Livingstone isn't newly arrived at his anti-Semitism. In 1982, when he was at the time the editor of a Workers Revolutionary Party front paper, published a cartoon of Menachem Begin giving a straight armed salute, wearing an SS uniform and standing on a pile of Palestinian skulls. In 1984, as leader of the Greater London Council, he accused the Board of Deputies of British Jews of being 'dominated by reactionaries and neo-fascists'. In 1984, as mayor of London, he welcomed Islamist cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi to City Hall. Qaradawi is a defender of Palestinian suicide bombing as a 'martyrdom operation' and 'evidence of God's justice', and has issued a fatwa permitting the killing of pregnant Israeli women. Livingstone called him 'a progressive figure'. In 2005, he accused a Jewish reporter of being "like a German war criminal". He has presented programs for the Iranian state propaganda channel Press TV and has said that Jews were rich and so were not likely to vote Labour anyway. He has spent half a century pushing the anti-Semitic canard that equates Zionism with Nazism. Yet unbelievably, in this day and age, there are still some who rise to his defense. Disgusting!