Britain should not have let Jews settle in Palestine and is responsible for decades of ethnic violence that followed in the Middle East, the Labour Party conference heard today.
Dr Victor Kattan claimed that the current bloody conflict in Gaza was ‘made in Britain’ as he campaigned for the UK to apologise and make ‘reparations’ to Palestinian Arabs.
At a fringe event attended by left-wing Labour MPs and peers he said that the period of British rule between 1917 and 1948 before Israel was created had witnessed policies of ‘occupation, repression and partition’.
The Labour politicians, who include Jeremy Corbyn ally John McDonald, are supporting the campaign, ‘Britain owes Palestine’, which demands the UK take responsibility for ‘serial international law violations’ including alleged war crimes committed during what was known as the British Mandate.
It also criticises the UK for the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which set out support for ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’.
Dr Kattan told the event in Liverpool that British control of the Middle East ‘violated the legal standards of the time’, with policies that included ‘large-scale demographic engineering, involving the mass immigration of Jewish persons to Palestine, a country which, when Britain occupied it in 1917, was more than 93 per cent Palestinian Arab’.
He added: ‘When the British government, British armed forces left Palestine, the Jewish population constituted 33 per cent of the total population, having grown from less than 5 per cent of the population when Britain had arrived.
‘Throughout those years Britain denied self-government to the Arab majority, suppressed opposition to Zionism violently and then abandoned the country in the summer of 1948 leaving Palestine in a state of chaos and anarchy.’
Dr Victor Kattan said that the current bloody conflict in Gaza was ‘made in Britain’ as he campaigned for the UK to apologise and make ‘reparations’ to Palestinian Arabs.
Labour politicians, who include Jeremy Corbyn ally John McDonald (left), are supporting a petition handed in to Downing Street last week.
Police arrested protesters supporting the banned group Palestine Action outside the Labour party conference in Liverpool
He added that the Palestinian people were facing their gravest crisis since 1948, with the Israelis flattening Gaza and threatening to annex the entire West Bank, adding: ‘This conflict which we see on our screen of starving children, of mass destruction, death and displacement, was made in Britain.’
His remarks were criticised by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism as ‘breathtaking historical ignorance and the sort of shocking moral inversion in which the far-left specialises’.
A spokesman said: ‘Jews have lived in the land of Israel for over three thousand years, long before the ancestors of most of today’s Britons ever set foot in this country.
‘Jews began returning to their ancient homeland in unprecedented numbers in the decades before the British Mandate and would have continued doing so in even greater numbers if successive British Governments hadn’t restricted Jewish immigration at the behest of the bloodthirsty leadership of the local Arab community, leaving untold numbers to their deaths at Nazi hands. Where are the calls at Labour conference for an apology for that?’
‘We expect these sentiments to be roundly condemned by Labour leaders.’
Lead petitioner 91-year-old Munib al-Masri was also at the event, alongside Mr McDonald, fellow MPs Simon Opher and Afzal Khan, and peer Lord Dubs.
The 400-page legal document, which was handed into No 10 earlier this month, launches the Britain owes Palestine campaign demanding official UK acknowledgement of ‘wrongdoing, apology and reparations for creating a century of oppression’.
The petition’s organisers said it details Britain’s ‘unlawful legacy’ including the Balfour Declaration in 1917 which stated support for establishing a home for Jewish people in Palestine, ‘acting as an occupying power during its self-granted mandate’ and ‘subsequent systematic abuse of the Palestinian people’.
Organisers added that it shows how ‘ongoing Palestinian suffering can be traced directly to Britain’s violations of international law during occupation and withdrawal’.
Lead petitioner 91-year-old Munib al-Masri was also at the event, alongside Mr McDonald, fellow MPs Simon Opher and Afzal Khan (pictured), and peer Lord Dubs.
Mr McDonald told the event the UK has a ‘hidden guilt, a hidden refusal of responsibility’ but social media meant a new generation was interested in Gaza
They added that the UK Government is ‘obliged to respond’ to the petition or it could ‘find itself brought before the courts in judicial review proceedings’.
Mr McDonald told the event the UK has a ‘hidden guilt, a hidden refusal of responsibility’ over what happened in the first half of the 20th century.
But he said that social media meant a new generation was coming forward and wanting to know the history of what happened in Gaza.
‘This new generation that has come forward wants to know this and what this new petition is all about is making sure they have access to the resources they need to do that,’ he said.
‘We talk about reparations … but part of the reparations process is reparations based on understanding and it is about repairing the way in which we have educated our own people about this matter.’
Elsewhere at the conference police arrested arresting protesters supporting the banned group Palestine Action.
Around 100 people have gathered silently to hold signs reading: ‘I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action’, protest group Defend Our Juries said.
Palestine Action was banned as a terror organisation in July after the group claimed responsibility for an action in which two Voyager planes were damaged at RAF Brize Norton the previous month.
