Jeremy Corbyn's brother has said Ken Livingstone’s comments about Jews and Hitler were “misunderstood” and there was far too much “sensitivity” on antisemitism in the Labour Party.
Piers Corbyn also referred to the relationship between the Nazis and Jews as “complicated”.
His comments follow Ephraim Mirvis, the UK's most senior rabbi, saying the party had a “severe” antisemitism problem within its ranks.
Mr Livingstone, former Mayor of London, caused a furore when he said Hitler supported Zionism “before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.” His comments have been widely criticised as historically inaccurate.
Piers Corbyn is not a member of Labour, but has close associations with the party. He told the Evening Standard: “I think Ken has been misunderstood, because he has been talking actual history which now looks incomprehensible.”
“We can’t understand now the context those things happened in, but there are numbers of historical documents around which seem to bear out some things bear out some things that Ken has said.
“But they’ve been taken out of context.”
He refused to deny Mr Livingstone’s comments were antisemitic, but added: “You have to look into the whole history of what happened in Germany.
“The relationship between Nazis and the Jews, and Russia, have been complicated and there have been serious alliances, or mutual supports, or dealings which are difficult to understand now.
“But there have been arrangements that went on, or certainly some type of understandings going on between Hitler and Zionists.”
He also retweeted a message supportive of Livingstone which said “No one with an iota of fairness wud consider #KenL remarks anti-semitic- unless pandering to #Israel [sic].”
He said he wasn’t “totally informed” with everything that was going on and didn’t necessarily agree with everything he retweeted, but said to the Standard: “I think people should certainly see that comment.”
