Let me start by saying that I have read the amendments on the Order Paper tonight, and if I could bring the hostages home and stop the fighting on the streets of Gaza, I would do it and I would do it now. But the truth is that I cannot; no one in this House can. I am a legislator in our domestic Parliament, so in this debate I want to speak out against the wickedness of antisemitism.
It is not acceptable that any community should be cowed or intimidated from displaying outward expressions of their faith through fear of violence. Let me be clear: whether it be Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or any other faith, we allow people to express their faith visibly without fear of attack. That is fundamental to this debate. It is not right for any British citizen to be held accountable for the actions of a Government other than their own. My Jewish friends and neighbours are British citizens.
Last Friday I talked to a young Jewish doctor in the NHS who said, “Charles, being Jewish in this country right now is very, very difficult.” Those are not the exact words she chose, but the words I think I should use in the Chamber. Worshippers leaving a synagogue in Maida Vale on Saturday were abused and suffered verbal threats. The synagogue is near where I grew up, near where I went to school; it is where many of my friends worshipped. This is not acceptable. A house in north London displaying a mezuzah was daubed in paint from top to bottom—not acceptable.
Without equivocation or qualification, I say this: I stand, with good and decent people of all faiths, by the Jewish community. And if any Jews face harm, I and those people will place ourselves in front of those Jews to defend them from that harm. That is a solemn commitment on my part. The Jewish community in this country is small—279,000 people—but it comprises my constituents, my family and my friends, and they are deserving of my support and the support of us all.
Let me get to the crux of the law and order parts of this debate. We have to deal with this as a Parliament, and future Parliaments will have to deal with it. Hate laws do not stop hate. We wish that they would, but they do not. Hate is one of the basest of human emotions. It is the consumption that consumes the soul in the way that cancer consumes our physical bodies. I am desperate to see peace—I really am; I want to see peace in so many parts of the world—but what history has taught us is
that peace is reached when the cost of hate is so great, when too many people have been killed, when scythes are exhausted, when nobody can take it anymore. That is the moment that great men and women of courage and enlightenment stand up, from both sides of that division, and set their hatreds and enmities aside, embrace each other, and hold out a hand.
The world is a complicated, complex place. If there were simple solutions, we would have found them by now; they do not exist. But there is always hope. There is always hope on both sides of this House. We settle our arguments through debate, and we are friends on either side of the House. There is a big lesson in there for many.
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