Livingstone blasts Sharon and his government as "war criminals"

London's mayor Ken Livingstone has denounced Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a war criminal, in a searing critique of Israeli policies published Friday in the newspaper "The Guardian". Livingstone also rejected accusations of anti-Semitism and brushed off fresh calls in his article to apologize for comments last month comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard. Sharon "is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office", he wrote, saying that even an Israeli commission had blamed the prime minister for deadly massacres at Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The mayor also denounced "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians during the expansion of the Israeli state, Israeli settlements in the territories and the denial of Palestinians' right to return. "Sharon continues to organize terror," he said, citing the disproportionate number of Palestinians killed compared to Israelis during the "Intifada". Livingstone said the Israeli government deliberately "attempted to portray anyone who forcefully criticizes the policies of Israel as anti-Semitic. The truth is the opposite: the same universal human values that recognize the Holocaust as the greatest racist crime of the 20th century require condemnation of the policies of successive Israeli governments."