(CB) [V]:...I quote Yehuda Bauer, an Israeli historian
who himself escaped from a possible holocaustand
was able to get to Palestine in the days when the United Kingdom
prevented most refugees entering Palestine. He said:
“Politics that are not based on moral considerations are, at the
end of the day, not practical politics at all. It is out of these
considerations that I beg you to permit me to repeat here what I
said, exactly eight years ago, in a speech to the German
Bundestag: I come from a people that gave the Ten Commandments to
the world. Let us agree that we need three more commandments, and
they are these: thou shalt not be a perpetrator; thou shalt not
be a victim; and thou shalt never, but never, be a bystander.”
He writes in a new book:
“I can no longer bear the speeches void of content and packed
with clichés of presidents, prime ministers, rabbis and others …
What does it actually mean to say ‘Never again’ when genocides
keep recurring? It’s just an empty slogan.”
We are learning that in this country. holocaust
remembrance is a major event every year, but building monuments
will not do it. There are countless memorials around the world to
genocide and atrocities, but they do not help the victims or
teach other countries to change their behaviour. We cannot block
China because of the unfortunate structure of the Security
Council...
(CB)
[V]:...It was conceived in the mid-1940s as a reaction against
the holocaust that the Nazis’
policy of extermination had created in Europe. It was assumed
that it would be enough to require the contracting parties to
enact the necessary legislation and, having done so, to require
them to bring those within their jurisdiction who were charged
with genocide to trial. But we can now see, in today’s world, how
ineffective and perhaps naive this relatively simple convention
is...
(CB):...When the Minister says that he has unequivocal opposition
to genocide in all its forms and that is the Government’s
position, I do not doubt that. I applaud it. I referred earlier
to the remarks of the noble Lord, , and the unequivocal stand that he has
taken on these issues. But the question for me, therefore, is:
what can we do about it? It is almost as though the spirit—the
shadow—of Raphael Lemkin has been here throughout the debate. My
noble friend Lady Falkner was the first to mention Lemkin, but so
did the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and others. Raphael Lemkin
lost 49 of his relatives—49 people were murdered in the
holocaust who were direct
relatives of his—and coined this word: genocide. It is not a word
to be used lightly. Again, I think it was the noble Baroness,
Lady Smith, who made this point, rightly: it is not hyperbole.
This is a word that should be used only in very extreme
circumstances. That is why the amendment is crafted to do
precisely that...
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