I love our homeland, but we can't condone the starvation of civilians

I write as a Jew profoundly connected to Israel, whose people are like an extended family.

- Jonathan Wittenberg

Without the embryonic state, most of my father’s family would have perished in the Holocaust. Forced to flee Nazi Germany, Mandate Palestine was for many thousands of desperate Jewish refugees the sole place where they could gain entry.

Israel, the only national home for the Jewish people, deserves security and a cessation of the hatred that has assailed it since its inception.

The trauma that continues to afflict the heart of the country, and of Jews worldwide, since Hamas’s brutal and cunningly sadistic attacks of 7 October 2023 has reawoken the worst horrors of Jewish history.

But it is the suffering in Gaza that impels me to write now. It is a catastrophe for innocent Palestinian people caught between the contemptuous nihilism of Hamas and Israel's attacks.

Homeless, surrounded by devastation, numerous Palestinians, including very many children, are plagued by hunger.

Israel has every reason to insist that supplies will not be stolen by Hamas, as they often have been.

Israel has equally good reason to seek the complete removal of Hamas from Gaza. But substantial quantities of aid must be allowed in. Neither Jewish nor humanitarian law condones the starvation of non-combatant civilians.