British MP tells anti-Assad audience member, “You make me sick”

If you can get over the mock Arab accent that British Member of Parliament George Galloway puts on during his new show for al-Mayadeen TV, you’ll likely take the same path I did while watching a clip from the show.

From being offensively condescending to downright factually inaccurate and rude, Galloway takes viewers on a journey that starts with laughter, middles in anger and culminates in disgust.

Last week, The Times of London reported (£) that Galloway was joining al-Mayadeen TV in exchange for the tidy sum of £80,000 per year.

Launched in June, The Times reports that al-Mayadeen is ‘linked to Syria and Iran’.  The head of its news division, we are told, is married to a former communications adviser to President Assad. The general manager was previously head of al-Manar, a Hezbollah affiliated station.

In Galloway’s last appearance on the channel, which you can see here, he descends from a reflection on how many ‘sons’ are being killed in Syria, to lambasting an audience member for his support for the revolutions across the Arab world, accusing him at one point, of having been ‘bought’ by Saudi Arabia – accusing the man of “collaborating with Saudi Arabia against Syria.’

Galloway rhetorically asks, “So what you’re asking us to believe is that a revolution supported by McCain, by Lieberman, by Britain, France, America, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is a revolution for good? For haq [truth]?”

Galloway rails against the idea of revolutions supported by Western figures such as John McCain and Joe Lieberman and includes Britain, America and Israel in a list of states that he refuses to believe act in good faith for for ‘truth’.

He goes on to farcically defend Iranian support for Palestinians, telling an audience member, “You make me sick”, forcing him to walk out as Galloway utters, “Alhamdulillah” (praise to Allah).

“There is food in the bellies of the Palestinian people, coming from Iran” says Galloway, casually ignoring that fact most aid to the Palestinian territories comes from the United States and the European Union.

Galloway feels the need to clarify, “I am not with the Syrian regime. I am against their enemies because their enemies are worse than them. I was not with Saddam Hussein, I was against his enemies because his enemies were worse than him.” A statement that, despite Galloway’s careful worded approach, has already been interpreted to mean that he rejects regime change in Syria and thus, by default, is advocating a position that would keep the country locked in civil war.

When I called George Galloway’s constituency office number, as per the UK Parliament website, the telephone was answered by a child asking us to ‘call back later’ as his mother, Aisha Ali-Khan (Galloway’s secretary), was not there to take the call.