Is Labour MP Andy Slaughter a sleazy liar? The evidence is certainly coming in.
Slaughter was one of the speakers at the parliamentary event where his fellow Labour MP Gerald Kaufman rolled out gross antisemitic slurs. Queried about the meeting by the Jewish Chronicle, Slaughter said:
“I am responsible for what I say; I am not responsible for what anyone else says.
“I would not endorse those comments. If you showed me that and said would you agree with that, I would say ‘no’.
“Obviously I would not endorse or be associated in any way with those comments.”
Oh really? David Collier, the blogger who first reported Kaufman’s words, has a new post (please read it) on the event. It notes that Slaughter had high praise for Kaufman and also backed his claims that Israel has been “fabricating” terrorist attacks. As Collier wryly writes:
From the comments in the JC, he clearly finds something distasteful, but from his own comments at the event, I find it difficult to identity precisely what that would be.
The truth is that Mr Slaughter wallows in antisemitic swamps very happily indeed.
Here is another of those occasions. This picture from earlier this year shows him proudly accepting an award from the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB). The PFB is part of the Hamas UK network. I think it holds the UK record for banned hate preachers. At least four of the people it has invited to address its rallies are no longer welcome here – Wagdi Ghoneim, Ahmad Nofal, Raed Salah, and Muhammad Musa Al-Shareef.
Let’s recap some of what the PFB rally luminaries have to say about Jews:
– Ghoneim is an ardent jihadi preacher who calls Jews “prophet killers” and “descendants of apes”. Country after country has banned him, not the UK alone.
– Nofal is a fan of Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, supports the terrorist murder of Israeli civilians, and has reportedly taken part in terrorist operations himself.
– Raed Salah is of course the “blood libel sheikh”.
– Al-Shareef wants Israeli civilians dead and calls them “the brothers of apes and pigs”.
No wonder the PFB wanted to hear from these four.
On and on the record goes. Here Slaughter leads an Israel hatred march in London, flanked by Hafiz al-Karmi of the PFB and George Galloway.
Here he leads another with the notorious fanatic Ismail Patel and fellow Labour MPs Rushanara Ali and Diane Abbott.
Slaughter adores the self-styled Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the organisers of London hatred rallies. Here he speaks at a PSC event with Daud Abdullah of Istanbul Declaration shame.
Slaughter also does everything he can to help al-Muntada, a nasty Salafi group in West London. Here he is welcoming them to Parliament.
Here he pitches in for Ismail Patel’s “Friends of al-Aqsa”, which likes to harass British shopkeepers who stock Israeli dates.
This is the bottom line. Where decent people see ugly hatred, up to and including terrorism, Mr Slaughter sees votes. In he rushes, eagerly courting. A few lies here and there are the only cost of doing this grubby business.
He should fare very well indeed in Mr Corbyn’s Labour Party, where that cost will be nil.
