Exclusive: Labour to reinterview council hopeful who said ‘Jews reaped rewards of playing victims’

A Labour council hopeful who said “Jews have reaped the rewards of playing victims” is to be interviewed again by the party, Jewish News understands. 

Condemnation followed News that Nasreen Khan, a former Respect activist, had been shortlisted to contest the seat in Bradford. 

Jewish News revealed at the weekend that the party was reviewing the case and it’s now believed she will be questioned again by a panel tomorrow. 

The controversy centres around a series of posts five years ago on which she said: “It’s such a shame that the history teachers in our school never taught us this but they are the first to start brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler.

“What have the Jews done good in this world??”

She is also reported to have written there are “worse people than Hitler in this world now” and “Jews have reaped the rewards of playing victims. Enough is enough”. She has since described the remarks as “inappropriate and unacceptable”. 

Following a number of complaints even before the story emerged publicly this week, the party said it would would not be able to suspend her candidature as details of her past had been known at the time of her shortlisting. Only if new information emerged could the case be reexamined, they said.

In a statement in the summer, Khan’s is understood to have said that she originally used the term ‘Zionist’, only to change it to ‘Jews’ when she was informed the former was “a term of abuse”. But she now “profoundly regretted” using the generalised terms ‘Jews’ and was now able to distinguish between Israeli policy and the Jewish community. Khan said she had also learnt more about the Holocaust.

She added that others in the party had said “as bad or worse”.