On Feb. 5th we posted about an episode of BBC’s Question Time in which Guardian executive editor Jonathan Freedland accused George Galloway, the MP from Bradford West, of fueling antisemitism with his conspiracy-ridden, obsessive hatred of Israel. A few days later, in the context of a tweet by Glenn Greenwald defending Galloway against these charges, a Guardian journalist named Hadley Freeman tweeted her belief that Galloway has indeed crossed the line into antisemitism.
After Galloway threatened to sue Hadley for her ‘defamatory comments’, she deleted her tweet.
Since then, Galloway’s lawyers have attempted to stifle such criticism directed towards him by suing twitter users who, like Hadley, suggest that he has engaged in antisemitism.
Undaunted by such intimidation, we published a post on Feb. 12th expressing our view that Galloway is indeed antisemitic (based on the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism), and pointed to the following evidence.
- Galloway openly calls for “the destruction of the political state of Israel.”
- Galloway explicitly expresses and demonstrates support for violent, genocidal antisemitic extremist movements like Hamas and Hezbollah.
- Galloway walked out of a debate with an Israeli Jew, declaring “I don’t recognize Israel and I don’t debate Israelis”.
- Galloway declared his district an “Israeli-free zone“.
- Galloway said he was “enthralled” by a book written by extreme antisemite Gilad Atzmon. The book, The Wandering Who?, was described by CST as “probably the most antisemitic book published in this country in recent years,” and included Holocaust denial, per these passages:
“To regard Hitler as the ultimate evil is nothing but surrendering to the Zio-centric discourse. To regard Hitler as the wickedest man and the Third Reich as the embodiment of evilness is to let Israel off the hook. To compare Olmert to Hitler is to provide Israel and Olmert with a metaphorical moral shield. It maintains Hitler at the lead and allows Olmert to stay in the tail. We should never compare Israel to Nazi Germany. As far as evilness is concerned, we should now let Israel take the lead.”
“The question of whether there was a mass homicide with gas or ‘just’ a mass death toll due to total abuse in horrendous conditions is no doubt a crucial historical question. The fact that such a major historical chapter less than seven decades ago is scholarly [sic] inaccessible undermines the entire historical endeavour. …Furthermore, unless one approves and repeats the official Holocaust narrative, one may find oneself locked behind bars. This happened lately to three rightwing history revisionists who dared to suspect the official Auschwitz narrative. ….I can see these three outlaws :[David] Irving, [Ernest] Zundel and [Germar] Rudolf, the three rightwing historical revisionists who happen to be locked behind bars. …While left academics are mainly concerned with signalling out Holocaust deniers telling us what is right and who is wrong, it is the revisionists who engage themselves in detailed archive work as well as forensic scrutiny…. If history shapes the future, we need to liberate our perspective of the past, rather than arresting revisionists, we simply need many more of them.”
Evidently, Atzmon isn’t the only anti-Jewish activist that Galloway is ‘enthralled’ with.
A tweet by Galloway on March 2nd expressed enthusiastic support for Asghar Bukhari, a founding member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK (MPACUK), an organisation banned from university campuses in 2004 due to its promotion of antisemitism.
Bukhari has advised supporters of Israel to literally kill themselves and has shown support for Holocaust denier David Irving.
We’ve placed Galloway’s expression of support for Bukhari next to the evidence we’re referring to:
So, to recap: George Galloway seeks a total boycott of Israel and all Israeli Jews, calls for the destruction of the only Jewish state, advocates for terror groups which call for the mass murder of Jews and supports antisemites (and supporters of Holocaust denial) such as Gilad Atzmon and Asghar Bukhari.
With antisemitism in the UK at a record high, and Jews fleeing Europe in increasingly large numbers due to the fear of jihadist attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions, the need to speak truth to power and call out those who legitimize and propagate such toxic racism takes on greater moral urgency.
So, once again, let’s be clear:
#GeorgeGallowayIsAntisemitic
