Addressing the Oxford Union Society, the prime minister took several questions, including his treatment of Anwar Ibrahim, his one-time deputy with whom he fell out in 1998 and who was sacked on moral grounds.

“Even if I tell you the truth, you are not going to believe it. He was tried in a court of law for nine months before he was sentenced to jail,” he said, referring to Anwar’s trials in the late 1990s.

“But now I am a good friend of his,” he added, drawing laughter in the hall.

Anwar, who Mahathir sacked as his deputy prime minister in 1998, was sentenced to six years’ jail for corruption in 1999, and given a nine-year jail sentence over a charge of sodomy in 2000. He was released in 2004 after a Federal Court overturned the sodomy conviction.

Mahathir rejected a suggestion from a member of the audience that he had subverted the rule of law in the Anwar episode.

“The rule of law says that if you commit something wrong, you will be charged and tried in a court of law and it is the judges who will decide, not me,” said Mahathir, who several times had to tell his audience to repeat their questions because they were too fast or inaudible to him.

When asked if he thought sodomy was a crime, Mahathir was candid in his response.

“In our society it is wrong. If you want to do yourself, go ahead. But in England, not in Malaysia,” he said.

‘American Bumiputera’

Mahathir also defended Malaysia’s affirmative action policy to help the Bumiputera, saying the same principle was practised in the United States currently.

“If you’re talking about Bumiputera (policy), the American Bumiputera do not want the Mexicans to cross their border. Why? They have a right, they can say what they like. They want to go to your country, they should go. But they erect a wall, and now Americans are not being paid their salary.

“That is the kind of reaction you see from great democracies. We are not so great,” he said.

Israel and anti-Semitism

Questioned several times on his views about Israel, Mahathir said he had a right to speak out against Israeli policies just as his critics had the right to label him anti-Semitic.

“That is their right to hold such an opinion of me. It is my right to tell them also that they had been doing a lot of wrong things,” he said.

Mahathir’s presence at Oxford had drawn protest from a Jewish students group there, who had asked the Union to cancel the invitation to him.

Yesterday, Oxford Union president Daniel Wilkinson, who chaired the session, suggested to Mahathir that he could have taken a more “constructive” approach in criticising Israel instead of targeting the Jewish people.

“I don’t know about constructive ways. This (Israel) is a government that doesn’t care about the opinions of others. That’s why they keep on committing war crimes all the time. So what I say is what I have a right to say.

“If they don’t like it, they could say they don’t like it, I don’t care,” he said.

He said the solution to the conflict in Palestine should be seen in its historic perspective, when Israel was created in 1948.

“I’m surprised that reasonable democrats keep on supporting the act of seizure of foreign lands to create a nation for somebody,” he said.

He also denied accusations that he was targeting the Jewish people instead of the Israeli government, and gave an example of Europe’s ban on palm oil imports from Malaysia.

“Europe wants to declare palm oil as poisonous. Why do you hurt the poor farmer in Malaysia, because you dislike the government?” he asked.

He then brushed aside charges of anti-Semitism.

“I can’t understand this. We talk about freedom of speech, and yet you cannot say anything against Israel, against the Jews. Why is that so?”

He defended Malaysia’s recent decision not to allow Israeli athletes into the country, saying it was using the same right that many other countries used, and pointed out to recent moves by Europe to close its borders to immigrants.

‘Intolerant democrats’

In his speech earlier, he made his familiar criticism of democracy, saying democrats have a tendency of forcing the system on countries they consider as dictatorships, leading to human casualties and destruction.

“Democracy is good in the sense that it allows people to choose their own government. To that extent, democracy has proven to be the right form of government.

“But we see attempts now to force democracy on all the countries in the world. Democrats have now become intolerant of other systems. They want to abolish other systems of government to the point where if you don’t change and become a democracy, your country will be invaded. That is completely against the concept and idea of democracy.”

He took his listeners through the events leading to Pakatan Harapan’s election victory last year, while defending his previous record of leading the country for 22 years.

“I’m reminded of course that I myself was a prime minister who was accused of being a dictator. Of course, many people believe I was a dictator, how else could I govern the country except by being a dictator?

“In the history of nations, there has not been a single dictator who stepped down from power and allowed others to take over,” said Mahathir.