Ex-London mayor says he might have some Jewish roots
Former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who was recently suspended from the Labour Party for saying that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism, said he might have Jewish roots.
Livingstone told the London-based Jewish Chronicle newspaper that his maternal grandmother had what he was told was a Jewish last name. He also said the late Jewish Labour lawmaker Greville Janner used to drive him home from Parliament at night.
“We would chat away about the Middle East. He would speculate about whether or not I was Jewish because my grandmother’s name was Zona,” Livingstone told the Jewish Chronicle.
“Zona” is the Hebrew word for prostitute.
“I have lots of Jewish friends and I always have. I have had members of the Board of Deputies round for parties,” he told the Jewish Chronicle last week, referring to the organization that represents British Jews. “When I went to Israel and stopped by a kibbutz, I felt completely at home there. Everyone was a leftie like me.”
Livingstone spoke to the newspaper after testifying before the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee hearing on anti-Semitism. During last week’s hearing he ignored repeated offers from committee members to retract the claim he made in an April radio interview, the Jewish Chronicle reported. Instead he doubled down on the remarks.
In a radio interview with the BBC, Livingstone had said, “Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism.”
Days later, Livingstone was suspended from the party for the remark. He served as mayor twice, from 1981 to 1986 and from 2000 to 2008. — jta
Holland bends pension laws for its citizens on the West Bank
The Dutch government made an exception to its pension laws in order to keep paying its citizens living in the West Bank, a Dutch newspaper reported.
The practice, which applies to several dozen Dutch citizens, was revealed in a 4,000-word exposé published June 18 in NRC Handelsblad, a prominent daily in the Netherlands.
The exception is to a 2006 law that limits eligibility to a full, untaxed Dutch state pension to residents of countries with a social security agreement with the Netherlands. Israel has one, but the Dutch government does not recognize the agreement as applying to territory beyond Israel’s pre-1967 borders: the West Bank, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem.
Residents of those areas who receive Dutch pensions registered with Holland as living in Israel, but many of them have been informed in recent years that their state pensions will be cut. The Dutch government has taxed or limited pensions paid to residents of other areas internationally viewed as occupied, including Western Sahara and eastern Cyprus.
The SVB, which implements national insurance plans in the Netherlands, published a notice on its website advertising the slashing of state pensions for West Bank residents as of 2015. But last year, Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Ascher instructed authorities to restore the pension benefits of a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor from the West Bank, who moved there after 2015 and had her state pension cut, NRC reported.
Three-quarters of Dutch Jewry died in the Holocaust. — jta
Ex-‘Kill Jews’ town changes name, twins with Israeli community
The Spanish village formerly known as Kill Jews Town is twinning with an Israeli town.
On June 19, Kfar Vradim in northern Israel hosted officials from Castrillo Mota de Judios, or Castrillo Jews’ Hill, for a ceremony to make the relationship official.
As part of the relationship, the towns will promote cultural, tourist and commercial ties with each other, the Associated Press reported.
Castrillo Jews’ Hill Mayor Lorenzo Rodriguez, who in 2014 submitted the proposal to return the town in northern Spain to its original name, attended the signing ceremony, as did the Spanish ambassador to Israel, Fernando Cardera, the AP reported.
The name of the village was changed to Castrillo Matajudíos, or Kill Jews Town, during the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. In June, the town used its new name of Castrillo Mota de Judios in the official state gazette.
No Jews currently live in the Spanish village, but a Star of David can be found on its official shield. A massacre of Jewish people is believed to have taken place near the town in 1035, while another massacre occurred inside the village in 1109. — jta