Labour’s Holborn candidate ‘is Zionist JLM member’

Sagal Abdi-Wali, the Labour candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, appears to be an ‘ally’ member of the ultra-Zionist ‘Jewish Labour Movement‘ (JLM). At the very least, she has extensive links to JLM, an explicitly and avowedly pro-Israel group that vocally supported Keir Starmer’s collaboration in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Social media posts and other public material show that Abdi-Wali is also closely linked to other local political figures who have shared racist articles online describing Green party leader — and Abdi-Wali’s rival in the by-election — Zack Polanski, a ‘court-Jew’, and claiming that the Green Party under Polanski has become a ‘home for Islamists’.

Silence on Gaza

Abdi-Wali, Labour’s local council leader, has been criticised for failing to speak out on Gaza — and for her part in resisting calls for Camden Council’s pension fund to divest from companies tied to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Abdi-Wali has particularly close ties to JLM’s current vice-chair, Izzy Lenga. Lenga is a fellow Labour councillor on Camden Council in North London — who has proudly posed in the uniform of Israel’s military:

Lenga also played a prominent role in the BBC’s shameful 2019 Panorama hit-job ‘Is Labour antisemitic?’. Lenga was falsely presented by the programme as having suffered antisemitism within the party. As with several other complainants in the programme, the makers did not divulge her links to Israel’s military or embassy.

‘Friends of genocide’

JLM is an profoundly Zionist organisation. Members of JLM are asked to ‘share’ its values, which include:

to promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life and its development

It is affiliated with the British subsidiary of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO). In 2024, the BBC admitted that the ‘Settlement Division’ of the WZO was complicit in facilitating illegal settlements in the West Bank.

JLM backed Keir Starmer’s shameful approach to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In November 2023, the group sent a joint letter with the equally complicit Labour Friends of Israel to all Labour councillors announcing that they ‘wholeheartedly’ supported Starmer’s decision not to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. The two groups urged all councillors to back the position.

Abdi-Wali appears to be, at the very least, closely affiliated to JLM, which has repeatedly used pictures of her campaigning with it in promotional photographs. A May 2025 post from the JLM twitter account stated:

The Jewish Labour Movement is out in force speaking to residents in support of Labour candidate Ezra Cohen and our Vice Chair, Cllr @ellarachelrose.

Rose is another prominent figure in the Panorama stitch-up. Her links to the Israeli embassy were kept hidden.

The picture underneath the post depicts several well known JLM members, alongside Abdi-Wali, including Ella Rose-Jacobs, the JLM’s current ‘National Movement Chair’. This image of Abdi-Wali was subsequently used in several other JLM communications shared on Instagram. The wording of this post appears to suggest that Abdi-Wali may even be a member of JLM:

Although full membership of JLM is limited to people who identify as ethnically or religiously Jewish — and Abdi-Wali is a Muslim — the organisation also offers ‘ally membership’. To qualify, ally members must pay a small membership fee and subscribe to JLM’s Zionist values and aims, which include:

promote Labour or Socialist Zionism as the movement for self-determination of the Jewish people within the state of Israel …[and]… promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life. 

Abdi-Wali and Lenga both became Camden councillors in 2022, after what was widely seen as a ‘purge’ of left-wing councillors overseen by JLM’s notorious then-chair Mike Katz. Katz was responsible for putting Abdi-Wali and Lenga, then a prominent JLM officer, on to the list of approved candidates. Unequivocal support for the “preposterous” IHRA ‘definition’ of antisemitism is known to have been one criterion used in determining the ‘suitability’ of replacement council candidates. Katz was subsequently elevated to the House of Lords by Starmer.

Since becoming councillors, Lenga and Abdi-Wali have developed a particularly close relationship. In November 2025, the pair travelled to Zion National Park in the US together. Lenga posted a picture of the pair, apparently taken by a smiling Abdi-Wali with Lenga in the background, on to her Facebook. Above the photo, Lenga provided the comment, ‘Twice as Zionist’.

An East London Times article showing the ‘twice as Zionist’ photo and comment was deleted shortly after Abi-Wali became Labour’s candidate in the by-election and London local independent media started to mention it:

However, the sanitising has not quite been successul. Former Mandela minister Andrew Feinstein, who lives in the constituency, included a screenshot of the image in a 28 September 2026 X post:

Lenga formally nominated Abdi-Wali to become Camden council leader in 2026, delivering a speech celebrating Abdi-Wali’s character and noting their personal connections. Abdi-Wali is currently the leader of Camden council, where Lenga serves as her chief whip. In this role, Lenga oversees disciplining councillors and ensuring they vote according to the council leader’s instructions. 

Labour betrayal of Gaza

As Feinstein also noted, local pro-Palestine activists have accused Camden’s Labour group of frustrating wide-spread local demands to force the Council’s pension fund to divest from companies accused of complicity in Israel. The Labour Group repeatedly refused to ‘second’ a motion from lone Green councillor Lorna Russell requiring a debate on divestment in the Chamber. The matter was only debated after a petition signed by 4,000 residents was delivered. 

The Labour group was accused of ‘dither and delay’ when they eventually referred the issue to a specialist pension’s committee. Recent disclosures provided to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and revealed in September 2026 by Declassified UK show that the value of Camden Council’s shares in companies alleged by PSC to be complicit in Israeli occupation has significantly increased since October 2023. The council’s shares in US spy- and death-firm Palantir, for example, have increased by 1200% between October 2023 and December 2025.

Camden’s Labour group has been slammed for its draconian response to local protests on Gaza. In 2025, the Labour group on the council successfully rewrote the Council’s constitution to limit protests in the public gallery of council chamber. Its rules now prevent individuals from even holding signs in the public gallery. Previously, Camden Friends of Palestine had silently held signs in the Chamber reading ‘end the genocide.’

A review of public sources suggests that Abdi-Wali did not comment about Gaza between October 2023 and her selection as Labour’s candidate in Holborn and St Pancras. Abdi-Wali’s campaign has failed to answer repeated requests for any comments Abdi-Wali made in this period. 

In 2025, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign issued a ‘candidates’ pledge’ that asked candidates in the 2026 local elections to work to end local government complicity in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The pledge was signed by over 1,600 candidates nationally, including 30 Labour candidates in the neighbouring borough of Islington. Abdi-Wali did not sign the pledge – nor did any other Labour candidates in Camden.

The ultra-Zionist ‘Board of Deputies’ and JLM have repeatedly claimed that protests and dissent over Gaza threaten ‘community cohesion’ – an approach that Abdi-Wali appears to endorse. On September 8, 2026, Polly Toynbee – a member of Camden Labour – published a piece on the by-election in the Guardian. It quoted Abdi-Wali saying:

If Greens stir up community antagonisms over Gaza, that would be disgraceful. 

Later on in the campaign, Richard Osley of the Camden New Journal pushed Abdi-Wali on the claim that she had declined to sign a solidarity pledge with Palestine earlier in the year. Abdi-Wali responded: 

It’s obviously an issue that has been really emotional. It’s been really harrowing to watch over the past three years and I know how deeply all of our councillors care about that. I think using that type of issue as a reason to try to divide communities is really not what I want to see. I want to focus on making sure that we’re able to put the message of what Ed Miliband is now doing with the government and on Palestine and Israel and Gaza and the West Bank to the community. I think it’s a real positive.

We’re going in the right direction and I want to make sure the community is aware of that rather than point at anyone else.

Muslims snubbed

Abdi-Wali caused controversy in September 2026 when she failed to attend the Muslim community by-election hustings, jointly hosted by the Camden Muslim Network and the Muslim Council of Britain. Polanski and Patrick Stillman, the Liberal Democrats’ candidate, were the only two candidates to attend. Abdi-Wali was ’empty-chaired’ for the debate.

Talking to the Guardian, Abdi-Wali claimed she had received the invitation at the last minute. The convenor of the hustings, however, has shared emails and texts showing Abid-Wali was invited five days before the event. The Guardian has subsequently added a footnote to its article noting that Abdi-Wali received her invitation at the same time as other candidates.

Days later, Abdi-Wali did attend the Board of Deputies hustings. Here she was explicitly asked whether she is a Zionist and answered stating she believed in a two-state solution.   

Labour friend of genocide-deniers

Martin Plaut is an influential ally and friend of Abdi-Wali, vocally supporting her candidacy to be chair of Holborn and St Pancras Labour Party in 2019. Plaut is a close friend of, and former researcher for, Keir Starmer. His wife, Gil Black, was Starmer’s election agent. Black also ‘seconded’ Abdi-Wali’s nomination papers for the upcoming by-election. 

Plaut is an active member of JLM. He has opposed anti-genocide protest and shared controversial posts on social media regarding events in the Middle East as well as the leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski. 

In October 2023, Plaut reposted a statement by Hussain Abdul-Hussain, who works for an American neocon think-tank, on Twitter that blamed Palestinians for their own mass displacement and deaths. The statement claimed that:

The Palestine disaster (nakba) is not a disaster of land loss or military defeat. It is a disaster of absence of leadership that can articulate the Arab alternative to war and death.

The statement described Palestinians as “either children, or Hamas thugs, or useless corrupt Mahmud Silicon-Face Abbas”. It claimed that “non-Palestinian Arabs should step up to save the Palestinians from themselves”. It then went on to describe Arabs as:

in fact idiotically out of touch with reality … We insist on our backward message, then act surprised why many of our states are failing and why we are migrating in droves.

Plaut has repeatedly denied that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and in August 2024 downplayed the notion that there was famine in the besieged enclave. He posted: “There is much talk of “starvation” in Gaza. But where are the images to match these? They are from Sudan, where famine has really hit hard”, alongside a picture of an emaciated child. 

In an article in 2026 Plaut said that it could not be a genocide in Gaza because not every Palestinian in Gaza had been killed:

Palestinians still live in Gaza; Tigrayan’s still live in Tigray. Using the term “genocide” for their suffering violates the use of the term as originally envisaged.

This is misleading nonsense. The Genocide Convention does not require the death of all inhabitants for a slaughter to be a genocide. The world’s top genocide scholars, including Israelis, agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The UN’s human rights experts agree. Israeli genocide expert Amos Goldberg said recently that, although he did not want to say Israel is committing genocide, he could no longer deny it — and added that:

It’s going to be a stain on Jewish and Israeli history for generations to come.

Plaut has also posted controversial material regarding Abdi-Wali’s opponent in the by-election, Zack Polanski, who is an anti-Zionist Jew. In March 2026, he posted a Jewish Chronicle article that described Polanski as a ‘useful court Jew’ in the headline. Plaut also posted a quote alongside the article, which described the Green Party under Polanski as a home for “Islamists”. 

Questioned about this post, Plaut stated that he ‘categorically’ rejected the idea that Polanski was a ‘court-Jew’ and disavowed the article. He also said he did not understand what the word ‘Islamist’ meant. Plaut’s personal website, however, includes a news category called ‘Islamists.’ Plaut has also backed Abdi-Wali’s failures on housing in Camden.

Whether a member of JLM or simply glued to it in relationships and ideology, Sagal Abdi-Wali is unfit to represent the people of Camden.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox