Ken Livingstone: Confusing London With Palestine
From the desk of A. Millar on Wed, 2008-04-16 22:53
International, multicultural politics are a large part of Livingstone’s campaign for mayor, partly because he views London as a cosmopolitan city, attracting tourists, and with a population composed of all nationalities. This is quite correct. But Livingstone goes further, making much of his support for Palestine in a video interview posted on the Muslims 4 Ken website. Indeed, Livingstone seems almost to portray the mayoral elections as the Palestinian-Israel conflict on a microcosmic or symbolic level. Asked by interviewer Anas Altikriti why the mayoral election “is so significant”, Livingstone responds:
I was a clear opponent of the war in Iraq and have a long history of support for the Palestinian cause […]
Hardly, one would think, of great importance in such an election. Yet, Livingstone continues: Johnson, he says,
[…] has a strong record of support for Israel, and I don’t ever recall him having any sort of reasonable position on the part of the Palestinians.
While Livingstone attempts to show that he – unlike Johnson – is a moderate who appreciates all cultures – pointing out, for example, that he is someone who thinks Muslim women should be allowed to wear the hijab and Jewish people their traditional dress – the invocation of Israel and Palestine is surely a highly emotive issue that can only fuel tensions between London’s Muslim and Jewish communities. He does not link the issue to London’s Jews, of course, but he brings it into local politics, and thus to local people themselves. How would the Muslim community feel if Jews voted en masse for Johnson, giving him the victory, or what would the Jewish community feel if Muslims appear to hand Livingstone the victory? What affect on national politics could this have some time down the road?
Livingstone rarely shies away from controversy, of course, and this is both his strength and weakness. His support of radicals such as al-Qaradawi has won him both admirers and detractors. Recently, however, he has come in for criticism for very different reasons. He has been caught on video joking that his greatest achievement was grinding the Labour Party (of which he is a member) into the dust, and it has been discovered that he has 5 children with two women – three of which he had kept secret. Nevertheless, always eager to portray himself as a man of the people, Livingstone suggests that the media is in the hands of “former Left-wing intellectuals” who believe in the “Clash of civilizations”, and who attack him for challenging this belief. London, he asserts, proves the theory wrong, saying that even after the 7/7 bombings there were no riots, and Londoners were brought even closer together. In regard to the media he says,
[… They] hate people like myself more than they hate Osama Bin-Laden. Osama Bin-Laden is the enemy they want. You can paint him as a demon. The last thing they want is someone saying, ‘you don’t have to have a conflict with the Muslim world; you can have peaceful coexistence’. Therefore they seek actually to get rid of me, I mean, as almost a bigger priority than catching Osama Bin-Laden.
This seems to be overstating his importance, but if Livingstone regards himself as a victim of the press, Muslims 4 Ken clearly aim to even the score by taking on his only real rival, Conservative candidate, Boris Johnson. According to The Telegraph, Anas Altikriti has said of him:
Boris Johnson would be extremely bad news for Muslims in London. When the 7/7 bombings happened, Ken condemned them as criminal acts. Boris condemned Islam. We are going door to door talking to everyone we can.
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