Sir, – When the IRA conducted its campaign of bombings in Britain, it would never have been considered an appropriate British response to blow up Irish ports, airports, water and sewerage treatment plants, or to limit the amount of food allowed into the country to starve and punish the entire population. No one would have thought it acceptable for the British RAF to bomb the entire country of Ireland, killing and maiming civilians.
Why then is this allowed to happen in Gaza? With 1.7 million people densely packed into this tiny area, no one is safe, no child knows if it will wake up tomorrow. This is not a war. It is not a “conflict” as it is so often called by our politicians and media. This is a savage and brutal massacre of innocent people by one of the largest and best equipped armies in the world. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – The disproportionate amount of coverage given to the flaring up of tensions in the small corner of the eastern Mediterranean that Israel and Gaza occupies is startling. For the most part the coverage has been predictable, big bad Israel and the poor downtrodden masses in Gaza. No mention of Syria and Iran using Hamas in Gaza as an ersatz army to provoke Israel into a proxy war, while they continue to kill with impunity their own citizens by the thousands. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Raymond Deane (November 16th) fails to see the elephant in the room. He says an Israeli embargo is “starving” the people of Gaza, yet this very same embargo allows the wholesale importation of rockets to be used by terrorists against the State of Israel. Bizarre and absurd. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Secretary of State Clinton on her peace trip to Israel, will no doubt remind prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to increase Israel’s arms order to the US next year. It makes my stomach sick . – Yours, etc,