WATCH: UK Jewish leader slams Livingstone’s ‘hateful’ comments on Hitler and Zionism

The head of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jonathan Arkush, tells a parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism that he was “horrified” when he heard what he called Ken Livingstone’s “hateful” claim that Hitler supported Zionism.

“I felt a feeling of complete disbelief, especially as the row was raging with suspensions in the Labour party, people saying some really ridiculous things about Jews having big noses, or that Jews were this or that. Most recently someone said that Jews were apparently the financiers of the slave trade,” Arkush told MPs.

“As a British citizen, who lives and works in this country as I have done all my life, I could not believe that I was hearing someone in political life say that Hitler was a Zionist. To me it was the most, not just absurd and ridiculous thing, but it was a hateful thing to say.”