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In a perfect world, the UK Parliament would have looked different

[additional-authors]
October 15, 2014

In a perfect world, George Galloway would have been removed from office, and Mike Freer would have stayed and fight. Sadly, we don’t live in a perfect world…


In the past couple of days, headlines here were all about the UK, and its House of Commons' controversial vote to symbolically recognize a Palestinian state, even without an organized agreement with Israel. This vote ended with 274 supporting the recognition of a Palestinian state, and 12 opposing. Many of the 650 House of Commons PM’s, including Prime Minister David Cameron, abstained from the vote. The fact that this vote is nothing but, well, a vote, makes this whole shenanigan a provocative act that only pushes peace further away by ignoring the need of peace talks and sacrifices from both sides of, and many of the voters (if not all) knew that. Sadly, this vote also “>rise of about 500% in anti-Semitic incidents in the UK. This showed us, yet again, that even in the 21st century, Jews outside of Israel are in need of protection. Freer having to leave a position that allowed him to do so, just because he needed to make an important statement, hurts not only him, but the people he represents.


On the other side of the equation, there’s MP George Galloway, a radical anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic person, who’s making  a special effort in hurting anything Jewish, but mostly Israeli, around him. Just this summer, he declared the city of Bradford an “Israel –free zone,” and was “>abstained from the vote this week, because voting “yes” means to recognize an Israeli state alongside a Palestinian one, and he does not believe Israel should exist at all.


We live in an unjust world. A world where a person like George Galloway gets to exploit his public position to incite and spread hatred and lies, and a person like Mike Freer needs to step down from office after making a much needed statement. This statement sent the message that some British MP’s use their common and oppose the idea of a Palestinian state without a proper agreement, for, as history taught us, without a proper agreement peace cannot last.


As people living in this unjust world, we were born with the instinct to search for justice. Unfortunately, reality slaps us in the face time and time again with the realization of the true nature of our world. In a perfect world, villains are being punished, heroes are being praised, right and wrong are as clear as day and night, and no one mourns the wicked. Sadly, we don’t live in a perfect world, and the distinction between right and wrong is difficult to make. The path to justice can sometimes be quite a via dolorosa, but even in our unjust world, we must fight hard to reach the end of that road, and pass the hurdles of hatred and bigotry.

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