Together with a number of senior parliamentary colleagues, I watched the footage taken from public and private security cameras, and also the body cameras of Hamas terrorists involved in the pogrom of 7th October.
When it finished, nobody spoke, we just filed silently from the auditorium having witnessed such unspeakable scenes of horror.
The merciless torture and killing, including women, children and babies wasn’t the worst of it. Neither was the grotesque mutilation of their corpses. What really affected me were the scenes of the terrorists whooping with joy as they phoned home on their mobiles to boast to their families about exactly what they had just done, demanding that mothers be brought to the phone so that they could hear the detail and offer their congratulations.
For me, the ultimate degradation was the jubilant chanting over the corpses that ‘God is Great’. These cannot be the worshipers of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful (anymore than the perpetrators of similar massacres in sixteenth century European wars of religion were the servants of Christ). There has to be a special place in Hell for this blasphemy
Sir Desmond Swayne TD
