Israel/Gaza

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I thank those in this House who have extended support, sympathy and understanding during these past two terrible weeks. I particularly appreciate the mention by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury of my young relative Yosef Guedalia, whose relatives he met in Israel last week and whose great-grandparents suffered in the Holocaust.

My theme today is that the root of the problem is education. The creation of Israel and the displacement of population is and was nothing out of the ordinary in the 20th century. There was the partition of India and Pakistan because Muslims and Hindus could not co-exist, which created at least 14 million displaced persons and 1 million deaths. A million Irish entered the UK; hundreds of thousands of Poles had to settle elsewhere; 40% of Greek Cypriots were displaced by the Turkish invasion; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, said, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from most countries in the Middle East, leaving no one of the Jewish faith in the countries from which they were expelled, even though 2 million Arabs are living in Israel. All the many displacements and refugees that I have referred to were settled, with one exception. It is not because a state of Palestine has been denied—that has been offered and rejected four times—but because the Islamists cannot accept having any Jews living in the Middle East at all.

The cure for these problems lies in the Middle East. Will the Minister ask Qatar to continue its benevolent intervention? Will he encourage the countries of the Middle East to continue, not abandon, the Abraham accords? Will he ask the many countries in the Middle East where Palestinian refugees are living in dire conditions —most notably Lebanon, Syria and Egypt—to settle them? Why should there be refugee camps 50 years after they arrived there? They should be given citizenship and allowed to work and have an education, as they are not in Lebanon. That would not rule out their return to a state of Palestine one day, but they should not be kept in a state of dejection as human pawns.

I come to a further aspect of education. The Minister said of the Holocaust, “That was then and this is now”, but that is not the case. There is a straight line from one to the other. Holocaust education and memorialising has almost wholly missed the mark. It is fruitless to cast the Holocaust as a self-contained episode in the past. The learning centre—such a misnomer—planned for Westminster would have visitors believe that it was all the Nazis, it was all in the past, it was just a question of not hating and not being a bystander, and that here in the UK it is clear that democracy protects against genocide. That is simply not true. The erection of barriers around the Berlin memorial is a portent of things to come. The hatred and anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust are bubbling under again today, and once again there is too much apathy and failure to recognise the old hatred. As David Baddiel said, “Jews don’t count” when it comes to stamping out today’s hatred and racism.

I am sorry to say that some of the worst is in our universities. I hear all the time of sad episodes: in Portsmouth an academic is excusing Hamas; a recent NUS report on anti-Semitism in universities is all too sadly being borne out today; there are rampages around universities; there is a motion at the University and College Union calling for “intifada until victory”; and Cambridge and UCL are calling for a mass uprising against Israel. These young people had Holocaust education. I call on the Government to start an overhaul of that education. It should be Jewish history education, setting the Holocaust in context, as the late lamented Lord Sacks called for. Young people should be taught what happened before the Holocaust, of the Jewish contribution to civilisation and what happened afterwards, culminating in the establishment of Israel. We have a Black History Month; why can we not have a Jewish history month, or at least a curriculum?

Finally, as others have said, Iran is behind all of this. It has created its axis of resistance. The Government should stop appeasing Iran, and make sure that it gets no closer to its nuclear ambitions and that sanctions are applied. They should call on the rest of the countries in the Middle East to follow that lead—to be humanitarian towards Gaza and to work for peace and the end of this conflict. It lies in the countries of the Middle East.