Green Party investigates councillor who shouted ‘Allahu Akbar!’

Mothin Ali beat the Labour hopeful in the Leeds ward Gipton and Harehills and declared ‘we will raise the voice of Gaza’

The Green Party is investigating a councillor who shouted “Allahu Akbar!” after being elected and said Palestine had the right to “fight back” on the day of the Oct 7 terror attacks.

Mothin Ali won the Gipton and Harehills ward in Leeds with more than 3,000 votes at Thursday’s local elections and said his victory was a “win for the people of Gaza”.

The 42-year-old father of three, who works as an accountant and runs a gardening blog, has previously described a Jewish chaplain forced into hiding by threats from protesters as a “creep” and a “kind of animal”.

During his victory speech on Friday, Mr Ali told activists: “We will not be silenced. We will raise the voice of Gaza. We will raise the voice of Palestine. Allahu Akbar!”

After Mr Ali’s historic comments emerged, a Green Party spokesman said: “The Green Party is investigating issues drawn to our attention in relation to Councillor Mothin Ali, so cannot comment further.

“However, we are clear that we never support anything that extols violence.”

The Telegraph understands Mr Ali has not been suspended by the Greens and will continue representing the party as a councillor during the investigation.

In videos posted to his social media channels following the Oct 7 attacks, in which Hamas massacred more than 1,200 Israelis, the councillor claimed Israel would “use the pretext of the fight back by Hamas fighters or supposedly Hamas fighters this morning” to launch attacks on civilians.

Labelling Gaza the “biggest concentration camp the world has ever seen”, he went on to urge viewers to “support the right of indigenous people to fight back” and described Israel as a “settler, colonial, occupier” which had tried to “erase the legitimacy of a native population”.

“They are not victims, they are occupiers, they are colonialists, they are European colonialists,” he said.

“It’s one of the last European colonies in the world and that’s why the European people don’t want to let it go. They use the weapon of anti-Semitism so effectively that anyone who criticises Israel is labelled as anti-semitic.”

It also emerged Mr Ali had criticised Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, the Jewish chaplain at the University of Leeds who went into hiding after receiving online threats from pro-Palestinian activists because he had served with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Mothin Ali shouted ‘Allahu akbar!’ after victorious election result – TWITTER

He said of Rabbi Deutsch in a separate video: “This is Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch. This creep, that’s the only way I can describe him politely, is someone who went from Leeds to Israel to kill children and women and everyone else over there.”

Mr Ali made a number of pro-Palestinian posts on his Facebook page during the course of the campaign, including videos and photographs in which he wore a beanie hat bearing the Palestinian flag.

On March 21 he shared a post from the Nottingham branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign urging activists to contact the vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham to complain about Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador, being invited to a private event.

The Green Party called for an “immediate end” to the violence in Gaza two days after the October 7 attacks, when it called on Israel to urge its “illegal occupation”.

In a separate statement last month, Carla Denyer, the co-leader of the Greens, accused the British Government of being “complicit in the deadly assault on Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces”.

Calling for the immediate suspension of arms sales to Israel, Ms Denyer said: “Six months on from the horrific Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens, it is clear that the Netanyahu government’s response has been totally disproportionate.”

The Green Party and dozens of independent candidates look to have benefited at Thursday’s elections from a pro-Palestinian stance, while support for Labour among Muslim voters after Sir Keir Starmer initially refused to call for an immediate ceasefire last autumn.

Sir Keir’s party lost two councillors in Rochdale to George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain.

Mr Galloway was elected MP for the Lancashire town at the end of February having run on a campaign on pro-Gaza and anti-Labour ticket, even rebranding himself as “Gaza George” to appeal to the town’s large Muslim population.

Mr Ali was approached for comment. He has previously said: “I have received hundreds of death threats from those on the far-Right and supporters of what the Israeli government is doing, many of which have been reported to the police. I understand very well the emotional turmoil threats of violence can have and would not wish that on others… the video in question has absolutely nothing to do with violence.”

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