Lord Weidenfeld

Former Crossbench Peer

UK Parliament Profile

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🗣️ Speeches and Debates

  • Middle East and North Africa — Motion to Take Note 30 Oct 2014

    My Lords, there are serious fissures in the worldwide alliance against ISIS and new hurdles in the sluggish race for peace in Palestine. History repeats itself with terrifying precision. Seventy years ago, the Warsaw rising of Poland’s military elite was brutally suppressed by the SS and the Wehrmacht. It lasted for 63 days and claimed nearly 250,000 victims. Yet in all that time, the Red...
  • Middle East Peace Settlement — Question for Short Debate 14 Jan 2014

    My Lords, Europe is confronted by three worsening, interpenetrating crises in the Middle East, demanding a new measure of watchfulness, partly because of the somewhat undulating nature of President Obama’s foreign policy of withdrawal and return. The descent of established, although perhaps malgoverned, countries into dysfunctional and even failed states is epitomised by the Syrian tragedy,...
  • Queen’s Speech — Debate (5th Day) 15 May 2013

    My Lords, just as Syrian territory has become a mosaic of every brand of political and religious extremism and operational terrain for barbarous practices, neither the USA nor Europe is in the mood to intervene decisively on the ground or in the air—shades of Iraq and Afghanistan. So in parentheses, the tragedy of at least one of the Iraq campaigns lies not so much in its moral deficit but...
  • Israel: Arab Citizens — Motion to Take Note 13 Dec 2012

    My Lords, I have been involved in the cause of a Jewish state in the Holy Land for nearly 80 years. I was privileged to have served the first President of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, as adviser and head of his office and claim a continuous involvement with the theme of this debate. I am aware how, from the very outset, Israel's leaders upheld the founders' pledge to treat the Arab minority as...
  • Middle East Peace Process — Question for Short Debate 4 May 2011

    My Lords, I am afraid that the two-minute speaking limit prevents me arguing certain basic facts with the noble Baroness, having myself been involved for over 60 years with Israel. There are many facts concerning even its creation which I should very much like an opportunity to discuss here at greater length. I think that the Arab spring is a mixed blessing. On the one hand it has given fresh...
  • Queen's Speech — Debate (2nd Day) 26 May 2010

    My Lords, three daunting challenges, inseparably linked, face our country and must be treated conjointly: first, the economic crisis; secondly, the inevitable political and social fall-out following austere fiscal and economic policies; and, thirdly, the existential threat that the whole of the free world still faces from rogue states and from worldwide interstate terrorism. I cannot, I am...
  • Foreign Policy — Debate (Continued) 26 Feb 2009

    My Lords, the predominant aim for a British foreign policy that can cope with political challenges, acute or simmering, and steer us through the floods of a global economic crisis in which there will probably be few Noah's Arks, must be a reinvigoration of our European policy and its harmonisation with renewed transatlantic ties. If your Lordships were to join me in looking further into the...
  • Gaza — Motion to Take Note 6 Feb 2009

    My Lords, the failure to resolve the Gaza crisis by the road map of the quartet bars the road to peace and makes the map irrelevant. More and more voices counsel direct contact between the quartet, Israel and Hamas, for it has been said that this, more than any other, crisis in the Middle East is not resolvable by military means alone. Be that as it may, I submit that psychological warfare is...

More of Lord Weidenfeld's speeches and debates

✍️ Written Questions and Answers

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