My Lords, less than two weeks ago, I commenced our party conference by reading Psalm 122.1 read the words:
“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: They shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, And prosperity within thy palaces”.
For over 40 years, I have been taking groups to visit Israel to walk the pathway where our saviour walked and where one day my saviour will return.
The attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas gunmen on 7 October was nothing less than pure evil. The Hamas attacks were marked by murder, kidnapping, rape and torture. As others have said, it was the bloodiest day in the history of the State of Israel, with the murder of 1,400 civilians, including 260 young people at a music festival, and thousands wounded both physically and mentally, and over 200 hostages taken. Indeed, it was the greatest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust.
Sadly, just like the Holocaust deniers of the past, there are many across the world who totally blinker themselves and peddle the narrative that Israel was to blame for this slaughter of the innocents; or they try to minimise the magnitude of the atrocities carried out by these hate-filled fanatics who invaded Israel with the intent of butchering, burning and capturing innocent civilians. We cannot allow this dangerous propaganda to go unanswered. The undisputable truth is that numerous heavily armed Hamas terrorists with murder in their hearts entered into different Israeli villages and left unbelievable carnage behind them. They did so unashamedly, cheering as they recorded their actions in order to gloat over their atrocities—yes, they recorded the innocent being shot, stabbed, tortured and burned. They bound, gagged and riddled with bullet holes the bodies of young and old. Hamas celebrated the beheading of men, women, children and babies, and yet there are those within our society who seek to justify these actions.
Let me make it clear that those who claim that the Hamas gunmen were soldiers fighting for a just cause are totally deceived. They were evil assassins who murdered the elderly, disabled, children and babies; they raped women, even abusing a dead young woman’s body, having been instructed to kill anyone and everyone. The inhumanity of their actions is unbelievable yet true and it must be condemned by all. Noble Lords may ask how such inhumanity could happen in 2023. Hamas’s stated aim is the obliteration or annihilation of Israel, not peaceful co-existence with Israel. Its actions are therefore taken seeking to achieve its evil ends.
Those who planned this attack did so to cause maximum fear and distress to innocent civilians. Over recent years Israel has been bombarded with numerous rockets fired from Gaza and Lebanon, but what happened on 7 October was completely different. Hamas carefully planned its attack; it knew when and where it would happen and had every opportunity to make preparation for the needs of its own people—the Palestinian people whom it claims to represent. Yet, within days of the attack, the news media talked endlessly about shortages of food, fuel, water, medical supplies; in other words, shortages of everything—but let us note carefully, no shortages of rockets. These are still in plentiful supply.
Why did Hamas not make preparations to feed or alleviate the suffering of its own people? If the truth is told, it did not care. Indeed, the truth is that the Hamas terrorist organisation has been happy to use and abuse the Palestinian people, making them human shields and using their grievous suffering as a part of its propaganda machine to suck in a receptive world.
Even parts of our own media are afraid to call out Hamas as a terrorist organisation and content to call its murderers “militants” or “fighters”. There is absolutely no excuse for creating the impression of a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel’s armed forces. When the hospital was bombed in Gaza the world’s news media were quick to blame Israel but, when independent sources as well as government agencies researched the evidence, this was found to be totally untrue. The blast at the hospital was from a missile fired in Gaza and hundreds of Palestinians paid the price with their innocent lives, yet Hamas used this tragedy to stir up anti-Israeli hatred across the world and, even after evidence has been produced to the contrary, the narrative has not changed.
The State of Israel has a right to defend its citizens from terrorism, and its fight is a fight for survival. Israel cannot co-exist with Hamas, which is out to annihilate it. Either Israel will defeat and wipe out Hamas or Hamas will continue to destroy Israel. We in Northern Ireland were subjected to countless acts of terrorism from the IRA, an evil organisation with terrorist links with Hamas. It too carried out barbaric acts of terror. It too murdered babies, abducted and killed innocent civilians, some of whose bodies have never been recovered.
The people of Palestine are indeed suffering, and a mother’s tears there are the same as in any other area of conflict, but the Israeli Government have exhorted the innocent to leave the Hamas enclave before they attack the enemy. The people living in the villages of
Israel were not given that warning. Hamas ordered its terrorists to kill, kill, kill without mercy, to behead or do whatever they liked against peaceful civilians and glory in their evil deeds.
It is deeply worrying to see that anti-Semitic attacks in this country have increased sevenfold from the same period last year. Will the Minister ensure that His Majesty’s Government continue to protect Jewish people living in the United Kingdom and take resolute action against those who seek to threaten them?
As I said earlier, this is a fight for Israel’s survival. I stand with the people of Israel and pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
8.28 pm