London, Dec 29, IRNA ,Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has accused the US of effectively endorsing Israel’s latest massacre of more than 300 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Israel’s massive military attack on Gaza is a crime by one of the most well-armed states in the world possessing hundreds of nuclear weapons against the relatively defenceless population of Gaza,” Livingstone said.
“The response of the US government to the killing of hundreds of people has been in reality to endorse Israel’s actions,” he said in a message of support for the daily protests in Britain against the ongoing massacres that were launched on Saturday.
Demonstrators were converging on the Israeli Embassy in London for the third consecutive day Monday. Protests have also been held in several other British cities as well as in Dublin.
Livingstone, who served as two-terms as London mayor until May this year, also criticized the British government who he said had “failed to demand an immediate end to the massive military action by Israel.”
“This refusal to uphold the elementary interests of humanity by powers which could stop Israel’s attacks is based on the falsehood that there is an equivalence between the actions of the Palestinians and the actions of Israel,” he said.
Israel,” Livingstone also said, has imposed an “illegal state of siege on Gaza, blockading the movement of people, goods and the supply of the most elementary humanitarian needs by the use of brute military force.”
“No people in the world would tolerate such a situation. This is the immediate cause of the present war,” he said, accusing the Zionist regime of not tolerating either democracy or self-determination for the Palestinian people.
“Elected Palestinian MPs are illegally held, alongside thousands of others, in Israeli prisons. Israel continues to not only to illegally blockade Gaza but to illegally occupy, build settlements, seize land and use military intervention in the West Bank.” “This treatment, too, would be unacceptable to any people in the world. These actions are the real causes of conflict with the Palestinians – as they would be with any people against whom they were perpetrated,” the former mayor said in his message.
He warned that there must be “no collusion with these crimes against humanity.” Israel, he said, is “overwhelmingly armed and funded by the US and its crimes against the Palestinians are given diplomatic cover by the British and other European governments.” “Without that support the slaughter of the Palestinians and the illegal blockading and the occupation of their territories could not continue,” Livingstone told the protesters.
He called on the US, British and other European governments to “stop the pretence that anything justifies the killing of hundreds of the people of Gaza and demand an immediate halt to the massive Israeli military attacks.”