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Following are excerpts from a public address delivered in Amman, Jordan by British MP George Galloway, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on May 15, 2008:
George Galloway: I have for 21 years sat in the British Parliament, the scene of many crimes. I had to sit in the same room for many years as Mr. Tony Blair – the peace envoy, don't you know! You know, in history, the Roman Emperor Caligula appointed his horse a minister in the government of Rome.
[To the interpreter:] Did you get it?
Not since Caligula made his horse a minister has there been a more inappropriate appointment as the appointment of Tony Blair as the peace envoy to the Middle East. He's dripping with the blood of the people of Iraq, of the people of Palestine, of the people of Lebanon - and he wants to be the peace envoy!
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President Abd Al-Nasser, one of the greatest men of the 20th century, was described in the British Parliament by the British prime minister, in my lifetime, as the "mad dog of Cairo." Of course, Eden's plan failed, just like Blair's plan in Iraq has failed. They too want to deal with somebody they described as a mad dog. But President Abd Al-Nasser and Saddam Hussein will live in history long after these dogs are forgotten.
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But every day, I also have to pass the room where the British Foreign Secretary Alfred Balfour authored the Palestinian catastrophe. It was an act unique even by imperial standards – and those standards were very low. You know, I come from an Irish background. Once, I came home and told my Irish grandfather that the teacher had said that Britain had an empire so vast that upon it the sun never set. My grandfather answered: "That's because God would never trust the British in the dark." But Balfour was unique even by these standards. In the Balfour declaration, on behalf of one people, he promised a second people the land of a third people, and with this declaration, he sent this whole region down a bloody staircase to hell. And it has been hell almost from the moment this declaration left his lips. And so my first duty, on this occasion, is to say that if I and my friends spend the rest of our lives, and our sons spend all of their lives, trying to help recover Palestine from the colonial occupier, we will not expunge this spot. As Shakespeare said in Macbeth, all the perfumes of Arabia cannot expunge this spot. So when you hear Blair, or the British ambassador in Jordan, or Lord Levy, or any of these other British crooks, who come to throw sand in your eyes - never forget Balfour and his declaration, and all the hell that it created.
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Because in this case, the victims of terrorism are called the terrorists, and the terrorists are called the victims of terrorism. This terrorist state of Israel parades around the world as a legitimate government, being received as such even in some Arab countries, whilst Hamas, elected by the people of Palestine, are called terrorists, who must be starved and beaten into submission.
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Jerusalem is in the hands of foreigners – why? Baghdad is in the hands of foreigners – why? The Arab League wants to meet to discuss the presence of a few hundred Lebanese gunmen in Hamra Street and on the Kornish in Beirut, whilst one million gunmen from Brooklyn NY, London, Paris, and Moscow have occupied Palestinian land for 60 years. They want to discuss Hamra Street, when Al-Aqsa, from which the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, ascended to heaven, is in the hands of a foreign army – and they want to discuss Hamra Street?
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Two years ago, I met Siniora. As I walked into the room, before he said hello, he told me: Stop saying that we won the war. We lost the war, he said. I told him: Prime Minister, you are unique amongst all Arab leaders. Most of the Arab leaders claim that they won when they lost. You are the only one to claim that you lost when you won. We met for half an hour. He didn't serve us even water – never mind tea or coffee. But he gave a kiss for Condoleezza. Give him a visa, Condoleezza. Give him a visa, Condoleezza.
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Now they want to turn you against Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah because he is a Shiite. They say there is a conspiracy – an Iranian, Syrian, Shiite conspiracy. There is a conspiracy in this region, all right, but it is an American-Israeli conspiracy. That's what's going on in this region. Any Arab Muslim, any Sunni, who allows himself to be drawn into this foolish false dichotomy, is falling for exactly the same divide-and-rule conspiracy of Sykes and Picot all over again.
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My second mistake was to believe that Palestine could be liberated by the Palestinians themselves, that this was not an Arab question, that this was a Palestinian question. This was a mistake. In fact, Palestine will never be free until the Arabs are free. And my third mistake... I'm not going to develop that last point. All of you know what I mean. And the third mistake is this: All my life I believed that Palestine could be liberated by the Kalashnikov and the armed struggle alone. This was a mistake. We need the Kalashnikov. We need the armed struggle. This is the hammer. But we need also an anvil. The hammer is necessary to defend yourself, to strike your enemy. You must never let it down, never let it fall from your hand. But it cannot make something alone. What is needed is an anvil, and that anvil has to be mass movements of the population, of the people. The most inspiring event, of the last – we can say – 40 years, since Karameh, was when the people of Gaza, with their bare hands, in their thousands tore down the walls of their prison, and poured out of the siege into Egypt.
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