Sammy Wilson says trip to Israel by unionists was 'enlightening' and served to 'dispel lies' about the state
One of the unionist politicians who has just returned from Israel has described the trip as “enlightening”.
Sammy Wilson said he had been impressed by “the resilience” of the Israelis he met, and said that their tour had served to “dispel lies” about the country – particularly about its level of integration.
Mr Wilson, DUP MP for East Antrim, was part of a delegation which travelled out to Israel for a six-day trip, arranged and paid for by the Israeli government.
The others were UUP MLA Steve Aiken, DUP education minister Paul Givan, TUV deputy leader Ron McDowell, and DUP Newtownabbey councillor Ben Mallon.
They arrived back on Thursday evening, having visited sites including a Holocaust memorial, the Israeli parliament, a kibbutz which had “built up a thriving fruit producing business out of the desert” in northern Israel, the Gaza border region in the south, as well as an Israeli-run school for children of different ethnic/religious backgrounds (which sparked criticism of Mr Givan in particular).
“It gave us an opportunity to hear from the people who have suffered the Hamas and Hezbollah and the Palestinian campaign of genocide against them first hand – what it meant to live through that,” Mr Wilson told the News Letter.
"It showed us the resolution of Israelis from the youngest to the oldest, because they know their very survival as a people is at stake if they don't stand up to the terrorists.
"It dispelled all the lies about Israel being an autocratic, apartheid, discriminatory state which is carrying out a campaign of genocide against the Arab and Palestinian population.
"All the themes that you hear from these people who walk around Belfast every weekend now practically supporting the terrorists, that they have to support the terrorists in Palestine because Israel is an apartheid genocidal state: it's just not true.”
He said the state is “probably more democratic than we are”, because a political party – of any religious or ethnic stripe – can win 3.5% of the nationwide vote, they are guaranteed four seats in the Knesset.
“That, to me, you couldn't describe that as a state that seeks to be apartheid, that seeks to keep people from having representation, when you set such a low threshold and give them the ability to have representation,” he said.
"In the Knesset there were Arabs, Jews, Christians, and we met with some of them.”
He said that in Jerusalem, and outside it, people walked around “clearly identifying who they were”: Othodox Jews, Arabs, Druze (“you knew them by their big moustaches”) and Christians.
"They all walked around parts of the city totally unmolested,” he said.
"I tell you, and I said to some of them: if you went to Belfast, you couldn't have that integration that there was in Jerusalem...
"I couldn't walk up the Falls with a Linfield shirt on, but yet Arabs and Muslims were walking through the Jewish part of the city, and Jews were walking through the Arab part of the city, clearly identifying themselves by their dress."
It was, he said, “totally harmonious”.
They had visited an Israeli community near Gaza that was overrun by Hamas on October 7.
He spoke of a visit to a house where a grandmother aged 82 had been.
"The terrorists came in, asked her for her phone, asked her the phone number of her grandchildren,” he said.
"They phoned the grandchildren on video link, and while the grandchildren were on the video link they killed the woman in full view of her grandchildren."
He said that “emotionally, the highlight” was a visit to a military outpost where they heard how the female soldiers had been monitoring cameras showing the Hamas incursions into Israel on October 7.
"They were calling the army for help, but the army was already detached trying to protect civilian areas,” said Mr Wilson.
"They were watching through the monitors seeing the terrorists coming in, taking girls, raping them, beheading people and everything else, and eventually the terrorists got into the monitoring room.
"The girls had to go into a safe room: 19 of them. They [Hamas] couldn't get at them then. So what did they do?
"They piled tyres up, burned the tyres, and left the girls with a choice: either come out of the room and be raped and killed and beheaded, or stay in the room.
"Nineteen girls, in their late teens, early 20s, suffocated to death in that room.
"That was one of the most emotionally charged moments for me."
What of the criticism there has been that this was an Israeli government trip, so they were only getting the Israeli side of things and not the suffering on the Palestinian side?
"It was Israeli sponsored, and you'd expect going to hear their side of the story – but it was a credible story,” Mr Wilson said.
He added: "We were there to hear the story of the people who have been under bombardment from the terrorists for decades now, and also to see the deprivation that causes…
"And anyway, anybody who says 'had we gone in to hear the Palestinian view', I don't think I'd be coming back here.
"Look what they're doing to people who even dared to drive aid lorries and were seen as collaborators – sure they're murdered in the streets.
"This is a fascist organisation which doesn't tolerate any deviation from what they want, and have held their own population in captivity."