The decision by London new Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan, to attend a Holocaust commemoration event as his first public engagement was met with anger by some Twitter users, who responded with virulently anti-Israel comments and even Holocaust denial, Haaretz reported Monday.
After the event, Khan tweeted, “So important to reflect, remember and educate about the 6 million Jewish lives lost in the Holocaust,” referring to his visit to the Holocaust memorial event, his first official mayoral act.
As of Monday evening, the post had attracted more than 1,500 “likes” and was shared 950 times, noted Haaretz, but there were also other responses which were not so kind and included blatant Holocaust denial, including a comment that “much of the so-called ‘holocaust’ has been faked, including the post-1945 Auschwitz construction,” suggesting that much of the Auschwitz site was built after World War II.
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Another commentator wrote, “Have you plucked that figure of 6 [million] out of thin air? What was the total population of Jews in 1940? Don’t distort history. Max 1 [million].”
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Khan received a hero’s welcome from London’s Jewish community at the end of Sunday’s Yom Hashoah ceremony, which brought together thousands from London’s Jewish community, including more than 150 Holocaust survivors and a combined choir from five Jewish elementary schools.
The visit was important given that Khan’s party, the Labour party, has been engulfed in controversy surrounding anti-Semitic statements from its members.
On Monday, the party suspended three members in one day over anti-Semitic comments, and later that day, sources in the party revealed that Labour has secretly suspended 50 of its members over anti-Semitic and racist comments in recent months.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has himself come under fire for having called Hamas and Hezbollah his “friends”. Last week he rejected calls from Jewish leaders to denounce the two terrorist organizations, vowing to continue talking to them.
Shortly after Khan’s election last week, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which officially represents the UK’s roughly 270,000-strong Jewish community, enthusiastically congratulated the new Mayor of London.
Last month Khan blasted his own party for the anti-Semitism within its ranks.
