ACTOR and comedian Miriam Margolyes has said she does not “believe in a Jewish state”.
Speaking on a roundtable with fellow British Jewish cultural figures Michael Rosen and Alexei Sayle, organised by Double Down News, Margolyes said she would not “accept” that Israel is a state for Jewish people alone.
The Bafta-winning actor said: “When you go to Israel and you see, as I went in 2012 was the last time I was there, and you see how Palestinians are treated, that for me was the door opening, the blind being lifted and I saw.
“If people can treat people like that, they are shits, and what they do and say cannot be accepted, cannot be believed.
“I saw it with my own eyes and I will never get over that. And that's when I became fiercely pro-Palestinian.”
Margolyes went on: “I suppose in my heart, in my deep heart, I don't believe in a Jewish state. I just don't.
“I think that people who live there live there, whether they're Jewish or whatever. You just live in a place.”
Rosen, a children’s author and broadcaster, interjected: “Well, that's the transgressive bit. You see that in the constitution it says the Jewish state is for the self-determination of the Jewish people.”
Margolyes responded: “Well, I don't accept that and I think that should be struck out. Struck out. Not kill the Jews or kill the Arabs. Just kill the borders.”
Israel’s “basic law” says that the “State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people” and “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”.
Rosen told the Double Down News conversation: “You're redrawing the map and saying this could be a secular state in which everybody could live.
“But you see, it's quite interesting. When we're challenged and they say, ‘Do you believe that the state of Israel should exist? Yes. No. Quick answer’, I often say, well, no state has the right to exist …
“Ironically, just right at this very moment, there's Lebanon. That's a state. And Israel is taking over a chunk of that state. So clearly, the state of Lebanon doesn't have the right to exist.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Margolyes said she believed Israel was perpetrating a “deliberate … planned genocide” in Palestine.
“How can Jews do that?” she asked.
Rosen said the question should be more broadly about how “human beings” can do it to one another, but Margolyes responded: “Well, I’m saying how can Jews do it? I am saying that.”
She further said she had faced attacks from her own family over her pro-Palestinian views, telling Rosen and Sayle: “I'm appalled when people say that I'm vile. My relatives said, ‘You're a disgrace to our family’. They actually said that. They are a disgrace.”
Rosen asked what Margolyes believed her relatives were thinking when they said that, prompting her to respond: “I think they see me as a threat to the continuation of Israel and they think Israel has to survive.”
Israel is widely accused of committing genocide in Gaza, and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court on separate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Over the weekend, Israel bombed Lebanon and Iran in defiance of a so-called ceasefire, and closed all border crossings into Gaza.
