Last week, a blog called People’s News posted about Ryan becoming the eighth MP to defect from Labour in the Facebook group. One person responded, “8th Israeli shill more like”, while another posted, “early spring clean it seems, all the cockroaches are weeding themselves out…”



Over the weekend, the Canary posted about Labour deputy leader Tom Watson getting into a feud with Corbyn over anti-Semitism.

One commenter wrote: “The defectors have come out with nothing new and relevant to political change. But they are sure to slag off their parties to cause damage and support the neoliberal Zionist politics dominating the UK… British politicians in the pay of a foreign government seems like a clear case of treason to me…”

And two days earlier, another post from the Canary brought more comments against the Jewish MPs, with one falsely claiming: “Hearing that Luciana Berger allegedly once laughed and shrugged when asked about the deaths of Palestinian children at the hands of the IDF? Can anyone confirm…”

After BuzzFeed News approached all the group’s admins on Wednesday, the People’s News claimed it had left the group after trying to push out Sivier for “inflammatory comments” they had judged to be anti-Semitic.

“It recently emerged Vox Political writer Mike Sivier has made inflammatory comments online,” the People’s News (TPN) said. “We have judged these comments to be anti-Semitic.”

In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Sivier denied claims that his posts were anti-Semitic and that he couldn’t be held accountable for comments made in the Facebook group.

“Nothing I have said or written has been anti-Semitic,” Sivier said. “I am not responsible for the comments of other people and would resist any suggestions of ‘guilt by association’ by you or anybody else.”

The People’s News added: “TPN tabled a vote to expel Vox Political from the group, but this was not passed. Our management team have therefore made the unanimous but regrettable decision to leave. We have not taken this decision lightly.”

In a statement, the Canary’s director of communications and membership Nancy Mendoza said it was up to members of the Independent Media UK to police the group.

“We share content from the Canary to the Independent Media UK Facebook group. Members of the group are able to flag inappropriate content for us to review and the group is essentially self policing in that way.

“We do not consider criticism of the Israeli government or its Zionist project to be anti-semitic. We believe it is vital that people can criticise the oppression of Palestinian civilians without being accused of antisemitism.

“As a Jewish person who has experienced real life antisemitism, I find it hugely frustrating that the true meaning of the term is being diluted for the sake of political gain. This has to stop.

“When the kids on my school bus told me I should have been ‘gassed with all the rest of them’, that was anti-semitic. I know the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism because I live it, every day.”