Israel's Foreign Minister says Britain right to let Irish Hunger Strikers die

» Mark Moloney

'Commenting on what he called "the great democracy of Britain", Lieberman praised Thatcher's intransigent attitude to the Hunger Strikers as the correct one'

ISRAEL'S Foreign Minister has praised British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's callous and unyielding stance on the 1981 H-Blocks Hunger Strike in Long Kesh which saw ten Irish republican prisoners die.

Minister Avigdor Lieberman made the comments as he criticised the recent release of Palestinian political prisoner Samer Issawi, who had spent 266 days on hunger strike in an Israeli prison.

Describing what he called "the great democracy of Britain", Lieberman praised Thatcher's intransigent attitude to the Hunger Strikers as the correct one.

"More than 10 of the protesters died in the hunger strike, among them a striker that was elected at the time to the British Parliament [Bobby Sands] by one of the voting regions in North Ireland," Lieberman said. "Despite all that, the British Government under Margaret Thatcher did not submit to the prisoners’ demands."

The Hunger Strikes resulted in a surge in electoral support for Sinn Féin and saw many more young people join the IRA. Following the Hunger Strike, the British also quietly reinstated political status for republican prisoners.

The far-right, Moldovan-born Lieberman is the founder of the ultra-Right 'Israel Our Home' party. He has previously said of Palestinian political prisoners: "It would be better to drown these prisoners in the Dead Sea if possible, since that's the lowest point in the world."

In 2001 he was convicted of assaulting and threatening a 12-year-old child who allegedly hit his son.

❑  Palestinian Samer Issawi is alleged by Israel to have been a combatant with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) during the Second Intifada (Uprising) in 2002 and was sentenced to 26 years in prison.

He was released in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal. He was rearrested in July 2012 after Israel claimed he had violated the terms of his release by crossing into the West Bank.