Veteran Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman has accused Israel of fabricating
the recent knife attacks in the country and claimed the Conservative Party has
been influenced by “Jewish money”.
Speaking at a Palestine Return Centre event in Parliament on Tuesday,
Sir Gerald said that the British government had become more pro-Israel in recent
years.
He said: “It’s Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party
– as in the general election in May – support from the Jewish Chronicle, all of
those things, bias the Conservatives.
“There is now a big group of Conservative members of parliament who are
pro-Israel whatever government does and they are not interested in what Israel,
in what the Israeli government does.
“They’re not interested in the fact that Palestinians are living a
repressed life, and are liable to be shot at any time. In the last few days
alone the Israelis have murdered 52 Palestinians and nobody pays attention and
this government doesn’t care.”
Sir Gerald, Father of the House of Commons, then told the audience of 45
people that the Israeli government had made up the recent spate of violent
attacks in order to allow it to “execute Palestinians”.
The Manchester Gorton MP said “a friend of mine who lives in East
Jerusalem” had emailed him with the accusations about Israel fabricating the
attacks.
Sir Gerald then read from the letter: “More than half the stabbing
claims were definitely fabricated. The other half, some were true, the others
there was no way to tell since they executed Palestinians and no one asked
questions.
“Not only that, they got to the point of executing Arab-looking people
and in the past few days they killed two Jewish Israelis and an Eritrean just
because they looked Arab.
“They fabricated a stabbing story to justify the killings before they
found out they were not Palestinians.”
Sir Gerald has not responded to a JC request for a comment on his
remarks.
