the balford Declaration is almost
exactly 100 years old it was a
declaration given by one people to a
second people the land of a third people
uh it was unique in even imperial
history because Britain didn't even
possess Palestine which was the country
in question uh as an imperial possession
but they nonetheless promised it to the
Zionist movement without of course
Consulting either the British or the
Jewish people in the world most of whom
at that time were not zionists and had
no wish whatsoever to go and live in the
Arab world and of course the least to be
consulted were the Palestinians whose
land it was Baur was the British foreign
secretary and he
uh promised to the zionists that
Palestine could be uh a national home
for the Jewish people although even the
Declaration grotesque and unjust as it
was made it clear that nothing must be
done that prejudices the rights of the
indigenous existing population there
which was
overwhelmingly uh Muslim and Christian
Arab so even Bal force uh uh declaration
doesn't justify what subsequently
happened but it was an unjustifiable
declaration in the first place because
it was not for Britain to give away
other people's land and it was not the
wish of the Jewish people at that time
in any case to go and live in the Arab
world Jewish and Zionist are entirely
different things so when we say we are
against Zionism we're against a
political ideology we're not against the
religion professed by the people who
support that
ideology uh we are as a matter of fact
it would be it would be sinful for me
Haram for me to hate Jews and I don't as
a matter of fact on an individual level
I I love them but a political ideology
being against a political ideology is
not the same thing as being against the
religion uh of the people who have that
ideology and to wish to see an end to
that political ideology it's not is not
to say you want to see the end of the
people who have it for example Britain
and the United States spent decades
being against communism and other
political ideology they were against the
Soviet Union which was a state but the
they weren't against the Russian people
they didn't want to kill the Russians
they wanted to liberate the Russians
from an ideology a political system and
that's all we're saying about Zionism
Zionism is a political ideology most
zionists are not Jews many Jews are not
zionists either for religious reasons or
political reasons I could take you to
Hackney where an entire Community lives
of very strictly Orthodox Jewish people
who are completely against Israel and
completely against Zionism equally many
of my own comrades are people of uh
Jewish background they might not be uh
particularly religious Beyond High days
and holy days uh but they are
culturally uh Jewish and they come from
often times uh left-wing Progressive
Jewish background which as I said
earlier is what was the
hegemonic uh political Viewpoint of Jews
before the rise and Triumph of uh of
Zionism so Judaism is a religion anyone
can convert to it a China man an
Ethiopian me any of us can become Jewish
we have to ask three times and it's not
as easy as it is to convert to other
religions but we can and there that
gives automatically the lie to the idea
that to be Jewish is to be of a
particular race or Nation uh and the
mere glance at Israeli settlers on the
television or Israeli soldiers invading
Gaza makes that clear most of these
people are nor American or european some
of them are black Africans some of them
are from
China some of them are converts the
person who assaulted me outside this
very door in August of
2014 uh and put me into hospital with
serious injuries had converted to
Judaism only weeks
before but automatically gained the
legal right to go and live in Palestine
on somebody else's land even though he
was a British Christian who converted to
Judaism he has no connection whatsoever
to the land of Palestine still less land
that's owned by somebody else but he
automatically gained the right to
citizenship in Palestine whilst
Palestinians in their Millions who still
have the keys to their own
houses are not permitted to return how
crazy is
that Theodore Herzel was a European who
wanted to gather the Jews of the world
to found a European Colony just like all
the other European colonies that were at
that time being founded in Africa and
Asia and elsewhere he thought well if
the British and the Germans and the
French and the belgians and all the
others if they the Dutch if they can
have foreign colonies why can't we with
our Superior uh education Superior
levels of Technology even military power
potentially why can't we go to someone
else's country and found a white
European settlement there and they were
not at all fussy about where that
settlement should be and they negotiated
seriously with the British government
over several places in the world that
had a narrow escape from being the uh
settler state of Israel Uganda for
example they seriously negotiated with
the British for a part of Uganda which
they would uh found their uh Jewish
European settler state in but there were
many others the SE shells uh Patagonia
in
Argentina uh these were all serious
propositions for the founding of Israel
the idea being that British Jews were
not British French Jews were not French
German Jews not German and this is
something therefore that Zionism has in
common with anti-semites and racists you
see for me a British Jew is the same as
a British Catholic a British Protestant
a British 7th Day Adventist their
religion has nothing to do with the fact
that they are or are not British the
racists don't believe that the
anti-semites don't believe that even the
fascists later didn't believe that but
also the Zionist didn't believe that
they believed that a French Jew was not
French and should leave France and
should go and live somewhere else either
Uganda or Patagonia or the seels or as
it turned out Palestine
this
is I think the other side of the coin of
the anti-semite racists you're saying
that no matter how many hundreds of
years Millennia even we live in a place
we are not of that place and we don't
have the same rights as the people in
that place or responsibilities as the
people in that place that's a profoundly
dangerous mindset and most Jews agreed
with what I've just said when Theodore
Herzel and the Congress of Basel uh in
the late 19th century declared this
Zionist project the vast majority of
Jews in the world I mean well over 90%
of them rejected Zionism and in fact
were at the Forefront in Progressive
politics in Europe at that time the Marx
was a Jew trosky was a a Jew uh Einstein
Epstein all these people were
non-zionist Jews and they were icons of
progressive thought left-wing thought
many were communist many were socialist
many were trade unionists in London for
example the East End of London was a
fortress of uh of um Progressive uh
liberal left-wing thought and action and
uh Zionism poisoned all of that and we
now have a situation where the great
majority of Jews though by no means the
all uh support the Zionist idea that
they should leave their own countries
and go and live in somebody else's
country even when they don't actually do
it because of course most Jews in the
world do not live in what they call
Israel and have no wish or intention of
doing so the majority of Jews in the
world live in the United States or
Europe and are quite happy to do so but
they're
nonetheless mainly supportive of the
foundation of the settler
State Israel is ethnically cleansing the
Palestinian people because it must
because their entire thesis is that
Palestine was a land without
people which should be taken by them who
were a people without
land and that gigantic lie one of the
biggest lies in all human
history is so obviously untrue once you
get there even then when the zus
settlers began to arrive and the Zionist
movement began to pick up a
pace well over 90% % of the population
of Palestine were
Arab Muslim and
Christian there were some Jews there who
had lived there for centuries in peace
side by side with the Muslims and the
Christians as a matter of fact salahadin
when he liberated Jerusalem ordered the
protection of the holy places of the
Christians and the Jews in the holy
city and yet he just fought a very long
war against the
Crusaders uh very bloody and uh
murderous war against the Crusaders but
as soon as he occupied Jerusalem and
liberated it from the Crusaders he made
it
clear as Muslims
must that the protection of the people
of the book The protection of the holy
places of others is an article of faith
for Muslims so
there had been always a smallish number
of religious Jews living in Jerusalem in
peace with all the others but Zionism
began to pick up steam it arrived there
and it found that this was not a land
without a people there were plenty of
people and they all saw themselves as
Palestinian first and as Arab second and
this was an existential challenge to
Zionism that's why hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians
800,000 were driven from Palestine into
refugee camps in what we call the nakba
the
catastrophe and those 800,000 have now
become many many millions 1948 to
2016 the high birth rate of the
Palestinian people it's become Millions
there are maybe 13 or 14 million
Palestinians now uh alive in the world
who consider themselves to be
Palestinians and they still have the key
and the title deed to the land that was
uh stolen from them uh so ethnic
cleansing is the only way to solve this
in in today's world you couldn't even if
they wanted to murder all the
Palestinians still there in Gaza and the
West Bank and inside What's called the
green line the original 1948 un
delineated border there
are maybe 7 million Palestinians you
cannot murder them all so what's the
only thing you can do is to drive them
out and there are many sections of the
Zionist
population uh and political
organizations and leaders who are
endlessly coming up with new ways to
drive these people out you make life as
bad for them as you possibly can and
hope that they will take off somewhere
else and disappear the problem for them
is the Palestinian people far from
disappearing are more visible today than
they have ever been I was at president
Arafat God rested his soul I was at his
deathbed in Paris when I came out after
his
demise in the early morning light I was
confronted by a battery
of maybe 500 television stations cameras
the entire world was fixated on this
physically small
man the leader of a small people which
didn't even have a state didn't have a
country but the whole world was at his
uh the sight of his demise why because
the Palestinian people are now a major
major factor in World politics in
international Affairs I happen to think
that he takes the great share of the
responsibility for that achievement so
the Palestinians are bigger now than
they were before more numerous than they
were before more indispensable to any
solution in the area than ever before
and they're not going to go away Arafat
used to
say we are not going to go into the
museum
of EX Nations so that people can come
and look at our clothes and our cooking
utensils and our artifacts we will not
go into the museum of EX Nations and
that's definitely
true well the United Nations of course
has a special responsibility in all of
this for two
reasons Israel was brought into
existence by a decision of the United
Nations it was the United Nation that
gave birth to Israel in
1948 and yet Israel is in defiance of
more broken United Nations resolutions
than any other country in the world in
fact more than all other countries in
the world put together and secondly they
have a special responsibility because
the Palestinian people millions of them
are officially
refugees and the official lead legal
responsibility in the world for refugees
is the United Nations now there are some
United Nations agencies like anoa in the
camps the United Nations relief and
works agency that struggle manfully to
do their duty to feed and school and
give medical uh help to these
Palestinian refugees but their budgets
are cut to the Bone and quite often
their officials inis spare at their
inability for logistical and financial
reasons to undertake their duties to
protect the Palestinian people so the UN
has a special responsibility but it has
not lived up to that responsibility it
should be saying to Israel listen we
gave birth to you and you have
responsibilities as a member state of
the United Nations and you must obey
them but of course they never asked and
if they asked Israel would never agree
and uh when they don't agree no sanction
or punishment at all uh is
forthcoming
the situation can be compared contrasted
with Iraq for example which was bled
white by the
most Draconian murderers United Nations
economic sanctions because they said
Iraq was in defiance of United Nations
resolutions as it turned out of course
Iraq was not in defiance of any United
Nations resolutions yet a million Iraqis
were killed under those sanctions or
more recently Iran was put under
Draconian sanctions on the issue of
nuclear weapons even though Iran does
not have any nuclear weapons yet is
Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons
illegally acquired Undeclared
unsanctioned unpunished whilst Iran with
none was sanctioned and punished so you
can see the double standard that runs
through virtually everything that is
connected to the word Israel in the
international political and legal system
World governments turn a blind eye to
the suffering of the Palestinian people
and will go on doing so until their
people make that impossible for them uh
so I want to make that point because
it's too easy just to blame the
governments uh if the governments felt
there were votes to be lost in turning a
blind eye to the Palestinian people
they'd stop turning a blind
eye uh I can tell you that someone has
been in elected politics for almost 30
years if a lot of people in your
constituency are really really concerned
about something you a know about it and
B have to take account of it so let's
blame ourselves first and foremost but
the world governments support Israel
even though they no longer love it I
mean we got a we got an insight into
what the world leaders really think when
a microphone was left on in the south of
France a a G8 Summit when President
sarosi was the leader of France
and President Obama uh said to uh or
rather the other way around president
sarosi said to President Obama this
Netanyahu he's such a liar I can't look
at his face and President Obama answered
you can't look at his face what about me
I have to deal with the guy every day
that's what they really think of
Netanyahu but their public stand and the
role of their countries viav is Israel
is very different they continue to give
it political and diplomatic and
propaganda cover for its crimes they
continue to refuse to hold it to account
for those crimes they continue to apply
the double standard we've been talking
about uh and that will go on until we
ourselves bring it to an end so it's not
good
enough uh to remember Palestine in your
prayers you should do but it's not
enough it's not good enough to think
about the Palestinian people only when
Israel invades Gaza or when some
particular outrage happens and it's not
good enough to think that tears for the
Palestinian children means anything at
all a stone would weep at the sight of
what happens to the Palestinian children
but those tear are worth nothing if you
don't follow them with determination and
action to change the situation now I've
been here
before throughout the 1970s and in the
1980s even in aparte South Africa
underground as an agent for the African
National Congress I worked to help bring
down the aparte system in South Africa
and it was brought down between the
hammer of resistance by the South
African people themselves and the Anvil
of international solidarity meaningful
International solidarity boycotting
divesting taking sanctions demanding
sanctions making South Africa such a
dirty word that no respectable person
would dare say that they supported
aparte that they thought a a part out
South Africa was a good thing we haven't
yet achieved that in Palestine and
yet the fate of the Palestinian people
is even
worse than the fate of the black people
in South Africa David Cameron is no
different to uh all British prime
ministers they have all supported the uh
Zion State they have all refused to act
on its
crimes the one small thing I could see
in David Cameron's favor is the only
political leader in Britain government
or opposition who described Gaza as an
open air prison camp and the zionists
were very angry about that but he didn't
take it back he hasn't withdrawn it uh
so at least he had the guts to describe
Gaza exactly as it is and is obviously
so to anyone who observes it but Cameron
is a died in the wo repor of the Zionist
political ideology the aparte state and
Cameron was a previous apologist for the
aparte state of South Africa so that
shouldn't come as a very big surprise
but all British prime ministers labor
and conservative have
underwritten uh the crimes of the Z
State they have sold weapons uh to the Z
State they have engaged in Military and
intelligence coroporation with the Zion
State and even when that Zion State
stole the
passports of British citizens in order
to murder a Palestinian leader in
Dubai we ordered the mosad chief in
London out of the country and when his
plane arrived in Tel Aviv the new mosad
chief for London got on board and flew
back to London and continued uh uh to uh
apply his trade here so uh Cameron is as
bad not better not worse than all the
others aparti South Africa was beyond
the pill and everybody knew it and
eventually before it collapsed nobody
would have anything to do with them and
we should have nothing to do with
Israeli supporters of Zionism of course
we have to embrace those people in
Israel who are with us
whether Jewish or not Jewish and many of
the finest bravest Fighters for
Palestine in the world are in Israel you
see them on the television they try and
stand in front of the bulldozers or they
stand to try and stop demolition of
houses or they carefully record crimes
and take them to court and I know many
of these people they are
heroes but an Israeli supporter of
Zionism and the aparte state is beyond
the pale social media has transformed
the landscape everybody knows that
almost all newspapers almost all
television stations uh are absolutely
supportive of Israel absolutely
embroiled in the double standards to
which I referred
earlier uh treat Israeli lives and
Palestinian lives in an entirely
different way uh Israelis are killed
Palestinians die as if uh by chance or
by uh any other means other than that
somebody killed them so you'll routinely
see in the news that four Palestinians
died on the West Bank but one Israel
he's always killed uh the blood of the
Israelis is far more valuable to the
international media than the blood of
Palestinians these three young children
that were killed on the beach in Gaza
playing football for
example uh this story was buried almost
as quickly as the children were buried
that would not have been the case if the
uh Shu had been on the other foot uh so
in the absence of any Fair coverage of
this issue even balanced coverage even a
little biased in the absence of all of
that uh people have taken to the new
tools that they now have and I I have 1
million followers on social media I am
endlessly daily putting out the
Palestinian case and that million
becomes many millions by the time
everyone has shared and so on uh and I'm
by no means the only person doing that
we at the time of the latest full scale
war on Gaza in
2014 we rallied hundreds of thousands of
people just in Britain almost entirely
by social media people learned of our
demonstrations where they were starting
where they were leaving who was speaking
almost entirely uh through social media
so of course the supporters of Israel
know this and they engage sometimes even
pay we don't have to take my word for
that they've admitted it themselves they
pay Israel students and other students
around the world to be effectively
trolls on uh Twitter for example
and on Facebook endlessly lying
endlessly smearing libeling defaming
anyone who stands up for the Palestinian
people and sometimes it works some
people are intimidated off the platform
or
intimidated into leaving the subject
alone but uh we are many and they are
few uh we are hundreds of millions and
they are a much much smaller number the
number of people now it's different when
I was young by the way you know I became
involved in the Palestinian issue in
1975 in the mid-60s to the mid '70s
almost everybody actually liked Israel
it had a really good image it was
swinging it was cool there was free love
communal eating K caboots uh which were
said to be uh examples of of uh
Cooperative living and working and so on
Israel had a very high reputation and
many followers and to say as I did in
1975 that you were a supporter of the
PLO was a very controversial thing
indeed I could show you my scars that
I've carried since those days uh but now
that's completely
changed almost nobody loves Israel
anymore of course those Jewish people
who are totally committed to Zionism no
by no means all of the Jews as I said
there are many religious Jews against it
and many secular and leftist Jews
against it but the majority of Jews are
in favor of they're the almost the last
people left who really love Israel even
the Evangelical Christians in the United
States who are in their tens of millions
and who are big supporters of Israel are
not big supporters of Israel because
they love Jews they're big supporters of
of Israel because they expect that it
will bring Jesus back and then all the
Jews will be forced to convert or be
killed uh so they don't love Jews
anybody that thinks George Bush loved
Jews never visited his golf club where
there are no Jewish members at all so
they're
zionists but not Jews and not liking
Jews sometimes even hating Jews Mr balur
himself about whom I
spoken wanted all the Jews in England to
leave because he didn't like Jews not
because he supported their rights to go
and live in Palestine but because he
wanted to see their backs leaving the
British ports um so we have this weird
phenomenon that people who don't like
Jews uh are with Israel and people who
love Jews Like Me are against Israel and
we are the ones accused of being
anti-sites which is of course utterly
ridiculous
risible what will
happen I don't have a crystal ball I
used to think that I could see the day
when I would myself walk in a free
Palestine now I can't even get into
occupied Palestine neither in the West
Bank nor Gaza because I'm banned from
Egypt and banned by Israel from Crossing
into to uh occupied Palestine frankly I
no longer think I will live to see uh a
free Palestine but by the grace of God I
have many sons and they're young and I'm
sure that one day they will walk in a
free Palestine and if you see them just
tell them that you remember their old
man