By Jenni Frazer for Times of Israel June 28 2016
Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London suspended by Labour in an anti-Semitism row, and notorious for insisting that Hitler supported Zionism for a while, issued a long written submission on Tuesday defending his positions to Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry on the rise of anti-Semitism.
Livingstone appeared before the panel on June 14, but on Tuesday sent a further lengthy submission in which he complains that he was questioned as though he were under investigation, claims to deplore anti-Semitism, and accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing.”
He acknowledges in the submission that he told the BBC that “Hitler was supporting Zionism” in the 1930s, and still insists on the veracity of the claim, but says he does “regret raising the historical points about Nazi policy in the 1930s.”
Livingstone writes that he does not believe “Zionism or the policies of Israeli governments are at all analogous to Nazism. Israeli governments have never had the aim of the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people, in the way Nazism sought the annihilation of the Jews,” he acknowledges.
Still, he goes on to launch a bitter assault on modern Israel, stating: “Israel’s policies have included ethnic cleansing. Palestinians who had lived in that land for centuries were driven out by systematic violence and terror aimed at clearing them out of what became a large part of the Israeli state. Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denies the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. I am deeply critical of these policies, but I do not consider them as analogous to Nazism.”
Livingstone appeared before the panel on June 14, but on Tuesday sent a further lengthy submission in which he complains that he was questioned as though he were under investigation, claims to deplore anti-Semitism, and accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing.”
He acknowledges in the submission that he told the BBC that “Hitler was supporting Zionism” in the 1930s, and still insists on the veracity of the claim, but says he does “regret raising the historical points about Nazi policy in the 1930s.”
Livingstone writes that he does not believe “Zionism or the policies of Israeli governments are at all analogous to Nazism. Israeli governments have never had the aim of the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people, in the way Nazism sought the annihilation of the Jews,” he acknowledges.
Still, he goes on to launch a bitter assault on modern Israel, stating: “Israel’s policies have included ethnic cleansing. Palestinians who had lived in that land for centuries were driven out by systematic violence and terror aimed at clearing them out of what became a large part of the Israeli state. Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denies the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. I am deeply critical of these policies, but I do not consider them as analogous to Nazism.”
Livingstone gave both written and oral evidence to the committee on June 14, but argues that he was “misinterpreted” and accused of saying things he insists he did not say.
His first issue is with the attitude of the inquiry. Livingstone writes: “The subject of the inquiry was confirmed by the Chair in his opening remarks, who clearly stated that this was not an inquiry into me or into the Labour Party, but into antisemitism.” And yet, he complains, the “overwhelming majority of questions… were about my views on the history of Germany in the 1930s, Hitler, the Nazis, Israel, Zionism and the Labour Party. Committee members seemed to be obsessed with these issues.” None of the committee members asked him, he laments, about “the dangers facing Jewish people arising from terrorism, despite this being a subject of the inquiry. … This was at the very least a missed opportunity.”
Livingstone, who is currently suspended by Labour over the remarks he made relating to Hitler having “supported Zionism,” on May 4 told Al-Ghad Al-Arabi, an Arabic-language station based in London, that “the creation of Israel was a great catastrophe” and “fundamentally wrong,” and that Britain and America ought to have absorbed the post-World War II Jewish refugees. “They could all have been resettled, whereas 70 years later, the situation is still very tense, and there is potential for many more wars, potential for nuclear war,” he said.
But in his written submission to the Home Affairs Committee, Livingstone claims that although he is “not in favour of religiously or ethnically defined states anywhere,” he has been “just as outspoken about Saudi Arabia as I have about Israel. And on the right of Israel to exist, as I told the Committee, I support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict and believe that would be aided by having a single economy.”
He also makes it clear that — although she apologized for her social media postings and was suspended from the Labour Party — he “does not agree with the claims made that Naz Shah MP and her reported social media postings are antisemitic. I believe that is a reasonable conclusion to reach if the criteria for antisemitism used to judge the situation are those put forward by Professor David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism. Some people take a different view of Ms Shah and her postings, but that does not mean my judgement and defence of her is a manifestation of antisemitism.”
Livingstone says he was “horrified by the way my remarks have been interpreted and twisted. I cannot think of a worse insult than to be called a racist or an antisemite. And I am sorry if what I said has caused Jewish people, or anyone else, offence. That was not my intention.”
Livingstone takes particular issue with the evidence of Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. He complains: “Jonathan Arkush suggested to the Committee that I had said that Zionists were ‘like Nazis’ and that ‘Hitler was a Zionist’. Those are not statements I made and I totally disagree with them. Both statements are factually incorrect.”
He describes as “highly contentious” Arkush’s suggestion that with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader a “leftward tilt” opened up in Labour allowing some people to say “things that previously they had felt they could not say.” Livingstone declares: “No evidence was presented to the Committee that prejudice against Jews has risen since Corbyn became Labour leader in September 2015. The rising figures on antisemitism reported to the Committee overwhelming related to periods before the current Labour leadership was elected.”
In response, a spokesman for the Board of Deputies said: “Anyone who witnessed Ken Livingstone’s astonishing performance in front of the the Home Affairs Select Committee would agree with chair Keith Vaz’s assessment that Mr Livingstone’s evidence was ‘unconvincing’.
“In particular his continued assertion that Hitler was ‘supporting Zionism’ is inaccurate, offensive and antisemitic,” the Board added. “Mr Livingstone has a track record of goading the Jewish community and it is time he is expelled from the Labour Party for good.”
A spokesman for the Community Security Trust told The Times of Israel on Tuesday: “We have heard more than enough from Ken Livingstone about Zionism, Israel, and antisemitism. It is time to move on.”
Shami Chakrabarti’s internal inquiry into allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is expected to publish its findings on Thursday this week. Livingstone was not invited to submit evidence to Ms. Chakrabarti’s inquiry and complains in his written statement to the Home Affairs Committee that he should have been.