(JTA) — A Labour lawmaker from the United Kingdom attributed to Israel the beating of an imprisoned Guatemalan boy by a soldier, then apologized.
Grahame Morris on Monday posted the 4-year-old video on Twitter, adding: “Marvellous, absolutely marvellous the Israeli Army, the best financed, best trained, best equipped army in the world caught on camera beating up Palestinian children for the fun of it. May God forgive them.”
The error was pointed out almost immediately, but Morris retracted the message about 24 hours later.
“My error demonstrates the dangers of fake news online and I will be more diligent in future in checking my sources,” he wrote Tuesday.
Critics of Morris and his Labour Party disagreed with his analysis of what went wrong.
“Your ‘error’ demonstrates what happens when one is consumed with such sheer Jew hatred and racism,” wrote Arsen Ostrovsky, executive director of the Israeli-Jewish Congress and a frequent critic of Labour and its anti-Semitism problem.
Under party leader Jeremy Corbyn, the prevalence of anti-Semitic hate speech in the Labour ranks has proliferated in what critics say is a response to Corbyn’s own bias against Jews and Israel.
He has denied having any such bias and vowed to punish any member caught engaging in anti-Semitic rhetoric. But Corbyn’s critics, including at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, have said he is part of the problem and is trying to cover it up.
In 2009, Corbyn called Hezbollah his friends along with Hamas, which he said “is working to achieve peace and justice.”
