What can any of us say to Ahmed Najar, whose family is trapped in the slaughterhouse that is north Gaza (In the Jabalia refugee camp, my sister has reached breaking point. What will it take to stop this nightmare?, 20 October)? Keir Starmer has repeatedly declared that “we stand with Israel”. Polls tell us this is a lie. He stands with Israel; Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the atrocities of 7 October has killed hundreds of Palestinian children for every Israeli child murdered by Hamas. Our government’s hands are steeped in this bloody proportionality, and for what? To boost our GDP from the sale of military hardware, irrespective of the scale of civilian deaths.
Rev Graham Murphy
Retired Unitarian minister, Liverpool
• This is the most heartrending story. There are no words that exactly express my feelings, which get worse with every violation of humankind that I read about or watch happening in Gaza and now Lebanon on my TV. I feel sick each time I watch the horrors being perpetrated on innocent people as they try to find just the basics of life against all odds, and watch little traumatised children as they call out for their parents or are rigid and stationary in shock at what they have just witnessed. What has happened to this world? How can world leaders, including those in the UK and the US, watch this genocide continue while covering their eyes with their fingers as they continue to send arms to Benjamin Netanyahu. I send all my love to Ahmed Najar.
Mimia Umney-Gray
Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
