Paris, 15 February 2010

In a letter to UK Liberal Party Leader, Nick Clegg, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, commended him for “ firing your Health Spokesperson in the House of Lords, Baroness Jenny Tonge, for her obscene call ‘for an inquiry into allegations that Israeli soldiers were involved in organ trafficking in Haiti.

’ This hatemongering was apparently also disseminated online by the Palestine Telegraph, of which Tonge is a Patron and, subsequently, posted on YouTube.” 

Samuels noted that “Tonge was already fired in 2004 as your Party Spokesperson on Childrens’ issues for suggesting that she ‘could consider becoming a suicide bomber.’”

The letter continued, “this agitator, reportedly known in radical circles as ‘Jihad Jenny’ is a hazard to the health, not only of the Liberal Democrat Party, but of the United Kingdom as a whole”, adding that “Tonge’s language arguably encourages the Islamist call to British-born children as eventual recruits to Jihad.” 

The Centre considered “Tonge’s apologies as recurrent and showing no remorse” and “as a recidivist, she should have no place in a Party:

• whose Constitution proclaims: ‘we reject all prejudices and discrimination…', and
• whose mission statement highlights, under ‘WHAT WE STAND FOR’: ‘we will put British values of decency and the rule of law back at the heart of our foreign policy.’”

“Our Centre thus urges you to ensure that the Liberal Democrats live up to those values by definitively expelling ‘Jihad Jenny’ from your ranks. For, as long as she remains, the Liberal Democrat Party is passively endorsing positions explicitly defined as antisemitic by the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency’s 2004 Working Definition”, concluded Samuels.