Britain’s Labour Party has launched an internal investigation into former London Mayor Ken Livingstone over comments he made last year alleging Nazi-Zionist collaboration.
According to the Jewish Chronicle, Labour sources have confirmed that another probe “is under way” due to Livingstone’s lack of remorse for his comments. Livingstone was suspended from the party last April after stating that "when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”
According to the Chronicle, should he be found guilty in this latest probe, he would likely be expelled from Labour.
Party officials take this matter “very seriously,” the Chronicle further reported, explaining that the new probe relates to his comments following his suspension and not the original comments.
Livingstone has defended his comments by asserting that he had "simply said that back in 1933, Hitler’s government signed a deal with the Zionist movement which would mean that... the Jewish community would be moved to what is now Israel.”
He denied that he had called Hitler a Zionist.
“I have broken no Labour Party rule. I am being attacked by the right-wing of the Labour Party because I support Palestinian human rights and strongly back our leader, Jeremy Corbyn. There is no real evidence against me, so hopefully the Labour panel will dismiss the charge against me. Only a biased and a rigged jury could find against me,” he said in his own defense this March.
Tensions were boiling over Labour’s failure to dismiss Livingstone. Board of Deputies President Jonathan Arkush told the Chronicle that relations between the Jewish community and the Labour Party were at “a new all-time low.”
British Jews have expressed concern over anti-Semitism within Labour since Jeremy Corbyn took over as party leader in 2015.
