Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed since Putin’s invasion last year. Many more have been injured and displaced. More than 160,000 refugees have come to the UK. Our government has sent tanks, rockets and other weapons worth billions to support Ukraine’s heroic struggle. The war has caused economic turmoil across Europe and here in the UK, with inflation at record levels.
This is a war in Europe with direct and serious consequences for the UK and you would expect it to be the number one foreign policy issue in the House of Commons.
Instead, out of 24 questions tabled for the session to scrutinise the work of the Foreign Secretary and his department in Parliament last week, just one was on Russia or Ukraine.
What about Iran? It is a rogue state, run by a medieval dictatorship which exports terror not just across the Middle East, but threatens to kill people here in the UK too. Iran has kidnapped British citizens, killed others working on ships in the gulf and risks triggering a nuclear arms race across the region by developing weapons to wipe Israel off the map. Despite all that, only one question had been tabled on Iran.
Three hundred thousand people have died in the Syrian civil war, but there was only a single question listed for debate on that as well.
No one asked about Myanmar, where an estimated 7,000 people have died this year. Conflicts in the Mahgreb have claimed 5,000 lives over the last six months, but that was not raised either. Neither was Somalia, where 4,000 have perished. Over a thousand people have been killed in Colombia and Yemen, which is the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, but no one mentioned either of them.
Can you guess what they did want to talk about? Out of 24 questions tabled for debate, seven – almost one in three — were about Israel.
I’m not saying Israel isn’t important. Of course it is, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a tragedy. But what does this tell us about Members of Parliament’s priorities?
And this is before we get on to the detail of what they said. Paul Bristow, the Conservative MP for Peterborough, accused Israel of killing “dozens of Palestinian children” this year but didn’t talk about victims of terrorism. Five MPs complained about settlements but didn’t mention the recent wave of terrorist attacks.
It is not just Parliament.
The country’s two largest trade unions held conferences recently. The agenda for Unite’s Policy Conference mentions Israel, Palestine or Palestinians 50 times. Syria was mentioned twice and Libya once, but Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia or Yemen were not mentioned at all. It didn’t even mention Qatar, despite its appalling record on human rights and slave labour.
Not to be outdone, in Unison’s conference document, Israel, Palestine or Palestinians got 48 mentions, Ukraine one, and none at all for Russia. And look at the BBC’s international editor, Jeremy Bowen, racing overnight to cover the IDF’s operation to deal with terrorists in Jenin. How much time has the BBC’s flagship programmes devoted to other conflicts in comparison with those involving Israel?
It is possible to believe — as I do — that the BBC is the best broadcaster in the world, operating to the highest standards and with the best-trained journalists, as well as believing that it can make mistakes and devotes more attention to the Israel and Palestine than the world’s 200 other land-based conflicts.
The corporation is not above criticism or scrutiny. Dismissing any questions as part of some “right-wing culture war” is infantile and stupid.
The blunt truth is that disproportionate obsession with Israel and unhinged hostility to the world’s only Jewish state and Middle East’s only democracy is not abating. With each conflict, the political debate, media coverage and public discourse appears to become more hostile and, as a result, antisemitism towards the UK’s Jewish communities gets more serious too.
There needs to be a coordinated campaign to tell the truth about the region’s only democracy and open, free and equal society and a broad effort to counter the disinformation and obsessive focus on Israel. We must be clear that this obsession does absolutely nothing to help the Palestinian or Israeli people. Instead, demonising Israel harms the cause of peace. We need to make the argument that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a simple question of right and wrong, with all the blame placed on one side, and that progress can only be made by supporting those on both sides who long for a peaceful future.
Ironically, the efforts by some unions and MPs are undermining the very goal they claim to support.
Lord Austin is a former Labour MP and a life peer
