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Ken Livingstone has insisted Adolf Hitler DID support Zionism and refused to apologise for saying it in a heated grilling by MPs.

The ex-mayor dug in his heels at an anti-Semitism hearing in Parliament despite his views leading Labour to suspend him.

Using 'Hitler' as his fifth word at the Home Affairs Select Committee, he said: "He was supporting Zionism. He wanted all the half million German Jews out".

In defiant mood the 70-year-old left-winger said he'd go back in time and unsay his Hitler remarks if he could.

But that would only be because it "allowed all the anti-Jeremy people in the party to whip it up into a bigger issue", he told MPs.

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Asked if he'd apologise he said: "If I had said Hitler was a Zionist I would apologise for that because it's rubbish.

"What I said was, and you can still access this on the BBC website, that when Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy was that the Jews should be moved to Israel.

"He was supporting Zionism. He wanted all the half million German Jews out. At that stage his view was to move them out.

"By the autumn of 1933 he had negotiated a deal with German Zionist organisation that did lead to 66,000 German Jews being moved to what is now Israel.

(Image: Heinrich Hoffmann/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

"Had the Zionists not negotiated that deal those 66,000 Jews would've died in the gas chambers."

Mr Livingstone was condemned for using "a completely false and distorted version of history" an hour earlier by Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Mr Arkush added: "To say Hitler was a Zionist was not only the most absurd thing to say, but a hateful thing to say.

"His views are utterly repellent to our community. If he was to say anything like that about any other people, I think he would be labelled a political pariah, and I think that is what he is."

But Mr Livingstone said while he'd been called anti-Semitic "many times... it's only been thrown at me when I've been critical of the policies of the Israeli government."

He added "criticising Israel does not mean you're a Jew-hater" and Zionism was once "seen by 90% of the Jews in the world as eccentric or extreme".

He later said: "I'm blaming people who lied about what I said, both MPs and journalists."

And he claimed "if the BBC want to give me half an hour to do a history of the period I’d be delighted to do it".

But he added: "If I could go back in time and avoid referring to Hitler and Zionism in the Vanessa Feltz interview I would.

"Because it allowed all the anti-Jeremy people in the party to whip it up into a bigger issue.

"It became this hysterical issue where in the midst of our campaign to do well in the local elections every front page was about me and anti-Semitism."

On Labour MP John Mann, who called him a "disgusting Nazi apologist" on cameras, he said: "Frankly I was trying to calm him down because he seemed to be on the edge of violence."

(Image: Channel 4 News/Twitter)

On comparing a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard, he said: "I've often been offensive to reporters and I think they usually deserve it."

He added he had no way of knowing the journalist was Jewish.

Asked if his suspension from Labour was caused by "embittered MPs", he said: "Absolutely".

"They're not out to get me because I'm a retired pensioner and a househusband. They're out to get Jeremy Corbyn ," he said.

(Image: Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Committee chairman Keith Vaz declared an interest in knowing Mr Livingstone since his own first failed election campaign 32 years ago.

He added: "This is not an inquiry into you or the Labour party ".

But Mr Livingstone's comments were too much for Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who said he'd be remembered as a "pin-up" for all the prejudice Labour tried to wipe out.

He blasted: "You not only betray our Labour values but you betray your legacy as mayor."

Labour's anti-Semitism inquiry and investigation into Ken Livingstone are both ongoing.