Sinn Féin will not discipline TD after remarks linking Israel to Nazism
Sinn Féin will not be disciplining a newly elected TD who previously linked Israel to Nazism and also suggested a picture of monkeys at computers was the Israeli embassy.
While Kildare North TD Réada Cronin has apologised for the series of tweets posted between 2012 and 2015, deputy party leader Pearse Doherty confirmed she would not be suspended.
Responding to media questions today, Mr Doherty said: “I haven't seen the comments from Réada. I do understand that Réada made some of those comments before she was even a member of Sinn Féin.
She has unreservedly withdrawn those comments and apologised for them and I think that is the right thing to do.
Ms Cronin in her tweets she would be "unsurprised" if "loads of judges" were paedophiles; that she had thought a picture of monkeys in a building was a photo of the Israeli embassy and its staff and that fluoride is a plot to sedate the Irish population.
She also shared content that said that Hitler was a pawn of Jewish banks.
The comments about Israelis was made when Ms Cronin was a councillor in 2014.
Mr Doherty said there were party guidelines for the use of social media but the party would not be trawling through messages posted by other members or elected officials.
“Our focus here is on putting forward a government for change. That's our focus, we are not going to be distracted from that,” he said at Leinster House today.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has already criticised Ms Cronin's comments today.
The anti-Semitic & anti-science remarks of one of Sinn Fein’s new TDs should trouble us all. This is not the kind of change we need #themaskslipsagain #notanormalparty
— Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) February 19, 2020
In his own tweet, he said: “The anti-Semitic & anti-science remarks of one of Sinn Féin’s new TDs should trouble us all.
"This is not the kind of change we need.”
