A judge has been reprimanded after making anti-Israel comments at the end of a trial, the Office for Judicial Complaints said today.

Jewish groups complained after Judge George Bathurst-Norman reportedly compared Israel to the Nazi regime.

The trial at Hove Crown Court saw seven activists who claimed to be preventing Israeli war crimes cleared of plotting to damage a Brighton weapons factory.

A spokesman for the Office for Judicial Complaints said: "At short notice, the judge assigned to try a politically sensitive trial at Hove Crown Court on 28 and 29 June was unable to sit. To avoid an adjournment, His Honour Bathurst-Norman agreed to replace to him.

"A number of complaints were made about some of the observations he made during the trial and summing up. An investigation found that a number of these observations did not arise directly from the evidence at trial and could be seen as an expression of the judge's personal views on a political question. This was an error.

"The Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice considered the conclusions of the investigation and HH Bathurst-Norman was formally reprimanded."

Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice-chairman of the Zionist Federation, published a transcript of Judge Bathurst-Norman's summing up to the jury on the internet.

The transcript read: "I am going to start with the background relating to Israel and Palestine and to the evidence which points to the war crimes being committed by Israel in Gaza, an area over which Israel has imposed a blockade.

"The evidence shows that those war crimes are committed against the civilian population of Gaza and against the property of its residents, including the United Nations by the Israeli Forces.

"Now you have to look at the evidence coldly and dispassionately.

"It may be as you went through what I can only describe as horrific scenes, scenes of devastation to civilian population, scenes which one would rather have hoped to have disappeared with the Nazi regimes of the last war, you may have felt anger and been absolutely appalled by them, but you must put that emotion aside."

Mr Hoffman said the judge acted like a member of the defence team.

During the three-week trial, the activists admitted breaking into the Brighton headquarters of EDO MBM in the early hours of January 17 last year and sabotaging equipment worth about £200,000.

But the defendants claimed they were acting with "lawful excuse" to prevent further alleged war crimes being committed by Israel against Gaza.

Christopher Osmond, 30, and Simon Levin, 35, both from Brighton, and Elijah Smith, 42, Tom Woodhead, 25, Ornella Saibene, 50, Bob Nicholls, 52, and Harvey Tadman, 44, all from Bristol, were cleared of conspiracy to cause criminal damage.