A Green Party councillor in Lewisham shared social media posts branding Zionism “pure evil” and compared it to Nazism, while publicly supporting lawyers fighting to lift the UK ban on terror group Hamas.
The Jewish Chronicle reports that Hau-Yu Tam, who represents Evelyn ward in south London, was elected as a Labour councillor before switching to the Greens. She currently serves on Lewisham Council’s Standing Advisory Council of Religious Education and is also a school governor.
On 18 March, she reposted a message on X that declared, “Zionism is pure evil and must be abolished.” Just six days later, she shared another post that read, “Zionism was undoubtedly and unquestionably the Nazism of our time.”
Her comments resurfaced this week after she expressed support for lawyers acting on behalf of Hamas in a legal bid to have the group removed from the UK’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations.
Reacting to the announcement from London firm Riverway Law, Tam posted, “Extremely proud of my brilliant comrade and lawyer Frank Magennis for being among those blazing the way on this intervention.”
Riverway Law – L-R lawyers Franck Magennis, Farhad Ansari and Daniel Grutters (Image: X)
Magennis, a barrister at the firm, had previously used a photo of armed Hamas militants storming into Israel on 7 October as his banner image on X. That same day, he also posted: “Victory to the intifada”.
Tam’s X profile features Palestinian, Sudanese, and transgender pride flag emojis beside her name, and her banner image shows protestors at an anti-Israel rally in Lewisham holding signs calling for divestment and for Britain to “stop arming Israel”.
Among her other posts, Tam has voiced support for UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric, declaring in November that her account had become a “stan account” for the UN official. She also shared a graphic posted by Albanese drawing parallels between the Holocaust and the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.
In separate posts, Tam referred to David Lammy and Priti Patel using the term “coconuts”, a racially offensive slur described by the Guardian’s Ella McLeod as a term implying someone is “black on the outside, white on the inside” and a “race traitor”.
Tam was suspended by Labour in 2022 after being accused of helping organise a pro-Palestine protest at a council meeting, a charge she denied. In July 2023, she resigned from the party, claiming: “Several Lewisham Labour colleagues organised with Labour London Region to expel me by falsely alleging I had ‘organised a pro-Palestine protest’, absurdly arguing I posed a security threat and thus dented the Council’s limited financial resources.”
The protest in question led to a council meeting being halted and resumed in a more secure location. Tam said she was later reinstated in February 2024 after a party investigation, though a letter from Labour seen by the Jewish Chronicle stated she had received a formal warning.
In March, she officially joined the Green Party and appeared on the local party’s website alongside deputy Zack Polanski and other activists.
A spokesperson for the Green Party said: “The Green Party has never condoned Hamas and has always condemned the brutal terrorist attacks on 7 October, 2023. We are also clear that the Israeli government is guilty of war crimes and genocide in its extreme and disproportionate actions in Gaza.”
