Proscription of Hezbollah

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation driven by an antisemitic ideology that seeks the destruction of Israel; notes that Hezbollah declares itself to be one organisation without distinguishable political or military wings; is concerned that the military wing of that organisation is proscribed, but its political wing is not; and calls on the Government to include Hezbollah in its entirety on the list of proscribed organisations.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased that my right hon. Friend is bringing this issue to the House. I do not know whether she is aware of this, but in December the Government held a debate on the extension of proscribed organisations. During that debate, the Minister for Security and Economic Crime told me that only the military organisation of Hezbollah was proscribed, but that Hezbollah supporters who engaged in terrorist activities in this country would be prosecuted.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that terrorist activities should not be the only grounds for prosecution, and that there should be prosecutions for incitement to hatred, incitement to anti-Semitism and other crimes that are being committed on the streets of London? As the Mayor of London has said, Hezbollah should be banned in its entirety.

[Joan Ryan]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend and I thank him for that intervention, which I take as 100% support for the motion.

I am the chair of Labour Friends of Israel, an organisation that has campaigned for many years on the issue that we are addressing. Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation, driven by anti-Semitic ideology, which seeks the destruction of Israel. It has wreaked death and destruction throughout the middle east, aiding and abetting the Assad regime’s butchery in Syria and helping to drive Iran’s expansionism throughout the region. It makes no distinction between its political and military wings, and nor should the British Government.

In 2010, the Obama Administration labelled Hezbollah

“the most technically capable terrorist group in the world”.

Over the past three decades, it has been implicated in a string of deadly attacks against Israeli, Jewish and western targets in the middle east and far beyond. Its operatives have been arrested for plotting or carrying out attacks across the globe, in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. The litany of death and violence widely attributed to Hezbollah includes the 1983 murder in Beirut of 241 American and 58 French peacekeepers; the 1986 wave of bombings against Jewish communal targets in Paris, in which 13 people died; the 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, in which 29 people died; the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Jewish mutual association, which led to the deaths of 85 people; the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in which 19 US servicemen lost their lives and nearly 500 people were injured; and the 2012 attack on a bus of Israeli tourists in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas, in which six people were murdered and for which two people finally went on trial last week.

Such terrorist acts are promoted, glorified and encouraged by the Hezbollah leadership. Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, has, for instance, praised suicide bombings—or “martyrdom operations”, as he prefers to describe them—as

“legitimate, honourable, legal, humanitarian and ethical actions”

saying that “those who love death” will triumph over those who fear it.