Jewish peer resigns from Labour party after Corbyn re-elected

Marcy Oster

(JTA) — Jeremy Corbyn has been re-elected head of the British Labour party, leading to the resignation of a Jewish peer from the party.

The results were announced at the start of the party conference on Saturday. Corbyn defeated challenger Owen Wilson, 313,209 votes to 193,229 votes.

Corbyn has faced allegations that his pro-Palestinian politics and endorsement of radical anti-Semites has encouraged hate speech against Jews. He been accused of doing too little to curb rampant anti-Semitism among party members and lawmakers, some of whom have been suspended for making racist and anti-Semitic statements in public or on social media.

Lord Parry Mitchell announced his resignation following the results.  He had told the London-based Jewish Chronicle in August that he would no longer represent the party if Corbyn remained its leader.

Lord Mitchell, who became a peer in 2000, called Labout a “lost cause,” and accused Corbyn of being “lukewarm” about tackling anti-Semitism.  He also said that Corbyn was surrounded by people with “violent anti-Israel views.”

“I’m Jewish and I’m very strongly Jewish and I make no bones about it and there’s no doubt in my mind that Jeremy himself is very lukewarm on this subject,” Lord Mitchell told the BBC on Sunday.

“But even more than that he surrounds himself with a coterie of people who hold violent, violent anti-Israel views and allied with it they are very hostile to Jews so, in my view, they’re pretty bad guys.”

In an Op-Ed in the UK Jewish News, Lord Mitchell compared leaving his political party to divorce, saying “we are no longer compatible and it’s time to move on.”

He also wrote: “How can I, a Jew and a Zionist, remain in a party where the leadership is so clearly hostile to Israel (even to its very existence) and which also flirts with anti-Semitism? In the end it was an easy decision, but that makes it none the less painful.”

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