Londong, England – Ken Livingstone is the former mayor of London and is part of the U.K’s main opposition, the Labour Party. Livingstone has been put on hold in the party after alleging Hitler was in favor of Zionism.
The suspension of Livingston comes after another member of the party, Naz Shah got kicked out of the party for anti-semitic posts on social media. The party is facing a nationwide scandal and criticism.
On Wednesday lawmaker Naz Shah was kicked out of the labour party in the UK’s House of Commons after posting on Facebook a chart that suggested Israeli people should be relocated on to the U.S. Naz Shah is one of the few female muslims in the party and in the Parliament, born in the UK to pakistani parents she became the parliamentary private secretary to John McDonnell in the beginnings of 2016.
Anti semitic scandal in the Labour Party
A right wing blog called order-order.com discovered a series of publications Shaw had made in 2014 on her Facebook account. The posts showed a series of charts titled ‘Solution for the Israel-Palestine Conflict’. The posts defended the moving of Isralies to the United States. It also said that Palestinians will have their ‘land and life back’, as written in the post.
After the posts met the public eye, Shah published a public apology. In the public announcement, Shah assured she made those comments before she started working for the Parliament. In addition, her views on Israel had changed over the last two years, according to Shah’s public statement. Nonetheless, pression over the Labour Party and its party leader started and intensified as well. Local newspapers began the day with front pages explaining the scandal and assuring Shah had made anti-semitic statements.
Naz Shah made another statement in the Jewish News where she apologized to the community for the posts “I hope that by writing to those who i have hurt, I am practicing as I preach and calling myself out” Said Shah in the statement. Jeremy Corbyn, party leader, announced on Wednesday that Shah had been suspended from the Labour Party, meaning she can’t be involved in any of the party movements anymore.
Hitler is pro Zionism, according to Livingstone
After Shah got suspended from the party, the media was on top of every declaration made by party members. Ken Livingstone, known as the ex-mayor of London between the years of 2000 and 2008 and for being a close friend to Corbyn went to an interview with BBC Radio.
In the Interview Livingstone defended Shah assuring that Hitler in his 1932 was pro zionist.
“When Hitler won this election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was a supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”.
Livingstone assured it was a historical fact, yet the anti-semitic scandal broke even more and media assured he had made similar accusations against Jews in the past. The former mayor made several other statements where he guided reporters to investigate his accusations.
On another interview with BBC’s “Daily Politics” Livingstone argued with the deputy Prime Minister about the comments and got followed to a restroom where he remained hidden from a crowd of reporters waiting for more comments.
After the scandal the party has announced that Livingstone was suspended from the party and is going to be investigated for it.
Source: Washington Post