Alison Leonard, thank you for your letter in last week’s Echo. Sadly being anti-Israel is often (not always) but mostly a thin guise of expressing antisemitism. If this was not the case, why are synagogues and cars being firebombed, and why is the private property of Jews being damaged on such a regular basis with no reflection on their political opinions?
There are so many absolute anti-Israel lies coming out of Gaza on a daily basis, and the organisations that you have mentioned have never been impartial, and don’t back up their statements with genuine facts.
Yes, sadly innocent children have been killed in Gaza, just as they are in every war, but it is a well-known fact that Hamas uses children as well as countless other civilians as human shields when they attack Israeli soldiers or fire rockets into Israel.
Hamas did intentionally kill Israeli children as policy, and literally ethnically cleansed the southern areas of Israel in their attack on October 7 – their disgusting GoPro videos showed the extent of their blood lust.
Every death is a tragedy and the population of Gaza increased by two per cent in 2023 (let that sink in please). Don’t take my word for it, search yourself, and you will also see that the civilian to combatant death toll in Gaza is lower than any other comparable conflict in history. As for John Scrivener, Russia in Ukraine? Are you kidding me? Even you know that your claim is false.
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. 
