By Pete McKenzie on Newsroom…
Phil Twyford says he didn’t know about the donor’s public anti-Semitic rhetoric about the March 15 attacks, despite having a long-standing relationship with him
Labour MP Phil Twyford has returned a $2,000 donation after Newsroom found that it came from a man who claimed the Christchurch terror attacks were part of a Jewish conspiracy.
Twelve days before voting closed in the 2020 election, the Te Atatu MP and new disarmament minister accepted the donation from Ahmed Bhamji, who in 2019 baselessly alleged that the gunman behind the Christchurch massacre was funded by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and “Zionist business”.
A spokeswoman for the New Zealand Jewish Council, Juliet Moses, said Bhamji’s “anti-Semitic conspiracist comments” came while “just up the road, at the largest Jewish community centre in New Zealand and the only Jewish school, there were armed police standing outside”. She said his comments were “extremely distressing for the community” at the time.
She also noted: “As for the donations, it is up to each politician to decide what that politician’s values are and what their criteria are when they take donations from an individual.”
Read the full article on Newsroom here.
