January 18, 2009 | 4:18 am

British MP compares Israelis to Nazis

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow JewishJournal.com on

Sir Gerald Kaufman, the veteran MP of Britain’s Labour Party, had some astonishing things to say in Parliament the other day. Kaufman is—you guessed it—Jewish. He says that “Israel was borne out of Jewish terrorism,” which is true, and he’s not happy about what he considers to be the Nazi-like behavior of the Israeli government in its war against Hamas and the substantial Palestinian causalities:

“My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszów. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. Madam Deputy Speaker, my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count. On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli Army Major Livovich was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, eight hundred Palestinians. The total is now a thousand. She replied instantly, “Five hundred of them were militants.” That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw Ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.”

Not sure what Kaufman’s feelings are about the ceasefire.

On a related note, a friend of mine doing graduate work in London took a trip to Israel two weeks ago. In his update from the frontlines—sort of—he mentioned that “England is getting very scary—the level of anti-semitism and anti-Israel is definitely on the rise.” When I saw this video on Affad Shaikh’s blog, This American Muslim, I immediately thought of the email my friend had sent. But then I looked the MPs name and I grew skeptical about his standing as an anti-Semite. Kaufman starts out his speech by listing his Jewish and pro-Israel credentials, I’m sure, for this reason.