{"id":240686,"date":"2016-04-28T22:12:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T22:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/hitler-was-a-zionist-claim-gets-ken-livingstone-suspended-from-labour\/"},"modified":"2016-04-28T23:42:49","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T23:42:49","slug":"hitler-was-a-zionist-claim-gets-ken-livingstone-suspended-from-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/hitler-was-a-zionist-claim-gets-ken-livingstone-suspended-from-labour\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hitler was a Zionist\u2019 claim gets Ken Livingstone suspended from Labour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has been suspended from the Labour party after he said Hitler had supported Zionism, during an interview where he defended a colleague accused of anti-semitism.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Livingstone refused to apologize for his comments and said people should not confuse criticizing the Israeli government\u2019s policies with being anti-Semitic after being confronted by Labour MP John Mann, who called him a <em>\u201cNazi apologist\u201d<\/em> and claimed he was <em>\u201crewriting history.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The row, which was captured on video, broke out after the veteran politician went on BBC Radio London to defend MP Naz Shah who was accused of anti-Semitism over a series of Facebook posts.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JByaUjb5UCc\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Let&#8217;s remember, when Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel,\u201d<\/em> Livingstone told BBC Radio London earlier on Thursday. <em>&#8220;He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>He later attempted to clarify his comments to the BBC and maintained that Naz Shah was not anti-Semitic: <em>&#8220;I&#8217;ve heard a lot of people being critical of Israel, but if I was to denounce the South African government, you wouldn&#8217;t say I was racist &#8211; and one of my worries is this confusion with anti-Semitism and criticising the Israeli government policy undermines the importance of tackling real anti-Semitism.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"rtcode\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">I am confused. Is criticism of Israeli gov anti Semitism or hate against Jews? As far as I can see, Ken Livingstone criticised Zionist gov!<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Bilal Mahmood (@bilalmahmooduk) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bilalmahmooduk\/status\/725675447191740417\">April 28, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>Shah apologized fully for promoting a Facebook post from 2014, which suggested relocating Israelis to America, but was later suspended.<\/p>\n<p>Labour MPs including London mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan were quick to condemn Livingstone\u2019s comments amid accusations by Prime Minister David Cameron that Labour <em>&#8220;has got a problem with anti-Semitism&#8221;<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"rtcode\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Ken Livingstone&#8217;s comments are appalling and inexcusable. There must be no place for this in our Party.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Sadiq Khan MP (@SadiqKhan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SadiqKhan\/status\/725621617519431680\">April 28, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rtcode\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Good on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JohnMannMP\">@JohnMannMP<\/a> for confronting Ken Livingstone. Leadership should have listened to John a long time ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wesstreeting\/status\/725663434256338944\">April 28, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>Shah has so far declined to comment on Livingstone\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/341271-ken-livingstone-suspended-hitler\/?utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has been suspended from the Labour party after he said Hitler had supported Zionism, during an interview where he defended a colleague accused of anti-semitism. Livingstone refused to apologize for his comments and said people should not confuse criticizing the Israeli government\u2019s policies with being anti-Semitic after being confronted by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":240687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,519,17,18,1615],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-240686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-newswire","9":"category-politics","10":"category-latest-news","11":"category-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}