‘Sir,

I am writing this letter to express my personal disgust at your incomprehensible support of Israel in its war against Palestine and its entire people. Your position does not befit the leader of a party which was established to defend the democratic rights of ordinary people.

I am a Jew. My home is England and I have no intention of living anywhere else. I certainly have never, and would never, contemplate living in Israel.

I believe that Israel has been committing crimes against humanity in Palestine for seventy-five years, and is now using the disgusting Hamas attack as an excuse to commit even worse war-crimes than it had ever committed before.

And given the scale of destruction and death the Palestinian people have already faced in the last seven decades that is a horrific thought.

Israel has planned on wiping Palestine out for a long time, to create an Eretz Israel. Now it is taking the opportunity to finish its work.

The idea that there are Jews who believe they have the right to treat non-Jews with the same contempt that Jews have met with throughout their history is truly appalling; and I, like a quickly increasing number of Jews, now realise that Israel can no longer claim to be a Jewish state. It is a profoundly unJewish state, betraying every ideal that the Jewish people once stood for.

For Jews to show such a total lack of compassion, such a degree of cruelty, is deeply angering.

And don’t tell me about Hamas. I know that what Hamas did was unconscionable, horrific, inhumane, deserving of punishment; and if Israel was confining its war to Hamas I would not complain.

But now, Israel is parrotting the phrase ‘right to self-defense’ as an excuse for punishing the whole Palestinian people, including all those Gazans who oppose Hamas, and all those West Bankers, now facing the assault of settlers, who have never had anything to do with Hamas.

Hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, refugee camps, villages, these are Israel’s military targets, showing that in their supposed pursuit of Hamas operatives they are not concerned with how many innocent lives they destroy.

Israelis complain about the Hamas Holocaust. If the Israeli armed forces are not creating a Holocaust for the Palestinian people, then what are they doing?

What. really, does it mean to be a Jew if this is what Jews think is good?

That is a question these must answer in their own consciences; and one to which you should be demanding an answer. Perhaps while you’re about it you should also listen to those Israelis, even among those who suffered in the Hamas attack, who see nothing good in what Netanyahu is doing in their name.

But it would seem that right now your conscience is having problems of its own.

Sincerely,

Richard Snell