There was some controversy during the week when Nasrin Khanam was selected to be the Tower Hamlets Labour candidate for the Weavers ward by-election.
The Enquirer reported on this here Labour’s Weavers by-election car crash, Moley upsets the Mayor #1 and here Labour’s Weavers by-election car crash, Moley upsets the Mayor #2 including an extensive number of comments on our story by the Mayor.
Mayor Biggs was unimpressed with our reporting and insisted in an email to the Enquirer that “… I believe ours is a good and principled organisation whereas the previous mayor was broadly without a moral compass and, of course, without the checks and balances that come with being a party representative.”
The mysterious missing tweet
We can now exclusively reveal that an anti-Semitic tweet that Nasrin Khanam retweeted on her twitter account @dehabmonikas on 19 May 2021 has, well, disappeared.
The tweet has an image of two Jewish American settlers standing at the front gate of a house looking at an elderly Palestinian couple with the caption “An old Palestinian couple in front of their stolen house now inhabited by jewish settlers from Brooklyn, NY, USA. Most of Palestine is stolen.”
The image at the top of this page shows a link from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine of Nasrin Khanam’s twitter page captured on 20 May 2021 where she has retweeted the image at 2:20 PM on 19 May 2021 with the partial text “…of their stolen house now inhabited by jewish settlers from Brooklyn, NY, USA. Most of Palestine is stolen.”
As you can see from the screen grab below of the relevant date of Ms. Khanam’s twitter feed the tweet in question is no longer there.
Standing together against racism
Browsing through the rest of Ms. Khanam’s feed there is this tweet of the Labour candidate for Weavers ward out campaigning on 25 May with the words “Friends standing together against racism whatever form it comes on George Floyd murder anniversary!”
The contrast in sentiment between the missing tweet and this is marked.
Some might argue that the missing tweet is mild by some standards of the evil anti-Semitic abuse that our Jewish friends and neighbours continue to suffer, but it seems Ms. Khanam was well aware of its character revealing her true feelings prior to the Weavers selection and so deleted it.
Who in Tower Hamlets Labour knew about this tweet?
Apart from the issue that Tower Hamlets Labour now has regarding the future political career of Ms. Khanam, there is a much bigger question to be answered, especially in the light of Mayor Biggs recent assertion that Tower Hamlets Labour “is a good and principled organisation”.
That question is quite simple.
Was anyone in Tower Hamlets Labour Party aware of the anti-Semitic tweet and did anyone instruct Ms. Khanam to remove it?
If so, who?
Were the Tower Hamlets Labour Party members who selected Ms. Khanam deliberately deceived as to her character?
This story is being filed just before 1 am on Saturday morning so we have not been able to contact Nasrin Khanam to hear her version of events.
After all there might be an innocent explanation for the tweet’s removal which we would be more than happy to publish.
Maybe Mayor Biggs could give us his reaction on Saturday?
Remember Mayor that you did tell the Enquirer that “I am most grateful for your scrutiny”.
Always a pleasure Mayor.
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As community journalists we do exactly what it says on our tin – we work for the community.
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As Love Wapping we were instrumental in exposing the electoral corruption of Mayor Lutfur Rahman.
