“You have been so disrespectful”

Looks like Kate Burton didn’t have such a lovely time being kidnapped as we were first led to believe.

In her first detailed account of the 58-hour ordeal to three British newspapers, including The Independent, she said: “The situation was starting to get very tense. Maybe they felt they hadn’t achieved what they wanted. They began getting nervous and started shouting at me.

“One of the two main guys said: ‘I can’t believe you have been so disrespectful – we have given you blankets, we have given you food, we have treated you so well’.

“I got really mad and said: ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this. Do you want me to get down on my knees and say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you?’ I was exhausted and started crying. I said: ‘I came here to work with the Palestinian people and now I feel I have been stabbed in the back.'”

And she feels really, really bad that she brought her parents into Gaza.

Ms Burton expressed her own guilt at having taken her parents to Gaza, despite Foreign Office travel advice not to make such a visit. “I feel really, really guilty,” she said. “I feel irresponsible. I’m the one who lives there and should have known better. I wanted them to see it was safe and feel a bit calmer about where I lived. But I’ve given them their worst Christmas and their worst holiday ever.

“They were curious and they’d been aware of the risks. That’s why we’d kept it to a day at the end. But the last thing they said was, ‘We’re never coming back’.”

Good for them. Too bad their daughter isn’t nearly as bright.