Nick Timothy, a Conservative MP, asked Lammy to clarify that “there is not a genocide occurring in the Middle East”, adding that words like “genocide” in connection with Gaza were “not appropriate” and “repeated by protesters and lawbreakers”.
Lammy’s answer began well: “These are, quite properly, legal terms that must be determined by international courts.”
Lammy might have noted that experts, such as the Israeli scholar Omer Bartov and the Lemkin Institute, founded by Raphael Lemkin, who in 1942 invented the term genocide, have already described Israel’s action in Gaza as exactly that. Neither can remotely be described as protesters or lawbreakers.
Instead, Lammy got chummy with Timothy. This should not come as a surprise since Keir Starmer’s Labour has a habit of siding with Tories rather than its own MPs over Gaza.
“I do agree with the honourable gentleman,” said Lammy, before redefining the term genocide in a way that no expert would recognise, let alone accept. The word, the foreign secretary told the House of Commons, was “largely used when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the way that they are used now undermines the seriousness of that term”.
Nitpick, but Lammy said “the Second Word War and the Holocaust”, the ways they’ve transribed it implies Lammy was saying the Second World War itself was a genocide.
Excuse me? That’s actually disgraceful.