My Lords, I share with others my thanks to the Minister for his excellent introduction to this debate. I also thank colleagues for their contributions on a subject which so many of us feel so passionately and deeply about.
The Hamas seizure of hostages during its murderous rampage through Israeli border communities is a horrific act and contrary to international law. The types of
hostages seized, as well as the murders and rapes committed of civilians, proves that Hamas’s claims that its actions were about resistance are lies. Leaving aside the fact that the holding of hostages is a crime in itself, Hamas is breaking international humanitarian law by refusing medical care to the hostages or allowing a humanitarian corridor to them. As many other speakers have tonight, I ask His Majesty’s Government to make every representation to the Palestinian authorities and other interlocutors to Hamas, such as Qatar, that the hostages should be immediately freed. Failing that, further negotiations around humanitarian corridors to Gaza must include aid being provided to the hostages.
The scenes on British streets over the past two weeks have been nothing short of disgraceful. While nobody wishes to restrict the right to protest in this country, and we all value the principles of free speech, it is quite a different matter to allow the spreading of hate and the glorification of terrorism, as has quite obviously been occurring in some portions of pro-Palestinian marches. It is telling, for example, that the first pro-Palestinian marches assembled on our streets on 7 October, when the only activity that had happened in Israel to that date had been the massacre of Jewish civilians by Hamas terrorists. The dead had not yet been identified and Israel had not responded, yet certain sections of the United Kingdom population felt that they should come out on to the streets, not in sympathy with the victims but seemingly celebrating their murder. Something has gone badly wrong in our society for that to be considered a normative action.
Since then, calls for jihad and intifada have somehow been explained away by police language experts as not being meant as violent. “Free, free Palestine, from the river to the sea” has been suggested to be offensive only if directed at a Jewish person, rather than chanted generally. We have been told to believe that these blood-curdling cries on British streets somehow relate to spiritual struggle. This is in complete contravention of the view of the average British citizen, who rightly concludes that those shouting such slogans after the grim massacre of Jewish civilians might well be intending to show support for such actions and could even inspire further ones. Meanwhile, marchers have also referred to the rhetoric of the Battle of Khaybar, which of course celebrates the massacre of a Jewish Arabian tribe on account of its alleged betrayal of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. There can be no doubt what suggestions of repeating this could mean in the contemporary context.
The police have been made to look like fools on account of their attempts to convince themselves that black is white and white is black, to avoid making arrests in the name of preserving public order. The net effect has been to surrender the streets to the baying mob crying for the armies of Islam to re-conquer Palestine, in the apparent belief that this is a safer course of action than enforcing British law and supporting British public safety. The consequences of this threaten to be calamitous. Already, our spy chiefs have warned that this tragic conflict risks increasing the threat of terrorism in the United Kingdom. What message does the police backing off from enforcing the simplest of public order ordinances therefore send to those who might be inspired to carry out a terrorist attack?
Our policing authorities need to get a grip and restore confidence in their abilities to keep the streets safe, in the eyes of both a despairing general public and those who might be thinking of pushing the envelope still further in what they might be able to get away with. We should be under no illusions. British Jewish communities may be the first victims of the extremes seen thus far with worrying regularity in these marches, but they will not be the last. We are all in the firing line of such extremism and we ignore it at our peril.
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