Mick Hartley

A letter in the Times this morning:

Sir, We said “Never Again”. Eighty years on from the Holocaust, we say it every year. We say those words not merely to remember those millions who died at the hands of the Nazis but to remind ourselves that we must never again let the ancient evil of antisemitism take root. That when it emerges, we must stamp it out.

What the world saw on October 7 in Israel was precisely what we promised we would never allow to happen again. The mutilation and murder of babies, the execu tion and abduction of children, women and the elderly, just because they were Jewish.

Any government faced with such an atrocity would have a duty to protect its people. The government of Israel, a country established after the Holocaust to provide a safe home for the Jews, has no alternative but to do the same. Hamas is an organisation whose sole purpose is to eradicate the state of Israel and murder Jews. It is not interested in the welfare of the Palestinian people. In its decade in control of Gaza it has done nothing to build a better future for its residents. Their only value to Hamas is as human shields.

As it acts to remove Hamas’s capability to threaten the Jewish people and oppress the people of Gaza, Israel deserves our support. As believers in the ideals that inspired the founding of the state of Israel, we urge its leaders to act with the humanity and concern for the welfare of civilians that these ideals require, and deny the leaders of Hamas the propaganda victory they seek.

Never Again is not just a phrase to be accompanied by bowed heads and folded hands. It is a promise on which we must act. We must stand with Israel in its hour of greatest need.

Because never means never.

Lord Austin of Dudley, Lord Bew, Nick Boles, Matthew D’Ancona, Michael Dugher, Amanda Foreman, Stephen Fry, Lord Grabiner, Alex Hesz, Margot James, Sajid Javid, Nicky Morgan, Lord McDonald of Salford, Jamie Reed, Lord Roberts of Belgravia, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Amber Rudd, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sir Mark Sedwill, Jacqui Smith, Lord Watson of Wyre Forest 

The paragraph about urging Israel's leaders to "act with the humanity and concern for the welfare of civilians that these ideals require, and deny the leaders of Hamas the propaganda victory they seek" acquires a special resonance now, after the bombing of the hospital in Gaza City. Of course the initial outrage was all directed at Israel, the presumed perpetrators of this new atrocity. Only later did it emerge that the damage was almost certainly caused by a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. There's no evidence of a crater, or the sort of massive structural damage an Israeli missile would cause. And the Israelis have released intercepted conversations which they say is from Hamas operatives acknowledging the strike on the al-Ahli Arab Hospital had been caused by a misfire from Islamic Jihad.

Anyway, why on earth would the Israelis target a hospital – with Biden arriving, and the eyes of the world on the Gaza situation?

As the saying goes, "a lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on".

An accident by Islamic Jihad, then? Most likely. Then again, as we've seen, for Hamas and Islamic Jihad the Palestinians in Gaza are expendable pawns in the battle for Israel's destruction. "We love death as you love life".