You show a photograph of a pro-Palestinian supporter holding a banner with the phrase “One genocide does not excuse another” (News, last week). Clearly she is comparing the Hamas massacre with the attack on Gaza.
She “forgets” that the attack on Gaza was forced by the massacre. She forgets, too, that Hamas does not fight on battlefields against a regular army, but against old ladies and babies, spreading terror through beheading, rape and murder. When Israel responds, they base themselves in hospitals and schools, expecting their own people to die for their cause. They launch thousands of missiles, so that Israel must hit back or more Jews will die.
Yes, the Gazan retaliation has become, it seems, indiscriminate: but to call it genocide and to compare it with October 7 is wrong.
Simon van Someren, London SW1
UN tells truth
Israel demands the resignation of the UN secretary general after he said that the Hamas attacks (which he has condemned) did not “happen in a vacuum”. Does Israel think that they did? Or that the displacement of the Palestinian people, more than half a century since, has no bearing on the situation?
Tom Stubbs, Surbiton, Surrey
Hatred at school
I agree with the sentiment of Diane Hughes’s letter suggesting an end to single-faith schools to foster greater understanding (last week). Believing diversity creates a more balanced society, I sent my British Jewish child to a multifaith school in St Albans.
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She was scared to go to school on the Monday following the Hamas attack. She remembered that the last time there was a flare-up in the Middle East she had had to endure whispers of “that’s the Jew” as she walked down the corridor.
This time she was subjected to seeing social media posts saying the attack was “well deserved”, with laughing face emojis. “Look, Mummy,” she said to me, pointing out that the post came from one of her classmates.
Amanda Blakeley, Radlett
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