RED KEN V HISTORY: ANALYSIS OF WHAT LIVINGSTONE CLAIMED AND WHAT THE FACTS TELL US
By Matt Dathan, MailOnline Political Correspondent
Ken Livingstone was accused of 'rewriting history' with a series of claims about anti-Semitism today. Here we compare Red Ken's claims with the facts.
Red Ken's claim: 'Let's remember, 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.'
Actual history: It is very clear from Mein Kampf – written in 1925 – that Hitler did not support moving Jews to Israel.
Hitler wrote: 'While the Zionists try to make the rest of the World believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim.
'It doesn't even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organisation for their international world swindler, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.
'It is a sign of their rising confidence and sense of security that at a time when one section is still playing the German, French-man, or Englishman, the other with open effrontery comes out as the Jewish race.'
Red Ken's claim: 'Let's look at what someone who is Jewish actually said, something almost very similar to something Naz has just said: Albert Einstein. When the first leader of Likud, the governing party now in Israel, came to America he [Einstein] warned American politicians: 'Don't talk to this man, because he's too similar to the fascists who fought in the Second World War'.
'Now if Naz or myself had said that today we would be denounced as anti-Semitic, but that was Albert Einstein.'
Actual history: Albert Einstein did indeed warn about the 'fascist' intentions of Menachem Begin in a letter to the New York Times.
But this was 25 years before Likud was even launched as a political party and Begin became first leader in 1973 – 18 years after Einstein died.
Red Ken's claim: He said Naz Shah's remarks were 'over the top' but not anti-Semitic.
Explaining his own definition of anti-Semitism, Mr Livingstone told the Daily Politics show today: 'Blurring these two things [criticising Israel and being anti-Semitic] undermines the real importance of anti-Semitism, because a real anti-Semite doesn't just hate the Jews in Israel, they hate their Jewish neighbour in Golders Green or in Stoke Newington. It's a physical loathing.'
Actual definition: The definition of anti-Semitism is 'a hatred of Jewish people' – so this would logically include 'Jews in Israel'.
Mr Livingstone's comments suggest hating Israeli Jews is understandable and even excusable.
The Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre said: 'Criticism of the Israeli government is of course entirely legitimate, as it is against any government.
'But when that criticism is expressed in violent language, directed at its people in racist terms or uses references to Hitler and Nazism, it is antisemitic and deeply offensive.
'If the only country in the world that you want to disappear is the Jewish one then you are in very bad company, on the wrong side of history.'
Red Ken's claim: He said it was wrong to say anti-Semitism is racism.
Actual definition: But as Jeremy Corbyn and even Ms Shah said yesterday: 'Anti-Semitism is racism, full stop.'
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