so yeah next up we've got george um
who needs no introduction
[Applause]
thank you very much for that
kindest of introductions been a good day
for me
so far manchester united won in fairgate
time
the fascists didn't get out of the
railway station in liverpool
and here in chester on a dark saturday
afternoon we have this magnificent
meeting
for palestine so my first duty is to
thank you and the organizers for
this event and for giving me this
opportunity to
speak i do most of my speaking nowadays
on
radio and television and thanks to ofcom
the orwellian presence in the corner
in fact standing over my neck
i don't get a chance to speak about
palestine very
often so in fact not at all never again
in fact on television or on
radio so it's good to be able to see
an audience and to have the opportunity
to address you on this subject
shabir when you were a little boy in
kenya i was
one of the founders of the stop the war
coalition
and we did thanks to the leadership
of lindsay german and andrew murray
make a decision then and there
that palestine could not be separated
from the issue of stopping the war that
was not an uncontested
point of view there were many people
some important ones and with decent
arguments
that we will weaken our stand against
the invasions of afghanistan and iraq if
we
bring in an extraneous issue which is
more divisive than the central one of
stopping the war
but our leaders argued
there's nothing extraneous about it at
all
in fact it's the other side of the same
coin
that the oppression of the palestinian
people
is part of an imperialist project
the latest example of which is the
current invasion and subsequent
occupation of afghanistan and the
imminent invasion and occupation
of iraq and that it would have been
wholly
unnatural and just
counterproductive to turn our face away
from the palestinian issue whilst
agitating
for stop the war and i believe that that
stand
pioneered by lindsay german and andrew
murray has been amply vindicated
in all the years since and you've grown
up to be a very fine young man and
leader
now of the stop the war coalition
i would like to say a few words if i may
before
the main burden of my remarks about
someone that has been now twice
referred to chris williamson
who is a matter of fact on our
television program
today just by chance
chris williamson is one of the most
outstanding
socialist agitators and organizers in
the country
today he is a man of
impeccable credentials
and integrity and not just the sheffield
so-called labor students have banned him
from sheffield university
but today the swansea so-called labour
students have also banned him from
coming to their
university we cannot allow this
to go on you cannot throw
one person after another after another
to the tiger in the hope that it will be
seated
before it gets to you on the contrary
after jackie walker mark wadsworth and
so many others now
they've turned to a man who many people
would
consider would be an exceptionally good
deputy leader of the labour party
certainly better than the one
the labour party's got now if he were to
run against tom watson
he would win the deputy leadership of
the
labour party
which is why they have now turned on him
they want to carbonize mcdonald's
hemp one after another to eliminate
potential leading figures
who have a clear view not just about
domestic
politics which they can tolerate up to a
point
but on international politics which they
cannot
and so i appeal to you and anyone
watching
this on the streaming
[Music]
enough is enough this far no further
stand with chris williamson defend chris
williamson
because after williamson
they'll simply move on to the next
now i've been doing this a long time i
was looking at mcnapier up on the stage
and
realizing how old he and i now look
compared to the likes of shabir
mek where are you no offense intended
all of our adult lives we've been in
meetings
like this in fact i'm older than you and
so me even longer i became involved in
this
issue in 1975 there's a comrade here
got involved in it in 1967.
this has been a long struggle in a way
the
central struggle of most of our lives
and for some people that arouses
suspicion
i'm frequently asked usually
wrapped around in insulting epithets
why are you so obsessed they call it
with the palestine question
well as a matter of fact i'm not i'm
involved in lots of
questions i've very recently been
outside the saudi arabian
embassy shaking my fist at them
it wasn't an anti-arab stand still less
was at an anti-islamic stand
it was a stand against foul
reactionaries hyenas
of the same imperialist project
that we are discussing here
and if you want the truth i got involved
in the palestine issue
in 1975 because we just won
my previous central cause
when we chased the american ambassador
off the roof of the
u.s embassy in saigon in vietnam
it was part of the same theme for me
opposition to imperialism
and the vietnamese people won through
overwhelmingly through their own heroism
with some help from an international
solidarity movement
and when they won some of us moved on
to help build the international
solidarity movement with palestine which
we now
have all over the world and for the same
reason
as they are now attacking williamson
it's the reason why they're now
attacking
bugging burgling subverting
impersonating hoaxing
us because they're losing
because they're scared of the advances
that we are making i watched yesterday
if you haven't yet you must
the second part of al jazeera's
the lobby i'll come back to the first
part in a moment
the second part deals with the lobby in
the united states
so dangerous is it
that the entire might of u.s imperialism
was brought to bear on the throat
of the tiny sheikhdom of
qatar which owns al jazeera
to force them not to broadcast the
program
but god is great somebody's leaked it
and now you can watch it for free and
you must
because laid there
in their own words with their lips
moving
they tell the brave jewish
undercover al jazeera reporter who is
there
posing as one of them when in fact he's
one of
us they damn themselves
condemn themselves
with their absolutely illegal
immoral unethical campaign to try and
disrupt
and destroy those who are making such
advances around the world including in
the united states
and including amongst young jewish
people
in the united states the victories
for bds have got them
so worried that they've
brought in a new ministry the ministry
for
strategic affairs which is situated
in netanyahu's own office
in occupied jerusalem
which is staffed by some of the
brightest
brains in the israeli intelligence
community
and with their own words in the al
jazeera program
they tell us about the things we kind of
knew
certainly suspected have probably been
the victims of
the sock puppet twitter accounts the
deliberate dog piling on people who are
against them
on social media the
impersonation fake accounts
you've seen it yes i'm a jeremy corbyn
supporter and
i hate jewish people and all these other
foul impersonations
the police are investigating
17 people who claim to be labour party
members
who knows if they are
we know that because the bbc had it
as their number one item on the bbc news
last night
except they said the police were
investigating the labour party
which was an out and out lie
attested to by the commissioner of the
metropolitan police cressida dick
earlier in the day
yet on the 10 o'clock news number one
item
the police are investigating the labour
party
for anti-semitism an absolute brazen
lie must be an election coming up
but these 17 people i have no idea
what they said or who they are
how do we know they were not the same
kind of provocateurs
that in the lobby
we have people on camera admitting
themselves to being
one of the main stories in the lobby is
a provocation at the university of
southern california davis
usc davis which won a landmark
bds on the faculty a landmark bds
victory
and israel orchestrated from jerusalem
moved into a full-scale
intelligence operation right down to
unknown unknown authors painting
swastikas
on the walls of the fraternity house
of the jewish students at usc
davis when asked on camera by our brave
undercover reporter who did these
swastikas the israeli embassy official
smirks and says
you know we really don't know even
though they'd
smeared around the whole world that it
was the pro-palestinian students
at usc davis that had
done this these provocations
are a sign of weakness not a sign of
strength they know
that we are winning the argument
the anti-zionism
has nothing to do
with being against jews
and that some of the finest
anti-zionists in the world
are themselves jews they know
abba eban the labour zionist grande
in the 1960s wrote
our principle task
is to convince his words the gentile
world
that the difference between
anti-semitism and anti-zionism
is a difference without a distinction
but of course it is absolutely
a distinction if it
went then some of the
fine jewish people in this room today
would not
be able to be here some of the
great agitators for palestine
like finkelstein and others would not be
able
to be with us the distinction
is absolute it's as clear as night and
day
and the idea that someone like jeremy
corbyn
who loves manhole covers who grows
marrows on an allotment who bicycles
around london
who's been a left-wing agitator for
45 years can somehow
miraculously be
transformed into an anti-semite
is so absurd
as absurd as it is offensive
but the key here shibuya and you
displayed it
is that we have to be clear but we have
to be
firm and it was a grave
strategic mistake bicarbon
and the labor leadership not to fight
this
on the first day on the front foot on
the front line
that was a grave strategic error
and many wounds have been sustained
since
some of them self-inflicted
as a result i paraphrase
because i'm so angry about it this
swansea university statement today
attacks williamson for appearing on
platforms
with people who've been expelled from
labor
for anti-semitism but that's a lie
none of the one's worth was cleared of
anti-semitism
he has never said or done anything
anti-semitic
the allegations against him were false
and were dropped
i go back to my metaphor of the tiger
you can't keep throwing people to the
tiger and think it's going to
tire of eating you but neither
can you defang a tiger claw by claw
because it won't let you you have to
be firm as well
as clear and that's why i appeal to you
to be firm on the williamson case
now the second reason why i got
so involved with this was that
it's our responsibility
there are many causes it's true around
the world
but they weren't all caused by us
although a lot of them were
but this is our responsibility as i said
once in a speech which is well viewed on
youtube in the house of commons this
tragedy was authored
here in this building i said
when 101 years ago
arthur balfour on behalf of one people
promised to a second people the land
that belonged to a third people
unique actually even by imperialist
standards
we didn't even possess palestine as a
colony
when we gave it away to someone
else balfour
was a white supremacist
he was an anti-semite
he wanted to create a little loyal
ulster as stores put it yes
but he also wanted all the jews in
england to leave
he wanted to see their backs leaving
because he didn't want them in britain
he was our foreign secretary
and everything that we did
from the moment 101 years ago
made possible the
enduring agony calvary
of the palestinian people and it was
good today
the bits i saw that we didn't just
concentrate on the atrocities
22
500 people have been wounded at the gaza
fence
in the great return march since march
22 500
12 000 of those have been shot
dozens of amputations people blinded
their lives destroyed forever try being
disabled in gaza
try getting medical treatment in gaza
and of course as you said hundreds
killed
including many children amongst them
nurses
journalists camera men and women
killed and it's vital that we
never forget these things but equally
important
in the bits that i saw the unending
daily attrition
of palestinian lives
in gaza and in the occupied west bank
and in
occupied jerusalem which can never make
the media because
there's just too much of it quite apart
from
any other reason for how long
for how how how many years
must some people exist in these
circumstances before
we can win majorities governments
in western countries to do something
about it so it's our responsibility
to rise to the challenge
to face all that we have to face
when we become activists in this
cause it's our duty to
do so and you know
in the middle east they say
it takes only a few drops of rain
to transform the landscape
one twinning
in 1980 what's that
almost 40 years ago i twinned
my city of dundee with the palestinian
city of nablus and we became the first
public building in the western world to
fly the palestinian flag
from our town hall
in the last nearly 40 years every person
i've met
from nablus when i say i'm from dundee
they say that's our twin city
our flag flies on your city hall
so if you can get your college
university school church
civil organization twin with a
palestinian
organization it won't mean that much to
you but it will mean
everything to them because it sends the
message that they are not isolated
they are not forgotten and that people
in the rest of the world care
about them one twinning
one act of solidarity one stand of
defiance
after all what you're being asked to do
you know you're only being asked not to
buy
the products of an apartheid state
how difficult is that
during the struggle against apartheid in
south africa
no decent self-respecting person
would have been found buying the
products of
apartheid south africa neither would
they have
twinned up with a apartheid university
or gone for an apartheid holiday
in sun city that's all we're saying
let's replicate that
on this palestinian front let's
tell it like it is that in the words
of mandela's grandson
apartheid in palestine is worse
than apartheid in south africa
was so let's rise to the challenge
with this boycott divestment and
sanctions
response let's make it something
that they'll now have to do the next
time they're going on a freebie
to saudi arabia
they'll have to hide it it'll be a
guilty
secret like boris johnson how ashamed he
is now
that he took a 14 000 pound three-day
trip to saudi arabia just a few days
before khashoggi
was murdered and dismembered and
dissolved in saudi arabia
no mp will be boasting in the future
that they've gone on a freebie to
saudi arabia let's make the same thing
happen
for israel so that no labour mp
is posing taking selfies yards away from
where palestinian blood
is flowing in the streets
let's back the possibility
and the real one is it's not an
inevitability at all
but the possibility of an anti-war
anti-imperialist government in britain
imagine
the oldest of us here never imagined
that we could have an anti-war
anti-imperialist government in britain
but we can
and we must do everything that we
are able to do to bring it about my
apologies if i've gone on too long
thank you very much indeed for the
opportunity of speaking
[Applause]
you