• WHILE racist and misogynist hate speech is never acceptable (There is no place for anti-Semitism, Letters, May 20), neither is the silence of MPs Karen Buck and Tulip Siddiq on the mass killing of women and children in Gaza, nor their silence on the support of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BOD) for apartheid Israel committing these atrocities.

Palestinians’ refusal through their resistance to being made invisible has mobilised most of the world behind their drive against Israeli occupation, while exposing what really went on in Gaza:

– 243 killed, including 67 children, 39 women, 17 elderly, and 1,910 injured;

– six hospitals and 11 medical centres damaged, including the Al-Rimal clinic, which housed the main laboratory for Covid testing;

– 1,335 housing units destroyed or damaged so severely that they are unfit for habitation;

– over 75,000 driven from their homes;

– electricity supply reduced to three or four hours a day; and

– more than 95 per cent of water drawn from the Gaza aquifer made unfit for drinking and the water supply reduced by more than 40 per cent.

The New York Times and Haaretz of Israel both published on their May 28 front pages photographs of 64 of the children who were murdered in Gaza.

The perpetrators of these crimes against humanity have aligned themselves with extreme right-wing anti-Semite leaders everywhere: Orban in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines  and Trump in the United States, among others.

Jews have often had to defend ourselves in the past against state-sponsored mass murder. As we speak millions of people around the globe, including the Palestinians, face the same, like the genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar, carried out at least in part with armaments supplied by Israel.

Major political parties in the UK vie for which can be most supportive of apartheid Israel. But the electorate is overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian, with approximately 50 per cent across all parties believing that the BDS campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions is reasonable.

There is a growing fury among Jewish people internationally against Israel’s insistence that they represent all Jews in what they say and what they do. They do not.

SAM WEINSTEIN
International Jewish
Anti-Zionist Network – UK