Peer suspended by housing association for criticising Hamas

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A peer has been suspended because the chair of a housing association over a social media submit by which he described Hamas as “Islamist rapists and murderers”.

Midland Heart, which is predicated in Birmingham, additionally mentioned a gathering has been organized to discusss eradicating Lord Austin from the board.

But the choice was criticised by Michael Gove, the housing secretary, who mentioned he was looking for an “urgent meeting and explanation” with the group, which offers reasonably priced properties and receives public funding.

He additionally described Lord Austin as a “champion for affordable housing, (who) he has spent his career fighting racism.”

In a submit on X, previously referred to as Twitter, the peer, a former aide to Gordon Brown, mentioned: “Everyone, better safe than sorry: before you go to bed, nip down and check you haven’t inadvertently got a death cult of Islamist murderers and rapists running their operations downstairs. It’s easily done.”

He later deleted it saying: “People have complained about a tweet I issued at the weekend about Hamas’ operations centre being underneath UNRWA’s ( the UN refugee agency’s) offices” in Gaza.

“It was not my intention to offend anyone and I have deleted it. As I have written and said many times – including in a national newspaper today – the vast majority of Muslims are just as appalled by racism and terrorism as everyone else.”

He informed the Telegraph: “The word ‘Islamists’ is very clearly a reference not to Muslim people but to extremists”.

He accused “politically motivated bullies” of intentionally misinterpreting his feedback about Hamas, which killed 1,200 individuals in Israel in a bloodbath at the beginning of October.

“I am particularly appalled that people are claiming the word ‘Islamist’ refers to all Muslims and it is disgraceful for people to claim this is in some way ‘Islamophobic’,” he mentioned.

Lord Austin give up Labour in protest underneath Jeremy Corbyn’s management, when the celebration was dogged by accusations of antisemitism.