Dear Sir,

I find it overwhelmingly distressing to see how monstrously Israel's war against Gaza is being conducted before a watching world in so much silence. When, however, a voice is raised in protest against Israel's brutality, that voice is snuffed out by being labelled anti-Semitic.

Over the years, the United States Government has always parroted the line “Israel has the right to defend itself”. Of course, that position comes out of the biblical injunction that if you bless Israel, you shall be blessed. Feels like a misapplication to our present circumstances.

Is Binyamin Netanyahu the leader of the same godly nation that we read of in the Old Testament of the Bible?

And then I think, what does it mean to be blessed?

Subjugating people and stealing their wealth by trickery, deceit and cruelty, leaving them in poverty, and then turning around and calling them poor?

Do you feel blessed to be a citizen of a country whose king wears a crown of precious jewels that we all know none of his ancestors gained by the sweat of their brow?

HELENE STEPHENSON

Smith’s