Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism — House of Commons, 2021-11-24
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Edward Jenrick (Conservative, Centre-right): I take this opportunity—my first—to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister on his appointment to the role, which I can see that he is already performing exceptionally well, as I would expect. I thank him and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for their decision to proscribe Hamas in its entirety, which I strongly support. I also thank the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds); the shadow Foreign Secretary, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy); and the Leader of the Opposition for their important decision to support the Home Secretary’s decision, which is to be welcomed wholeheartedly Last week, a young man, as we heard earlier—Eli Kay, a 26-year-old tour guide—was murdered as he was doing his business, walking around the old city in Jerusalem. His grandparents are well-respected members of the West Hampstead Jewish community, and he had deep links here in the United Kingdom. I think all of us would send our best wishes and our deepest condolences to his grandparents and all those who knew him here in the UK. He was murdered by a Hamas terrorist—a Hamas terrorist who purported to be from the political wing of that organisation. That one young man’s brutal, unexpected and unexplainable death goes some way to explain why we as a country need to be proscribing the whole of the organisation that that murderer, that terrorist belonged to. I cannot reach into the heart of that individual and explain what motivated him to take the life of Eli Kay. I do not think any of us here can. That is terrorism—that is the unexplainable impact of terrorism. It is pure evil. We cannot accommodate terrorism. When someone uses the slaughter of innocent people to advance a political cause or a supposed political cause, at that point that cause becomes immoral and unjust, and they and the organisation that they stand for have to be eliminated from serious debate and serious discussion We have to take this issue seriously, and I am afraid at times in this country we do not. We have seen, just in the last few weeks, two very serious terrorist incidents. Most deeply we felt, of course, the loss of our friend and former colleague Sir David Amess, and of course we have seen a very serious incident—albeit one that could have been all the more serious—in Liverpool. We do not know, and it is not our role right now to speculate on, the true causes and motivations of either of those incidents, but we know enough to say that they were motivated by extremist individuals. That, again, should give us cause to redouble our efforts here to tackle extremism in all its forms, and that is why I think this effort, this move is so important As my right hon. Friend the Minister has said, the distinction between the political and the military wing of this organisation has for a very long time been entirely artificial, just as it was with Hezbollah, which we took similar action to proscribe in its entirety just a couple of years ago. It was an absurdity that, during the al-Quds Day rally, an individual could march through the streets of London shouting antisemitic remarks and waving the flag of Hezbollah, but get away with it because it was the flag of the political wing of Hezbollah, not the military wing. For exactly the same reasons as the former Home Secretary took action against Hezbollah, it is absolutely right that the current one does the same with respect to Hamas This action will be welcomed in the United Kingdom and by our friends and allies around the world, not just in the west—where the European Union, the United States, Australia and other countries have already done this—but in a number of Gulf states. I was in Bahrain at the weekend, and I can assure my right hon. Friend and Members of this House that the Government there support this action. It is entirely in line with what is happening in the middle east today. When I was in Bahrain on Saturday, I visited a synagogue with the former Bahraini ambassador to the United States who is both a woman and a Jew, and is now a senior member of the Government in Bahrain. Thanks to the Abraham accords, the whole atmosphere in much of the middle east is beginning to change This hatred between Muslims and Jews is a product of history, which we must consign to history. Organisations such as Hamas that stand for that hatred must be treated as the terrorist organisations they are. We only need to look at its charter to see that. Its preamble has a promise that Islam will "obliterate" Israel. Article 32 reads: "Leaving the circle of struggle against Zionism is high treason" Article 15 reads: "In the face of the Jews’ usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised." Article 7 reads: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them." This is an organisation that in its entirety deserves to be proscribed in the United Kingdom. By doing so, we will help to further isolate Hamas, we will hinder its ability to raise funds and spread its extremist ideologies, and we will bolster more moderate forces in Palestine and elsewhere in the middle east. I strongly support the Government’s action today, and it is extremely heartening that it is being conducted in a broadly cross-party approach.