British Member of Parliament David Ward was suspended by his Liberal Democrat party on Thursday over a recent message on Twitter calling Israel an apartheid state.
“Am I wrong or are am I right? At long last the #Zionists are losing the battle—how long can the #apartheid State of #Israel last?” Ward tweeted last Saturday.
Ward refused to apologize for the tweet, Reuters reported.
In January, Ward said he was he was “saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.”
Suspended by his party until Sept. 13, Ward until then will sit in the parliament as an independent.
“[Ward’s] use of anti-Semitic language veiled in anti-Israel rhetoric has finally been dealt with by his party,” Paul Charney, chairman of Zionist Federation UK, said in a statement. “I applaud Lib Dem Chief Whip Alistair Carmichael MP and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg MP for taking this necessary action. Should Mr. Ward continue to abuse his position by using it as a platform to broadcast his prejudice against Jews and Israel, then his party should withdraw the whip permanently. This action sends a clear message that racially prejudiced language will not be tolerated in our society.”