Israel/Gaza

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York. I pay tribute to him for his public statement last Monday and in particular for his message of support for the Jewish community here in the UK.

Although this excellent debate has ranged far and wide, I want to focus my remarks on matters rather closer to home. On Saturday night, I had two children in uniform. My son, who has now made his life in Israel, wore the uniform of the Israel Defense Forces. Like most 20 year-olds in Israel, he is doing military service. He personally saw the aftermath of Hamas’s atrocities, sights which no 20 year-old—in fact, no one—should see. But he is in uniform because, if he and his friends were not, there would not be an Israel. It really is that simple.

My other child in uniform was my daughter. Her uniform was trainers, jeans and a necklace with a Magen David—a Star of David—around her neck. That is her customary Saturday night uniform, in common with many teenage girls in north London, as they come into town on the Tube to enjoy this great city’s nightlife. I was more concerned about the safety of my daughter than of my son.

How on earth have we got to a place where I am more concerned about a teenage girl in London with a Star of David around her neck than my son in an army uniform in a country at war? There are three reasons: information, institutions and constitution. I will give an example of each.

The first is information. The BBC is not a state broadcaster, but it is a national broadcaster. I say this with genuine regret as a supporter of the BBC: in the past few weeks it has brought us national shame. I need not take time with the BBC’s abject failure to describe Hamas in plain English as what it is: a terrorist group. After an intervention from me and other noble Lords, the BBC announced that it had stopped calling Hamas “militants”—I am not making this up—because

“we have been finding this a less accurate description for our audiences as the situation evolves”.

A “less accurate description”—no further comment is necessary. However, last week the BBC reported, uncritically, and citing only Palestinian officials—which of course means Hamas—that Israel had struck the Al-Ahli hospital. But what the Israelis said at the time has now been corroborated: it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that hit the hospital. That defamatory report is still on the BBC website.

In our community we are used to some people, such as Mr Corbyn, parroting Hamas propaganda, but to have the BBC do it when it would not have done so with propaganda from ISIS or al-Qaeda led to real consequences, not just the cancellation of a summit in Amman but in this city too: Jewish schools closed, kosher restaurants smashed up, heightened security at every synagogue—and my daughter wondering whether it was safe to go on the Tube.

Others repeated that propaganda, including, I am afraid, a noble friend of mine, who tweeted not just that the Israelis had hit the hospital but that they had “targeted” it—a word she used twice. I called that out as a modern blood libel, and I am delighted that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury used the same language recently as well. But the damage was done. Other terrorist groups will have seen and taken note. So we should remember the old injunction: “Careless talk costs lives”.

The second is our institutions. The Jewish community has learned over the past two weeks who our many friends are. We have also seen who they are not. I will give just one short example: our universities. University Jewish societies no longer publicise where they are meeting. The address is handed out, samizdat fashion, shortly before the meeting. This is not some underground group in Soviet Russia but a Jewish society in this country in 2023.

Our universities have become centres of binary thinking, where you are either an oppressor or the oppressed. In the case of Israel, it would seem that oppressors include murdered babies and kidnapped grandmothers—although sometimes Hamas preferred to kidnap the babies and murder their grandmothers. Students and their professors will write long and apparently scholarly articles explaining how words are violence and silence is violence, but they now offer no words—only silence—in the face of not just violence but a pogrom. So if, when we face terrorism, careless talk costs lives, silence in the face of terrorism costs even more.

The third is our constitution. I do not mean the royal and political elements of our constitution. The moral lead shown by His Majesty the King in response to what went on, and his granting the Chief Rabbi a private audience, has resonated across the entire Jewish community, as has the principled stance taken by the Prime Minister, the leader of the Opposition and other political leaders. This is not a party-political issue.

The Jewish community is protected by law, but many currently feel that they are not protected by those whose job it is to enforce the law. The shout “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is not a nursery rhyme; it is a murderous rhyme because it calls for the destruction of Israel and, necessarily, its inhabitants. It is not a demand for the two-state solution in which I and so many others still believe. But the police have done nothing about it.

They did not even intervene when members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group that is illegal in many other western countries but is still legal here for some reason, chanted for jihad. I am aware that “jihad” has several meanings apart from armed struggle: it can refer to self-reflection, personal improvement and quiet meditation. But when it is chanted on the streets of London with a banner referring to Muslim armies liberating Palestine, and when the group’s website refers to

“heroic feats carried out by the heroic Mujahideen in the Blessed Land—Palestine”,

I simply do not understand how the Metropolitan Police concluded that that cry for jihad was not supporting or glorifying Hamas, which is a criminal offence.

Careless talk costs lives, but silence in the face of terrorism costs more. Police inaction will only encourage those who want to bring their violence and terrorism here. We need to change, to call out terrorism for what it is, to speak out against terrorists and their apologists here, and to act firmly to keep people—everyone—safe. The safety of my son in his army uniform is ultimately a matter for the Government of Israel, but the safety of my daughter on the Tube in London is a matter for our Government and this Parliament.

I conclude with this. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, quoted Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 15. The prophet there sees the matriarch Rachel in her resting place at Rama, so close to Bethlehem, weeping as the people of Israel are led past her as captives into exile, but she refuses to be comforted. As the noble and right reverend Lord said, that verse is repeated in the New Testament in Matthew, chapter 2, verse 18. There is a Jewish tradition that we do not end a biblical reading on a note of despondency, so I conclude by reciting the immediately following two verses in Jeremiah, as we all pray for the safe return of all the hostages:

“Thus saith the Lord; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord”—


veshavu vanim lig’vulam—

“thy children shall return to their own borders”.

Amen.