#VoteBike - 2012 London Mayoral elections

His various antisemetic rants, however couched as "jokes", are intolerable.

I'll concede he may rant, but disagree with everything else in that sentence. I'll start with the incident transcribed on [ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Livingstone[/ame]'s Wikipedia page. Nothing he said implied he is opposed to Jews in general. He attacks the behaviour of one particular reporter, initially on the basis of the newspaper she represents and in ignorance of her race.

The only way i can understand that offence can be taken is if merely mentioning Nazis in the presence of Jews is like using the N word if you're not black. But to me they are almost opposite. Not using the N word is about denying that skin colour could ever possibly be connected with someone's worth as a person. Whereas the lesson of the Nazis is that a culture of picking on differences and mentally separating groups of people off as 'not like me', and then 'less human than me' can lead to a lot of normal human beings supporting, or at least permitting, some truly terrible things. And that is something we should all keep in mind and guard against.

I'd generally avoid mentioning Nazi's in front of Jews because the history is so painful and i wouldn't want to trivialise that pain, and because it's such overblown and desperate rhetoric, but i don't think that mentioning nazi's to people who happen to be Jews is racist.

I've read through
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/65426/the-letter-ed-miliband-jewish-labour-supporters
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/65425/ken-livingstone-jews-wont-vote-labour-because-they-are-rich
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/former-london-mayor-forced-to-apologize-over-controversial-remarks-to-jewish-activists-1.421551
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/ken-livingstone-tries-and-not-entirely-succeeds-to-make-up-with-london-s-jews-1.426695
and not been able to find anything to justify all the excitement. I think perhaps the worst bit is from the first link:

At various points in the discussion Ken used the words Zionist, Jewish and Israeli, interchangeably, as if they meant the same, and did so in a pejorative manner. These words are not interchangeable and to do so is highly offensive, particularly when repeated over and again as was done. For example, when discussing Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi's extreme views on homosexuality, Ken said "one would expect the same views on homosexuality from extreme Christians, Muslims and Israelis" and using the word "Zionist" as an adjectival negative to criticise much more widely than what can be attributed to the ideology of Zionism. He also stated "I am not against Israel, I am against Zionists", which we also find impossible.
But even here i'm confused as to what is impossible about "I am not against Israel, I am against Zionists". It seems to me they are different things, and Zionism is incompatible with the 2-state solution he supports.

Or take this article: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jenniferlipman/100147208/as-jewish-labour-supporter-i-cant-back-ken-livingstone/. The only meat i could find in it was this paragraph:

It's not about anti-Semitism. It's about an entire community feeling uncomfortable in a supposedly inclusive city, their concerns ignored because their political support isn't considered important. It's about a mayor who is unrepentant about his friendship with a radical Islamic cleric, and doesn't see how his cozying up to extremists jars with his claim of a city where "different communities live side by side peacefully".
Which boils down to admiting that she doesn't like Ken because he's more interested in reaching out to other groups for support than hers. You could argue that's misguided, but calling it antisemetic is as overblow and desperate as comparing an annoying jounalist to nazis.