Israel/Gaza

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his opening remarks and all noble Lords who have spoken. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Oates. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. I declare my interests as a British Jew, an adviser to the Chief Rabbinate Trust and a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel and the Jewish Leadership Council.

Every day I grieve for the suffering and death of Israelis and Palestinians, and I pray for the hostages. Hamas murder squads, claiming to represent the Palestinian people, invaded Israel with the express purpose of killing, torturing or kidnapping civilians. I never would have believed that we would witness a pogrom against Jews in my lifetime. My family was nearly all wiped out by anti-Semitic hatred in the 1930s and 1940s. To then witness these murders being supported, celebrated and glorified by Palestinians in Gaza and their supporters around the globe has shaken me to the core. “Why?” I ask myself again and again. Do these Hamas terrorists really have the support of the Palestinian or Arab majority? They were elected, and opinion polls suggest they may still have support.

Those who glorify Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizb ut-Tahrir and their ilk are a threat not just to Israel or to Jews but to all of us, as my noble friend Lord Harrington said. Israel has always wanted to live in peace with its neighbours, but a first step to achieving that must be to have a partner on the Palestinian side wanting the same. Peace is a duet, not a solo.

As my noble friend Lord Leigh said, Israel left Gaza, dismantled the settlements and wanted the Palestinians to have a prosperous future, and all it has received in return is terror. If the Palestinian people do not really support the actions of Hamas but are frightened to speak up, as ordinary Germans were in the 1930s while the Nazis increasingly threatened Jews, Israel must have the courage to rid them of Hamas once and for all. If Hamas really does have majority support, Israel must anyway destroy further Hamas threats and help the Palestinian people recognise that extremism brings only misery, not a better life.

Israel and Jews are not the Palestinian people’s enemies, but what can Israel do to achieve peace? Since 7 October, there are those who defend Hamas actions or even blame Israel. As the noble Lord, Lord Austin, said, we are already seeing frightening disinformation, such as videos denying survivors’ accounts.

Israel is the only Jewish state. It has known nothing but rejection by most of its Arab neighbours since its inception, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, explained. As long as Israel’s right to exist is not accepted, what can it do but keep defending itself? If Hamas continues to fire missiles aimed at Israel’s civilians from sites among, next to or directly underneath its own children, what else can Israel do other than warn civilians to leave and then do what it must to stop the attacks, dismantle the rockets and show its people that Jews will not submit to torture and murder, as millions did in the Nazi horrors?

Jews yearn for peace; we pray for it every day. Jews have accepted being expelled from Arab countries where their families had lived for centuries, and have settled elsewhere. This is a bleak time for us as Jews. Are our children safe on our streets, in our universities and in other western countries, as the plague of anti-Semitism has resurfaced? Support for Hamas and Palestinian fighters is a threat to us all, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, said—not just Jews. If Islamic extremists are not defeated, we are all in danger. If brutal oppression succeeds in eradicating Israel, the only westernised democracy, and, as others have said, if Russia succeeds in defeating Ukraine, our way or life, our freedoms and our values are all in peril.

Hamas has never honoured international humanitarian law. If Israel cannot protect its citizens by ridding Gaza of the Hamas rockets—made, by the way, with some of the water pipes provided for Gazans by western aid—a new standard for horrific assaults against Jews is established in our time. International commentators already seemingly consider the repeated rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel as somehow acceptable, on the apparent justification that its Iron Dome can shoot them down, even though civilians are still killed.

This cannot persist. Decades of wishful thinking that Hamas’s charter calling to kill Jews is just rhetoric has been a delusion. The Palestinian leadership is anti-Semitic: Mahmoud Abbas has repeated anti-Semitic canards and blamed the Jews for the Holocaust because of, apparently, their social role. He rewards Palestinian terrorists for attacking Israelis. They just want Israel to disappear. Well, Israel cannot disappear. Jews have no other homeland. Israel must defend its civilians against missile attacks and targeted torture.

I pray for all in the region, but I have no doubt that Israel must and will do its utmost to pave the way for a peaceful two-state solution. Am Yisrael Chai—may Israel and its people live.