Letter: Anyone who is a genuine friend of Israel will be guiding them away from this slaughter

The editorial (At least America still stands by embattled Israel, July 25) was its heading and it praised the welcome that Benjamin Netanyahu received when he addressed the US congress.

All of us were horrified by the events of October 7 but many of us are just as horrified at Israel’s misguided response.

Those leaders who declared that Israel had ‘a right to defend itself’ knew what was coming. Israel has tried a military solution to its political problem with Palestine several times – Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2009 caused over 1,100 deaths, but solved nothing.

In 2014 the repeated violence claimed over 2,000 lives and now in 2023/24 the cycle repeats, with the death toll spiralling towards 40,000.

Israel and the Palestinians were not at peace before October 7. In the previous year, Israeli forces had already killed 234 Palestinians in the West Bank, while settlers were responsible for nine more killings, but Western leaders never declared that Palestinians had a right to defend themselves.

In your editorial you write about ‘cultural threats to civilisation in the world today’ and protest about moral equivalence being drawn between ‘Israel and Hamas barbarians’.

You must be aware of the nightly slaughter inflicted on Palestinians by Israel; you must have seen the videos and read the testimonies of doctors returning from Gaza filled with horror at the suffering of children they have witnessed. What Israel is doing to Gaza is barbaric and unnecessary.

For years, the News Letter reported on the tit-for-tat pattern of sectarian killings in our Northern Ireland troubles.

After every atrocity there was a call for the army to go in hard and ‘take out the terrorists’ but we never carpet-bombed West Belfast or Newry.

Even when an IRA attack came close to wiping out Thatcher’s cabinet in Brighton, or when the IRA attacked Downing Street with mortar bombs during the Gulf War, our British government continued to focus on a political solution that became the Good Friday Agreement.

Plenty of our people wanted to ‘take out the terrorists’, but somewhat unwillingly, we discovered that talking to your enemy might not make him your friend, but it will stop you killing each other’s children.

Anyone who is a genuine friend of Israel will be guiding them away from this madness, but in your editorial, you praise the USA for expressing approval of the disastrous Netanyahu who is asking for more weapons to intensify the killing, but offers no plan for an end.

This was a very disappointing editorial. The News Letter can do better.

Arnold Carton, Belfast BT6