Urgent Question (Commons) on
Israel-Hamas War: Diplomacy
Westminster Hall debate on
Israel and Palestine
Extracts from Lords QSD
on Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(Non-Afl):...Such
silence speaks volumes, none more shocking than in response to
the 7 October anti-Jewish pogrom in Israel
This was particularly tragic and ironic as the UN declaration was
precisely conceived in the shadow of the Holocaust, in which 6
million Jews were annihilated because they were Jews—a fact worth
stating as polling reveals that a fifth of the young think the
Holocaust a myth. Now that “never again” is now, you would expect
the human rights community to leap into leading denunciations of
the worst display of anti-Jewish bloodlust since the Nazi regime.
But despite filmed evidence of Jews raped, beheaded, burned alive
and worse, the UN human rights organisations stayed silent for
almost two whole months before condemning Hamas’s gruesome
butchery, and they remain tight-lipped about the remaining 130
hostages.
A few weeks ago there was a cartoon in the Yedioth Ahronoth
newspaper depicting an Israeli woman in bloody and torn clothes,
saying “Me too”, while a panel of three UN women were shown—one
covering her ears, one her eyes, another her mouth. Shameful.
Conversely, we must ask why the UN human rights organisations
have been anything but silent about Israel’s alleged human rights
violations in relation to Gaza, labelling the undoubted brutality
and suffering caused by war—arguably a just war—as genocide of
Palestinians, which is a misnomer. In doing so, human rights
advocates relativise the specific meaning of genocide, reducing
it to a meme, a placard, a slogan—too often deployed by western
activists as an anti-Semitic slur against our Jewish fellow
citizens.
How can we defend the UN human rights leadership, which only this
year appointed the UN ambassador for the Islamic Republic of Iran
to chair a UN conference on human rights, representing a country
whose morality police violently assault and lock up brave Iranian
women who dare show their hair in public? It is a country where
you can be hanged for insulting the Prophet Muhammad and
belittling the Koran. It is a brutal regime that, in the
immediate aftermath of 7 October, celebrated the Hamas terrorist
atrocities.
I am afraid that such selective double standards in terms of
whose human rights deserve attention and whose we ignore
undermine the principles of the UDHR. Some of the problem lies at
the heart of the human rights industry. I suggest to the Minister
that for the principles of the declaration to be promoted
genuinely we must stop looking the other way when human rights
are reduced to partisan weapons for politicised ends, and human
rights advocates are sometimes the problem.
(Con):...The noble
Baroness, Lady Fox, raised the current situation in Gaza
and Israel I understand
her frustration. Hamas can have no future in Gaza after its
appalling terrorist attacks. It must release all hostages without
delay, stop endangering the lives of Palestinians, and surrender
them. Together with the US, the UK has targeted Hamas with a new
tranche of sanctions in an effort to disrupt the group’s acts of
terror. As the Prime Minister has said, we must work with our
allies to provide the serious, practical and enduring support
needed to bolster the Palestinian Authority.
On the other side of that coin, Israel of
course, has a right to defend herself. The Foreign Secretary has
been clear that Israel’s actions must comply with international
humanitarian law and that it must take every step to minimise
harm to civilians. The Prime Minister has pressed Israel to ensure that its
campaign is targeted against Hamas fighters and military
objectives. The Foreign Secretary discussed this with the Israeli
President during his recent visit...
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