Labour donor defended Livingstone’s Hitler comments

Beirut-born film director also shared article claiming pro-Israel lobby contrived anti-Semitism campaign

A FIRST-time donor to Labour previously claimed that Ken Livingstone was the victim of a “witch hunt” over his comments on Adolf Hitler, and shared an article claiming that Jeremy Corbyn was being subjected to a “contrived anti-Semitism campaign”.

Omar al-Qattan, who has given £10,000 to help fund Mr Corbyn’s general election campaign, questioned how a “democratic” party could expel Mr Livingstone for “expressing a view on a historical event” after the former mayor of London claimed that there had been “real collaboration” between the Nazis and Jews.

Mr Qattan, 55, also retweeted claims that the “goal” of MPs urging Labour to adopt an international definition of anti-Semitism was to “make ‘Palestine’ itself a dirty word”. “And we must not let the Right succeed,” said the tweet by Ash Sarkar, a prominent supporter of Mr Corbyn, in September 2018.

Last year Mr Qattan, a Beirut-born film director of Palestinian descent, also shared an article that claimed that the “pro-Israel lobby” had established a “contrived anti-Semitism campaign” designed to undermine Mr Corbyn.

He donated £10,000 to Labour on Nov 26, in one of the biggest donations the party has received from an individual during the campaign.

The sum is the first time Mr Qattan’s name has appeared in the Electoral Commission’s register of donations to political parties, which lists gifts worth more than £7,500.

A trawl of his social media postings reveals that he appears to share the views of some of Mr Corbyn’s most ardent supporters who believe that allegations of anti-Semitism under his leadership have been invented in order to attack him and his allies.

In March 2017, posting a Guardian article titled “Ken Livingstone ‘brought Labour into disrepute’ with Hitler Zionism remarks”, Mr Qattan wrote on Facebook: “Extraordinary that this witch hunt is happening in 21st century Britain. How can a democratic Labour Party expel a member for expressing a view on a historical event?!! Or even waste so much time, money and energy on this absurd debate?!” The Guardian article set out how Mr

Livingstone was facing an expulsion hearing for suggesting that Hitler had supported Zionism.

Before the hearing Mr Livingstone said: “The SS set up training camps so that German Jews who were going to go there could be trained to cope with a very different sort of country when they got there [Palestine].” Mr Livingstone quit Labour last year having been suspended over his remarks.

In September 2018, Mr Qattan tweeted an article about criticism of Mr Corbyn, which stated: “The ... most effective enemy group is the pro-Israel lobby … It is this camp that seems to have succeeded in finding the best way

to undermine – and possibly destroy – Corbyn. Their contrived anti-Semitism campaign against him, whose aim is to conflate anti-Zionism with antiSemitism and make criticism of Israel equate to Jew-hatred, is beginning to bear fruit.”

In 2012, Mr Qattan described Baroness Tonge, a controversial peer, as “brave and honest” after she rejected her then Liberal Democrat party leadership’s demands to apologise for stating: “Beware Israel. Israel is not going to be there forever in its present form.”

On Friday, Mr Qattan described Baroness Tonge as a “brave defender of Palestinian rights”, adding: “I don’t think anything lasts forever, whether it’s Israel or any other states. I think what she was saying was that the status quo cannot continue as it is, it must change if peace is to come to the Middle East.”

Mr Qattan said he could not recall his post about Mr Livingstone, but that it “seems to be a fair point”.

Asked about the comments about the “contrived anti-Semitism campaign” against Mr Corbyn, he said: “I don’t think there’s any grounds at all for him personally to be accused of any of that stuff.

“There have been some tardy reactions to cleaning up some pretty awful anti-Semitic behaviour, yes, but to then claim that this is a systematic thing in the Labour Party is totally out of order. Clearly there are efforts to undermine [Mr Corbyn] through this and other means.”

Mr Qattan said the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism “seems to make it impossible or illegal … to discuss the ethnic basis of Zionism”.

He added: “My principal reasons for donating are that I think that the Labour Party has got an excellent election programme. It’s really time to change 10 years of miserable austerity and division in this country.”