Cyril Olsen writes in the Sheffield Star(2/11/23) that peace will not be possible in Gaza while Hamas remain. However, carrying out genocide on a civilian population will only lead to the recruitment of more and more people willing to take revenge on Israel. The way to peace is not through more barbarism but by ending the oppression of the Palestinian people and negotiating a fair settlement so that Jews and Palestinians live together in a country where all have equal rights. Apartheid came to an end in South Africa. I hope Apartheid can be ended in Israel/Palestine.
Cyril continues to write as if the war began on October 7th. This is a bit like Germany declaring the Second World War started with the blitz bombing of Dresden! Here are some of the data on deaths from the conflct in the last few years.
2020 Israel 61 Palestine 2781
2019 Israel 133 Palestine 15628
2018 Israel 130 Palestine 31558
So I could continue for 76 years but word count limits prevent this.
Cyril disputes that the Israeli war on Gaza constitutes genocide. He helpfully provides a dictionary definition, “the deliberate extermination of a race of people”. If denying water, food, medicine and fuel to 2.3 million people while at the same time bombing their schools, hospitals, mosques, churches and homes does not meet this definition then I don’t think anything ever will. It is very clearly a genocidal war crime.
Much is written about the 242 Israeli hostages in Gaza. It was a war crime for Hamas to take these innocent people. But Israel is showing no care for them either, constantly bombing the places where they might be. Meanwhile, Israel has arrested and held over 1200 Palestinians, holding them indefinitely without trial. This illegal act goes largely unnoticed by our media.
Cyril maintains that Israel is fighting Hamas, but they are also fighting in the West Bank where Hamas are not in control.
I am pleased Sheffield Council has called for a ceasefire and an end to arms sales to Israel. Our Government should follow suit.
Here is the letter from Cyril Olsen
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Tell the Truth Sheffield 
Thanks Graham – I agree with much of what you are saying and you are right to highlight the gross disparity in deaths in recent years of the conflict – but I can also understand Cyril Olsen – who in my view is quite right to emphasize that Hamas is pledged to destroy Israel (in its constitution). At neither of the local rallies I’ve been to have I heard clear condemnation of what specifically Hamas did in the atrocities of 7th October or its continued holding of Israeli hostages. Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian yesterday quotes a senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad on Lebanese TV this week saying 7 October was “just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth”. He was asked if he was bent on Israel’s destruction and said “yes of course”. I think you cannot understand Israel’s cruel and stupid military action without having a sense of the existential threat many of its people feel . The historical context for them includes not just the last 75 years, or the Holocaust, but the pogroms, the ghettoes, the expulsions from Spain and England – (in the last 2 weeks I have by chance seen where Jewish communities in York and Lincoln were brutally persecuted 800 years ago) – going right back to Roman occupation and slavery in Egypt and Babylon.
So Hamas’ words and actions intentionally touch that intensely raw nerve and Netanyahu grossly overreacts with predictable ferocity. Our solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza at this terrible time should not blind us to the disastrous nature of their political & military leadership.
In Friendship Ian
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