I attended Parliament on Monday to hear a report-back by Parliamentarians on their trip to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
Four points came up for me:
1. Baroness Jenny Tonge said that she has a dream that all the Palestinian refugees will eventually form together and march to Israel en masse and reclaim their land. Fair enough, but then she said that Israel can't kill all of them.
So, her point is that she thinks that Israel could well kill quite a few of them. Is this thought compatible with someone who seems to care so much about Palestinians, or am I missing something?
2. The Parliamentarians had a meeting with a Hamas official. Hamas is a terrorist group banned by the EU and America. Are there any sanctions for meeting with a banned group like this? If not what is the point of them being banned?
3. Gerald Kaufman MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP told us how decrepit the Palestinian refugee camps are and that they have live electrical wiring hanging loosely overhead and sewage running down the middle of the streets. We were told that Palestinians have been regularly killed by electrocution. One has to ask how can the Lebanese government treat its Arab brothers and sisters like this?
4. The police were called by the organisers to evict me from the meeting on the false premise that Gerald Kaufman had asked me to leave because I was intimidating people and filming without authority. First, I stayed quiet for the whole event and second, Kaufman had made no such request. I was filming, but so was everyone else. And, no, the others didn't have authority either. Kaufman, who was chairing, told the policeman to leave in no uncertain terms.
I'm not paranoid, but I do get the impression that sometimes they are all out to get me.
http://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/jenny-tonge-i-have-a-drea...