Speeches at an anti-Israel demonstration in London organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have been branded “discredited, nasty and hateful” by Board of Deputies president Jonathan Arkush.
In one speech filmed by the London’s Jewish Chronicle, the vice president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Bruce Kent can be heard telling Jews to “overcome” the horror of the Holocaust.
Kent, a former Catholic priest and ong-term ally of the leader of the principal opposition Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, appeared to undermine the significance of the Shoah, saying: “We have all had terrible sufferings in history – all of us.”
Kent was speaking to supporters of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, for whom he is a patron with Corbyn, outside Downing Street on Monday when he claimed the horrors of Germany’s Nazi regime had left people suffering from a “guilt complex” in relation to Israel.
He is also claimed Zionism did not represent Judaism and that many Jews “know this perfectly well”.
Arkush said of the PSC speakers: “This motley band of people from the past show why we can be confident that when we make the case for Israel calmly and reasonably, we will expose the malicious posturing of those who think that the only way forward for a just and secure peace for all is to push Israel into the sea.
On Tuesday, John Mann MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism condemned Kent’s speech.
The Labour MP said: “Bruce Kent ought to be studying the role of the church in antisemitism. But I doubt he ever has – or will.”