George Galloway, former member of parliament and prolific anti-Israel activist has declared that the State of Israel “should be no more”.
Mr Galloway made the controversial statement on 28 January 2018 at a seminar titled, “The Future of Jerusalem” organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC).
It is important to note that IHRC runs the anti-Israel Al-Quds day march and was in the news this week for its anti-Israel poster in Luton. You can find out more about their anti-Israel ways here.
Galloway was talking about Trump’s decision to move the Embassy, which he referred to as “incredibly stupid”. He said that “It’s not actually really relevant, on the bigger level, where the United States has its embassy. The point is, it’s an embassy to an illegitimate state that should be no more. Should be no more.” He emphasised.
After calling for the world’s only Jewish state to be “no more”, he said it was a “foul lie” to accuse himself and others who oppose Israel as being antisemitic. “We will stand tall and stand firm. Whatever they call us, they’re lying,” he declared.
Galloway also claimed that “many Jews are not Zionists, most Zionists are not Jews, many Zionists hate Jews, we on the other hand love Jews”.
“We hate Zionism,” he declared, “not least, because it has lead so many of the Jewish people off the path of righteousness and onto the path of gangsterism.”
“One of the many crimes of Zionism is to have sucked so many Jewish people into the vortex that allows them to all day… justifying the incarceration in a cold prison cell and the threat of rape and murder against a sixteen year old girl, Ahed Tamimi, for slapping a soldier.”
Let us be clear that Ahed Tamimi is under no threat of “rape and murder” in Israeli custody as Galloway claims.
He then goes on to justify her actions by saying, “Incidentally the soldier slapped her first as the video shows”. (Actually, the video first of all shows Ahed Tamimi’s mother telling Ahed to attack the soldier and hit him, but almost every media source cut that part from the video.) The slap Galloway is talking about is when the soldier deflects Ahed’s first attempted slap, an reactive act of self-defence by the soldier.
Galloway then goes on to tell his audience that Ahed had “every legal right to slap that soldier” and confirms that this wasn’t the first time but that Ahed had been slapping soldiers since she was little, before declaring, “God strengthen her slap, and have everyone slap illegal occupiers and oppressors in Palestine and around the world”.
“Who knows what criminal, God forbid, will physically harm her. But if they do they should know that they will not stop her. Dead or alive, Ahed Tamimi is an example of the Arabs and the Muslims risen, risen to new moral heights.”
In his speech, Galloway also called for the boycott of the entirety of Israel, not just the so-called settlements, which is something his friend Jeremy Corbyn has done on various occasions.
“We take a conscious decisions, not just for ourselves to boycott all goods and services emanating, not just from the illegally occupied territories, settlements. They’re all settlements. It’s all illegally occupied territory. We boycott and we refuse to legitimise,” Galloway said.
He concluded his speech by shouting “victory to the Palestinian people”.
This is not the first time that George Galloway has carried out an anti-Israel tirade. In fact, it is much of what he is known for. One of his many examples was when he was an MP for Bradford West in 2014 he declared Bradford an “Israel free zone”, which is odd considering his opposition to apartheid.
He declared, “We don’t want any Israeli goods, we don’t want any Israeli services, we don’t want any Israeli academics coming to the university or the college. We don’t even want any Israeli tourists to come to Bradford, even if any of them had thought of doing so. We reject this illegal, barbarous, savage state that calls itself Israel.”
You can watch George Galloway’s full IHRC speech below.