What is it with Gerald Kaufman? The long in the tooth Labour MP has been at it again. In Parliament yesterday he compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.
He, of course, has a history of making similar speeches, but he seems to be getting worse with advancing years. In his latest outburst he called on the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: “My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town… 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. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians.”
He used the occasion of his speech to join others who insist on drawing parallels with Poland and the uprising in the ghetto when he said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants “was the reply of the Nazi…I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants”.
Kaufman says Israeli’s plan is for “conquest” and that the Israeli government are not simply war criminals, but fools. Well he should know.
