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UK’s Labor Party criticized over response to former London mayor’s Nazi comments

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone was declared in breach of party rules and suspended until April 2018.
(Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP)
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Jewish leaders in Britain are accusing the opposition Labor Party of tolerating anti-Semitism after it failed to expel a senior politician who said Adolf Hitler had been a supporter of Zionism.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone has been suspended until April 2018.

Livingstone, who has repeatedly asserted collaboration between Zionists and Nazis before World War II, said the party hearing was “like sitting through a court in North Korea.”

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, called Livingstone’s suspension “a slap on the wrist for a serial offender.” Labor lawmaker Wes Streeting said the decision was “a terrible betrayal of Jewish Labor supporters.”

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Allegations of Labor anti-Semitism have grown since pro-Palestinian socialist Jeremy Corbyn was elected party leader in 2015.

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