Labour candidate who said: Hitler wasn’t the bad guy

Party in new anti-semitism storm after mother’s vile web rants

THE Labour Party is embroiled in another anti- Semitism row after a mother who questioned Hitler’s reputation was shortlisted to fight a council seat.

Nasreen Khan, a former member of George Galloway’s Respect Party, made offensive remarks about Jews on Facebook five years ago.

She said Jews ‘have reaped the rewards of playing victims’ and that there were ‘worse people than Hitler in this world’.

Miss Khan, a Muslim who has since joined the Labour Party, said they were ‘inappropriate and unacceptable’.

But despite the remarks, she is on a two-person shortlist for the Labour nomination in a safe seat in Bradford, West Yorkshire, at next year’s local elections. A final decision was thought to be due yesterday.

In 2012, writing under a video titled ‘The Palestine you need to know’, she said: ‘It’s such a shame that the history teachers in our

Regret: Nasreen Khan school never taught us this but they are the first to start brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler.

‘What have the Jews done good in this world?’ When questioned about the comment, she had added: ‘No, I’m not a Nazi, I’m an ordinary British Muslim that had an opinion and put it across. We have worse people than Hitler in this world now.’ When she faced further online criticism she said: ‘Stop beating a dead horse. The Jews have reaped the rewards of playing victims. Enough is enough!’

Miss Khan, a mother, was also given a restraining order at Bradford Magistrates’ Court in November 2011 to protect a local solicitor and her family from harassment.

Simon Cooke, Bradford Council’s Conservative group leader, said: ‘The Labour Party really has got to get itself sorted out. These are just not the sort of views that are acceptable. The Labour Party shouldn’t have people like that as candidates,’ adding that retractions were ‘easily said’.

He said: ‘It really is concerning if the Labour Party is selecting people with these kinds of views, even if they are historic. At the moment, it looks like an absolutely terrible decision by the Labour Party.’

Miss Khan later said: ‘I have been honest, frank and held my hand up regarding comments I made on Facebook over five years ago. I was challenged immediately about my language and apologised straight away. I accept fully that it was inappropriate and unacceptable. I profoundly regret the comments I made in 2012 and any offence they caused.’

Labour has faced repeated accusations of failing to deal with antiSemitism in recent years. In April 2016, Bradford West MP Naz Shah was suspended from the party after arguing that Israel’s population should be ‘transported’ out of the Middle East to America.

Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone was also suspended for two years after he claimed that Hitler colluded with Zionists before World War Two.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ordered a probe into alleged antiSemitism and racism in the Labour Party. The inquiry, run by Shami Chakrabarti, found that the party ‘is not overrun by antiSemitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism’. A spokesman for the Labour Party said it did not comment on internal party selection matters, the Bradford Telegraph and Argus reported.

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