Tim Dawson, left, and Julian Assange

• AS Jewish people who feel strongly that journalists must be free to expose war crimes and crimes against humanity, we welcome Tim Dawson’s article (Pursuing Assange hands Putin a fig leaf, Forum, May 19) which spells out prime minister Boris Johnson’s outrageous duplicity: the PM pretends to believe that, “people have a right to know the details of war carried out in their name”, then Dawson asks “why is Julian Assange facing 175 years in prison?”

The National Union of Journalists, of which Mr Dawson is a past president and whose HQ is in Camden, states that: “If this extradition is allowed, it will send a clear signal that journalists and publishers are at risk whenever their work discomforts the United States government.”

While Mr Assange faces “death by incarceration” by the United States, another journalist, Palestinian / American Shireen Abu Akleh has been “assassinated” by the Israeli army using guns subsidised by the same United States which grants at least three billion dollars in “aid” to Israel annually.

The NUJ condemned the killing of Ms Abu Akleh; the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said that this crime was “deliberate and planned to assassinate her”; both the NUJ Belfast and District and Derry and North West branches held vigils in her memory; and the International Federation of Journalists recently submitted a case to the International Criminal Court
alleging that Israel systematically targets journalists.

A week after Ms Abu Akleh’s assassination and the sickening Israeli attacks on her funeral, the United Kingdom home secretary, Priti Patel, said that she gives her “unflinching and unequivocal” support for Israel.

She is now to make a judgment on the extradition of Julian Assange. This must send shivers down the spines of every journalist who wants to use her / his profession to make sure we are able to access the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

SELMA JAMES
MICHAEL KALMANOVITZ
SAM WEINSTEIN
JEANETTE ABENDSTERN
RICA BIRD
PROFESSOR HAIM BRESHEETH
DAVID CANNON
MARK ELF
MAX GELLER
TONY GREENSTEIN
YAEL KAHN
STEPHEN KAPOS
PAUL KELEMAN
LES LEVIDOW
ILANA MACHOVER
PROFESSOR EMERITUS
MOSHÉ MACHOVER
HELEN MARKS
SABBY SAGALL
ALEXEI SAYLE
IANTO SCOTT
SIAN SCOTT
KARL WEISS