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Ken's At It Again
Just days after being suspended for calling a Jewish reporter a concentration camp guard, London's mayor Ken Livingstone has accused the leaders of Britain's Jewish community of McCarthyist tactics.
Speaking after he won a last-minute reprieve from suspension yesterday, Livingstone revealed that the Board of Deputies of British Jews had asked him to tone down his criticism of Israel. The request came before Livingstone's attack on reporter Oliver Finegold last February, and Livingstone claims that the Board of Deputies inflated the Finegold case in order to punish him for his hostility to Israel:
"If the issue hadn't been this, it would have been something else... This was the general displeasure of the Board of Deputies about my views on the Middle East. I think they saw this as an opportunity to use that incident to try to hush me on it."
Oddly, Livingstone reacted to criticism of his remarks to Finegold and the Board of Deputies' request by publishing an opinion column in The Guardian, in which he launched a fierce attack on the state of Israel.
A couple of months later, he followed up his print attack with a sympathetic explanation of suicide bombing at a press conference. Palestinians, he said, "don't have jet fighters, they only have their bodies to use as weapons. In that unfair balance, that's what people use." (Harry's Place also reports on Livingstone's previous form on talking up the Zionist Conspiracy in the 1980s, and in particular its infiltration of the UK's Labour movement and press.)
In recent years, Livingstone has also championed Yusef al-Qaradawi as a moderate. Al-Qaradawi is a prominent supporter of suicide bombings on Israeli civilians.
The Clooney Left
This time, however, Livingstone draws his inspiration from the movies.
"For decades the charge of anti-Semitism has been used to try to suppress any meaningful debate about the policies of the Israeli government," he said, "Londoners who may have seen George Clooney's recent film Goodnight And Good Luck will recognise the tactic of McCarthyism updated for a new age."
The Board of Deputies responded with disbelief. Chief Executive Jon Benjamin said Livingstone's accusations were "pure fantasy" and added,
"I think (Livingstone) is really just trying to spin this and create a smokescreen to justify what he did.
"He made the comments. He decided not to apologise and to make it worse. Now we are in the realms of legal argument but that does not get away from what he said a year ago which caused national uproar and even brought calls from the Prime Minister for him to apologise."
Livingstone was speaking after London's High Court froze the suspension order until his appeal was heard. The four-week suspension was to have started today.
UPDATE: John Lloyd wonders where rising anti-semitism in the west is leading.
