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Baroness Tonge confirms her retirement from the Lords
Anti-Israel peer says she is keeping promise to retire at the age of 80
February 4, 2021 16:38
Anti-Israel peer says she is keeping promise to retire at the age of 80
February 4, 2021 16:38Baroness Tonge has confirmed she is retiring from the House of Lords later this month but has vowed to “continue to campaign on justice for the people of Palestine.”
The crossbench peer – an outspoken critic of Israel - confirmed to the JC she had always promised herself and her family that she would retired from the upper house when she reached the age of 80 this month.
She added: “Indeed I think we all should because there are far too many people in the Lords. I am keeping my promise and indicated my intention to the authorities some months ago.
“However, I shall continue to campaign on justice for the people of Palestine.”
Last month Baroness Tonge sparked fury in the Lords when during a debate on rising campus antisemitism she claiming victims are targeted “because of the illegal actions of the Israeli government.”
In a debate secured by the crossbench peer Baroness Deech in response to the publication of the Community Security Trust’s Campus Antisemitism in Britain 2018-2020 report, which showed an alarming rise of incidents at universities, the former Liberal Democrat MP said: “I was shocked when I read the nature of the abuse.”
But Baroness Tonge then added: "What is missing, however, is any investigation into why these incidents are increasing .... with increasing violence in the West Bank and Gaza, the expansion of settlements and the occupation of east Jerusalem, antisemitic incidents have continued to rise.
"Whenever I suggest a connection between the two, I am told this is ‘victim blame’, which it is not. The victims are innocent Jewish people—students, in this case. They are victims because of the illegal actions of the Israeli government."
In 2010, Baroness Tonge was sacked as the Liberal Democrats' health spokesperson in the House of Lords after demanding an investigation into allegations that IDF aid workers in Haiti were harvesting organs.
In 2016, she was suspended from the party after she hosted an event at the House of Lords where audience members compared Israel to Isis terrorists and suggested Jews were to blame for the Holocaust. She subsequently resigned from the party.
She was made a life peer in 2015 as Baroness Tonge, of Kew in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
She has sat as an independent in the Lords since 2012.
A former Lib Dem spokesperson on International Development, in 2003 she visited the Gaza Strip with Labour’s Oona King and, at a subsequent press conference after their return, compared Gaza Strip living conditions to those Jews suffered in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.
One year later she was sacked as the Lib Dem’s children’s spokesperson after saying of Palestinian suicide bombers; "If I had to live in that situation – and I say that advisedly – I might just consider becoming one myself".
At a fringe meeting in September 2006 she said: "The pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party.”
More recently in 2018 after the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh she said: “The victims are innocent Jewish people—students, in this case. They are victims because of the illegal actions of the Israeli government."