An independent pro-Gaza MP has been roundly condemned for appearing to suggest that Israel is planning to create “gas chambers” for Palestinians.
On Monday night, Blackburn MP Adnan Hussain shared an image of a story from Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz had instructed the IDF to prepare plans to “concentrate” the entire population of Gaza in a new “humanitarian city” in Rafah.
Hussain highlighted the word “Concentrate” in the article’s headline and commented: “We're on the concentration camp stage. Gas chambers next? Don't let it make you angry though, that would be an extreme reaction.”
Jewish communal groups were outraged by Hussain’s comments which appeared to compare Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza with the mass murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.
Karen Pollock CBE, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust told the JC: “It is shocking to see these comments from a Member of Parliament. It is disgraceful to use the Holocaust as a stick to beat the world's only Jewish state.”
She went on: “Whatever one thinks of what is happening on Gaza, raising the spectre of gas chambers, which were used for the industrialised murder of millions of Jewish people as the Nazis tried to wipe out an entire race, is a grotesque distortion of the Holocaust and deeply offensive to survivors, their families and the memory of the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust.”
Her sentiment was shared by the Community Security Trust, whose spokesperson said that the “appalling” comments were “especially disgraceful coming from a Member of Parliament”.
“Abusing the memory of the Holocaust in this way should be offensive to everybody and he ought to apologise”, they added.
Hussain, who was elected last year along with four other independent MPs on an explicitly pro-Gaza platform, was also urged to apologise by Antisemitism Policy Trust Chief Executive Danny Stone.
He told the JC: “Weaponising Jewish collective memory in the context of the current situation in the Middle East in this way is deliberate, offensive and beneath any public official.
“It is perfectly possible to be angry and upset about Israeli government statements without making cheap Holocaust references.”
And the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) accused the Blackburn MP of inflaming divisions by deliberately using the Holocaust to attack Israel.
“Mr Hussain knows exactly what he is doing. This post is an absurd attempt to invert the Holocaust to attack the Jewish State. This isn't just wrong, it perpetuates the antisemitism which is rising in this country”, a spokesperson for the group said.
Reacting to the JLC’s comments on social media on Tuesday, the MP for Blackburn appeared to double down on his remarks.
He shared similar remarks by Andrew Feinstein, a left-wing anti-Zionist and former South African MP who stood against the prime minister in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency at the last election, saying: “This son of a Holocaust survivor seems to agree with me”.
During his time in Parliament, Hussain has already established a track record of hardline criticisms of Israel.
In a debate on British military cooperation with Israel in March, he urged the severing of ties between the two countries.
He told MPs: “Allying with Israel while it carries out a genocide will bring about the end of the international world order as we know it”.
Hussain was also one of the MPs criticised by Conservative Peer Lord Polak for repeating incorrect claims made (and later corrected) by UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die from malnutrition within 48 hours.
The honorary president of Conservative Friends of Israel urged the MPs to “put that record straight”, adding: “Truth matters and words have consequences.”
Meanwhile, a decade before becoming an MP, Hussain allegedly told a pro-Palestine rally “let’s make Israel burn” and compared Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in 2014 to a “holocaust”.
He subsequently said he could have expressed himself better but told the Telegraph that he concluded his speech by expressing solidarity with “Jewish brothers and sisters”.
“In hindsight, and with the maturity of at least ten years since the speech in question, I’d use my words much more carefully, in order for room for nuance not to arise,” he said.
“The speech itself, other than a potential failure in adequate articulation of my point, carries a very positive, and inclusive message when listened to as a whole. I call for harmony between all racial and religious groups, Muslim, Christian and Jewish.”
Adnan Hussain has been contacted for comment.
