Meeting of the Parliament 26 June 2024
Like my colleagues, I thank Humza Yousaf for the moral courage and leadership that he showed in his time as First Minister and has shown throughout his time as a member of this Parliament in defending the inalienable rights of Palestinians, which many other world leaders would not defend.
In preparing for this debate, I looked back at the previous speeches that I have given in the chamber on the occupation of Palestine, and one in particular stands out. In 2018, we debated the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Nakba—the catastrophe—which was the campaign of ethnic cleansing that established the state of Israel and shattered Palestinian society. We marked that anniversary at the same time as Palestinians in Gaza marched peacefully to the fence that Israel has used to imprison them since its siege and blockade began. They marched peacefully for their freedom, and they were met by Israeli soldiers who slaughtered them. The peaceful struggle for freedom was met with colonial violence.
That year was Scotland’s year of young people, and, as we were marking that, 46 Palestinian children were murdered by Israeli soldiers during those protests. They were murdered alongside paramedics wearing their uniforms. They were murdered alongside people who were shot dead in their wheelchairs. They were murdered alongside a journalist who was killed by Israeli soldiers and whom the Israeli state then claimed was a senior Hamas operative even though he had been held in prison by Hamas and was an opponent of Hamas who had passed American vetting to receive their support, because, of course, there is no lie that Israel is unwilling to stoop to telling in its constant campaign to destroy the Palestinian people.
As Humza Yousaf mentioned, Save the Children has just published a report on the toll that the past eight or nine months have taken on the children of Gaza. It says that 20,000 children are
“lost, disappeared, detained, buried under the rubble or in mass graves”.
That figure comes years after the debates that we have had previously about the scale of suffering that those children have had to experience. I want to read from the remarks that I made in 2018 on the experience of those children. I said:
“Half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 18. More than a decade into the siege, the UN estimates that more than 300,000 of them need psychological support, because they are so traumatised by the atrocities that have been inflicted on them.”—[Official Report, 15 May 2018; c 85.]
That psychological support is now needed by every one of the 1 million children in Gaza.
In the 2014 Israeli assault, more than 500 children were killed. In the 10 years since then, world leaders have attended events to commemorate those who have been lost in previous genocides and slaughter, and they have said the same thing: “Never again.” Ten years on from those 500 children being killed, we are now looking at at least 15,000 children who have been killed.
Among those 500 children back in 2014, there were four boys from one family who, as I have mentioned previously, were murdered by Israel while they were playing football on the beach. They were killed by the Israeli Navy. They were clearly children and were clearly no threat, but they were hit not by a single stray shell but by a deliberate attack. As they fled across the beach, the Israeli ship adjusted its aim and fired a second shell to make sure that it killed all of them. Those children’s names were Ismaeel Mohamed Bakir, who was nine years old; Zakariya Aahed Bakir, who was 10; Aahed Etaf Bakir, who was 10; and Mohamed Ramez Bakir, who was 11. Their deaths were recorded by the world’s media, because they were just 200m away in a hotel. Many journalists risked their lives to try to save those children and the two others who were wounded with them. They cannot do that now, of course, because Israel has prevented international journalists from even entering Gaza. We rely on the incredible bravery of Palestinian journalists to know what is actually happening there. Not only those Palestinian journalists but their families are being targeted by the state of Israel.
Israel is the only country in the world to summarily prosecute children through a military court system—not Israeli children, of course; just Palestinian children. Those who object to Israel being labelled as an apartheid state must explain why Palestinian children and Israeli children are held to such different standards.
I recognise that we do not have much time in this debate, so I will finish with a plea to the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government could still take further action to support the Palestinian people. It could ban the companies that are listed by the UN as being complicit in the occupation from receiving grants and contracts. Palestinians have the right to self-determination. Recent events have shown the double standards that are applied to international law and human rights, but we can still stand up for our Palestinian friends. We can defend their right to a free, independent and sovereign Palestinian state.
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