My Lords, how should one wind up a debate of such passion and complexity? Jesus summed up the whole of the law and the prophets by saying:
“Love God with all your heart … Love your neighbour as yourself”.
When you next look into the eyes of one of your own children or grandchildren, you will see the miracle of a wonderful human being. You do not want them to suffer, be beaten, shot or blown up, have their limbs amputated without anaesthetic, live in misery or die in agony. That is too awful to contemplate. When you next look at a picture of a child—a Jewish child, a Palestinian child, Muslim or Christian or any other child—are you reminded of your own children, or have you lost that sense of our common humanity? With the killing of innocent children, much less the killing of thousands and thousands of them, there can be no excuses, no exceptions, no caveats and no shifting of the blame to someone else for their deaths. Does the Minister agree that it is not just “the other” who is being killed? Our common humanity is being destroyed.
