UK Labor MP: I'm not anti-Semitic, but my Facebook post was
Shah now says that after much reflection it was hard for her to believe "how stupid I was and how ignorant I was."
By JPOST.COM STAFFUpdated: JULY 18, 2016 18:12British Labor MK Naz Shah(photo credit: TWITTER)
A recently reinstated UK Labour MP acknowledged to the BBC Monday that a message she posted to social media earlier this year was "ignorant" and "anti-Semitic."Naz Shah for the first time sat down with BBC Radio 4's World at One to discuss her experience since being suspended in April from the UK's largest opposition party over a 2014 Facebook post suggesting Israel should be moved to the United States."I wasn't anti-Semitic, what I put out was anti-Semitic," Shah said in the interview."The language I used was anti-Semitic, it was offensive," she continued. "What I did was I hurt people and the language that was the clear anti-Semitic language, which I didn't know at the time, was when I said, 'The Jews are rallying.'"The Bradford West MP was readmitted into the Labour party on July 5. Before Shah became an elected official in the UK's parliament, she had posted a graphic to Facebook that showed an image of Israel's outline layered over a map of the US. The image was labelled "Solution for Israel-Palestine conflict - relocate Israel into United States, with the comment "problem solved," according to the BBC.The post was first exposed by British political website Guido Fawkes.Shortly after Shah's post was brought to light, The Jewish Chronicle also reported that Shah had posted a tweet in August 2014, with a link to a blog which claims Zionism has been used to “groom” Jews to “exert political influence at the highest levels of public office,” and which compared Zionism to al-Qaida.The article, titled “Colonization, Israel, Palestinian resistance and…”, from a blog called Walk Together, claimed Zionism, “like al-Qaida, was and is a political movement layered with religious symbolism.”
Shah now says that after much reflection it was hard for her to believe "how stupid I was and how ignorant I was.""The truth is that some of the stuff I have since looked at and understood, I didn't know at the time." Towards the conclusion of the interview, Shah expressed gratitude to the UK Jewish community for their "amazing compassion" throughout the ordeal.