The British Labour Party has suspended former London mayor Ken Livingstone after he said Adolf Hitler supported Zionism, in a furious row over anti-Semitism that is dividing the party.
“Ken Livingstone has been suspended by the Labour Party, pending an investigation, for bringing the party into disrepute,” a Labour spokesman said on Thursday.
Mr Livingstone told BBC radio: “When Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”
“I have been in the Labour Party for 40 years and I have never heard anyone say anything anti-Semitic.
“I have heard a lot of criticism for the state of Israel and its abuse of Palestinians, but I have never heard someone be anti-Semitic.”
He was defending Labour MP Naz Shah, who was suspended on Wednesday for sharing anti-Semitic posts on social media.
Ms Shah shared a graphic of Israel superimposed on to the US under the words “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict — Relocate Israel into United States”, adding the comment: “Problem solved”. She also used the hashtag #IsraelApartheid above a quote saying “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal”.
There are growing claims that the party under veteran socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn has a problem in which criticism of Israel has strayed into anti-Semitism, but his defenders claim much of the row is politically motivated.
Prime Minister David Cameron said it was “clear that the Labour Party” had an anti-Semitism problem.
“They have got to recognise that anti-Semitism is like racism, it is unacceptable in a modern political party and every political party facing this problem has got to deal with it,” he said.
More than 20 Labour MPs had earlier called on Mr Corbyn to suspend Mr Livingstone following his BBC interview.
Full AFP report in The Australian