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Peers demand Baroness Tonge apologises over 'Israel lobby' comments on election

The independent peer is condemned for 'shameful' remarks

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Nearly 90 peers have urged independent peer Baroness Tonge to give an unqualified apology after blaming Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat on the “pro-Israel lobby”.

The cross-party wrote to the Daily Telegraph on Monday denouncing her “shameful” comments on social media.

In a Facebook post, the former Liberal Democrat, whose comments on Israel have frequently caused outrage, wrote: “The Chief Rabbi must be dancing in the street. The pro-Israel lobby won our General Election by lying about Jeremy Corbyn.”

But her remarks were denounced as “both shameful and in clear contravention of Britain’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism” in the letter to the Telegraph.

It was signed by the government’s antisemitism adviser Lord Mann and its envoy on post-Holocaust issues, Lord Pickles.

“Baroness Tonge has brought Parliament into disrepute and we demand that she withdraws her remarks and issues a full and unqualified apology without delay,” they wrote.

A Board of Deputies spokesman, echoing calls for an apology, said, " As has been proved time and again, Jenny Tonge is unfit to sit in the House of Lords.”

In 2010, Baroness Tonge was sacked as the Liberal Democrats' health spokesperson in the House of Lords after she suggested the IDF should hold an inquiry into claims it was harvesting organs from Haiti earthquake victims.

Six years later, she resigned from the party after being suspended following another row over Israel.

"I am at last free of being told what I must and must not say on the issue of Palestine, lest it offends the Israel lobby here, who like to control us, as they do in the USA,” she announced at the time.

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