Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, writes in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1430132,00.html


"The contribution of Jewish people to human civilisation and culture is unexcelled and extraordinary....

"Throughout the 1970s, I worked happily with the Board of Deputies in campaigns against the National Front.

"Relations with the board took a dramatic turn for the worse when I opposed Israel's illegal invasion of Lebanon, culminating in the massacres at the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila...

"Israel's expansion has included ethnic cleansing. Palestinians who had lived in that land for centuries were driven out by systematic violence and terror aimed at ethnically cleansing what became a large part of the Israeli state. The methods of groups like the Irgun and the Stern gang were the same as those of the Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic: to drive out people by terror.
Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return...

"Sharon continues to organise terror. More than three times as many Palestinians as Israelis have been killed in the present conflict. There are more than 7,000 Palestinians in Israel's jails.
To obscure these truths, those around Israel's present government have resorted to demonisation. Initial targets were Palestinians, and have now become Muslims..."