Middle East

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as vice-chairman of the New Israel Fund UK and as a former chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club.

When I attended the annual NIF human rights award dinner last November, I was privileged to hear the son of Yitzhak Rabin calling for greater efforts to promote peace, and award winners, who included an Arab-Israeli woman who worked with, among others, Russian Jewish immigrants and a Jewish man who worked with Israeli Arabs who was opposed to the price tag extremists. It occurred to me that, sadly, it was virtually impossible to conceive of any other country in the region for which a human rights award ceremony could be held. The sad loss of life in Gaza has been exceeded more than a hundredfold in Syria, where more people have been displaced than the total population of Israel.

I am not an admirer of the present Israeli Government, though as someone with a particular interest in the position of Israel’s Arab citizens I welcome its overdue decision substantially to invest in improving their conditions and opportunities—a view shared by an Arab member of the Knesset I recently met. For all its faults, Israel’s democracy is still functioning.

I have asked more than one advocate of BDS whether they were aware that the judge who presided over the trial of a former president of Israel was an Israeli Arab, and whether they could conceive of a Jewish judge performing a similar role in any of Israel’s neighbours.

Protest is legitimate, but I reject the moral relativism of those who are loud in their condemnation of Israel but whose protests against the brutality of Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers, or the dictatorial regimes in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf whom we supply with weapons, are rarely audible or visible to the naked eye.

Peace across the region requires a commitment to democracy and human rights in every country and for people of every faith and nationality. The UK’s foreign policy, including its arms sales, must reflect that commitment.