Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said, in an interview with Al-Ghad Al-Arabi TV, that when Hitler came to power in 1932, he did not want to kill the Jews. He just wanted to "deport all the Zionists to Israel," said Livingstone, who further claimed that Britain and the U.S. should have absorbed the Jewish refugees following WWII, rather than enabling the establishment of the state of Israel, which was "fundamentally wrong." Livingstone added that he never buys Israeli products and that the failure to resolve the Palestinian problem leads Muslims to join ISIS. The interview was conducted on May 4, 2016.

Following are excerpts

Ken Livingstone: The simple truth is that the situation in Iraq today is worse than what it was under the rule of Saddam Hussein, and the same is true of Libya, which is much worse now than it was under Qadhafi. All the Western interventions in the Middle East had nothing whatsoever to do with introducing democracy. Their goal was to control the oil reserves, and to secure governments that would support the Western plans in the region.

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I believe that the endorsement of double standards in the Middle East was one of the causes that led to the development of the terrorist Islamic groups today. We imposed harsh sanctions on Iran for almost a decade, because we believed that it was developing nuclear arms. We also believed that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms, and we invaded [Iraq], but then, we could not find them. On the other hand, Israel has possessed nuclear arms for 40 years. It is the first country to introduce nuclear arms into the Middle East. But we still have not acknowledged that, and have not imposed sanctions upon it. The angry youth can see that this world is completely unjust. I think this is what encourages many youths to fight alongside terrorist groups like ISIS.

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There has always been a solid bloc of Labour Party MPs who believed that an independent Palestinian state must be established. There have also been many Labour Party members who opposed intervention in the Middle East. But Tony Blair became America's lapdog, and he carried out anything dictated to him by George Bush. The consequences were catastrophic.

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If you reexamine the bombings that took place in London in 2005 - the bombings in the Tube were carried out by young angry Muslims. In the weeks that followed, there was not a single case of an anti-Muslim attack - no screaming at Muslims, no attacks on mosques. We were not divided then, but recently, things have begun to change.

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The creation of the state of Israel was fundamentally wrong, because there had been a Palestinian community there for 2,000 years.

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The creation of the state of Israel was a great catastrophe. We should have absorbed the post-WWII Jewish refugees in Britain and America. They could all have been resettled, whereas 70 years later, the situation is still very tense, and there is potential for many more wars, potential for nuclear war.

Interviewer: Do you support the global movement for boycotting Israel?

Ken Livingstone: I never buy anything [that comes from Israel]. I could make mistakes sometimes. I like dates, but I don't buy dates that come from Israel.

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Interviewer: Europe decided that the solution, in order to get rid of the Jews, was to establish their own national state in Palestine. Is this not unjust?

Ken Livingstone: This is the interesting thing. There was a lot of antisemitism in Europe. The Christians were very hostile toward the Jews. When Hitler won the elections in 1932 and came to power, his policy was not directed toward killing the Jews. He wanted to deport all the Zionists to Israel [sic]. If you look at the Arab world at the time, there were large Jewish communities that never suffered threats or attacks. They lived in peace alongside their Arab neighbors. But all of this was destroyed with the establishment of the state of Israel, and all the Israeli [sic] communities in the Arab world were deported to Israel. This is unparalleled. If you examine the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad - he recognized Moses as a divine messenger. He also recognized that the Jews could live alongside the Arabs in the Middle East. All of that was destroyed, and I think it was catastrophic.

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I have always believed that the failure to resolve the [Palestinian] problem fuels the terrorist attacks. What makes a 15- or 16-year-old boy go and fight with ISIS, or carry out the barbaric attacks that we saw in Paris or Brussels? They don't do it because they enjoy killing, but because they believe that they are the victims of injustice. The West must deal with the injustice, or will continue to fuel terrorism.

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