Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Hamas horrors are to blame for this conflict
I don't usually agree with Colin Bullen's views, especially regarding climate change, but I think his excellent letter criticising Hamas supporters is so true.
As he states, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East where people have free speech and women are not forced to cover their hair or be at risk of imprisonment or even death, as has recently happened in Iran. It should not be forgotten that during the Holocaust, six million Jewish people were brutally murdered by the Nazis for just being Jewish.
Parents and their children were separated, never to meet again. Most were cruelly starved and worked to death in concentration camps, shot or murdered in gas chambers. Children were not spared. Many spent years in hiding, as did Anne Frank with her family. Her diary, discovered after the war by her father, has been translated into 70 languages, sold 30 million copies and is the most widely read book after the Bible! After World War Two, the United Nations decided that Jewish people should have their own country where they could live safely, free from persecution. In 1948, the state of Israel was created, being the ancestral home of the Jews, who already had lived there for thousands of years. Israel was surrounded by 11 enemy countries, yet offered them the hand of peace. But they were attacked by nine of these in 1967. Amazingly, Israel won after just six days of war and in doing so gained land, some of which they gave back to the Palestinians. Israel agreed to two states - a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state, which the Palestinans refused to accept as they did not want Israel to exist. The scenes of people in Gaza, especially the children, are heartbreaking, but it was Hamas who started this with their horrific attacks in Israel, making the country no longer a safe haven for Jewish people.
If Hamas regroup, there will be no democratic country in the Middle East and this could be a threat for the whole world.