English: Flag of Israel with the Mediterranean sea in the background, in Rishon LeZion. עברית: דגל ישראל בראשון לציון (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 26JAN08 – Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, United Kingdom captured during the session ‘SlimCity – Managing Urbanization’ at the Annual Meeting 2008 of the World Economic Forum at the Hotel National in Davos, Switzerland, January 26, 2008. Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org) swiss-image.ch/Photo by Annette Boutellier (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
English: Adolf Hitler Wax Statue in Madame Tussauds London (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Fathom publishes an outstanding must read article by US history scholar, Jeffrey Herf, examining the historical accuracies behind ex-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone’s charge of Hitler as a Zionist.
Source: Fathom – Hitler and the Nazis’ Anti-Zionism
As I reflected on this article, I concluded with a number of emerging threads.
Firstly, there is an important need for historians and other scholars to publish evidence, so that lies and distortions are refuted before they become half-truths. Too often the main stream media is heavily biassed these days, seemingly with headlines penned before the article.
Secondly, there’s an urgent need to challenge the rhetoric of both the hard-left and the hard-right. Both frequently suppress the evidence and portray carefully crafted lies to justify the dogma, based on the maxim that the end justifies the means.
Thirdly, both London and the United Kingdom have been tarnished by Livingstone period in high office as London’s mayor. Livingtone has crafted his political profile based upon his anti semitic slogans. For London and the UK to regain the moral high ground, Livingstone must be thoroughly discredited (this is similar to Germany’s overwhelming support for recognizing the genocide of the Armenian people).
Fourthly, the UK Labour Party needs to recover the moral high ground and not scurry around in the lies and half-truths peddled by the hard-left, like Livingstone.
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
Jeffry Herf in his Fathom article about Ken Livingstone and his assertions about Hitler and Zionism is quite right in his analysis and Dr Alf is right to say that too many people comment first and then make up the facts afterwards.
Hitler wanted Jews out of Europe and ideally he wanted them dead.This clearly meant that he was not a Zionist as a two minute reading of Mein Kampf would show.
So he approached the British authorities in Palestine to accept the Jews he didn’t want.
Some went to Palestine but the British authorities, citing problems of their own, refused to allow many more into the country.
Later, Nazi Germany supplied the Palestinians with 25,000 rifles in secret in an effort to stop the fledgeling state of Israel in its tracks but as history shows the new state finally came into being.
From that point on (the British refusal to let more Jews go to Palestine) the die was cast in Germany; first pits were dug and Jews were shot; then when the kill rate wasn’t high enough, vans with exhaust fumes piped into the rear of a sealed metal box were used; and then the blueprint for the extermination camps together with the system of railway lines was developed for the “Final Solution”.
The role of the Allies was not covered in glory either as no attempt was made to bomb the railway lines into the extermination camps because neither Churchill nor Roosevelt gave it priority and because Stalin didn’t see it as his own problem.
Instead, railway stations either side of the tracks were bombed in order to decimate German troop concentrations but the trains pulling the cattle cars into which condemned Jews were packed like sardines were never touched.
Ken Livingstone is and always was a troublemaker and never really looked into the history of the last war or any of the earlier ones as he was more interested in personal aggrandisement, politics, headline creation and the cut of his linen suits.
John, thank you for adding these historical insights. I agree with you that Ken Livingstone has always been an opportunist looking at the next headline and generally oblivious to the evidence.