Israel/Gaza

Lord Grabiner Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grabiner (CB)]

My Lords, I want to speak about proportionality and the position of Iran. I commend the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, as to the meaning of lawful self-defence in international law. If I may respectfully say so, for anybody interested in the subject it is essential reading.

As to proportionality, it is not helpful to examine this concept in the abstract by reference to dictionaries or lexicons; the context is critical. On the weekend of 7 to 8 October, Hamas entered Israel, ISIS style, and engaged in the slaughter, rape, beheading and hostage taking of civilians. Israel’s response has produced great hardship to Gazans, including many who must be innocent of wrongdoing. Israel has also conducted hundreds of bombing raids on Hamas targets. I believe that it has made best efforts to minimise the suffering of those Gazans who are not terrorists. That is the key difference between the Israeli approach—to preserve innocent life wherever possible—and Hamas, whose avowed objective is to kill Jews.

Gaza is a small and densely populated enclave. As Hamas well knows, it is obvious that Gazans would be killed or injured because Hamas fires rockets from locations near schools and hospitals hoping to secure worldwide sympathy when Israeli efforts to destroy the source of the firing inevitably result in the death of innocent Gazans. The Al-Ahli Anglican hospital episode has been referred to and is instructive. The loss of life and the related damage to the car park at the hospital were the result of a misfired missile from the cemetery located close to the hospital. There was no Israeli bomb, the missile did not hit the hospital and 500 people were not killed. The journalistic performance of the BBC over this episode was appalling. It also led to unfair international criticism of Israel. It was a piece of fake news. In the Spectator, and with reference generally to the performance of the BBC, the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, described the journalism as moral blindness. I completely agree.

Two points come out of that episode. First, Hamas is exclusively responsible for what happened. Secondly, firing missiles from the vicinity of a hospital is an example of Hamas’s indifference to the loss of Palestinian life. From Israel’s perspective this war, as others have said, is about survival. Hamas is committed to the “obliteration” of the State of Israel—that is the word in Hamas’s founding constitutional document. The determination to destroy the State of Israel is reflected in the offensive chant that we are now familiar with, which other noble Lords have mentioned: “From the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea”. That means only one thing: the end of Israel.

The motivation for the timing of the Hamas action was to ensure, if possible, the termination of negotiations designed to bring about the normalisation of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel and to scupper progress towards a two-state solution. Unfortunately, Hamas has achieved some success in that endeavour. Peaceful relations and international harmony do not figure in the Hamas agenda. In my view, debate about proportionality at this time and in these circumstances is essentially meaningless. I will make the point rhetorically and crudely—I hope noble Lords will forgive me. How many deaths sustained on the Hamas side would be within the limit of what would be acceptably proportionate? That is an insoluble equation.

Repeated references to proportionality, often in the context of demands for Israel to cease fire, merely obscure the underlying problem. Hamas is fully operational. Even as we speak, rockets from Gaza have not ceased to rain down on Israel since hostilities began. Apart from the release of four hostages, no word has been heard from Hamas about the other 222 hostages. Why does Hamas not let them go? Why is it keeping them? This is a gross breach of international law. Israel has an absolute right to defend herself. Israel’s response can not fairly—or even honestly, I would say—be described as disproportionate. It is easy to bandy about the word “proportionate,” but when you think about it, the complexity associated with its application in this context is not fathomable. It has actually become a clichéd mantra.

The other point I want to deal with is the position of Iran. Iran professes to be uninvolved with what happened on that October weekend, but this is nonsense. We know Hamas has been financially and militarily resourced by Iran. There have been reports of Farsi having been spoken during the Hamas incursion, which suggests that the Iranian guard were participants from the outset. We also know that the October weekend was carefully planned. Interventions, including drones, were used, which shut down the defences that would have alerted Israelis to the imminent threat. The level of sophistication in the planning and the use of electronic jamming techniques must have come from Iran. Iran is the Hamas puppet master. It performs a similar function in Lebanon, a broken state, via Hezbollah, another proscribed terrorist group.

Fortunately, the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom are alert to the Iranian threat. President Biden has made it clear that a third-party intervention will not be tolerated. This has been backed up with a United States and British naval presence, now located in the eastern Mediterranean. Our own Government are to be complimented for their steadfast and swift response.

This is a depressing and deeply distressing story, not least because the problem is apparently intractable. I paraphrase the famous observation of Golda Meir to the effect that a solution will be found only when Hamas learns to love Palestinian children more than it hates Jews. If you believe, as I do, that the State of Israel is entitled to exist and to defend its borders and its people against this evil, you will support the position of Israel. I hope that your Lordships share this view.