(video link and transcription of major excerpts)
I was brought up as a Jew and a Zionist. On the shelf in our kitchen there is a tin box in which we put money for the Jewish National Fund to help the pioneers in Palestine. . . .
I first went to Israel in 1961 and have been there more times than I can count. I have family in Israel, and I have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1972.
I’ve known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion.
My parents came to England as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. My grandmother was shot dead by a German soldier while she was lying in her bed.
Madame Deputy Speaker,
My grandmother died not to provide cover for Israeli soldiers to murder Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.
The current government in Israel continues to exploit the guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count. . . .
A few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli Army was asked about the Israeli killing of, at the time, 800 Palestinians. The total is now 1,000. She replied instantly, “Five-hundred of them were militants.” That is the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw Ghetto could have been dismissed as militants. . . .
However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve their existential problem by military means.
Whenever and however the current fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza — and there are 2.5 million more living in the West Bank who are treated like dirt, with hundreds of roadblocks over the ghastly denizen of illegal Jewish settlements. . . .
It is time for our government to make clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace — not the solution by conquest, which is the Israeli’s real goal but which is impossible for them to achieve.
They’re not simply war criminals; they’re fools!
