Dear Editor

I RECEIVED a letter from Harlow MP Chris Vince in response to my email to him concerning the killing of fifteen humanitarian workers by the Israel Defence Forces in the Gaza Strip on 23 March.

I am sure that many readers will be interested to note that he did not actually condemn these killings.

Chris Vince described them as “tragic”, whereas the British Ambassador to the United Nations called them “an outrage”.

Mr Vince’s choice of adjective suggests that he is denying that the humanitarian workers were deliberately killed by the Israel Defence Forces. An earthquake is tragic, but a massacre of unarmed humanitarian workers is an outrage.

Mr Vince justified the provision of military support to the State of Israel on the grounds that states have a right to self-defence. The right of a state to self-defence does not oblige other states to arm it.

International law does not allow a state to commit atrocities in the course of the exercise of its right to self-defence. Committing war crimes and crimes against humanity is not self-defence. To continue to arm a state that is committing those crimes on a large scale is to give it licence to commit those crimes.
Mr Vince claims that the British government supports a “two-state solution” to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The United Kingdom does nothing in practice to facilitate a peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It brings no real pressure on the State of Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In fact, it helps to maintain the occupation of those territories by ensuring the export of British weapons to that state. It is also party to a military co-operation agreement with the State of Israel, and allows an Israeli arms manufacturer to operate in Britain

A government cannot claim that it is in favour of an oppressed people forming a sovereign nation state if it provides arms to the state that applies military force to deny the self-determination of that people.

I am old enough to remember the news of the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry. It was certainly clear to me, as a young teenager reading the report in the The Guardian the next day, that the victims had been unjustly killed by the British Army. Thirty-eight years would pass before the government of the United Kingdom acknowledged that the thirteen people killed that day had been unarmed civilians who posed no threat to the British soldiers who shot them dead.

The video recovered from the body of one of the victims of the Gaza Strip Ambulance Massacre, eyewitness testimony by a survivor, and forensic evidence all point to the conclusion that the victims were murdered by the Israel Defence Forces.

I hope that we will not have to wait thirty-eight years before Chris Vince feels able to acknowledge that fact, and condemn this war crime.

Yours sincerely

John Wake