Hamas Attacks: First Anniversary

Luke Akehurst Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jon Pearce]

The clarion call from this Parliament is “Bring them home.” Hamas were indiscriminate in their killing and in those that they dragged back to their terror tunnels in Gaza. They range from nine-month-old Kfir Bibas and four-year-old brother Ariel to 85-year-old Shlomo Mansour. Shlomo survived the 1941 Farhud pogrom in Iraq and emigrated to Israel at the age of 13. On 7 October, Shlomo was kidnapped from his home at the small, quiet kibbutz of Kissufim.

Last month I met Shlomo’s granddaughter, Noam. I also met Eviatar David’s mother, Galia, and brother, Ilay. On 7 October, 23-year-old Eviatar was seized at the Supernova festival. His family and friends hold weekly dance and jam sessions in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square to raise awareness of his continuing plight. I also met Sharone Lifshitz, the daughter of 85-year-old Yocheved and 84-year-old Oded. On 7 October the couple were taken from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. Yocheved was freed after two weeks, but Oded remains in captivity. Oded has spent his life campaigning for peace and Palestinian rights.

[Luke Akehurst (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate on this profoundly sad occasion. I wish to draw attention to a thread that has gone through everything he said, which relates to the nature of the communities on the Gaza border that were attacked. One of the tragic ironies is that this was an attack on communities that were almost all kibbutzim and moshavim. These were idealistic communities founded on a co-operative ethos, the residents of which practised what they preached about co-existence and peace. I visited such communities in peacetime. They are bucolic and idealistic. The people there spoke about sending money across the border to people they knew in Gaza through third countries, in order to support them. They organised transport to hospitals for people from Gaza. They were people straining every sinew to bring about peace and who believed in a two-state solution. I cannot stop thinking about the horrors that were visited on them that day. I thank my hon. Friend for giving us the opportunity to honour the memory of the people who suffered on that day.

[Jon Pearce]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and could not agree more with his experience of the kibbutz. In July 2023 I visited Kibbutz Kfar Aza, which was founded by the Mizrahi refugees from Morocco and Egypt in 1951. The kibbutz is so close to Gaza that it is possible to hear the mosques’ call to prayer. Over lunch with the kibbutzniks, they told us about the ever-present danger of rocket attacks and the terror tunnels that Hamas had attempted to dig nearby. They also spoke of their compassion for the ordinary people of Gaza just a couple of miles away.