Hitler was a Zionist, says the polemical former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone
Britain’s venerable Labor Party, the 106-year-old mainstay of bourgeois Europe’s center-left, finally imploded this weekend, and it is a sight to behold.
Israel had nothing to do with it, but to the chagrin of Laborites and British Jews alike, the name of the Jewish state was woven into each of the events that precipitated the party’s unraveling.
The first hint that trouble was brewing came on Tuesday, when it was revealed that Naz Shah, a bright young star of the Labor Party had, in 2014, posted on her Facebook page an image in which the tiny State of Israel was superimposed on the map of the United States, alongside the suggestion that all Jewish Israelis be deported to America.
“Problem solved!” the soon-to-be new Member of Parliament added.
Actually, the problems were just beginning.
The pace of events has made it difficult for even the most assiduous observer to keep track, and it is not slowing down.
On Sunday, capping off an astounding week, Diane Abbott, the Labor Party spokesperson for international development, proclaimed in a morning news show that “saying the Labor Party has a problem with anti-Semitism is a smear.”
In between those two points, the following happened:
Ken Livingstone, the firebrand former mayor of London, took to the airwaves to decry the punishment meted out to Shah, who was suspended from party positions pending an internal investigation, incongruously adding that “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.”
John Mann, a Labor Party colleague and fellow MP, confronted Livingstone publicly, in front of a dumbfounded group of journalists, accusing Livingstone of being “a Nazi apologist and a f**king disgrace.”
Over the rest of the weekend, as reported by the Sunday Times, Livingstone gave 20 interviews about anti-Semitism, the Labor Party and his views of Adolf Hitler, and refused 20 times to say sorry for doing so.
In one radio interview, the oft married and partnered Livingstone explained that “It’s absurd to call me an anti-Semite, as two of my ex-girlfriends are Jewish.”
The girlfriends notwithstanding, the BBC headline on Friday, April 30th 2016, read: “Ken Livingstone stands by Hitler comments.”
When leaving the last interview, Livingstone was confronted by a Sky TV reporter who asked him what point he was trying to make by bringing Hitler up. His reply: “I can’t remember.”
“What he ought to be saying sorry for is sending his party into a new death spiral,” Tim Shipman, the Political Editor of the Sunday Times, told The Media Line. “Labor are spread all over the Sunday papers having a new meltdown.”
For Jeremy Corbyn, the recently elected Labor Party leader, long an activist on the hard left of British politics, the events forcing him to suspend both Shah, and by the weekend, his close ally Livingstone, may be a body blow.
“What has happened is that ever since Corbyn, who hails from the far left, became head of Labor, there has been far greater media scrutiny of the far left,” said Jonathan Rynhold, the director of the Argov Center for the Study of Israel and the Jewish People at Bar Ilan University, speaking with The Media Line.
“Even people who are critical of Israel look at the organization he headed, the Stop the War Coalition, and notice that its website says it is against all wars but declares war on Israel. So people start asking, why is there only a boycott against Israel? Why only Israel? And this has built up, and suddenly this has all come to the surface.”
For reasons that remain unclear, it took the Labor Party hours to react to Livingstone’s Hitler statement, during which Shah, who had issued a heartfelt apology, was left for forty minutes in a waiting room while Labor Party spokesperson Seamus Milne told reporters he did not consider her statements anti-Semitic, did not approve of her apology for the (non) anti-Semitic post and was unable to explain what transgression caused her suspension from the party.
Jeremy Corbyn finally emerged from a day and a half of monk-like silence to tell the world that “there’s no crisis.”
Hours later, a video emerged showing Milne decrying the establishment of the State of Israel as “a crime” and lauding the “spirit of resistance” of Hamas, the Islamist faction that rules Gaza and is considered by Britain and all other Western states to be a terror organization, adding, “they will not be broken!”
At about that time, George Galloway, another notorious firebrand formerly of the Labor Party, who was, ironically, replaced in the last elections by Naz Shah, rushed to Livingstone’s defense, saying on television that “Nazism and Zionism are two sides of the same coin.”
By this point Carwyn Jones, the head of the Welsh government, issued a firm “thanks, but no thanks” to Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to travel to campaign in Wales.
According to the latest polls, Labor has sunk to 8 points behind Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling Conservative Party, a “feat” never before accomplished by an opposition party, and is slated to lose a devastating 150 parliamentary seats in the elections that are scheduled for next Thursday.
By far the most important seat in play is that of the mayoralty of London, with a Shakespearean cast of characters dominating the headlines.
The current mayor, Boris Johnson, was seen to be a possible Conservative successor to Cameron until he stumbled in an op-ed last week, blaming US President Barack Obama’s “part-Kenyan” background for his opposition to an anti-EU initiative opposed by Cameron and supported by Johnson.
Sadiq Khan, the Labor candidate who comfortably led in the polls until this week and would, if elected, be the first Muslim mayor of London, faced a viperous backlash from supporters now fearful of his association with Corbyn, whom he nominated for the party leadership.
Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative nominee and a hapless candidate who trailed in the polls until the current meltdown and, if elected, would become the first Jewish mayor of London, accused Labor of “putting the fear of God” into Jewish Londoners.
But Professor Rynhold concludes that the collapse of the British Labor Party “is a positive thing, because it has brought into the open this tolerance of anti-Semitism that has become part of the regular discourse of the élites, and it will end up helping the Labor Party members who rightly feel that the majority of decent people believe this does not represent their views.”
“The anti-Semitism row has acted a little like a barometer on the Labor Party,” Shipman, of the Times, said, “highlighting again Corbyn’s weakness when it comes to decisive action, the incompetence of many of his aides, their disregard for the norms of political communications, the toxic rows at the top of their party, the yearning of critics for a change of leader and the apparent paralysis of either Corbynistas or their critics to gain a decisive advantage.”
Shipman added that the vote on Thursday, “a once every two decade electoral contest which combines elections in Scotland, Wales and the London mayoral contest,” has now been turned “into a giant witches brew.”