Former British MP George Galloway: Zionism Is the Other Side of the Coin of Antisemitism; MEMRI Harvested Material against Ken Livingstone to Be Held against Him in the Event of a Trial

Former British MP George Galloway recently said that while he had "no time for quibbling" over the exact number of people who perished in the Holocaust, "Zionism is the other side of the coin of anti-Semitism." Speaking on his weekly show on the Lebanese Mayadeen TV on June 27, Galloway further said that "the Israeli TV service MEMRI has harvested material against [former London mayor Ken Livingstone], which will be held against him in any eventual trial that he faces." Livingstone was recently suspended from the Labour Party following his comment that Hitler had supported Zionism in the 1930s.

George Galloway: "Antisemitism was a brute reality for Jews in Europe for hundreds of years. For hundreds of years, Jewish people faced marginalization, discrimination, bigotry, and pogrom [sic] leading up to the ultimate pogrom of millions of Jewish people in what is known now as the Holocaust with a capital 'H.'

"I have no truck with those who deny the existence of antisemitism, of pogrom, or of the Holocaust. It was an article of faith of right-wing European nationalism morphing into fascism in some countries, principally Germany, and that industrialized attempt to wipe out - to extirpate - Jews from the face of the earth actually happened. We can quibble as to the exact numbers of people who perished in the Holocaust. I have no time with such quibbling. Whether it was three million, four million, five million, or six million is immaterial to me. There was an attempt to annihilate, physically, European Jewry.

"Equally, I am not going to hide from an uncomfortable truth which has become almost unsayable here in Britain and in some other countries. It is this: that Zionism is the other side of the coin of antisemitism. After all, both the Zionists and the antisemites share at least one thing in common. At least one. And that is that both of them believe that a Hungarian Jew is not Hungarian, a French Jew is not French, a British Jew not British, and that they should leave their own countries and go and live in someone else's country, even if it means as it did [to] me, the wiping of that country off the map. The scattering to the four winds, of the four corners of the earth, of the people of that country. I refer, of course, to Palestine, where now 13 million Palestinians live in the world mainly as refugees and exiles, without papers, without status, held up at borders, marginalized, and reviled.

"The Palestinian people, therefore, have been the principle external victim of that European antisemitism - the Palestinian people who had no history whatsoever of antisemitism, before the rise of Zionism, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in the Holy Land, in Palestine, in Jerusalem in particular, as neighbors and as friends.

"In Britain today and particularly inside the British Labour Party, a crisis has been created, not over Islamophobia, but over the issue of antisemitism. Now I spent 36 years in the Labour party - and not just as a foot soldier, although that's how I started out. I was a professional organizer for the Labour party. At the age of 26, I was the chairman of the whole Labour party in Scotland. I was a Labour member of Parliament for the best part of 20 years.

"I have never met an antisemite in the Labour party. And I don't believe that beyond perhaps - perhaps - a handful, that antisemitism exists in the British Labour party today. So how come we've got a situation where potentially thousands of Labour party members stand on the verge of suspension and expulsion over antisemitism? And I'll tell you why and then I'll stop speaking. We do because of the fake and deliberately contrived conflation of antisemitism and opposition to Zionism and Israel.

"Let me be clear: Opposition to Zionism and to Israel is not antisemitism. First of all, many Jews, including some in this audience, are not Zionists. Most Zionists are not Jews."

[...]

"Well, I was put on trial before a kangaroo court convened by Tony Blair and expelled from the Labour Party for the way in which I opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Ken Livingstone, the twice mayor of London, has been suspended from the party. The Israeli TV service MEMRI has harvested some other material which will now be held against him in any eventual trial that he faces."

[...]

[To ultra-Orthodox Jews in the audience]: "I would give my life's blood on the pavement outside your house to defend you against anyone who wanted to touch your hat or touch your beard or touch your life or touch your religion or how you live your life, and Ken Livingstone would be beside me ready to give his life's blood. I mean that, sincerely.

"So, we who hate racism, who hate bigotry, who hate Israel because we hate bigotry and hatred, and injustice... We are the real defenders of Jews and Muslims."