Jewish woman recalls on her past experience and calls for peace at Palestine rally outside Portsmouth Civic Office on 7th of May 2024
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00So I'm here today because I am horrified, as everyone else in the world is, who has
00:17a heart, at what's happening to the people in Gaza and the West Bank. I can't understand
00:24why the people who are running the world, the people in power, can allow this to happen,
00:29the horrors that are being inflicted on men, women and children in Palestine. I can't understand
00:35quite why Israel is being allowed to behave in the way it is, why Benjamin Netanyahu has
00:40not been stopped. And I can't understand why the argument that criticising Israel is anti-Semitic
00:48is still being listened to, still being given any space or time at all, because it's simply
00:53not true. I'm Jewish, I'm not anti-Semitic, I hate anti-Semitism as I hate all hate crimes,
01:01and I am passionately anti-Zionist. I'm against the whole Israel project and certainly the
01:06way that Israel is behaving towards Palestinians. I mean there's so many demonstrations that
01:12anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not the same thing. The American protests have got
01:18so many Jewish people passing Seder night and doing all kinds of celebrations, peacefully
01:24protesting against the actions of the Israeli government. Being Jewish has nothing to do
01:29with being Israeli. Truly religious Jewish people believe in peace, just like any truly
01:35religious person of any faith believes in peace. And they just do not represent us.
01:41So the Second World War was horrific, what was done to Jews in the Second World War was
01:46horrific, and I grew up having nightmares about what would have happened if I'd have
01:49lived earlier, what would have happened if Hitler had come. I grew up having nightmares
01:53about gas chambers, quite frankly, and it was awful. And the world stood by us, and
01:59the resistance in France, the French resistance to the Nazi occupation, were heroes after
02:04the war. In the same way that when the Jewish people escaped, some of them escaped the Holocaust,
02:09they went to Israel, the safe place, forgetting that it was actually a Palestinian place and
02:15where there were already people living, Palestinians living, and they took with them the trauma
02:20of the Second World War. I guess what I would say is please do not be afraid to raise your
02:25voice against the actions of Israel, the horrible, horrible actions of Israel, because you're
02:31not being anti-Semitic, you're being human. I'm Jewish, and I think what they're doing
02:35is awful, and I'm human. Don't be put off, don't be worried about being called anti-Semitic,
02:40it's a ridiculous idea that being against Israel is being against Jewish people. It's not true.
03:10It's not true.