Interview with George Galloway.

George Galloway is a rare and inspiring orator. Ostensibly for his stance on the issue of Palestine, the Canadian government has attempted to connect him with terrorism, and temporarily succeeded in banning him from entry into Canada in 2009 (Shame Jason Kenney! Shame Stephen Harper!). That ban was recently overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada, allowing the speaking tour to continue after a brief delay. Last night, Halifax hosted George Galloway at a packed St. Andrew's Hall. I had the opportunity to interview him earlier that afternoon.

 

MH: "Zionism, for Jews in particular, is often an emotionally-charged word.  How do you define Zionism?"

GG: “The period in which Zionism has been hegemonic among the Jewish people is a very brief period. A group of Atheists and Jews, none of whom made any biblical claim at the time, petitioned the British Empire during the last part of the 19th century, and the first part of the 20th century, for a settler state. They were not actually particular as to where. Palestine was not necessarily the place where these Atheistic settlers wished to found their European settlement. At the time, these people represented a tiny scintilla of Jewish opinion. Most Jews at that time were in the left, were in the labour movement, were in the leadership of the Communist and Socialist organizations. They were in fact the avant-garde in political terms, and also cultural terms, of European civilization. The vast majority of them rejected the idea of going anywhere, whether to Uganda or to shores of the Mediterranean. They rejected the idea of the fascists and the anti-Semites that a Russian Jew is not a Russian, a British Jew is not British, a Canadian Jew is not Canadian.”

“By a combination of events, the most cataclysmic of which was the Holocaust, a Christian-European attempt to annihilate if possible all the Jews, and through a combination of other factors, the opinion began to swing towards the Zionist idea amongst Jews, and it has more or less stabilised as a hegemonic, but not exclusive, not monolithic, support. There are many Jews who describe themselves as non-Zionists, even anti-Zionists. They’re still Communist. They’re still Socialist.”

“So what is a Zionist? A Zionist is someone who believes that a Canadian Jew is not a Canadian. That the place, the only place, for Jews, is on the Mediterranean, in the state they call Israel. I believe that this is an acceptance of an anti-Semitic and racist ideal, and should be rejected, even if Palestine had been empty. But because Palestine was far from empty, and because this project required the annihilation of the people who lived in Palestine, the elimination of the name of their country from the map, it makes it doubly condemnable.”

MH: "What are you saying to Zionists, to those on the right of the spectrum, who seem to believe just as strongly that they are in the right?”

GG: “I’m not actually saying anything to them. I’m not seeking to persuade Zionists out of being Zionists. I’m trying to support the rest of the world out of supporting Zionism, and the rest will follow. That’s borne of bitter experience. I’m not trying to persuade Zionists of the error of their ways. I hope that non-Zionist Jews can do that, and I think that may be beginning to happen. I think that new scholarship is casting further and further doubt upon what has become the Zionist case. I think that Shlomo Sand’s new book demonstrates that the vast majority of Jews in the world in fact have no connection to Palestine anyway, the vast majority of them are converts.”

“None of that affects my view of what the outcome of all this should be. I believe that all the Jews living in Palestine-Israel today have a right to live there. They have acquired national rights by virtue of the fact that they were born there, that they live there, that they’re citizens of one part of that territory. And so in the bi-national state for which I argue, all the Jews currently living there have a right to live there. But all the Palestinians who were driven from there must be allowed to return to their homes, and we must have a state in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims are equal citizens. That’s what I’m fighting for.”

MH: "How do you see this taking place when the population of Israel continues to elect as its representatives people who have such a hawkish mentality? And when they elect somebody who stands for peace, he’s assassinated?"

GG: “I don’ think it’s going to end for a very long, long, time. You’ll be an old man, and I’ll be dead. I don’t have any expectation that any settlement of any kind to this conflict will be reached in the next fifty years or more. I don’t believe that it will ever come about through the persuasion of Israelis. A surgeon will not operate on his own foot. This will have to be imposed from outside by people declining any longer to fund, arm, diplomatically and politically buttress, a state which is in flat defiance of international law and on course to plunge their region repeatedly into violent paroxysms. So I’m not seeking to persuade Israelis. I’m not seeking to persuade Zionists. I’m seeking to persuade the rest of the world to stop supporting Israel and Zionism.”

MH: "I see Israel and the Middle East in general as a staging ground for conflicts that are significantly larger in scope than Israel versus Palestine, or right now Israel versus Iran. Do the empires need to fall before there can be a resolution?"

GG: “No, I don’t think so. I think the current empire, the US empire, is fast losing patience with Israel. I think if you were ever to be allowed an off-the-record discussion with President Obama about Netanyahu, it would be unprintable, what he would have to say about him. General Petraeus, on the other hand, possibly the next Republican President of the United States, put the cards right on the table in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee just a couple of months ago, when he said that the United States’ relationship with Israel had become ‘a strategic liability for the United States’. This is a very profound comment, and has the benefit of being true, and there was no demark from any of the Senators to which he said it. And he can hardly be accused of being a Hamas supporter. This is General Petraeus. And what he said, I think, was in part reflected in Mrs. Clinton’s speech to APEC, in which she, amidst a mountain of complements and flummery about Israel, made very specific warnings about the changing demography, the changing technology, and the changing political situation in the world. She was really saying to Israel: ‘This is as strong, and as dominant, as you will ever be. From here, its downhill.’"

“This is, of course, the paradigm, in which the settler state in South Africa made a strategic decision to make an agreement with its former slaves, its former prisoners. I think we’ve entered that period vis-a-vis Israel. But it will be a very long time in working its way through.”

MH: "You've had a great deal of personal involvement with ending Israel's siege on Gaza. What efforts are now being made to end this siege?"

GG: “Of course, in the next flotilla, there’s going to be a Canadian Boat to Gaza. There are boats and convoys leaving from all parts of the world. All roads lead to Gaza from all parts of the world, and I’m very glad to have played a role in that. Our siege-breaking activities are quite well known, and they’re not finished. But Gaza is not Palestine. Gaza and The West Bank are not Palestine. The Palestinian people are scattered far and wide, some of them are even in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They’re the lucky ones. The unlucky ones are in a refugee camp hell.”

MH: "What is the west, and Canadian forces in particular, doing in Afghanistan?"

GG: “I think you’re right to put it that way. You could make that the answer really, as well as the question. The answer, let’s keep it in perspective, is not much. The Canadians have lost a very large number of soldiers as a proportion of their strength in the occupation. Of course, its a figure which is entirely dwarfed by the dead and maimed and displaced amongst the Afghans themselves. And if you’re about to become ‘trainers’, behind the wire, in Kabul, the answer is you’ll not be doing very much in Afghanistan. What you will effectively be doing is giving political cover, continuing political cover, to what is effectively an American-Anglo occupation of the country.”

“The Harper government promised, solemnly, thought bindingly, to the Canadian people that they would leave, and they’ve broken that promise. It’s a matter for Canadians, whether they accept that or not. When you have a parliamentary system in which the opposition is indistinguishable from the government, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, it’s very difficult for the public to properly get a handle on the debate, if there is no debate. I never imagined that any democracy would allow questions of war and peace, contributions to foreign occupations, to go by without even a debate, without even a vote in parliament. That’s what has happened here.”

“The Canadians might well ask, as the rest of the world might well ask, just exactly how, why, this Karzai army needs so much training. For ten years they’ve been ‘being trained’. And there’s no noticeable improvement in their performance, or even their attendance rate at work. A billion dollars a month, I kid you not, is being spent on training Karzai’s army. One third, fully one third, of all the soldiers of Karzai’s army, have defected to the Taliban, where the pay is better. Because of course, once that billion has ended up in the pockets of Karzai, and his brother, and his friends, and the warlords, and so on, there’s not that much left to pay the soldiers. So, actually the Taliban wages are higher than Karzai’s army. And so what’s happening is you’re training them through one door, and they’re disappearing out the back door to try and kill you.”

MH: "It seems like the whole region at this point is propped up. I think of the instability of Pakistan..."

GG: “You may well want to ask the sub-question of ‘How come the military of the west colluded with the military dictatorship in Pakistan to obtain a nuclear weapon?’ They’re threatening to go to war, to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but they encouraged and facilitated the generals in Pakistan to get a nuclear weapon. Pakistan is being de-stabilized by the situation in Afghanistan, not the other way around. And I don’t just mean in this current era. The beginning of the de-stabilization of Pakistan was the beginning of the original Afghan wars in 1978-79 when the west began to support the very people they are now fighting, on the moral principle that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend.’ The last line on the credits of Rambo III says ‘This film is dedicated to the heroic resistance fighters of Afghanistan’. And of course, those ‘very heroic resistance fighters’ are exactly the people they are now fighting. And who included in their number a certain Osama bin Laden, who was helped and armed by western governments in Afghanistan. The destabilization of Pakistan began at that time, because the war led to millions of Afghan refugees flooding into the Northwest frontier province, huge refugee camps, a massive drug trade to help finance the war, a sea of weapons. And you can date the rise of Pakistani jihadism to exactly that date, when we decided that we were going to support the ‘heroic resistance fighters’ of Afghanistan.”

“So, it is true that it is unstable. And its true that the withdrawal of Western forces will not itself guarantee stability. But the failure to withdraw Western forces will guarantee permanent instability and evermore extreme radicalization in the Muslim world. Our wars, our double standards, our attitude to Israel-Palestine, and many other things, our propping up of dictatorships in the Muslim world and so on, all of these things are fanaticizing the Muslim depth and all of us will pay a price for that fanaticism.”

MH: "What are your thoughts on Iran?"

GG: “I’ve only had one personal meeting with the President of Iran. I’m rather keen to avoid us going to war with Iran. I think that would probably be the biggest mistake in all of history. I think that that would be war throughout the world, were we to do that. So, if there’s anybody listening, in Israel, don’t do it. Don’t do it.”

 

George Galloway continues his cross-Canada tour with the following stops:

 

T O R O N T O

Saturday, November 20 at 5:30 p.m. (doors open 5:00 p.m.)
Islamic Society of York Region, 1380 Stouffville Road, Richmond Hill
More info and tickets: crescent@ca.inter.netor info@nowar.ca

H A M I L T O N

Sunday, November 21 at 1:00 p.m. (doors open 12:30 p.m.)
McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, MDCL 1305
More info and tickets: http://gallowaymcmaster.eventsbot.com/

V A N C O U V E R

Monday, November 22 at 7:30 p.m. (doors open 6:30 p.m.)
St Andrew's-Wesley United Church (corner of Burrard & Nelson)
More info and tickets: stopwar@resist.caor 604-737-1299

C A L G A R Y

Tuesday, November 23 at 7:00 p.m. (doors open 6:30 p.m.)
Location TBA
More info and tickets: gallowayincalgary@gmail.com

Y E L L O W K N I F E

Wednesday, November 24 at 7:30 p.m. (door open 7:00 p.m.)
Northern United Place, 5403 Franklin Avenue
More info and tickets: focusonpalestine@gmail.com

E D M O N T O N

Thursday, November 25 at 7:00 p.m. (doors open 6:30 p.m.)
University of Alberta, Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science (CCIS)
More info and tickets: 780-988-2713

W I N N I P E G

Friday, November 26 at 7:30 p.m. (doors open 7:00 p.m.)
Broadway Disciples United Church, 396 Broadway at Kennedy
More info and tickets: peace@peacealliancewinnipeg.caor 204-586-6057

O T T A W A

Saturday, November 26 at 2:00 p.m. (doors open 1:30 p.m.)
Bronson Centre, 211 Bronson Avenue
More info and tickets: ottawa.peace.assembly@gmail.com