A Labour MP has provoked fury after marking Holocaust Memorial Day by calling for the Israeli military action in Gaza to be remembered as ‘genocide’.
Kate Osamor sent a message to party members in her Edmonton constituency in North London after she was photographed signing the Holocaust Educational Trust’s commemoration book in Westminster in which she said that ‘Gaza’ should be added to a list of ‘recent genocides’ to be remembered alongside the murder of six million Jews.
Ms Osamor, who was a front-bencher during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, said that there was an ‘international duty’ to remember the victims of the Holocaust as well as ‘more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and now Gaza’.
Kate Osamor (pictured) said that ‘Gaza’ should be added to a list of ‘recent genocides’ to be remembered alongside the murder of six million Jews
Karen Pollock, the chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, told Jewish News that the ‘disgusting post’, sent on Friday, was ‘a malicious distortion of the truth, a painful insult to survivors of the Holocaust and particularly distressing to see on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day’.
A Jewish Labour Movement spokesperson added: ‘This is wholly inappropriate. This week we have been commemorating the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust – and those who perished in subsequent genocides, as listed by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
‘Unilaterally co-opting the war in Gaza, despite the horrific suffering there, on to that list is wrong and offensive.’
Mr Corbyn has addressed the series of pro-Palestine marches that have taken place in London since the attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel triggered the regional conflict last year.
Ms Osamor invited Mr Corbyn to address students at a ‘political summer school’ last year, after which she said: ‘Without exception the students remain inspired and excited by Jeremy and the politics of hope he represents.’
After an uproar over her remarks on Gaza, she posted a message on X (formerly Twitter) saying: ‘I apologise for any offence caused by my reference to the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza.’
She has been dogged by controversy. In 2019 it was revealed that she had used Commons notepaper to write to a judge pleading with him not to jail her son.
Ishmael Osamor, then 29, resigned as a Labour councillor after admitting to having £2,500 worth of drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, at the Bestival festival in 2017.
Holocaust Memorial Day is held annually on January 27 to commemorate the victims of the Nazi genocide (Pictured: the entry to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland)
He was ordered to do 200 hours of community work. When confronted by a reporter from The Times about the issue, she threw a bucket of water, and shouted: ‘I should have come down here with a… bat and smashed your face open.’
The Standards Commissioner found her guilty of two breaches of parliamentary rules, but she later claimed she had been the target of a ‘witch-hunt’.
One Labour member in her constituency said: ‘There is nothing more offensive than equating the murder of six million Jews with the current conflict in Gaza.
‘This is not the first problem we have had with Kate Osamor. It’s time the party took action and removed the whip. She really is a disgrace.’