Thank you, Nesrine Malik, for saying so movingly what many of us have felt throughout the Israeli assault on Gaza (Goodbye to the lost children of Gaza. You were loved, you are remembered, you did not deserve it, 27 January). Most western media have been reluctant to call out the horror for what it is. One sentence in her excellent article stands out for me: the killing of children on such a scale was “unnecessary and only permitted because Palestinian life as a whole has been made cheap by the logic of Israel’s absolute right to defend itself by whatever criminal means it likes”.
Western governments and media have been shamefully complicit in overlooking these atrocities, taking no significant action to restrain or condemn Israel, maintaining neutrality between those dropping the bombs and the babies underneath them. Even now, Palestinian suffering is underemphasised. The attention given to the fewer than 100 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza is grossly disproportionate to that given to the suffering of the Palestinians, including the more than 9,000 Palestinian detainees, many of them held without trial or charges.
Michael Foster
Chelmsford
