Former London mayor sparks “fresh anti-Semitism row” with comments about Jewish vote.

By World Israel News Staff

“The Jewish vote wasn’t very helpful,” said former London Mayor Ken Livingstone shortly after the British election results came in late Thursday. “Jeremy should have tackled that issue far earlier than he did,” he said.

The Daily Mail reported that Livingstone’s comments have sparked “a fresh anti-Semitism row.”

‘It looks like the end for Jeremy, which is disappointing for me since I’m a close ally. I’m sure he’ll have to resign tomorrow,” Livingstone said. Corbyn has since announced he won’t run again as opposition leader.

Livingston attempted to defend Corbyn during the campaign, calling the accusations of anti-Semitism “lies and smears” and blaming it on the old Labour guard led by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who he said wanted to get rid of Corbyn because they feared he would lead the party to a “wipeout.”

Corbyn did, in fact, lead Labour to a wipeout. The Boris Johnson-led Conservative party won 364 seats to Labour’s 203. It is the worst result for Labour since 1935.

Livingston had little moral authority to draw on in his efforts to defend Corbyn as he himself was forced to quit Labour in 2016 after he said that Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”

He also said “it’s not anti-Semitic to hate the Jews of Israel.”

The Daily Mail reports that more moderate factions within the party immediately began to attack Corbyn for the disastrous showing.

Ruth Smeeth, the parliamentary chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, told Sky News that Corbyn should have resigned “many, many, many months ago.”

“We are the racist party because of the actions of our leader and the lack of actions of our leader… we need to detoxify and move on,” she said.

“Jeremy Corbyn should announce he is resigning has leader of the Labour Party from his count today,” she said.

Jews have responded with relief to the defeat of Corbyn, under whose leadership the Labour party had seen an unprecedented rise in anti-Semitic behavior among its rank and file.

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Ken Livingstone denied accusations of anti-Semitism in Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said the accusations of anti-Semitism in the British Labour party were “lies and smears,” orchestrated by supporters of former Labour party Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Daily Mail reported on Saturday.

“[A] Labour machine controlled by all the ghastly old Blairites, convinced Jeremy [Corbyn] was going to lead us to a wipeout, doing everything possible to get rid of him, and that’s what has fueled all this stuff about anti-Semitism,” he said, according to the Daily Mail.

‘At that stage, 80 percent of Labour MPs thought we’d be wiped out at the next Election. They didn’t believe Jeremy and his policies would connect with people. And so that was the first time I started to hear accusations about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party,” Livingstone said.

Current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is widely thought of as an anti-Semite, with a huge majority — 85.9 percent — of British Jews agreeing that he is, according to a poll conducted by The Jewish Chronicle. Anti-Semitism is said to be running rampant in the Labour party under Corbyn’s leadership.

Livingstone also made the rather peculiar statement that, “It’s not anti-Semitic to hate the Jews of Israel.”

Livingstone himself was suspended from the Labour party in 2016 after he said that Adolph Hitler supported Zionism. He then quit the party in 2018. He said that Corbyn opposed the suspension, calling the campaign against him a “witch hunt.”

“Jeremy Corbyn’s office did not want it to happen. It was about distracting … this is endemic if you have a genuine socialist leader who is going to transform things for ordinary people and make the bloody corporations pay their fair share of tax – they will do whatever is necessary to stop you,” Livingstone said.

“And that means lies and smears in most of the West. In other parts of the world it can mean assassination,’ he said.

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The longtime leader of the Labour party tells Israeli TV that anti-Semitism must be rooted out “completely and totally.”

By: World Israel News Staff

Ex-British Prime Minister and former Labour Party leader Tony Blair says that anti-Semitism in party ranks would have been unthinkable when he was in charge. During an interview with Channel 10 while on a diplomatic mission to Israel, Blair blasted the current party leadership over its utter “failure to tackle anti-Semitism within its ranks, and root out anti-Semitism completely, totally.”

Blair served as British Prime Minister between 1997-2007, and led the Labor party for 13 years. Blair said he is certain that the general British public is not at all anti-Semitic, and that Labor had to make it clear that anti-Jewish sentiment in party ranks cannot be tolerated.

“I’m extremely sad about it, and anxious about it, and also very determined that the Labor Party should take the action necessary. There should be zero tolerance towards it. It’s one of these things that if you allow it to take root at all within a political party, it’s hard then to uproot it. This is a situation, frankly, I could not even have imagined when I was leader of the Labour Party,” he said.

Blair told Channel 10, “I’m distressed on behalf of the Jewish community. I’m afraid it is a problem. The leadership has now said that they’re going to take the necessary action. But they really need to do that. The progressive part of British politics has got to get away from this notion of criticizing the whole concept of Zionism. This is a danger because it so easily trends into anti-Semitism.”

Trying to explain how anti-Semitism has seeped into Labour, Blair said, “The difficulty is that there is a lot of popular anger at the state of things all over Western politics today. People look for causes or issues upon which they can attach blame.” Blair then warned, “It’s important that the Labour Party makes it very clear that these sentiments are completely against everything that we stand for as a country and everything that we pride ourselves on as a community.”

The issue of anti-Semitism in the Labour party returned to the headlines on Sunday, when a former speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin demanded a special party conference to discuss the issue and warned that anti-Semitism could cost the party the next election. Martin told The Guardian newspaper, “If you ran a restaurant, and it was dirty and there were cockroaches, you wouldn’t get away with saying ‘The restaurant down the road is dirty and has cockroaches too.’ You would be expected to sort out the problem.” Martin disagreed with those who said the issue of anti-Semitism was being used in an effort to rid the party of its leader Jeremy Corbyn.

On March 26, about 1,500 protesters, including British Jewish leaders, gathered outside Britain’s Houses of Parliament to protest anti-Semitism in the UK Labour party. The slogan they chanted was, “Enough is enough.”

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