She also said:
“Israel must be eradicated. Even if it means killing every single Zionist”, as well as describing Zionists as “vermin. And vermin must be eradicated so they can’t harm children”.
She also made numerous references to the idea that Jews are obsessed with money and use it to control the world, for example:
Ion’s Threads account referred to “Jewish Nazis”, describing them as “the money grubbing thieves have built mountains of money over centuries that they use to buy their way in the world through the lowest and most corrupt individuals in high places”.
I don’t think I need to explain that describing Jews as moneygrubbing vermin is straight-up old school racism. Her statements obviously go far beyond any valid criticism of Israel, its government or its supporters.
No, you make a completely fair point. All kinds of abuses are possible if the leader can unilaterally suspend people, so it’s quite right that Polanski not have that power.
That said, I think it’s okay for him to make it clear that he generally supports suspending people for this kind of thing and I also think he should rebuke Mothin Ali for undermining the process.
Yeah, it’d be nice if Polanski could come out with a stronger statement about antisemitic candidates than this. I don’t know if publicly rebuking Ali is the right move though, but something should be done. One of the deputy leaders saying the disciplinary process has been weaponised and telling them to seek legal advice (TERF tactics) while they have ongoing cases just isn’t a very good look.
It’s just bad comms, really. Who is that ‘it’s just a handful’ comment for? What does it say that isn’t already implicit? It does nothing to address people’s concerns.