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UK’s Labor Suspends Livingstone over Zionism Comments

UK’s Labor Suspends Livingstone over Zionism Comments
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The UK Labor Party on Tuesday suspended former London mayor and senior party official Ken Livingstone for one year for comments about Hitler supporting Zionism that a disciplinary committee found "grossly detrimental" to the party.

UK’s Labor Suspends Livingstone over Zionism Comments

Jewish groups, who had been calling for Livingston to be expelled, called the move "deeply disappointing" and said it would erode the fractured trust between the party and its Jewish members.

"Given that Ken Livingstone has been found guilty, we are deeply disappointed at the decision not to expel him from the Labor Party. A temporary suspension is no more than a slap on the wrist," the Jewish Leadership Council said in a statement.

"Livingstone's antagonistic attitude towards the Jewish community has been longstanding and has had a huge impact on Jewish people," the group said. "This decision makes us question if the Labor Party wanted to repair its historic and long-standing relationship with the Jewish community."

Those sentiments were echoed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. "Relations between the Labor Party and the Jewish community have reached a new all-time low," said President Jonathan Arkush.

According to the Guardian, the Labor Party panel that decided Livingstone's fate technically leveled him with a two-year suspension, one year of which had already been served.

He was charged with "engaging in conduct that in the opinion of the National Executive Committee was prejudicial and/or grossly detrimental to the Labor Party."

A year ago, as the Labor Party was grappling with a series of gaffes deemed anti-Zionist and even anti-Semitic, veteran leftist Livingstone, a member of Labor's National Executive, claimed that Adolf Hitler was initially a supporter of Zionism "before he went mad and ended up killing 6 million Jews."

Livingstone also charged that for decades in the UK there had been a "well-orchestrated campaign by the ‘Israel' lobby to smear anybody who criticizes ‘Israel' policy as anti-Semitic."

Last week, he caused fresh uproar by claiming that German Zionists received assistance from the SS and were close collaborators of the Nazi regime.

Livingstone's case was heard by three members of an 11-member Constitutional Committee. Two lawyers, one retained by him and one by the Labor Party, cross-examined him and a number of witnesses: Jeremy Newmark, chair of the Jewish Labor Movement, the only Jewish affiliate to the Labor Party, and five members of the group Jews for Justice for the Palestinians [JfJfP], described by Livingstone as "leading Jewish members of the Labor Party."

This was slammed by the mainstream Jewish community who had said that JfJfP is not representative of Anglo-Jewry. However, lawyer Michael Mansfield, representing Livingstone, tried to persuade the panel that the views of "Livingstone's Jews", who included a 93-year-old Berlin-born Holocaust survivor, Walter Wolfgang, were as equally representative of Jewish feelings as those of the Board of Deputies or the Jewish Labor Movement.

Livingstone, who had expected to be expelled from the party and had planned to fight expulsion through a judicial review, seemed pleased with the verdict, calling it "pretty fair," the Guardian newspaper reported.

"Have I said anything that wasn't true? All the Jewish activists who spoke on my behalf yesterday, all actually confirmed what I said was true."

While the suspension is seen as a blow to the man who been a member of Labor for half a century, the Jewish Labor Movement reacted to the verdict with dismay, saying it was "a betrayal of our Party's values," and allowed for "a revolving door for repeat offenders."

"It simply can't be acceptable that there can be some kind of revolving door policy, that you can revise the history of the Holocaust, duck out of the party for a year - and then come back," said Newmark, chair of the Jewish Labor Movement. He described the suspension as "a betrayal of our party's values" and called on Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn to make a hard and fast ruling of "zero tolerance" on anti-Semitism.

Paul Charney, chairman of Britain's Zionist Federation, said: "The fact that Ken Livingstone remains a suspended member of the Labor Party and was not expelled at today's hearing serves only to drive a larger and more robust wedge between our Jewish community and the Labor Party. The comments made by Mr Livingstone regarding Hitler and Zionism bear no resemblance to the truth and are a disgrace to the values he and his party apparently hold."

Added Charney, "Where Labor had an opportunity to make clear that anti-Semitic slurs made by Livingstone have no place within our society, they instead showed that when it comes to Jews, liberal standards are readily set aside."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website teem

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