A tweet posted by Hannah Spencer on January 28, 2025 (X)[Missing Credit]
Her comment, around nine months before the implementation of a ceasefire in Gaza, appeared to suggest that Israel’s actions in the war with Hamas, which party leader Zack Polanski has previously labelled a “genocide”, were comparable with the Holocaust.
The IHRA definition of antisemitism, which the Green Party adopted formally in 2021, notes drawing comparisons between contemporary Israeli policies and those of Nazi Germany as an example of what may amount to antisemitism.
Responding to the post, Lord Katz told the JC: “It's quite unbelievable this Green candidate used Holocaust Memorial Day to belittle the memory of six million Jews killed in the Shoah to make a tawdry political point.”
And Ella Rose-Jacobs, former national chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, said: “The comments from Hannah Spencer are a classic example of Holocaust Inversion.
“Holocaust Inversion is when someone uses the Holocaust as a way to draw false comparisons between it and a different issue as a way to weaponise the Holocaust and insinuate that Jewish people should know better.
Several months prior to Spencer’s post, in September 2024, the government had suspended 30 arms export licences to Israel on the grounds that the Foreign Office had identified a “clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”.
However, then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy emphasised that the move was “not an arms embargo” and that other licenses remained active.
Business Secretary Peter Kyle has since said, in an interview with the JC this month, that the government is set to revisit both the arms licenses and suspended trade talks with the Jewish state after the second phase of the ceasefire – currently ongoing – is concluded.
The by-election will take place on February 26 to replace Andrew Gwynne, a former Labour health minister who resigned from parliament earlier this month due to an extended period of “ill health”.
A spokesperson for the Green Party denied any suggestion of antisemitism in the tweet, saying: “This is obviously nonsense. The response was clearly to Angela Rayner and her claim of 'never again' while the Labour government was failing to oppose an unfolding genocide in Gaza.
"Hannah and the Green Party utterly deplore antisemitism, and to invoke the charge in relation to her response to this Labour government's action just debases the term.”
