Here a slightly abridged version of the statement that Sir Gerald Kaufman made in the House of Commons on January 15:

I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.

I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.

I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.

My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians….

On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians- the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that “500 of them were militants.”

That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants….

However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the West Bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.

It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis’ real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve. They are not simply war criminals; they are fools.

Here’s the url:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090115/debtext/90115-0013.htm#090115102001355

From: Rabbi Arthur Waskow [mailto:office@shalomctr.org] Fri 1/16/2009

On the Sidewalk at the Israeli Embassy in Washington:

Wednesday afternoon I got a phone call: Would I come to Washington on Thursday to stand outside the Israeli Embassy to mourn the dead of Israel and Gaza, and call for a ceasefire?
Yes.

So that’s where I was yesterday, along with about 50 other people of many different religious and cultural communities — ranging in age from 22 to 84, all dressed in black —

all mourning the dead both in Gaza and in Israel,

all calling for a ceasefire and an end of the Israeli embargo/blockade of Gaza.

The vigil was called by Code Pink, a women’s antiwar group founded to oppose the Iraq War. They often use whimsy and humor to oppose war; on this occasion, they were solemn, in mourning, some of them in tears.

Before the vigil actually formed, there was an odd and almost funny encounter. Almost.

About 80 college-student tourists were standing in line at the Embassy door, waiting for a tour and talk with the Ambassador. Most of the vigilers had not yet arrived; so I walked up to the students and just started talking. I explained who we were, what we were doing. Some of them asked questions. One teacher-age man came out of the group to argue with me.

And then — Out from the Embassy came a security officer. He walked up to me and said, “This sidewalk is part of the Embassy, part of Israeli territory. Move.”

I said, “The American police say we are fine here on this sidewalk.”

“It is Israeli territory. Move, or I will arrest you.”
I laughed: “Do you really want the Embassy of Israel to arrest an American rabbi on an American sidewalk?”

“I will arrest you.”
This time I just looked at him. I shrugged. I stayed put where I was. He walked over to the police officer nearby, spoke with him a minute — turned and walked back into the Embassy.

Funny – almost. I thought: ” Because you have annexed large parts of the West Bank, you think you can annex a strip of American sidewalk”

Hours later I learned that one of our vigilers had walked into the Embassy with the students, waited toll the Ambassador was speaking, and interrupted to give him a white rose of peace and urge him to support a ceasefire.

When the vigil itself began, I spoke; so did a former US colonel and foreign service officer who quit over the Iraq war; an aid worker who had spent years on the West Bank; and a Catholic nun in her 80’s who was aboard one of the “ship-in” boats to Gaza that brought medicine and baby food past the blockade before the Israeli attack on Gaza began.

Since the attack, let me note, two more of the ship-in boats were forced to turn back. One was rammed by an Israeli Navy vessel and limped back to Cyprus. The other, just yesterday, certified as weapons-free by Cyprus officials, carrying desperately needed medicines for Gaza hospitals, was surrounded by Israeli Navy ships and threatened with being fired on. It too finally sailed back to Cyprus.

I began with the blessing over learning Torah, added one for “livakesh u’lirdof hashalom: to seek peace and pursue it.” …we were vigiling not on behalf of the Palestinian government or the Israeli government, not supporting either one’s use of military force. We were here out of grief and compassion for the dead and the traumatized …

The Israeli and Palestinian peoples are now so devoured by fear and rage that only a third party can bring both power and moral authority to bear to make a decent peace. That only power is the new Obama administration. It must insist on a regional international emergency peace conference out of which there must come a peace treaty between Israel, a new Palestinian state with its own choice of government, all the Arab states, and Iran.

Why, you might ask, did I draw on Torah, rather than just using secular language to the same end? Because I am trying to heal Torah from the poisonous hate-filled interpretations of it that right-wing Jews and Christians have thrust upon it. Jews chant about the Torah that “all her paths are peace.” It is time to make that so.

And because I look toward a grand alliance of American Jews, Muslims, and Christians to get the new American government to take this stand. Otherwise it will not; it will fall into the old habits. Together, the peace-seeking majority of each of our communities can call forth the deeper wisdom of its own tradition and the deep anguish each feels for the death and destruction among our kinfolk…

With blessings of shalom, salaam, peace
Arthur