Wiesenthal Centre to British Deputy Prime Minister: "Expel M.P. David Ward from Liberal Democrat Party for Offense to Holocaust Survivors and Legitimization of Terrorism"

January 29, 2015

SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE - EUROPE
Tel. +33-147237637 - Fax: +33-147208401
E-mail: csweurope@gmail.com

"By invidious comparison, Ward insults good name of United Kingdom and, thereby, British forces role in liberating Nazi concentration camps."

Paris

In a letter to British Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, Nicholas Clegg, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels vigorously protested "the scurrilous desecration of the Holocaust by David Ward, your party's Member of Parliament for Bradford."

Samuels noted, "At the 27 January, 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau service in Bradford City Hall, Ward consciously abused the memory of the six million murdered Jews by stating: -

'On Holocaust Memorial Day, it is imperative that we share the memory of the millions who have been murdered in the Holocaust and subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Palestine, Bosnia and Darfur in order to challenge hatred and persecution wherever it resides today.'

Ward is a conscious abuser of Jewish victimology in view of his recidivist series of offensive jibes, arguably aimed garnering support among anti-Semitic elements in his Bradford constituency; -

- 11 January 2015, his tweets following the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket atrocities: 'Je Suis #Palestinien' (mocking 'Je suis Charlie') and ' #Netanyahu in Paris march – what!!!! Makes me feel sick' -

- July 2014, 'saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps, be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza'

- during the summer 2014 Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, he tweeted: 'The big question is – if I lived in #Gaza would I fire a rocket? – probably yes'. "

The Centre urged Clegg as party leader, "to expel Ward from the Liberal Democrat party for his Holocaust inversion, a form deemed anti-Semitic under the European Union 2005 Working Definition of Anti-Semitism and his egregious offense to Holocaust survivors – especially those who rebuilt their lives in the United Kingdom and in Israel."
The letter continued, "by his claims of a 'genocide' in Palestine, Ward legitimizes terrorism. His 'challenge to hatred' should be directed to the anti-Semitic incitement in Palestinian media and the calls to murder Jews globally in articles 7 and 32 of the Hamas Charter."

Samuels stressed that "by invidious comparisons, Ward's behaviour at a British Holocaust Memorial Day service is an insult to the role of British forces in liberating Nazi concentration camps and to the good name of Great Britain which saved my family from the horrors on the continent – only thirty miles of water away".
"Above all, Ward impugns your party by his constant rants. The option of apology has long past", concluded the Centre.

For further information please contact Dr. Shimon Samuels (00) 33 609 70158, join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).