A Labour parliamentary candidate posted controversial tweets peddling a conspiracy theory about Israel and defending Ken Livingstone against accusations of antisemitism, it has been revealed.
Caroline Kolek, the mayor of Honiton in Devon and candidate for Tiverton and Honiton, also posted a graphic which accused Israel of seeking to capitalise on unrest in Syria by seeking to obtain oil from inside the country’s territory. The same tweet, which has now been deleted, implicated Rupert Murdoch in the plot.
She also tweeted a quote by Mr Livingstone in which he claimed to be the victim of a 35-year smear campaign by the “Israel lobby”. The former Mayor of London was suspended for two years by the Labour Party for claiming that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism in the 1930s.
She also accused Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi of buying oil from ISIS and selling it to Israel.
Mr Zahawi recently won a £338,000 payout after winning a libel case against Iranian state TV channel Press TV, after it made the same claim.
In December 2015 Ms Kolek tweeted a quote by John Sheehan, a Jesuit priest: “Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.”
On Thursday, Ms Kolek, who came third in Tiverton and Honiton at the last general election, tweeted that she was wrong to post the statements, and said she did not agree with the views expressed in them.
She apologised for causing offence, before deleting her Twitter account.
