Debate contribution: Gaza: Action to End Forced Starvation

Debate contribution by Mr Stewart Dickson on 9 September 2025.

MLA: Mr Stewart Dickson
Party at the time: Alliance Party
Date: 9 September 2025
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Private Members' Business
Heading: Gaza: Action to End Forced Starvation
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5086563

Text

Once again, I stand with Members to discuss the horrific war crimes being perpetrated in Gaza. In June, I said in the Chamber that, due to the withholding of food and aid, half a million people — a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza — were at risk of starvation and that Gaza was on the brink of famine. Shamefully, famine was confirmed in Gaza on 22 August, with the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report stating that famine was on track to spread to the rest of Gaza, where 640,000 people could be starving within six weeks if more aid is not allowed in. That is, by any measure, a humanitarian crisis. I join fellow speakers who call for, first, an immediate ceasefire. The war is causing untold suffering. If more aid is not allowed into Gaza and a ceasefire is not called, it runs the risk of leading another cycle of intergenerational fear, hatred and violence that will make everyone in the region more unsafe and more unstable — something that we know about all too well in this small part of the world. I stand here distressed because we are once again discussing horrors that cannot be imagined. However, do not listen to my words; listen to the words gathered and recorded by B’Tselem, a well-respected humanitarian human rights organisation, an NGO that collects unbiased reports across Israel and in Gaza:
"Planes bombed our house while we were sleeping. My brother Ibrahim was killed in this bombing along with his wife, Sally ... their son Hamdi, 2, and their baby daughter Masah, 4 months old ... Their bodies were torn to pieces and thrown onto the roofs of nearby houses. I was seriously injured all over my body, including my abdomen, and had several surgeries. My wife, all my daughters, my brother Mahmoud, and his family members were also injured ... the doctors had to amputate my five-year-old daughter Malak's leg because it was in really bad shape."
According to the report, tens of thousands of wounded individuals and amputees remain without adequate care. Many are discharged into horrifically impossible conditions, living in tents and rags, destroyed buildings or makeshift shelters. Yet the United Kingdom Government and, shamefully, people in this Chamber equivocate about offering First World medical care to a small number of children who could be evacuated here for that care. Listen on. A parent says:
"I dread the moment [my two children] Hanan and Misk will ask me about their legs. What will I tell them? When I go to buy shoes for my [other] children ... what will I say to them? ... They lost their mother, the love, compassion, and security she gave them, and they also lost their legs, their ability to move and play."
If you were a mother today in Gaza, not only can you not feed your children but you do not even have enough milk in your breast to feed your babies. Those are horrific and dreadful situations, and we, as politicians in the First World, have a real and serious duty to tell our national Government in London that they need to take action — action that they should have taken a long time ago — to end the genocide, the starvation and the humanitarian horror.

549 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.14 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.66).
No identity-based framing was identified (0.81).
The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.07	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.03	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.02	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.04	No
Controversy escalation	0.06	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.66	Yes
Overall judgement	0.14	At or below not-flagging threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	0.81
Reports or questions it	0.01
Criticises or condemns it	0.08
Adopts it	0.10

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
No identity-related subject	0.32
Immigration, asylum, race, ethnicity and Travellers	0.26
Another identity-related subject	0.19
Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues	0.07
Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations	0.04

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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