John Prescott had a history of supporting Palestinians and criticising Israel
John Prescott, the former British deputy prime minister who has died at the age of 86, had a long history of showing solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The former trade unionist and merchant seaman was an MP for Hull for 40 years and the longest-serving deputy prime minister in British history. His family said he had been living with Alzheimer's disease in his last years.
Having served in Labour shadow cabinets through the 1980s and early 1990s, Prescott became Tony Blair's deputy prime minister throughout Blair's ten years in government, from 1997 to 2007.
During the course of his life, Prescott referred to Gaza as a "concentration camp", said Israel had forced Palestinians into poverty and argued that Israel was given special treatment by western powers.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer hailed Prescott as a "true giant of the Labour movement".
But after leaving government, Prescott repeatedly provoked controversy for his fiery condemnations of the Israeli government and US President Donald Trump - with a string of remarks that would seem dramatically out of place in today's Labour Party.
In 2018, then a peer in the House of Lords and a staunch supporter of then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Prescott claimed that "Donald Trump has the blood of scores of Palestinians on his stumpy little hands", after the Israeli army fired on unarmed Palestinians from Gaza during the Great March of Return.
"There can be no doubt that Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem contributed to the Israeli massacre of unarmed men, women and children by the army," he said.
The onetime New Labour heavyweight accused Trump of blocking a UN inquiry into the massacre, "motivated by pleasing evangelical Christian and Jewish supporters he needs to get re-elected".
Prescott further slammed the Board of Deputies of British Jews for blaming Hamas for the massacre: "If the Board of Deputies really wants to stand up for social justice, they should join Labour and the rest of the world in openly condemning this hateful act and back an independent inquiry."
Labour and antisemitism
That same year Prescott rubbished claims made by anti-Corbyn Labour MPs that the Labour Party, then under Corbyn's leadership, was institutionally antisemitic, saying: "It’s time Corbyn, Labour and Jewish campaigners came together and agreed on a way forward."
Labour MPs critical of Corbyn's leadership slammed his comments.
Then in 2019, Prescott triggered further outrage after reportedly saying that Labour's alleged antisemitism crisis was "about Israel". He was accused of asking a Jewish journalist: "Is there anything you can do about Israel and its behaviour?”
'Israel brands [Hamas] terrorists, but it is acting as judge, jury and executioner in the concentration camp that is Gaza'
- John Prescott
Four years earlier, during Israel's 2014 bombardment of Gaza, Prescott called Gaza a "concentration camp" and said Israelis should learn from the Holocaust.
Prescott said about Hamas that, "Israel brands them terrorists, but it is acting as judge, jury and executioner in the concentration camp that is Gaza...
"What happened to the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis is appalling. But you would think those atrocities would give Israelis a unique sense of perspective and empathy with the victims of a ghetto."
The Board of Deputies of British Jews and chairman of the Jewish Leadership Council branded his remmarks "deeply offensive", accusing Prescott of having "trivialised the Holocaust, the most painful memory in Jewish history".
In his comments, Prescott argued that the international community was hypocritical over what he called its failure to criticise Israel.
Another country that killed hundreds of children as Israel did in 2014 in Gaza, he argued, "would be branded a pariah state, condemned by the United Nations, the US and the UK. The calls for regime change would be deafening.
"But these howls of protest are muted. The condemnation softened. For this is Israel."
He explained that Palestinians in Gaza "are kept like prisoners behind walls and fences, unable to escape the bombings, and an Israeli economic blockade has forced Palestinians into poverty."
Neither Prescott's old boss Blair nor the current Labour government has used such strong words to criticise Israel, which it insists is a close ally - even after imposing a partial arms ban on the country in September and admitting in court this week that Israel is not complying with international humanitarian law.
On Tuesday, Britain's ambassador to Israel said that the UK "is prepared to put its own aircraft and its own personnel in harm’s way to defend Israel" against any Iranian attack.
Invasion of Iraq
Prescott was deputy prime minister when Britain joined the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, a move he supported.
But after he left government, the Labour man sent shockwaves through Westminster by saying the war had been illegal.
In 2013, he told the BBC that the invasion "cannot be justified" and claimed he had supported it because he had thought US President George W Bush would resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
'I will live with the decision of going to war [in Iraq]... for the rest of my life'
- John Prescott
"You know Bush was quite prepared to have a plan for Israel and the whole problem in regard to Palestine and he promised," Prescott said. "And, therefore, that plan was something."
In the wake of the publication of the Chilcot report on the invasion in 2016, Prescott said Britain had broken international law.
"In 2004, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said that as regime change was the prime aim of the Iraq war, it was illegal. With great sadness and anger, I now believe him to be right.
"I will live with the decision of going to war and its catastrophic consequences for the rest of my life," he added, supporting then-Labour leader Corbyn's decision to apologise for the war on behalf of the party.
Corbyn, now an independent MP, paid tribute to Prescott on Thursday.
"John was a huge figure and personality," he said, "from his seafaring union days to the highest offices in government.
"I will be forever grateful for his personal and political support in the 2017 and 2019 elections. His endless warmth and iconic wit were loved on the campaign trail."
