My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.

Gerald Kaufman by Nick Atkins Photography

On 15 January 2009, Sir Gerald Kaufman, who is Jewish, gave a brave speech about Gaza to the UK Parliament.

Sir Gerald Kaufman is Labour MP for Gorton, Manchester.

Here are some of the words spoken by Sir Gerald (Gaza ):

1. I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist.

2. I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel... Golda Meir was my friend.

My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust.

3. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.

4. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit ... 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.





5. On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians—the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that

“500 of them were militants.”

That was the reply of a Nazi.

I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.

6. The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists.

Tzipi Livni’s father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.

Tzipi Livni

7. Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism.

Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses.

Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin.

8. The Israeli Government ... could have negotiated with ... Yasser Arafat... Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah...

However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this ... problem by military means.

Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the west bank. (Many more millions live in refugee camps ootside the area)

They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well.

The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.

(Palestinians already outnumber the Jews if you look at the area as a whole.)

9. It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their 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 Israelis’ real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve.

They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.

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