Palestinian Territories

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, for securing this debate and refer to my entries in the register of interests.

We may differ in our opinions, but this debate surely shows that we are united in our sorrow at the tragic situation that the world saw played out on the Gaza border only a few days ago. I seek neither to judge nor to justify the Israeli response, only to attempt to rationalise why a country would seek to defend itself so robustly. Israel has been accused of using excessive force. Fear often informs the use of force, so I simply ask: can anyone accuse Israel of excessive fear? What might excessive fear look like? I wonder whether it might look like the reaction I had when I saw the crematorium at the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp on my recent trip to Poland with March of the Living. Abandoned intact by the Nazis as they fled the rapid Soviet advance, the ovens, the pipework and valves were practical and almost pristine, a model of German engineering—so much so that the ovens looked as if they could be turned back on tomorrow. I saw the unimaginable with my own eyes and it terrified me.

It is so much easier to criticise Israel from the safety of this Chamber rather than imagining ourselves as Israelis in one of the 28 communities living within five kilometres of the Gaza border fence. The noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, and my noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton mentioned the Israeli kindergarten that was fired on with a mortar recently. I wonder whether we would accuse the parents of the young children attending that kindergarten of excessive fear. The leader of Hamas recently declared that he would,

“take down the border and tear out their”—

the Israelis—“hearts from their bodies”. Was he talking about soldiers? No. In the 24 hours before infiltration attempts on 14 May, maps were distributed on Gazan social media detailing the fastest route to reach Israeli civilians in the closest communities to the fence.

I cannot accuse Israel of excessive fear. The Hamas terrorist regime hates Israel just for being. It is a hatred that we have never encountered. Israel’s citizens’ fear is commensurate with the actual threat and with the trauma of knowing that their people were victims of attempted annihilation within the lifetimes of some noble Lords; we are honoured to be joined by a Holocaust survivor today.

Like all who have spoken, I long for peace, but would the Minister agree that the Hamas terrorist regime’s violent rejection of Israel’s right to exist is a recipe not for peace but for the perpetuation of suffering?