Labour suspends candidate in Baruc after rogue tweets

Glamorgan Star news 22/04/2022

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Labour suspends candidate in Baruc after rogue tweets

A Labour candidate for the Baruc ward (Barry) in the upcoming Vale Council elections has been suspended by his party after he described the Jewish president of Ukraine as a “Zionist” on Twitter.

Ziad Alsayed sent the tweet about Volodymyr Zelensky in February, in which he wrote in Arabic: “How could we side with a country that has a Zionist president”.

Official portrait of President Zelensky.

Zionism refers to the movement to create a Jewish state in the Middle East and support for the modern state of Israel, but some say the term is also used as a coded attack on Jews.

Days earlier, Alun Cairns, Conservative MP for the Vale of Glamorgan, raised concerns about other tweets sent by Mr Alsayed, including one where he called President Zelensky a “fascist”.

In a tweet to London mayor Sadiq Khan, who expressed solidarity with Ukraine, Mr Alsayed said: “If you mean the Ukrainian people that’s OK, but not the fascist president”.

Following Labour’s withdrawal of its endorsement of Mr Alsayed, Mr Cairns said: “To make such a statement when a nation is under siege from the most ruthless aggressor who has no respect for international law. We all recognise the war crimes and to post doubt will only embolden Putin’s cronies.

“These comments from an official Labour candidate are shocking and could have come straight from the Kremlin’s propaganda arm.”

With nominations having closed, Mr Alsayed’s name will still appear on the ballot paper as a Labour candidate, despite him having been suspended by the party.

The Baruc ward is currently represented by two Plaid Cymru members, who won in 2017 with a small majority over the Conservative candidates.

The issue of antisemitism within the Labour Party came to prominence during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, when a series of complaints led to an investigation and report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

Upon the publication of the report, Mr Corbyn was immediately suspended from the Labour Party. In his statement, Mr Corbyn said that while anti-Semitism was “absolutely abhorrent” and that “one anti-Semite [in the Labour Party] is one too many”, he alleged that “the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media.”

The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said that anyone who thought the problems were “exaggerated” or were a “factional attack” were “part of the problem and should be nowhere near the Labour Party.”

In November 2020, a panel drawn from Labour’s National Executive Committee decided to readmit Mr Corbyn to the Labour Party, but Sir Keir refused to restore the Labour whip to Corbyn, effectively denying him readmission to the parliamentary party, saying that he would “keep this situation under review”.