Lord Polak
Main Page: Lord Polak (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, I refer the House to my registered interests and my honorary position as the president of the CFI. I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Warner, on securing this debate and offer my noble friend the Minister congratulations and welcome her to the Dispatch Box—it may get easier.
I began my working career as a youth worker; I have my own children and a new precious granddaughter; I have helped to build schools; and I believe passionately that every child, wherever they may be in the world, deserves the best that they can get. It was in that spirit that I was more than happy to try to help my noble friend Lord Cope on the matter of the Palestine Youth Orchestra, which I totally supported.
As I will explain a little later, we here can do much to alleviate suffering, and I am confident that the excellent new Secretary of State for DfID, Priti Patel, will seize the opportunity to target our aid carefully to help those children who suffer. However, let me be very clear: we must not continue to profess Israel’s sole responsibility for the health and well-being of Palestinian children. By doing so, we continue to prolong the conflict by condemning the Palestinians themselves to perpetual helplessness. The suffering of Palestinian children is a tragic consequence of the extremist ideology that has been allowed to flourish in the Palestinian territories; we must recognise this in order to better the conditions in which they live.
The terror group Hamas, which calls in its founding charter for the destruction of the Jewish state, must take prime responsibility for the ongoing suffering of Gazan children. As the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, said, under the rule of Hamas at least 160 Palestinians have been killed while digging Hamas terror tunnels into Israel—including nine children, according to the Journal of Palestine Studies. Those Peers in this House who follow social media may see the latest Hamas video of excited children being taken on tunnel tours; I saw it this morning. I ask noble Lords: no incitement? Everyone is clear that the sole purpose of Hamas’s tunnels into Israel is to kill Israeli civilians. Do they really hate Israelis more than they care about the well-being of their own children?
Instead of building houses, schools and hospitals, Hamas has built a sophisticated infrastructure of terror. We should remember that, in the 2014 war, Hamas put Palestinian children in danger. In many cases, the rockets launched by Hamas fell short of their intended target—Israeli kindergartens—and instead landed in Gaza, killing Palestinian children. From firing rockets near hospitals to storing rocket in schools, Palestinian children were used as human shields throughout the conflict, defined as targets by the very people who should have protected them. I wish that there were no rockets; I wish that there were no tunnels, and as a result I know that there would be no retaliation.
In the West Bank, it is the Palestinian Authority that must stop polluting the minds of youngsters through its campaign of radicalisation. Any leadership that encourages children to take a knife and to kill another child purely because of their religion or race would be deemed despicable. Why is it viewed differently in the Palestinian territories, where the glorification of terror continues unabated? To dismiss this incitement as irrelevant is quite shameful.
Worrying reports have emerged about some of the NGOs that we in the UK support in the Palestinian territories. A number promote violence on their social media pages despite carrying out laudable activities in development and healthcare. One example is the Ibdaa Cultural Center, which receives £5,602 from the UK Government. It repeatedly glorifies on its Facebook page Palestinian terrorists who have killed Israelis, and it hosts events in their honour, inviting their families as special guests. A killer in the recent wave of violence, Muhannad Halabi, a terrorist who stabbed two Israelis to death and wounded two more, including a two year-old boy, was recently described as a martyr and his family were invited as honoured guests to an event hosted by the UK-funded NGO. This is the kind of rhetoric that Palestinian children are being subjected to—a community organisation that provides social, educational and health programmes for Palestinian children is consistently spreading the message that if you kill an Israeli you will be rewarded and martyred.
This brainwashing of Palestinian children to hatred and violence is a form of child abuse. The Palestinians must be condemned for denying their own children a better future. Surely UK aid to such NGOs, which in the vast majority of cases undoubtedly carry out good and important work, must be made conditional on the renouncement of all violence and incitement. In addition, DfID should monitor far more closely the social media presence and activism of NGOs funded by our taxpayers’ money and immediately address any concerning material that is found, so that we can safely reassure the public here that Britain is being a help to the Middle East peace process, not a hindrance.
The only way that future generations of Palestinian children will enjoy good health and well-being is for Palestinians and Israelis to recognise each other’s right to live within safe and secure borders. Yet less than 13% of DfID’s £1.17 million funding of Israeli and Palestinian NGOs goes towards projects that promote and foster peaceful co-existence. This amount is a mere 0.2% of the £72 million that we give in total, including our general budgetary support for the PA, despite its continued misuse. Our aid strategy has been flawed by its lack of support for projects bringing Israelis and Palestinians together.
Why not help to bring Palestinians and Israelis together while also saving lives? I refer to the charity that the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, talked of, Save a Child’s Heart. I have seen numerous times how this Israeli NGO brings Palestinian children from Gaza every Tuesday morning, and other desperately ill children from Africa, to have life-saving surgery in Holon, just outside Tel Aviv. As I say, I have seen first-hand, for more than 15 years, the co-operative efforts that have existed between the Save a Child’s Heart medical staff in Israel and the parents of sick children in Gaza.
Let us also support other projects, such as the Equaliser project—there are so many. I hope that the Minister will look in the future to supporting co-existence projects that will bring long-term stability to the region and increase the quality of life of the children involved.
Can the Minister update the House on the progress of DfID’s search for projects bringing together Palestinians and Israelis? Does she agree with me that the institutionalised radicalisation in the Palestinian territories sustains the conflict, and thus the suffering of Palestinian children? This suffering is, as I stated earlier, a tragic consequence of extremist ideology that has been allowed to flourish. We must recognise this and we must defeat it—if we do, the lives of so many children in the area will be improved enormously.