Party U-turn as Ganley backs Jewish group

LIBERTAS performed an astonishing U-turn last night after earlier claiming that a leading Jewish human rights organisation was “beneath contempt”.

Less than two hours after Libertas candidate Caroline Simons branded the Simon Wiesenthal Centre as “willing idiots”, Libertas founder Declan Ganley said his organisation was joining with the centre to “actively fight racism and anti-Semitism”.

The embarrassing U-turn overshadowed Libertas’s final press event of the European election campaign.

The contradictory statements were issued after the centre, which fights anti-Semitism across the world, raised questions about some of Libertas’s candidates across Europe, as revealed in this paper yesterday. The centre stated: “Libertas is running some 600 candidates in over 20 of the elections in the 27 member states. Some of those standing are known anti-Semites, homophobes and anti-migrant racists.”

Libertas responded yesterday when claiming in a statement issued at around 3.20pm that the centre’s comments represented a “smear”.

“In 2004, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre smeared the president of our country,” Ms Simons, who’s standing for Libertas in Dublin, said. “They implied that by association, she was giving support to fascists. They are beneath contempt.

“The voters aren’t stupid. It was only ever a matter of time before the establishment got so desperate that they resorted to calling us Nazis. The only surprise here is that we had to wait so long before they could find a willing idiot to come and say it.”

But shortly after 5pm, Libertas founder Declan Ganley, who’s running as a candidate in Ireland North West, issued a very different statement.

“Libertas leader Declan Ganley today announced that the Libertas pan-European movement will ally itself with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in a joint commitment to defend against and actively fight racism and anti-Semitism within the European Parliament and other European institutions,” the statement said.