Dave’s letter to the Chief Rabbi

Dear Rabbi Mirvis

 

I carefully read your statement on the UK government’s withdrawal of some 30 arms licences for export to Israel.

 

Like you, I wish wholeheartedly for the safe return of all the hostages. I wonder, though, whether Mr Netanyahu’s government has that aim high on its list of priorities. His approach seems completely other than that, and a large section of the Israeli population appear to agree that a different approach is needed. The kind of unrestrained carnage visible to us all in Gaza and the West Bank was never likely to bring home the hostages, or to ensure their safety.

 

Unlike you, I do not accept that the current war resulted from the atrocity of last October. It began in the long years of occupation, illegal settlements, and the systematic mistreatment of the Palestinians. 

 

Unlike you, I do not believe that the cruelty of this conflict is one-sided. The intolerable number of deaths in Gaza, the wholesale destruction of housing and infrastructure, and the repeated displacement of the population are all evidence of savagery. How else could they be described ?

 

Surely ‘an eye for an eye’ is more of a limiting statute than a permission for unrestrained vengeance. Israel clearly sees it as the latter, and, sadly, has the military resources to enable the unspeakable scenes appearing daily on our screens.

 

The UK has been morally complicit in this by supporting Israel, and the withdrawal of arms licences comes way too late and is too limited. It is the support of the West that allows Israel to act with impunity and without humanity.

 

I, too, look forward to a peaceful future, a wholly peaceful future in which all people are treated equally and fairly, and all may bring up their families in safety and prosperity. Perhaps in this future we can all put more effort into making common friends rather than the deracination of ‘common enemies’, who share our humanity and bleed and grieve as we do.

 

A civilised world – yes, I hope for that, too – cannot accept that violence is ever an answer. It is merely a determined failure to ask the right questions. 

 

Dave Hepworth