Thursday, September 27, 2018

Anti-Semitism in UK Parliamnet

No, not today.

July 31, 1946.

Here is MP Richard Crossman commenting in the debate following the King David explosion:


May I turn to General Barker?(*)                                                                              I am not so much concerned with him as with anti-Semitism. I was a little shocked at the roars of applause on the Benches opposite when the right hon. Member for West Bristol defended General Barker from the point of view that there was a great strain in Palestine, and that little errors of tact must be explained or excused. When one's troops are doing a military operation against the Jewish people, the danger of anti-Semitism is extraordinarily high. The natural instinct is to dislike the race or people one isfighting. There is an inclination rather to have it out with the Jewish community than to limit one's hatred to terrorism. This is a natural inclination, and it is all-important that the men at the top should give no sign of countenance, by word or praise, to support anti-Semitism. They should not officially give those under their command the feeling that it will not be ruthlessly penalised.

We are living in a strange world. I spent 120 days meeting and talking with Jews and others in Palestine, and elsewhere. I became aware of the deep unconscious anti-Semitism which there is in us, a virus, a poison which has been put into us by Hitler. I became more aware of it last Monday, when I listened to a moving Debate on Germany, in which I heard hon. Members advocating that Habeas Corpus must be given back to S.S. men; that it was impossible, as two hon. Members said, to indict a whole people. One even said that to indict an organisation was impossible. One Member said, "After all, liberty means liberty to be a Nazi." Those are sound sentiments. But I thought it a monstrous irony that a year after the war has finished hon. Members are making speeches forgiving the nation which killed six million Jews and pleading from all sides of the House that we should be fair to the Germans at a moment when they are condoning the removal of Habeas Corpus altogether in Palestine. There has not been a right to Habeas Corpus for any Jew or Arab in Palestine since the emergency regulations were introduced. They have been living under a more ruthless form of dictatorship in Palestine than the people living in the control division of Germany or Austria.

(*)



and here



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