“It will not go on for ever, it will not go on for ever. Israel will lose support and then they will reap what they have sown,” Tonge was filmed as saying during a student panel address at Middlesex University last week.
“Beware Israel… One day, the United States of America will get sick of giving £70 billion a year to Israel to support what I call America’s aircraft carrier in the Middle East – that is Israel. One day, the American people are going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough,” She added.
Following her remarks, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg apparently gave Tonge an ultimatum to apologize or step down, but the peer refused to make an apology and resigned.
“I have been asked to apologise but refuse to do so and resign the whip of my party,” she said in a statement.
The outspoken anti-Israeli peer, who once said she would consider becoming a suicide bomber if she were a Palestinian, also attacked the Lib Dem leadership over their decision saying they seem “always to abet the request of the pro-Israel lobby.”
“The comments I made were in protest at the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank,” she said in the statement.
“Israel is acting against international law, the Geneva conventions, and Human Rights. They do this with impunity and if our political parties will not take action then individuals must,” she added.
Tonge has been a Lib Dem MP between 1997 and 2005 when she was appointed to the House of Lords.
She has been a fierce critic of the Zionist regime of Israel and a thorn in the Lib Dems’ side over the past years.
Back in February 2010, Clegg removed Tonge as a Lib Dem health spokesman in the House of Lords after she called for an inquiry into reports that the Israeli soldiers were guilty of body parts trafficking in Haiti.
The reports showed that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) who were allegedly deployed to the Caribbean country for humanitarian purposes after the killer 2010 earthquake, were actually busy harvesting victims’ body parts.
Tonge was also removed as Lib Dems spokesman on children’s issues in 2004 after suggesting she could become a suicide bomber.
AMR/HE
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