Labour candidate apologises for saying she would ‘celebrate’ death of Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu
2 min read
A Labour candidate in next month's general election has apologised after social media posts in which she said she would “celebrate” the deaths of Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu resurfaced.
Zarah Sultana also backed the right of Palestinians to mount "violent resistance" against Israel.
Ms Sultana will contest the seat of Coventry South, where Labour has a majority of nearly 8,000, on 12 December.
In Twitter comments revealed by the Jewish Chronicle, the party activist responded to a quote claiming it was wrong to “celebrate the death of any person regardless of what they did”, Ms Sultana said: “Try and stop me when the likes of Blair, Netanyahu and Bush die.”
She added: “The sooner they meet their creator the better. The concepts of justice and accountability don’t truly exist in this life. Only in the next.”
In a separate Facebook post, Ms Sultana wrote that while she had written that she backed the Palestinian right to “non-violent resistance”, she had in fact meant “violent resistance”.
She said: “Best believe that was an error and I meant to write ‘violent resistance’ #signsofanextremistMuslim”.
Elsewhere, she said there would “come a time in the near future where those (who) lobby for Israel feel the same shame and regret as South African apartheid supporters”.
The candidate also wrote that students who went on “Zionist conferences and trips should be ashamed of themselves” as they were “advocating racist ideology”.
But in a statement, Ms Sultana insisted she no longer held those views.
She said: “Today I was shown tweets from a deleted account dating back several years from when I was a student.
"This was written out of frustration rather than any malice. I was a young activist exasperated by endless cycles of global suffering, violence and needless killing resulting from decisions by political leaders, from the Iraq war to the killing of over 2,000 Palestinians in 2014, mostly civilians, which was condemned by the United Nations.
"I do not support violence and I should not have articulated my anger in the manner I did, for which I apologise."
The row comes hours after Labour called on the Conservatives to drop a candidate who said that people who featured on Benefits Street should be "put down".
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