It has been a year since the brutal Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, and the start of this devastating war in Gaza and beyond. The scale of human suffering has been horrific. As people of faith from Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities in the UK, while we may hold different views about aspects of the conflict, we stand united in our grief and in our belief that our shared humanity must bring us together. Our faiths and our humanity teach us that we should mourn for all the innocent people who have lost their lives.
We must also reject those who seek to divide us. Anti-Jewish hate and anti-Muslim hate have no place in the UK today. We must stand together against prejudice and hatred in all its forms. The UK has long been a model of different communities and religions getting along with each other. We commit to upholding and nurturing this proud tradition.
Imam Qari Muhammad Asim, chair, Mosques and Imams national advisory board; the most reverend Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury; chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis; Julie Siddiqui; Dilwar Hussain, chair, New Horizons in British Islam; imam Asim Hafiz; imam Monawar Hussain, founder, The Oxford Foundation; rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg; rabbi Charley Baginsky and rabbi Josh Levy, co-leads of Progressive Judaism; rabbi Pinchas Hackenbroch, chair, Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue
So much for goodwill
“Back to the office, say bosses. Thank goodness for that, say property firms”: what short memories these bosses have. If not for the goodwill of staff agreeing to work from home during the pandemic when they could have been relaxing in the sun on government-funded furlough, many such firms would have gone bust. I hope all staff aggrieved at this volte-face remember this in the next lockdown and relax on furlough instead.
Pete Lavender
Woodthorpe, Nottingham
Apocalypse now
I could offer Catherine Bennett several reasons why Netflix is revisiting Ancient Apocalypse (“Any ice-age telepaths out there? Please explain why Netflix is revisiting Ancient Apocalypse”). One is that there are so many mainstream academics (and their followers in the media and on social media) eager to pour vitriol on [writer and presenter] Graham Hancock, smearing him and his theories – and people love an entertaining underdog who dares to challenge the orthodoxy.
History is littered with far-fetched theories that disappeared without trace, plus a few that overcame fierce opposition and changed the way we see the world. There is still a huge amount we don’t know about prehistory, and only time (and evidence) will reveal whether there is merit in any of Hancock’s ideas. In the meantime, I recommend watching his series with both a critical eye and an open mind.
Alan Davies
Dale, Haverfordwest
Poor deal for stroke patients
Your report on thrombectomy for stroke highlights the poor provision of stroke thrombectomy nationally (“Only 4.3% of stroke patients in England can access life-saving treatment”). Since 2018, interventional cardiologists, who provide a 24-hour year-round similar service for heart attack patients, have been offering to contribute to stroke thrombectomy to improve the range and reach of this service. While training of interventional cardiology experts in this procedure has been successfully achieved within three to six months elsewhere in the world, this appears to be a stumbling block in the UK. We remain in discussion with NHS England but progress has been slow and no cardiologist is yet on a rota. Meanwhile, despite dedicated but small teams in some areas, only 4% of our stroke patients can access life-changing mechanical thrombectomy.
Dr David Hildick-Smith, president of the British Cardiac Intervention Society; Dr Nick Curzen, immediate past president BCIS; Dr Helen Routledge, chair of BCIS stroke thrombectomy focus group
Sudan’s terrorist menace
Your editorial suggests that the Sudanese Armed Forces shouldn’t seek to regain ground lost to the Rapid Support Forces militia in the capital, Khartoum (“Decisive action is needed to avert crisis in Sudan, but where is the will?”). This militia has seized hospitals, universities, churches, mosques, diplomatic premises and the homes of millions of people, turning them into barracks, while detaining thousands of civilians as hostages. What is the SAF supposed to do in the face of this terrorism and the “horrifying atrocities against the population”, as the editorial states?
The SAF and RSF are not equal. The former is the national professional army of Sudan, founded in 1925 and modelled on the British armed forces. It participated in the fight against fascism and nazism during the Second World War and in peacekeeping missions in the Congo, Lebanon and the Comoros, helping African and Arab countries build their armies after independence. The RSF (the former notorious Janjaweed) is a terrorist militia, comprising essentially foreign mercenaries.
The international community should stop regional sponsors of the militia, who supply it with sophisticated weapons and mercenaries to fuel the war, and enforce the Jeddah declaration of 11 May 2023, which commits to protect the civilians of Sudan.
Babikir Elamin, head of mission
Embassy of the Republic of Sudan, London SW1
The bright side of life
Billy Connolly’s constructive attitude to death is inspiring (“‘Jesus Christ, is that the time already?’ Billy Connolly on death, despair and his new book of drawings”). I’ve not suffered from cancer or Parkinson’s disease, let alone housemaid’s knee, so, at 84, I look forward to several more years yet of music-making and writing.
Animals don’t laugh. But we humans can chortle at all the nuisances and inconveniences that illness might bring. Life without them would be dull.
Meirion Bowen
London N10
Right, then…
Kenan Malik, on liberal conservatism (“Can liberal conservatism survive the remaking of the right? We’ll soon find out”), may have misunderstood a recent piece of mine on the topic in the Financial Times. The piece did not “lament” (his verb) but described without judgment the flight of liberal conservatives, here and elsewhere, to an illiberal, hard right. I stressed that the collapse of the liberal right was nothing new.
Conservatism has always had a hard right and a liberal right. They are fraternal enemies, forever at war with each other, yet ready also to set aside differences to do what the right in modern democracies has shown itself remarkably successful at – winning elections and holding power.
Malik faults me for exaggerating the right’s internal contradictions. Yet I described it as a circus rider circling the ring with one foot on a pony “Capitalism” and another on a pony called “Tradition”. Is that not to say what he is saying – that the line between liberal and illiberal conservatism is, in his words, “more blurred than many assume”?
Edmund Fawcett
London SW5
Another fine mess
William Keegan referred to the key roles of two Old Etonian prime ministers, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, in inflicting Brexit on us (“In my view”). The piece brought to mind the tale, possibly apocryphal, of the restaurateur who changed the name of one of the desserts on his menu from Eton Mess to Brexit Pudding.
Mike Pender
Cardiff
