Galloway Blasts Israel

By Daniel Kahtan - Friday 30th of September 2005

The controversial leader of the Respect Party George Galloway this week provoked a fresh wave of condemnation after he launched a stinging attack on Zionism and Israel during a radio interview in America.

The MP, who this year won the Bethnal Green and Bow Parliamentary seat in a bitter contest with Labour’s Oona King, was denounced by community leaders and political peers for his comments which suggested Zionists had effectively engineered anti-semitism.

During the show, broadcast on stations across the US and online Galloway declared that, “Israel and dirty tricks have a long history,” denouncing it as a “little settler state on the Mediterranean” whose purpose was to “act as an advanced guard in the Arab world.”

Responding to interviewer Alex Jones’ claims that Zionists funded Hitler because “they said he’s going be good, he’s going to persecute Jews and he likes our plan of Palestine”, Galloway stated, “This is the thing about Zionism. It has nothing to do with Jewishness. Some of the biggest Zionists in the world are not Jews…. These people have used Jewish people.”

He added: “They created the conditions in the Arab countries and in some European countries to stampede Jewish people out of the countries that they had been living in for many hundreds of years and stampede them into the Zionist state.”

Labour Liverpool Riverside MP Louise Ellman, who has been derided by Galloway as “Israel’s MP on Merseyside,” said: “I think this is just another demonstration of George Galloway’s total hostility towards Jewish national identity and self-determination.”

Eric Moonman, President of the Zionist Federation, added to the condemnation, accusing Galloway of “manipulating many of the facts”.

He continued: “He has created a relatively new bogey for him, which is the non-Jewish Zionist. I think in short that one must never overestimate the power of his words but we must not underestimate the way in which he can influence groups of people who are somewhat naive about the Middle East and Zionism. It’s depressing that the Jewish people and friends of Zionism are having to justify themselves and argue their corner.”

Stan Urman, Director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, a group which represents the 856,000 of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, dismissed Galloway’s claims. He said: “How does one explain pogroms in 1912 and 1932 well before the establishment of the State of Israel? They were part of an orchestrated campaign by Arab governments to use their Jewish population as a weapon in their struggle against the creation of the State of Israel. His comments do not stand the test of historical fact.”

While Downing Street said it had “no intention of validating these well-known views of George Galloway with any comment, ” Galloway himself told the Jewish News: “I stand by all those comments. Everything I have said there is fact and there are shelves full of books to prove it. I believe that Zionism has exploited the Jewish people as much as the Palestinian people and has turned the people of Einstein and Epstein into one apparently represented by Sharon and Netanyahu.”

TotallyJewish.com

Is George Galloway Anti-Semitic or is he a honest and brave journalist ?
what do you think about this remark "Some of the biggest Zionists in the world are not Jews…" could this be true ?