Rob Delaney’s article gave voice to many who are horrified by the recent slaughter in Israel and Gaza (If someone killed my child I’d want bloody revenge. But I’d be wrong – as is the Israeli government, 17 October).
Any sane person should struggle to understand why people kill and why some fanatics join organisations to kill. Rob gave an airing to an uncomfortable truth – that governments do not represent their people as they struggle to make sense of this horror. An Irish immigrant, I lived in London through the 1970s and 80s and watched, albeit from a distance, as people – ostensibly in my name and in the name of my ancestors – killed, maimed and destroyed lives in Northern Ireland, Britain and Ireland, promoting hatred through terror and mistrust. This insanity by fanatics in Gaza and Israel will prolong the suffering.
There is not a day that goes by when I do not think of the exodus of people who suffered at the hands of imperialists, fascists, communists and religious fanatics in any century. There is not a single person of sanity who would condone any of the violence in the Middle East.
Rob Delaney knows this and clearly understands how governments fail us all. Scarred by violence and propaganda, it is often hard to discern the truth. Rob shows us the voice of empathy and understanding that is needed for people to listen to each other and drown out the voices of division. Rob tells it as it is: “Jewish and Muslim ghosts guided me better during my time of greatest pain than today’s presidents and prime ministers and newspaper owners are guiding us today.” Who on earth will guide us?
Dr Fiona Quilty
Deal, Kent
• My father was a coalminer in Yorkshire. But he didn’t come from Yorkshire or Britain. He never talked about where he did come from. But as a kid I kept pestering him until the day he gave in and told me. “I come from a place that didn’t exist, where everyone is dead.”
Many, many years later we found our way back there and stood in the forest where his village once was. We could make out the mossy remains and old fruit trees that once stood in gardens.
He was 14 the night the soldiers came. He was the only one to survive. Standing there, he told me what they did. “They were animals,” he ended, then paused and thought again. “Mind you, not their fault – it was the way they were brought up.” I’m not saying he forgave them, but he knew first-hand that hatred breeds hatred, and violence breeds violence.
My father would take no side in today’s wars when it comes to religions, countries, leaders and the rights and wrongs of history. But he would be firmly on one side. No matter what colour, creed or faith, he’d be with the all the people dying in the streets and the fields and the deserts who only ever wanted to live a quiet life with their families and take care of their kids. Just as he was on the side of folk fleeing a burning village in a news report from the Bosnian war.
“Look at them poor buggers … if you stay where you are, they kill you. If you go somewhere else, they kill you. What do you do?”
We should put the world’s “great leaders” in that position and see if they can answer his question.
Stephen Deput
Richmond, London
• The issue is not one of revenge. From the Israelis’ perspective, it is what action has to be taken to prevent a repeat. And the Israelis have concluded that it is invading Gaza and going after the Hamas leadership and infrastructure. It is not blindly lashing out. Whether or not you agree with Israel’s course of action, that is what it is trying to do.
How both parties got to here is also not really germane to the immediate tactical response, which is how to remove the capacity of Hamas to conduct future atrocities against civilians. Sadly, Gaza is crowded and there are no good options. For the Israelis, “never again” comes to mind. As indeed it should for the rest of the world.
David Rose
New York, US
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