To preface: I am not pro-Hamas, nor am I antisemitic.
To Danny Wakil who asked in last week’s Echo, ‘Name one army, in all of history, in any war, that has done more to protect the civilians of its enemies that Israel has done in this war?’
Realising you weren’t being ironic, here are some reports of incidents that I have read:
Dr Fozia Alvi was making her rounds of the intensive care unit on her final day at the battered European public hospital in southern Gaza when she stopped next to two young arrivals with facial injuries and breathing tubes in their windpipe.
‘I asked the nurse, what’s the history? She said that they were brought in a couple of hours ago. They had sniper shots to the brain. They were seven or eight years old,’ she said. (source: The Guardian April 2, 2024).
Ramallah, September 3, 2024 – Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian children in the northern occupied West Bank today during a large-scale military incursion that has been ongoing since August 28. Mohammad Abdullah Mohammad Kanaan, 14, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper around 4.40am (source: Defence for Children International Palestine).
Eyewitness accounts reveal Israeli snipers are systematically targeting unarmed civilians, including children, using tactics that point to deliberate genocidal intent and a chilling policy of terror designed to annihilate a people, not just wage war (source: The Cradle 25/11/24).
There are so many reports like this, it is sickening.
The organisations who have declared Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians are: Amnesty International, The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, The Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, CCR (US-led legal advocacy group), UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, The International Criminal Court Of Justice.
Like so many people around the world, I am in a state of sickness over Israel’s crimes and the West’s complicity. What is, nearly, more sickening is the virulent defence of Israel’s actions by calling any criticism against this genocide ‘antisemitic’. Amnesty International are antisemitic? The ICC is antisemitic?
The former defence minister of Israel called the Palestinians ‘human animals’. The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog said, ‘there are NO innocent civilians in Gaza’. Pre-October 7, Gaza’s population was half children. Half. Yet the president himself declares not one of them to be innocent.
Yet, this you ardently defend. There is countless evidence of deliberate killing of children, the deliberate starvation of the Palestinians, deliberate attacks on refugee camps, the use of white phosphorous, the rape and torture of prisoners, etc etc ad nauseum.
The defence of these actions is absolutely sickening. It is defence of genocide of which there is none, ever.
Can I name any country that has done more to protect civilians in a war than Israel? Yes. I would say: nearly every country in the world.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
