David Ward MP. Photograph courtesy of David Ward/Twitter
The Liberal Democrats have condemned their own MP, David Ward, for his statement about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Sunday.
In a statement to the Asian Image magazine, Ward compared the persecution of Jews by the Nazis to the way the Jewish state of Israel currently treats Palestinians on a daily basis in Gaza and the West Bank. He said:
Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.
Ward is not the first person to draw similarities between the persecution of Jews in 1939 to the Palestinians of today, with Palestinian land being continually confiscated in the West Bank, and the blockade of Gaza by Israeli forces resulting in very high rates of poverty and unemployment that makes parts of Gaza resemble the Jewish ghettos.
The state of Israel also collects taxes from the Palestinians but refuse to support the two-state solution whilst also refusing Palestinians Israeli citizenship, excluding them from the democratic process and essentially making them second class citizens.
However, the condemnations for Ward’s comments are not only from his party which describe his comments as a matter of “deep regret”, but also from the Holocaust Educational Trust which described them as “sickening and unacceptable”, and the right-wing press such as The Commentator.
He has not commented on the condemnation from his party, but on his website it says he is committed to “honouring those who died during the Holocaust” and describes Auschwitz as “the Nazi concentration and extermination camp which is the site of the largest mass murder in history”.
