At a time when violent antisemitic attacks on British Jews increased 42% last year reaching greater levelsthan in France, where just days before Holocaust Memorial Day Jewish gravestones were desecrated with swastikas, while at the same time there was a spate ofviolent attacks against Jews in North London, where Jewish students feel increasingly intimidated on university campuses for openly expressing their support forIsrael, and when young people in the UK increasingly display a lack of understanding of the Nazi Holocaust, the slanderous comments against a Jewish reporter and the Stateof Israel by London's controversial mayor have fueled an already dangerous environment.
Mayor Ken Livingstone's most recent statements accusing the Israeli government of "ethnic cleansing" and hisdescription of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a "war criminal who should be in prison" have added to the anger over comments made last month when he compared aJewish reporter to a concentration camp guard. Livingstone has refused consistent calls from Prime Minister Tony Blair, British officials, Holocaust survivors, andLondon's Jewish community to apologize.
Livingstone has had a long history of conflict with British Jews. Last year, he hosted Sheik Yusuf alQaradawi, a Muslim Brotherhood Imam who has endorsed suicide bombings against civilians in Israel and attacks on foreign civilians in Iraq. In 2000, he made a speechclaiming that global capitalism was responsible for more deaths that the Nazis. And as far back as 1983, in his capacity as a newspaper editor, he published acartoon of then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin dressed in an SS uniform with a caption reading, "The Final Solution."
Additionally, the Center is urging mayors of all cities to refuse to officially welcome Livingstone to theircities until he apologizes for his reckless and incendiary behavior.
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