Labour deselects candidate Ed Murphy after it emerges he described the IDF as “international pirates” secretly backed by the Conservatives
Ed Murphy, the Labour Party general election candidate for North West Cambridgeshire, has reportedly been deselected by the Party after it emerged that he accused the Israel Defence Forces of being “international pirates” secretly backed by the Conservatives on Peterborough City Council.
Mr Murphy, who is a councillor on Peterborough City Council, reportedly deleted a tweet from July 2014 in which he alleged that the Israel Defence Forces were backed by the Conservatives on the council, apparently posting: “Israel a terrorist state? And Israeli military (secretly backed by the Cons on Pboro Council) are international pirates.”
The tweet is said to have been accompanied by the image of the Israeli flag turned into a symbol of piracy, and Mr Murphy is alleged to have shared the image on Twitter twice more in 2015 with the hashtag #MilitaryStatePirates.
It has also been claimed that Mr Murphy, who was then Labour’s leader on the council, proposed Alan Bull as a candidate in a Peterborough City Council election, despite knowing that Mr Bull had shared a post on social media suggesting that the Holocaust was a hoax and other controversial material.
However, it took the Labour compliance unit eight months to suspend Mr Bull in a saga that neatly illustrated Labour’s institutional antisemitism, as Mr Bull’s critics were hounded out of the Party.
Labour confirmed the “difficult” decision to withdraw Mr Murphy’s candidacy had been made on Wednesday night but did not provide a reason for the move.
On 28th May, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a full statutory investigation following a formal referral and detailed legal representations from Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is the complainant.
In recent months, thirteen MPs and three peers have resigned from the Labour Party over antisemitism, along with a large number of MEPs, councillors and members.
Over 57,000 people have now signed our petition denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and declaring him “unfit to hold any public office.”
On 8th December, regardless of religion, race or politics, Jews and non-Jews alike will gather in Parliament Square to declare that they stand together against antisemitism in the face of Jew-hatred in politics and mounting anti-Jewish hate crime.
