Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)

I pay tribute to the work the noble Baroness has done over many years, at immense personal cost, in fighting antisemitism. She is completely right about this. I know the owners of that building. I went to see it afterwards. I know how deeply shocked they and other Jewish residents in that area were after that attack. I want to pick up on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about the defence and security relationship between Britain and Israel, which is of huge importance to our national interest. People who argue for boycotts or banning defence exports to Israel need to be careful about this, because the RAF would not be able to get its planes off the ground without Israeli technology. British soldiers would have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan without Israeli defence equipment. Israeli intelligence has prevented terror attacks here in the UK. We have to be careful when people suggest undermining that relationship. People who argue for that would have a great deal of difficulty explaining to the public why they want to put our Armed Forces at risk because they are so obsessed with this. There are 200 land-based conflicts in the world and the only one that people seem to care about is the one involving Israel. We have to ask ourselves why that country is singled out and held to standards that never apply to any other country. The final point I want to make about Palestine Action is this: if the only country you campaign against, the only country you think should be abolished, or the only country you think should never have been established in the first place just happens to be the only Jewish one, do not tell me that you are not a bunch of antisemites.