Carl Packman exposes the sick underbelly of anti-Semitisim at the heart of George Galloway’s victorious Bradford West by-election campaign.
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Carl Packman blogs at the Though Cowards Flinch blog
George Galloway, the new MP for Bradford West, could hardly contain his satisfaction in the early hours after it was reported he had won his election campaign. “By the Grace of God”, he opined in a tweet, “we have won the most sensational victory in British political history.”
Before long it was being dubbed the Bradford Spring, the implication being that a despot was ousted while a rainbow coalition of groups has united in search of the goal of democracy.
But unity was the last thing Galloway had on his mind when he took to the road.
Reading around I found that the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, an organisation that wants to empower “Muslims to focus on non-violent Jihad and political activism”, who naturally support Galloway and Respect, had published a blog post on the Bradford West Labour candidate Imran Hussein, describing him as “thirsty”, dishing out ad hominem attacks, relaying childish jibes that Hussain “might have to rely on his trusted pals John E Walker and Jackie Daniels to give him a hand”.
One of course would naturally assume that this level of politics be beneath the anti-war firebrand. But of course this turned out to be false.
When I spoke to one Labour activist who travelled from London to Bradford to join the campaign against Galloway, he described Respect’s campaign as “vile” – not least because of the personal letter sent around by Galloway claiming:
“I, George Galloway, do not drink alcohol and never have. Ask yourself if you believe the other candidate in this election can say that truthfully.”
Addressing the “voters of the Muslim faith and Pakistani heritage in Bradford West”, Galloway felt it apt to write:
“God KNOWS who is a Muslim. And he KNOWS who is not. Instinctively, so do you.”
His references to his Labour opponent as a “Muslim” in inverted commas made it obvious he wanted the “Muslim faith and Pakistani heritage” vote because he was the real Muslim candidate, which Labour rightly responded to as a “bizarre and deeply insulting letter”.
While on the trail Galloway also dragged out of the woodwork supporters of note, namely Carole Swords and Yvonne Ridley. Swords, chair of the Tower Hamlets Respect Party, was convicted in February for slapping a Jewish man during a boycott protest at a supermarket.
Making the line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism even thinner she was previously found to have written on Facebook that Zionists are “cockroaches” who “hide in the dark and try to create havoc where they lay their eggs” and that those “slimy, vile, hard skin bugs need to be stomped out”.
Yvonne Ridley, on the other hand, who is reported once to have said she’s “quite a fan of Mahmoud Admadinejad who is adored by the common man and woman in Iran”, and that “Zionists have tentacles everywhere”, told supporters of Galloway’s campaign recently that sentences handed to young men after the Bradford riots represented an “apartheid-style justice that we haven’t seen since the days of South Africa”.
With the “most sensational victory in British political history” and comparisons to South Africa, Bradford ought to feel like the centre of the universe.
• How much longer will Labour MPs cosy up to extremists? 30 Jun 2011
• The A-Z of Ayman al-Zawahiri 16 Jun 2011
• Too many on the Left are continuing to promote Islamist extremists 20 May 2011
• Hell Called, Your Place is Reserved: Muslim-country blogs react to Bin Laden death 3 May 2011
• We shouldn’t abandon the label “extremist” for extremists 20 Jan 2011
• Lifting the lid on Islamist radicalisation at British universities 19 October 2010
• Islamic extremist calls British troops Nazis 4 Jan 2010
But in the age of austerity it drew a cheap politician.
The way in which Galloway conducted his deeply divisive campaign should leave him with nothing to be proud about. But as I said yesterday he doesn’t care about you, or me or Bradford, or Glasgow or Bethnal Green, or Joe Public, or the man-in-the-street. Galloway is a one-man brand, and one who appeals to low politics and dirty tricks – what a pity that we have to see him in parliament (occasionally) again.
99 Responses to “The sick anti-Semites at the heart of Galloway’s band of bigots”
Alf
As I always believed, nazis are alive and well in left wing politics. It’s natural, Hitler was a socialist after all. Like his modern prophet, Galloway.
Zionism is “the right of self determination for the Jews”. Or to put it another way, the right for Jews not to be harassed and murdered by racists like Galloway. After all, what have the Jews given the modern world? 130 Nobel prizes for everything from peace to medicine and economics proves nothing I guess. Doesn’t matter what they give to the world, how many millions of lives they save, they’ll always be hated.
Israel is a tiny country that is guilty of the heinous crime of being in the Middle East and not being Islamic. Nothing more. The fact that the chairman of their parliament is an Arab is ignored, as are their law freedom for all, you can’t attack Jews if you admit theirs is the only free state in a region where to oppose religious control s to very killed. It’s a place Where gay pride marches take place and food, illegal under religious laws is freely served. This is intolerable to Islamists (and I don’t mean Muslims who are peaceful people but Islamists who are the most evil people on the planet today) and their representatives such as Galloway. He doesn’t care that innocent Muslims and Christians are being murdered in their thousands because it’s being done by his beloved Islamists. But if a single Jew should defend himself – we have marches and outrage. The fact that more women and children died in a single week in Syria that in the whole Gaza campaign doesn’t matter. The fact that many Israeli soldiers were killed because they refused to shoot an armed, brainwashed child is irrelevant. Rockets stored in and fired from schools irrelevant. All that matters is attacking Jews.
And where can Jews go when Galloway gets his caliphate?
Israel.
Anti Zionist = anti Semite.
Simple.
Lindum
Jews are not despised by the civilised world. Indeed the only parts of the world they are despised is in Moslim countries which hardly qualify as civilised.
Surface Agent X20
I see. No one who does anything unpleasant can be from the left. Got it.
You are right about Galloway being a hypocritical, rabid anti-Semite, though.
John Matthews
A contradiction in terms here. Use of civilized world combined with a totally uncivilized prattish comment. You fortunately, and people like you, have never spoken for the ‘civilized world’ and never will. One test of ‘civilized’ I suppose would be to ask yourself how many Nobel prizes for science, literature and the arts Jews have notched up versus Muslims. I think you’ll find the score is something like 80 to 2.