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Rayner ignored complaints about Islamophobia adviser's ‘anti-Semitic' tweets
Angela Rayner ignored complaints about allegedly anti-Semitic posts written by a peer advising ministers on the definition of Islamophobia, The Telegraph can reveal.
Baroness Gohir, one of five figures appointed to the working group on defining anti-Muslim hatred in February, previously claimed that Israel 'controls' the US in several social media posts.
In April, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister, whose department is responsible for drawing up the definition of Islamophobia, alerting her to the comments.
It quoted five tweets written from 2013 and 2014, which were public until at least 2022 but have since been deleted, that it claimed met the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.
In September 2013, when the US was considering whether to conduct military action against Bashar al-Assad, the then Syrian president, Lady Gohir said: 'Will Israel influence the US vote on whether to invade Syria? Are the Americans really in control of their own decisions? #JustAsking.'
A week later, she tweeted: 'Who controls America's foreign policy? ISRAEL – they would be the ONLY beneficiaries of a US attack on Syria.'
The following year, she shared a news article about comments made by Barack Obama issuing a warning to Benjamin Netanyahu over him not agreeing to a peace deal with Gaza.
She wrote: 'US warns Israel over Palestine talks failure. I bet Israel are quaking in their boots – NOT! Don't they control US?'
Also in 2014, Lady Gohir said: 'The hold Israel has over world leaders, including Muslim ones, is extraordinary that they continue to murder Palestinians and get away with it.'
