David Parker, Opinions Contributor
Listening to George Galloway address a packed church hall of 400 people was a bit like going to a rock concert. Galloway could barely get through his speech amidst all the cheering. Maybe it was more like a boxing match, actually.
That’s not so strange an analogy, when you consider the fact that Galloway challenged Conservative MP Jason Kenney to a boxing match 18 months ago, when Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (re-titled by Galloway as the Minister of “Censorship and Deportation”) barred Galloway from entering Canada.
“When Jason Kenney decided to ban me, he missed the point that any bookseller could have pointed out: that the books you try to ban always make it on the best-seller list,” Galloway told the crowd.
The ideas that Galloway is currently sharing with thousands upon thousands of Canadians, in a whirlwind tour to ten major cities — his first time entering Canada since Kenney’s interruption — are really not as scary as Kenney would have you believe.
Galloway took on three main topics: Palestine, Afghanistan, and free speech.
His talk addressed the reality of Palestinians living under occupation, in exile, victims of massacre, of expropriation, and the elimination of their country from the map.
He spoke of the need of a state that would recognize full rights for Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, in Israel, and for the millions of Palestinian refugees worldwide who currently don’t have the right to return to their homeland. Currently, the world’s largest refugee population is Palestinian.
Canada has made numerous salvos to shut down free speech when it concerns the Palestinian struggle: Canada’s one-sided support of Israel; cutting funding to human rights organizations that serve important functions in war-torn Gaza, and in refugee camps across the middle east; last year’s Parliamentary motion (in Ontario) to condemn the use of the words ‘Israeli Apartheid’, and more. Canada is one of the world’s strongest supporters of Israel. It’s no wonder we lost the bid for the Security Council seat.
Galloway also addressed the doomed and disastrous war and occupation in Afghanistan. He recalled rebuffing Tony Blair, on the eve of war on Afghanistan almost a decade ago:
“A thirty year war, for the future of somebody else’s religion, doesn’t sound like a very stable project to me. And what if it doesn’t work out, and you spend 40 years doing it? What if you spend 40 years killing people for the future of Islam and you end up with a world at war, and with 2 billion Muslims in the world hating you? How can that possibly be in the best interests of the world?
“The people in Afghanistan who are fighting us are not Al-Qaida; the people in Afghanistan who are fighting us are the people of Afghanistan, as they have always fought against foreign occupation and invasion.”
“And by the way, they’re quite good at it. Did you ever ask yourself why these Afghan wallahs need so much training? We’re spending a billion dollars a month training Karzai’s army. Have you noticed any great improvement in the military performance of Karzai’s forces? There’s nobody training the Taliban, but they’re doing pretty well on the battlefield. The truth is, your soldiers are being sent back there for another four years as fig leafs, as covers, for the foreign, Anglo-American occupation of Afghanistan, and you should reject it.”
‘Nuff said, Galloway. Sorry to hear it was so hard to get into Canada!
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