Labour’s Emily Thornberry has lashed out at Jeremy Corbyn's advisors, claiming they had "disgustingly" tried to remove condemnation of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel from party's 2019 manifesto.
And she vowed a ruthless crackdown on anti-Semitism, saying she would "just kick these scumbags out of our party."
In an article for Jewish News, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, claimed senior aides had sparked a row by seeking to remove language from the document which had appeared in the 2017 manifesto.
Ms Thornberry, who is standing to replace Mr Corbyn as leader, wrote: “Disgustingly, attacks on Israeli civilians were being deliberately dismissed in a way that would never have been tolerated of attacks on any civilians in any other country around the world."
When she complained this was unacceptable, she says she was told the new wording was “very balanced considering the considerable imbalance in the conflict”.
Ms Thornberry said she believes Mr Corbyn did not know about the row, but that senior aides had "invoked his name" while pressuring her to drop her objections - "something I believe they frequently did without his knowledge".
And she said she was later able to convince the party's ruling body to keep the language in the election document.
She wrote: "I finally won the argument, and succeeded in reverting the proposed text to [the language used in the 2017 manifesto], but the whole process left me deeply disturbed at the mentality of the advisers around Jeremy."
As leader, Ms Thornberry said, "driving antisemitism out of Labour would be my most urgent and immediate priority. No more suspensions, training sessions or forgiveness.
"I would just kick these scumbags out of our party the way we should have done long before now."
