Jozef,
Isn't it a SHAME???? Over one month after the devastating London bombings, London mayor Ken Livingstone is still unrepentant in his anti-Israel criticism --or "anti-Semitism" as you'd have it.... I bet it must still madden you that "Red Ken" wasn't in one of those bombed carriages on that fateful 7 July, must it not? And, chances are, even Tejek would have felt elated at the news: London mayor Red Ken among the casualties --one more head to roll! Indeed, with you and Tejek at the helm, London would be such a safer city, wouldn't it?
Mon., August 22, 2005 Av 17, 5765
Red Ken's true colors
By Yossi Melman
The terror attack on Thursday, July 7, against the public transportation system in London found Ken Livingstone dining at a fashionable restaurant in Singapore. The mayor of London was celebrating with the fellow members of the British delegation after the International Olympic Committee's choice of London as the host city of the Olympic Games in 2012. He had been with Prime Minister Tony Blair, high-ranking businessmen and the head of the British Olympic Committee Lord Sebastian Coe.
Livingstone feels comfortable with them, and seems as if he has always been part of the club, which represents the British mainstream. Upon learning of the tragic bombings, he hurriedly flew back to London, and after the weekend, in a symbolic gesture, traveled to his office by underground. His statements in the ensuing days reflected the mood of the majority of the British public. "Mass murder," he described the terror attacks, in which 56 people were killed.
At a memorial service held in Trafalgar Square, a teary Livingstone quoted from the speeches of the Athenian military leader Pericles and borrowed images from the speech made by American president John F. Kennedy in Berlin. "This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old," he declared. The only hint in his speech to his own radical past was the use he made of socialist terminology, of "ordinary working-class Londoners."
Even the lead editorial of the tabloid The Sun, one of Livingstone's most blatant critics, praised the speech, writing that the words "captured London's resolve."
The mayor of London shined during the first few days after the terror attack. During this period of grace, all of the divisions and hatreds and controversial statements were forgotten. He was seen as a sort of London incarnation of Winston Churchill who faithfully reflected the public consensus. Nevertheless, he soon reverted to type, and once again became the Marxist socialist "Red Ken," whose shrill and discordant statements invariably provoke enraged reaction.
His supporters see him as a charming and inspirational leader, capable - when need be - of being a powerful political propagandist who does not hesitate to generate provocation to hype his accomplishments. His rivals regard him as an inveterate publicity hound with a penchant for over-aggressiveness and a "siege mentality."
These rivals hastened to attack him after he differentiated between the suicide terrorists in London and the suicide bombers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In an interview with Haaretz, he reiterated, "It is as much a crime for an Israeli soldier to use a rifle or a missile to kill or maim a child as it is for a suicide bomber to do so." These and other statements, and especially his past, have earned him a reputation for being "anti-Israeli." Some members of the prosperous Jewish community of London even consider him an "anti-Semite," of the variety that grew in the hothouses of the extreme left of the 1960s.
The opinions of those who consider him to be anti-Semitic or at least latently anti-Semitic are reinforced by the fact that Livingstone stubbornly refuses to be interviewed in the Jewish Chronicle, the traditional journal of record of British Jewry. Similarly, requests by Haaretz, and a month-long negotiation with his spokespeople could not budge him from his vehement refusal to grant the newspaper a face-to-face interview.
He would only agree to respond in writing to questions sent him in advance (see box). Actually, Livingstone sees the fact that he agrees to answer these questions as evidence of his special attitude toward Israel and Jews. Asked if his refusal to grant an interview had something to do with Haaretz being an Israeli paper, he responded: "No. I have been unable to meet far more requests for interviews from British newspapers. Haaretz is a very important Israeli paper, hence my decision to answer your questions."
The height of vulgarity
Ken Livingstone was born in Stratham, in south London, in June 1945, one month after the end of World War II. "I grew up in a world in which all the horror of what the Nazis did unfolded over the years," he said in a newspaper interview six months ago. "For all my generation, we defined evil by that: that this is the absolute worst in human history."
His world of images is anchored in that war and its horrors, from which he also occasionally draws some of his controversy-sparking expressions. In 1984, as a member of Camden borough council of London, he attacked the Board of Deputies - the umbrella organization of the Jewish communities in Britain - describing it as being "dominated by reactionaries and neo-fascists." Three years later, he compared Camden's housing policy to the persecution of homosexuals by Hitler's regime of terror. In 2000, he commented, "Capitalism has killed more people than Hitler."
But his sharp tongue reached the height of vulgarity of historic memory one evening last February. Livingstone was in an especially ebullient mood that night, and some say he was a trifle too ebullient due to having had a few too many drinks (he denies this) at a political get-together. Waiting outside the party was Oliver Finegold, a Jewish reporter for the Evening Standard, who peppered Livingstone with questions. The mayor responded by comparing the reporter to a kapo, a guard at a concentration camp.
This caused a huge storm. Holocaust survivors demonstrated outside his office. Synagogues called for a boycott of the mayor. Some observers feared the incident could hurt London's efforts to win the right to host the Olympic Games. Prime Minister Tony Blair phoned and asked Livingstone to apologize, but the mayor refused, with characteristic stubbornness. "Why should I say words I don't believe in?" he railed. But at the same time, in an effort to fend off the criticism, he also attested that "The Holocaust infuses all my politics."
After high school, Livingstone completed a teacher's certificate, but never used it. From a relatively young age he had worked as a technician in the cancer research laboratory of a hospital, was active in the Labour Party, and was drawn to its more radical circles. His political consciousness was etched by the protest movement of the 1960s. The two mainstays of his worldview emerged from that era. One was reflected in his opinions on foreign policy, in which it was always clear who were the bad guys (European colonialism and American imperialism) and who were the good guys (the repressed Third World). It comes as no surprise that in 2002 and 2003 he described Ariel Sharon as a "war criminal."
When George W. Bush was due to arrive in London on a visit, Livingstone called him "the most dangerous man in the world." Sharon and Bush are in good company in Livingstone's vocabulary. They are there together with the Saudi royal family, about which he said that he hoped to see its sons "swinging from lampposts."
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haaretz.com |
