Mick Hartley

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve posted about Green councillors and their rabid antisemtism. And here we go again, from the Times:

Birmingham city council’s cabinet member in charge of children and families shared a post calling the October 7 attacks on Israel courageous.

Kamel Hawwash, who was elected as a Green councillor in last month’s local elections, shared a post on his website on October 16 2023 — less than a fortnight after Hamas’s attack — headlined: “10 days since Al-Aqsa Flood: Courage in the face of aggression.”…

Hawwash was appointed to the council’s new ruling cabinet administration that will run it as a coalition between the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Independents. 

His deputy, Mumtaz Hussain, is a Liberal Democrat councillor who led calls to ban fans from the Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv from Villa Park in a Europa League match in November….

Hawwash, a former professor of civil engineering at the University of Birmingham, has made several controversial comments, including false claims that Israel “killed its own citizens, including children” in the October 7 attacks. 

He formerly chaired the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He has previously described Zionism as “Jewish supremacy” and said “millions” would be mourning the death of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, despite the group being a proscribed terrorist organisation in Britain.

Hawwash resigned from Labour in October 2023 after the attacks, citing Sir Keir Starmer’s “blind support for Israel” and stood as an independent candidate in Birmingham’s Selly Oak constituency at the general election in 2024. He then joined the Greens and was one of the party’s newly elected councillors.

Because the Greens are now the go-to party for antisemites. Everybody welcome: no Jew hatred too extreme.

Lord Austin of Dudley, a former Labour MP in the West Midlands, said the appointments were hugely divisive. He said: “Decent Brummies will be appalled that people with such divisive views have seized power in Britain’s second city. It beggars belief that the person in charge of children and families is a man who allegedly thinks it was courageous for Islamist terrorists to slaughter and rape hundreds of people in the October 7 atrocities in Israel, and his deputy is a woman who led the ban on Israeli football fans from the city last year. It makes me fear for the future of Birmingham.”

Well yes. And not just Birmingham.