The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has launched a strong attack on the "war criminal" Ariel Sharon. He also accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" and said its prime minister should be imprisoned. He also accused Israel of demonising Muslims, it was reported Friday.
Writing in the Guardian, Livingstone accused Israel of spreading misinformation about the scale of anti-semitism in Europe, and seeking to silence critics by calling them anti-semitic. Livingstone wrote: "Israel's expansion includes 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."
He added: "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. "Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila [Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut] massacre."
