Dear Mr Galloway,
It has not escaped my attention that, since discourteously walking out on an event I had spent much time and effort organising, you have been claiming repeatedly that I had "misled" and "deceived" you. I was not intending on replying until I saw you once again attempt to, in my opinion, slander me on Press TV.
In that broadcast you claimed, "... I was deceived; I was not told by the Iraqi, Muslim organiser of the event, that I would be debating against a 20-year old Israeli...". But let's look at the facts. Fortunately, all my correspondences with your secretary are saved in my inbox so we can refer to this record while scrutinising your allegation. Here is what I told your secretary about your opponent:
"I can confirm that the venue for the debate will be the Blue Boar Lecture Theatre in Christ Church. Mr Galloway's opponent will be a student called Eylon Aslan-Levy. He is a final-year undergraduate at Brasenose College, reading philosophy, politics and economics. He has debated internationally for Oxford, including in Ireland, Serbia and Israel, and was the winner of the Mediterranean Universities Debating Championship in Istanbul in 2012. He delivered a paper speech in the Oxford Union debate on the Middle East in 2011."
Note, this was the only time Eylon was mentioned, in the entire thread, either by your secretary or I. It is strange that someone who takes such a hard-line view on debating Israelis should omit to ask whether or not his Jewish, pro-Israeli opponent, who has debated in Israel, is in fact Israeli. Your secretary did not go on to ask me about Eylon's nationality - indeed I did not know until the debate that Eylon is an Israeli - and even had I known Eylon's nationality, I was not aware of your staunch (and damaging) stance of boycotting Israeli individuals.
As the organiser, am I to know about every one of your views? Should I let you know if your opponent is a vegetarian in case you have a policy of not debating vegetarians? Am I misleading you if I do not tell you your opponent's shoe size? Think hard about the absurdity of your position. In none of the previous debates I had organised did it even occur to me to inform the debaters of their opponents' nationalities. This particular debate was no different.
Please know that I had been looking forward to seeing you put forward the case for Palestine and the Palestinian people. Instead I was left humiliated in front of a room full of people who had waited an hour and a half for your arrival, only to be subsequently accused of being deceptive and misleading. Does that seem fair to you Mr. Galloway?
Yours sincerely,
Mahmood (the Iraqi Muslim)
Follow Mahmood Naji on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mahmoodnaji
David Burrowes MP: Words Matter
George Galloway - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Galloway (georgegalloway) on Twitter
George Galloway | Politics | The Guardian
'I don't debate with Israelis': George Galloway accused of racism ...
George Galloway storms out of Oxford University: 'I don't recognise ...
George Galloway's refusal to debate with Israelis is bad politics
The decline of George Galloway
George Galloway: “I don't recognise Israel and I don't debate with Israelis.”
Shin Bet documents show illegal interrogation methods used against Palestinian prisoner
A prisoner who suffered serious injury 18 months ago, which he alleges were caused by torture, files a High Court petition asking that the military prosecution open a case against investigators in the Shin Bet security service.
By Amira Hass | Apr.04, 2013 | 11:23 AM |
A Palestinian prisoner who suffered serious physical and psychological injury following alleged Shin Bet torture 18 months ago has filed a High Court petition asking that the military prosecution be instructed to intervene in the case.
On March 24, the prisoner asked that the Justice Ministry’s department for investigation of police officers open a case against the prisoner’s investigators in the Shin Bet security service.
The petition comes more than 16 months after the prisoner filed his original complaint of torture; since then the Justice Ministry has not completed its preliminary probe or responded to the prisoner’s request to investigate the officials the petition deems responsible.
The petition, filed on the prisoner’s behalf by the Public Committee Against Torture and by Physicians for Human Rights, states that the prisoner fears his complaint will end up like more than 700 other complaints of torture during interrogation since 2001 − closed after extended foot-dragging.
George Galloway, holding is rod and a burning bush will lead you all to a land of milk and honey and freedom. Your abandoned homelands and oilfields will be tended by the friendly US Peacekeepers, on your behalf, of course.
To summarise, you Israelies and Palestinians need your heads banging together, your peoples have suffered enough!
Hopefully fair-minded, compassionate people will be again reminded that Israel is engaged in an unacceptable, brutal policy of land-theft and apartheid. So his actions were perfectly in line with a decision to not contribute in anyway to the acceptance in OUR society of Israel's ongoing immoral andl illegal actions. It worked with the racist apartheid S. Africa. It can work with Israel. All Israeli's who support Israel's policies can not expect to be treated as if nothing is going on. So get used to it.
Well done George. One of the few but growing number of politicians prepared to break the wall of silence regarding this. Respect!
and i assume you're referring to the settlements when you speak of 'land theft' - the settlements are not illegal as long as israel and other arab countries are not at peace. which, i think we can agree, they are not. therefore, the settlements are in no way illegal.
please, research your claims before stating them publicly, otherwise, its embarassing that youre so wrong in so many ways.
Also that you believe that the country that has been doing that for six decades "...is the place of refuge for those who are hated, chased out, shunned - gays, christians, supporters of democracy, all of these people go to israel for a safe place of refuge..." shows you are clearly delusional and any further communication will be a waste of effort. Good luck with your life.
Real hope for future peace lies with you, and the young Israeli GG refused to speak to, and the rest of your generation. Good luck to all of you.
The whole purpose of his attending your debate was to get himself on the front page of Newspapers. He did this with his idiotic and xenophobic refusal to debate a young man who is Israeli. This method ensured the maximum publicity whilst avoiding any form of intelligent debate, which I'm sure would have left him floundering and well out of his depth.
The last time he had this much coverage was when he expressed his wonderful opinion on rape. He only appeals to a small minority of bigoted individuals. He needs to convince them that he has some sort of influence and importance on the international scale. When he fails to do this his constituents are going to start asking when he will sort out their 'Bin Collections' 'Street Lighting' and 'Bus Timetables' all things that he believes are beneath him but actually have a daily impact on their lives. Lives he genuinely doesn't care about!
Being irate about Israelis today, when a young Palestinian is buried after being tortured to death by them, is NOT being "xenophobic" ...
The crimes of Israel are mounting and mounting and there's NEVER any reaction from our world, it's ENOUGH
It is funny how you cry torture when all you have for that basis is a report which conflicts the pathology report by the Palestinian ME that was present.
BTW non lethal torture is practiced by the UK, US, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and and and yet I do not see you having any problems with them...hypocrite much?
Firstly I want to ask GG, would he have walked if the person debating was Haneen Zoabi? She is Israeli and a member of the Knesset/parliament, but also a Muslim!
Secondly...how many Jews are there on the parliaments of Arab countries....any of the Arab countries...assuming you can find any Arab countries that have true democratic parliaments in the first place!
As for administrative detention and democracy, if the Oxford of "Oxford Mom" implies England, then rest assured that your country is still universally acknowledged as a democracy despite its widespread use of detention without trial in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. In fact, Israeli administrative detention is based on British law applied in British-ruled Palestine until 1948. If, on the other hand, the Mom of "Oxford Mom" means USA instead, you can be safe in the knowledge that neither the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII or the camps in Guantanamo Bay show any sign of disqualifying the US as a democracy.
Finally, Palestinian kids are in Israeli jails because Palestinian adults who should know better & care more use children — "use" in every sense — to fight their wars.
He's done this kind of thing before, including lying about it. These tricks seem to appeal to his constituency and so gets away with it. Western politics is far from perfect and going through a particularly ugly time at the moment.
Congratulations on your stance throughout this episode.
Saudi Arabia, the Maldives, Somalia, Afghanistan etc don't even give you a choice...
Claims of institutional racism in Israel are laughable - Although I will agree that there are a sizable minority of individuals that hold discriminatory attitudes, but the law does not.
After George ranted about the atrocities of the Iraq War, an Iraqi student pointed out that the removal of Saddam Hussein would bring stability and safety to millions of Iraqi citizens (including his family) and began to question George on the financial payments he had received from Saddam Huessein. George lost his temper, started shouting about how we were too young to know anything and walked out.
Essentially, he is anti-establishment, a racist bigot and a horrendous human being.