Gerald Bernard Kaufman Quotes


It is time to remind Sharon that the star of David belongs to all Jews, not to his repulsive Government. His actions are staining the star of David with blood. The Jewish people, whose gifts to civilized discourse include Einstein and Epstein, Mendelssohn and Mahler, Sergei Eisenstein and Billy Wilder, are now symbolized throughout the world by the blustering bully Ariel Sharon, a war criminal implicated in the murder of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila camps and now involved in killing Palestinians once again.


Context

Sharon, before he became Prime Minister was an Army General, who led the attack on the Palestinian PLO terrorists in Southern Lebanon. He had made an alliance with the Lebanese Christian Phalangists who had been brutalized and many had been murdered by the PLO militants who operated out of the Sabra Sabra and Shatila Beirut refugee camps where the terrorists had a safe haven and their headquarters in Shatila. Israeli troops under Sharon had reached Beirut, and then the Phalangists attacked the two refugee camps where they had scores to settle and sought revenge. Somewhere between 700 and 3500 Palestinians were killed. Most of them were civilians (according to the Palestinians) or terrorist fighters (according to the Phalangists). Sharon was faulted by many for the deaths; these critics observe that Sharon, as the victorious military power in the area was responsible according to the rules of war for the safety of all civilians in the area. He commanded the strongest military in the area and he allowed or did not stop the Phalangists who were exacting their revenge. Therefore some accused him of war crimes. There was also an Italian military peacekeeping contingent in the camps but they chose not to intervene.


Citations

Gerald Bernard Kaufman, British Labour Party Member of Parliament, Junior Foreign Minister, Shadow Foreign Minister & Shadow Home Secretary, Speech, House of Commons, April 2002

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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Gerald Bernard Kaufman
Gerald Bernard Kaufman
  • Born: June 21, 1930
  • Died: February 26, 2017
  • Nationality:
  • Profession:

Sir Gerald Bernard Kaufman was a British Labour politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 until his death in 2017, first for Manchester Ardwick and then for Manchester Gorton. He was a government minister in the 1970s and a member of the Shadow Cabinet in the 1980s. Knighted in 2004, he became Father of the House in 2015 and was the oldest sitting MP of the UK Parliament at the time of his death.