AMY GOODMAN: Why did you go to Gaza?

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Because after twenty-two days, the Palestinian people there were in a desperate situation. We took twenty-four ambulances, a fire engine, trucks full of wheelchairs and medicine and children’s clothes and blankets for the 61,000 Palestinian families whose homes have been destroyed. And, of course, when we got there, we have to give them to the authorities there.

As it happens, I’m not a supporter of Hamas. I never have been. But I am a supporter of democracy. And if the Palestinian people elect a government, we have to respect that.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain why they’re saying you provide material aid to a terrorist organization.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, is material aid ambulances and medicine and wheelchairs and nappies for children and biscuits for hungry people and tents for homeless people and blankets for them to huddle up in the wintertime under? If that’s terrorism, then terrorism no longer has any meaning as a word.

AMY GOODMAN: You almost didn’t get into Gaza. You were stopped. Our reporter, producer Anjali Kamat was there in Gaza. They got through, CODEPINK, the delegation. You ultimately did, but you were stopped at the border.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Yes, because we were a convoy of 350 British people, 110 British vehicles. And, of course, the Israelis put tremendous pressure on the Egyptian government as to what can go through the gate at Rafah and what must go through the Israeli-controlled gates.

That’s why we’re in the bizarre situation. You can take aspirin to the Palestinians through the Egyptian gate, but you can’t take food. So you can’t feed them, but you can give them an aspirin for the headache that they’ll get as a result of being hungry. This is crazy.

This siege has to end. Gaza is like an earthquake has hit it, the difference being, if it had been an earthquake, all the governments of the world would be airlifting the means of life to the victims of that earthquake and beginning to reconstruct it. And that simply isn’t happening.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, George Galloway, President Bush did get into Canada, despite a Canadian group, the Lawyers Against the War, calling for his arrest or deportation. The Canadian government ignored their request, though they did deny you entry.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: Yes, and on the grounds that I was a national security risk, which will have come as a surprise to the Homeland Security Department here and to the Speaker of the House of Commons, with whom I’ve sat with for twenty-three years. Yes, I mean—

AMY GOODMAN: We have twenty seconds.

GEORGE GALLOWAY: George Bush, dangerous killer, here’s a million-dollar fee, come and speak. George Galloway, antiwar leader, don’t bother turning up.