How is that the Speaker of the House of Commons has allowed a group of Parliamentarians, Clare Short amongst them, to host a live video link tomorrow, with a known terrorist, someone who advocates suicide bombings in Iraq and has been refused entry into the UK?
After all the recent goings on with the thwarted terrorist attacks – and arrest of a number of individuals in the North of England, what can possibly be the rationale for giving succour to such people?
Tomorrow evening, in Portcullis House, Khaled Maashal, a senior Leader of Hamas, who was denied a Visa, is instead speaking to an invited audience, through video. If this were to happen outside Parliament, that would be bad enough, but to host a known and self confessed murderer in the Commons is beyond the pale.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, most people will be appalled that Mr Maashal is being given such a platform. This is a man who is on the record, actively promoting ‘martyrdom cells’ in Iraq. He has also argued that ‘Allah made a laughing stock of America’, urging for the world to submit to the ‘Arab Islamic will’. This is not forgetting his role in supporting and planning a range of suicide attacks in Israel. He is also regarded as instrumental in the Hamas coup in Gaza, which saw, Palestinian Authority members thrown off the rooftops, and 400 Palestinian Fatah members killed by Hamas fighters.
To the credit of Shadow Foreign Minister, David Lidington, he has contacted the Speaker, urging that the event be called off stating:
If this event goes ahead, a strong signal will be given to Islamist extremists in Britain and elsewhere, that Parliament is soft on terrorism. It will give a propaganda boost to extremists over Palestinian moderates. Above all, it will demonstrate that all ‘means’ – particularly suicide bombing – justifies the ‘ends’. And those ‘ends’ usually mean an Islamic caliphate and the destruction of the State of Israel.
