Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
Labour leader Jeremy CorbynReuters

The Labour party in Britain continues to make headlines, with its leader Jeremy Corbyn promoting a lawmaker who seemingly compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs to the Holocaust.

According to JTA, Corbyn made Yasmin Qureshi, who has apologized for causing any offense with her remark in 2014, shadow justice minister, a position that makes her Labour’s point person on the subject.

Qureshi, speaking in England's Westminster Hall a week after International Holocaust Memorial Day in 2014, made the surprising accusation that Israel is conducting a "holocaust" against Arabs in Gaza.

In her subsequent apology, the Pakistani-born MP denied that she had meant to draw parallels between modern-day Israel and Nazi Germany.

“The debate was about the plight of the Palestinian people and in no way did I mean to equate events in Gaza with the Holocaust. I apologize for any offense caused,” she said. “I am also personally hurt if people thought I meant this.”

Corbyn, who was re-elected last month to head Labour after being elected in 2015, has faced allegations that his pro-Palestinian politics and tolerance of radical anti-Semites has encouraged hate speech against Jews.

He has come under fire himself due to his calling Hamas and Hezbollah his "friends" and for outright refusing to condemn those two terrorist organizations despite being urged to do so by local Jewish groups.

Corbyn recently, however, took back those earlier comments.

He has challenged the assertion and declared a policy of zero tolerance to anti-Semitism and other forms of hate speech, publishing an internal report on Labour’s anti-Semitism problem and subjecting dozens of party activists to review for statements deemed anti-Semitic or hateful.

Dozens of these members have been suspended in recent months over their anti-Semitic statements.

The most senior was former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, whose membership was suspended after he suggested and later insisted that Adolf Hitler was a Zionist.

Livingstone has refused to apologize for his comments and has repeatedly stressed that he stands by them.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which has labeled the internal report a “whitewash”, offered a milder reaction to the appointment of Qureshi.

Noting Qureshi’s apology for what she called an “offensive” statement, the board’s vice president, Marie van der Zyl, was quoted by the Jewish Times of London on Monday as saying, “Naturally we hope she will be more judicious in her new role as shadow justice minister.”

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Yom Kippur in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)