Military Co-operation with Israel
Debate between Imran Hussain and Jeremy Corbyn(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) for securing the debate, as well as the authoritative way in which he introduced it. Last night, 400 more people died in Gaza as a result of direct bombardment in breach of the ceasefire. At the same time, Israel is denying access to food, water and supply of electricity to the people of Gaza, who are now going through the most ghastly time ever, on top of all the horrors they have been through over more than a year. So many people—69,000—are now known to be dead there, and more bodies are found every day that rubble is cleared away. Those who survive will forever live with survivor’s guilt for the fact that they survived while all their friends and family died around them. This is devastation beyond belief on live television all around the world. We watch people being starved to death in front of our very eyes, while there is food aplenty just a few kilometres away, deliberately denied to them by a decision of Israel. That is a war crime. We have to be quite clear about that.
In a statement in the Chamber yesterday, in response to the G7 summit that the Foreign Secretary had attended, I asked a specific question about international law and the war crimes that I believe Israel has committed. He, it seemed to me, conceded that Israel was in breach of international law. That is quite significant. Presumably, there are many Foreign Office briefings going around saying that Israel is in breach of those laws.
That leads to the second question: if we, as a country, knowingly accept that Israel is in breach of international law and continue to provide it with the weapons with which people can be killed in Gaza then we ourselves, as a country, also become complicit in breaches of international law. Those laws are there for a purpose, to try to prevent genocide and the crimes against humanity that are happening before our very eyes.
Imran Hussain
The right hon. Member makes a powerful case. Does he agree that the international dimensions of the situation are so clear, with the ICJ investigating genocide and the International Criminal Court investigating war crimes, even though it continues to be attacked for that, that there is no room for any nation to deny this serious international situation? Secondly, would he agree that silence, frankly, goes with hypocrisy and double standards?