Israel conflict latest: Northern Irish Jew says 'we tried to warn people about Hamas - they want every last one of us on Earth dead'

Steven Jaffe was speaking to the News Letter amid the most recent round of internecine bloodshed in the Middle East, sparked by an invasion of Israeli territory on Saturday by Hamas killers (who are now believed to have claimed upwards of 1,200 lives before retreating or being slain themselves).

The News Letter has catalogued the outpouring of support for “the Palestinian resistance” in the days that have followed:

• Israel conflict latest: INLA-linked group holds roadside vigil in Northern Ireland calling for people to 'support the Palestinian resistance'

• Israel conflict latest: VIDEO FOOTAGE - Crowd in Londonderry chants 'from the river to the sea Palestine will be free' on the same day that UK government warns police forces to be on lookout for that phrase

• Israel conflict latest: WATCH - Republican group Lasair Dhearg broadcasts the message 'smash the Zionists!' onto Belfast City Hall along with images of 'Palestinian resistance paragliders'

• DUP human rights spokesman Jim Shannon MP says Hamas should be 'liquidated' and calls for 'aggressive' police crackdown on signs of support for the group

Mr Jaffe, the co-chair of Northern Ireland Friends of Israel, told the News Letter: “We always knew that those demonstrating their support for Hamas around the world wanted Israel eliminated and its population massacred.

"It is plain to see from the Hamas foundation charter which dates from the 1980s.

"The charter calls for the murder of the last Jew on the planet. But we couldn't convince the rest of the world.

"Many moderate people were happy to march alongside those singing ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ – meaning no more Israel.

"Now no one can be under any illusions about what that means and what it entails.

"Hamas wants every Jewish man, woman and child dead.”

Hamas was formed in the late 1980s. Its charter set out an extreme Islamist interpretation of Jewish-Muslim relations.

It sets out a desire not just to re-conquer Israel itself by exclusively armed means (“so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement”) but also casts itself as “the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism... [and] the fight with the warmongering Jews”.

There are a mere 439 Jews in Northern Ireland according to the last census in 2021.

In Israel, there are about seven million Jewish people.

There are very roughly three million Palestinians in the West Bank, another two million in Gaza, and another two million inside Israel.

According to a 2023 study by the Jewish People Policy Institute (as reported by the Jewish Chronicle), there are now 14.2 million Jews worldwide, plus another 2.3 million “partially Jewish” people.

When combined into 16.5 million, that means the global Jewish population in 2023 has finally rebounded to the same level it was at before the Holocaust, according to the Chronicle.