Holocaust Memorial Day

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown), who reminds us of the importance of the experiences in Rwanda. Just as there were echoes of the holocaust in Rwanda, as she shared with us the testimony of that particular family in Rwanda there were echoes of what happened to some of the people in the 7 October attacks: breasts slashed, people raped and brutality taking place in front of families. I thank her for sharing that.

When I used to deliver holocaust education as a secondary school history teacher, I used to put up pictures for my students of the holocaust and those appalling scenes that we all know too well. We used to show the video footage and the pictures of the gas chambers and of the bodies of murdered Jews piled high. Never did I think that I would have the experience in my lifetime of visiting the site of a pogrom and smelling the rotting flesh of Jewish people who had been murdered. That happened for me three and a half weeks after 7 October, when I visited Israel with my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord). That is a memory and a trip that will live with us all.

Although in my 14 years in Parliament I have taken a number of parliamentary trips, I have never undertaken a visit that has been more important to me—and important to me in my lifetime, not just as a Member of Parliament. We visited Kfar Aza, the kibbutz that the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) spoke about. It was founded by peaceniks and led by a peace-loving leader, who was also the chair of the regional council and who was picked out and shot by Hamas fighters on his own doorstep specifically because of his leadership of that peaceful group.

At the time of our visit we could still smell the blood and the flesh that was still rotting in that community. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon will attest, we also visited the base where the bodies—or should I say the body parts—were being identified. I do not think either of us will forget the emotions we felt when the doors were opened to where the bodies were being kept in the refrigerators. The wave of smell coming towards us was truly shocking. Having delivered education on the holocaust, I never thought that in my time I would bear testimony and see the bodies and smell murdered Jews. It was a truly horrendous visit, but one I am very proud to have made, and I am pleased to come back here and at least share that experience.

When I delivered that education on the holocaust to year 9 students, what did I teach? I taught them about boycotts and how people were told not to buy Jewish goods and products. I taught them about Jewish community facilities and synagogues being attacked. I taught them about how Jews used to huddle in dark spaces, about how they were held in captivity against their will and about the people shouting on the streets for the death of Jews. I taught them about how children were indoctrinated with hate against the children of Israel.

I am afraid all that is what we are seeing today across large parts of our own country and, indeed, across the west. We now see Jewish products in shops attacked. We have seen Jewish schools in Canada shot at, not on one occasion but on two occasions. We have seen Jewish businesses torched in other parts of the west and, of course, we have had marches on our own streets where people have called for the death of Jews.

It is the same message but in a different era. It is not the brownshirts of the Nazis on our streets or the streets of Europe, parading through screaming and shouting that society needs to be cleansed of Jews. They have been replaced, I am afraid to say, by hard-left activists and associated useful idiots—“useful idiots” is a polite way of describing them—calling for a socialist intifada. They are joined by progressives, LGBT groups and feminists, who would not last a second in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

The cries of, “The Jews are our misfortune” have been replaced on our streets by calls for jihad, calls for an intifada and demands for Muslim armies to rise up and fight Israel. It is no longer Nazis crossing international borders to murder and round up Jews; it is Islamist extremists in Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and, of course, in Hezbollah if it had its way. Those groups are as clear in their intentions to commit a genocide against the Jewish people as Adolf Hitler was in his ramblings. That is not to say that we do not still have a problem with far-right antisemitism and racism—of course we do—but it has now been joined by those sinister groups and alliances of Islamist extremists and hard-left activists.

What was the response to the atrocities on 7 October by some of those people? It was not to come out in sympathy after the events of that pogrom; it was to stand outside the Israeli embassy within hours demanding boycotts of the state of Israel. As I have called out before, I am afraid that even in this place some people have spent a lot of time on their feet criticising the response to the atrocities of 7 October and not a lot of time condemning those actions. We have seen that in the media and civil society. Football pundits and actors who have never uttered a word about Yemen or the 85,000 children killed there, or about Sudan and the millions of people displaced, find time to add their voices and offer us commentary on Israel, sometimes promoting ancient blood libels.

We have even had Members of this place tweeting about an attack on a hospital that never took place. A blood libel; Jewish bloodlust—that is what that feeds into. Some of them never apologised for that, of course. Yesterday, we even had somebody accusing the Prime Minister of having blood on his hands. Who has blood on their hands for 7 October? It is Hamas, and the thousands of civilians who followed those fighters into Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Kibbutz Be’eri and other communities and stepped over the bodies of murdered Jews to loot and pillage their homes. That is who has blood on their hands. Some people in this place would do well to remember that.

I have been attacked for daring to call people out for giving a free pass. I will continue to do that—the bile and hate for me that came up as a result does not bother me, including from people targeting my post on Holocaust Memorial Day with words such as “Zionist scum”. I am a proud Zionist. I have never been prouder to be a Jew or a Zionist. People attack my Facebook page and tell me about the “Zionist rat hostages” and that “Nobody cares about the Jews”—all because I dared to say freely, as I thought I had a right to do in this Chamber, that I thought some people were not contextualising the response of Israel with the events of 7 October and were giving a free pass to terrorists. I will go on doing that, because I will not be silenced by those who seek to bully me.

And from members of the community who would otherwise be screaming and shouting about the gender-based violence that took place on 7 October? Not a peep. Not a word. Why not? Is it just the pressure of people’s inboxes? Is it something deeper and more sinister? I do not know, but I find it hard to understand how that is not called out. Why is that gender-based violence not acknowledged? Why do we not have young people on the streets of this country marching against what happened to those young Jewish women on 7 October? The most brutal rapes, breasts sliced off, people shot and then raped—necrophilia—and under-age girls subjected to the most appalling abuse.

Look at our streets. What do we have? Nazi and Soviet-era propaganda marching down our streets, and it is not being tackled. The police stand by as people call for jihad. They say that it is about context. The anti-Zionist stuff on our streets is directly out of the Soviet propaganda playbook, which itself drew heavily from Nazi propaganda.

Look at what is happening in our schools. Just a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned at Prime Minister’s questions the letters being produced by pupils in our schools that included such phrases as, “I do not believe all Jews are bad”, and a phrase challenging a Member of Parliament on why they believed the western media narrative that Hamas were a terrorist organisation. Where is that coming from? It is coming not from the school but from within communities in this country.

In Jewish areas in this country, we have flags put up illegally that will not be brought down. I, like many hon. Members, have watched the 47-minute video of the slaughter of people on 7 October, and the same flag was proudly displayed on the breasts and lapels of Hamas fighters. That flag is not being removed in Jewish areas because people are scared. Councils are scared to remove them and cannot guarantee the safety of people who take them down. Imagine if we had swastikas up. How long would they last? I am not comparing the two flags—of course not—but in a Jewish area where concerns have been raised about these triggering incidents, something that would be so triggering in a different way would be dealt with very quickly. We have seen that across the west.

What do I want from my Government? What do I want from this country? I want it to stand up for the values that I thought it stood for. I want the right to have a different view without being subjected to threats of violence. I know that many Members of Parliament who have a different view on this have had their offices and inboxes targeted, and have been threatened. Those are not the values of Britain. The values of Britain are that we allow and respect people’s right to have a different view. That is what I want my Government to protect.

I want to feel safe on the streets. I want Jewish people in this country to feel safe coming into central London on a weekend, which they do not at the present time. I want our democratic values to be defended. I want to live in a country in which children are not brainwashed with hate—be it hate against Jews, hate against members of the Muslim community, or any other hate. I want a Government and institutions that stand up and say, “That is not acceptable and we will do something about it”—not just standing up and saying, “We all condemn it,” but actually doing something about it.

I leave Parliament this year. I have never felt more ashamed or sadder about the state of some of our institutions, about our democracy and about people’s right to express their views freely without fear of being subject to violence or threats of violence. That is what is currently happening on our streets—it has happened on other issues as well—and it is dangerous.

In the time that I have, I want to refer to two holocaust survivors I met this week. One is Eve Kugler, who spoke at the Foreign Office event this week. She gave us examples, which are all too familiar today, of growing up in Germany and of experiencing Kristallnacht. Her father was taken off to Buchenwald but, fortunately, the whole family were eventually able to escape. So much of her story and testimony rings true today with regard to boycotts, the smashing of Jewish businesses and all the rest.

I also want to mention briefly John Hajdu, another survivor I met this week. He was born into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, in 1937. He shared with me his experience of being hidden in a cupboard by a non-Jewish neighbour. Again, that rings true with 7 October, when Jewish children on those kibbutzim were hidden in cupboards—it did not save some of them, of course. After hiding, John was eventually forced to live in the ghetto. Those who were not taken to concentration camps were forced into about 290 buildings, where at least 20 people lived in each overcrowded flat. He described the situation there as pretty grim, as Members would imagine; his experience was horrific, but fortunately during the liberation of Budapest, he was freed, minutes before the ghetto was about to be blown up

As I recounted those two stories, they made me think that John and Eve at least have one fortunate thing that some of the people who were affected by 7 October do not have: they lived to tell their story. Right now in Gaza, there are Jewish people who do not have a voice—who cannot tell their story. Those are the 136 hostages who remain, and in the brief time I have, I would like to name just a few of them. I would like to name all of them, but I appreciate that that is not going to be possible today.

I think particularly of Liri Albag, Karina Ariev and Noa Argamani—who, as Members will remember, was the young girl on the motorbike, seen pleading to her boyfriend as she was whisked away into Gaza. Her mother is dying and wants her daughter home, but Hamas refuse to release her. I think of Romi Gonen, Carmel Gat, Inbar Haiman, Judi Weinstein, Arbel Yehud, Maya Goren and Doron Steinbrecher. I think of Daniela Gilboa, 19 years old, Naama Levy, 19 years old, and Agam Berger, 19 years old—all women held currently by Hamas. I think of the Bibas family, the ginger-haired family; Members might remember the little baby who turned a year old in captivity, his parents, and of course his brother Ariel.

I think of Omer Shem Tov, the 21-year-old Israeli at the Nova music festival. I met his mother in early November: she was desperate for news about her son and utterly distraught. Of course, he has no voice today in this place, and neither do so many others. I think of Amiram Cooper, 85 years old; Oded Lifshitz, 83; Gadi Moses, 79; and Shlomo Mantzur, 85—people who are not too different from my parents’ ages. They should be at home with their families, enjoying the peaceful life of their retirement and their dotage. Of course, it is not just Israelis who are held: Bipin Joshi is a Nepalese citizen, and Avera Mangisto is a Tanzanian. There are so many other names I wish I could mention—Shlomi Ziv, Tsachi Idan, Matan Zangauker, Andrey Kozlov, Ohad Ben Ami, Sahar Baruch, Uriel Baruch, Ziv Berman, Gali Berman, Rom Braslavski—but of course, I cannot name them all today.

As I end my contribution, those are the people I will be thinking about: the Jews who do not have a voice, who again are being held as Jews were held 80 or 90 years ago, in dark tunnels, in cupboards and in cages, as we have heard. How is this happening again? It is now 2024, and here we are again: Jew hate, which never really went away, is manifesting itself for all to see in all of its gory, disgusting detail.