We have moral duty to push for peace

It would be a very damaged or heartless person who did not condemn unequivocally the Hamas criminal attack on Israel on 7th October.

It would be an equally callous person who believes that the mass bombing of innocent civilians, including women, infants and hospital patients, are justified and proportionate responses to Hamas’ barbarism.

This conflict has a well-known, long and bitter, bloody history in which Britain’s role is far from blameless. No community is blameless but blame does nothing meaningful except guarantee more slaughter.

It is a toxic culmination of decisions made by colonial powers after the First World War and has always been a conflict that cannot be resolved without well-intentioned, even-handed, outside mediation.

This is why the current UK policy of a temporary pause is reprehensibly inadequate. The rationale of the Government and Opposition is that Israel must be permitted to rid the land of Hamas.

You don’t have to be a history scholar to know that that is an impossible objective.

Every mother, sister or infant sibling that is killed in that process will create another young person recruited to murderous revenge.

As a nation, we have some expiation to undertake, and as sentient humans, we should not hesitate to recognise that if we and our families were being dispossessed, dismembered and starved to death, we would want the world unequivocally to press for a ceasefire.

Then the real work of crafting the two-state solution which we began so duplicitously in 1917, can begin. Bill Hicks Bath 2I have lived in Bath for over two decades and have raised all four of my children here. I have been deeply affected by the bombardment of innocent children and civilians in Gaza leading to more than 12,000 deaths already.

I look at those babies and children that the world seems to have forgotten and see my own children in their faces. I imagine bombs were dropping on our schools and hospitals and how we would feel if the world abandoned us, our children and our elderly people in our hour of need.

Israel has contained the people of Gaza (half of whom are children) into a tiny walled in enclave on a starvation diet for 17 years already.

Since the 7th October, Israel has stopped all food, water, fuel and electricity from reaching every civilian in Gaza. They have indiscriminately carpet bombed the civilian infrastructure, homes and people across the entire Gaza Strip.

Our main political parties, to their eternal shame, do not call for a ceasefire. They say the killing should continue and demand only “humanitarian pauses”.

This should shock and devastate every one of us who thinks all human beings have the same human rights that we have and have the right to life and to live in peace. The bombardment and deprivation of water, food, fuel and the destruction of civilian infrastructure has been agreed by Human Rights organisations as “collective punishment”.

It is in contravention of Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention. We must not forget that the Geneva Conventions arose out of the horror and savagery of WW2 and the Holocaust. Our country and the world said “never again” should we allow crimes against humanity or genocide as acts of vengeance or in the name of war.

Please can you alert people to the urgency to act now, protest and speak out? We will all need to account for what we did in this defining historical moment for human rights and life on earth. Emma Owens Bath