Nicholas Soames
Tory peer Nicholas Soames joins calls for UK to stop arming Israel
Exclusive: Grandson of Winston Churchill says UK must send message to Israel after aid workers killed in Gaza
The Conservative peer Nicholas Soames has joined calls for the UK to stop arming Israel after an airstrike killed seven aid workers in Gaza.
Soames, the grandson of Winston Churchill, said the UK should send a “message” about Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Hundreds of senior lawyers and judges, including three former supreme court justices, have said in a letter that the government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel.
Asked whether the UK should stop doing so, Soames said: “It’s probably time that that happened now, yes, I think if we’re determined to show that we are not prepared to countenance these ongoing disasters.”
He added: “Israel have every right to go after Hamas, there’s no shadow of doubt about that.”
The UK’s contribution to Israel’s arsenal “would be tiny and it’s probably parts more than anything else”, Soames said, but stopping the exports would send a message.
“I say this with real sadness because, I mean, first of all, what happened was an absolute tragedy, and secondly, it was absolutely inexcusable,” Soames said of the strike that killed the aid workers, including three Britons, on Monday.
“This is not a fog of war issue with these [aid workers]. They were quite clearly – the whole thing had been deconflicted, organised, everything, and something has gone very, very wrong, and the Israelis need to really get a grip of all this.
“And secondly, these people were doing the most wonderful work to provide aid to starving Palestinians … I think it is the message that matters.”
No comments:
Post a Comment