RISHI Sunak’s trip to Tel Aviv is odd considering President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken’s disastrous visit to the Middle East. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made Blinken wait hours for a meeting before postponing it until the next day. Jordon cancelled a summit with Biden that was to have taken place with Palestinian and Egyptian leaders.

At the UN Human Rights Council, members turned away from US Ambassador Michelle Taylor’s speech to protest Israel’s bombing of Gaza. A recent Wall Street Journal headline read “How the Israel-Hamas war is tilting the global power balance in favour of Russia and China.” As the US undermines its influence by its policy of military subjugation and economic sanctions, Russia and China are constructing a new multipolar global order.

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By blindly supporting Israel, the US has boxed itself in. Saudi Arabia now won’t normalise relations with Israel, dealing a blow to the US. The US is haemorrhaging support and geopolitical influence. The Arab world is uniting over the Gaza situation. Qatar, Jordan and Turkey issued statements in support of Palestine and yesterday, Iranian and Saudi ministers met in Jeddah.

As a new member of the BRICS group of nations, Saudi Arabia turning away from US hegemony is especially significant since the petrodollar has been the glue holding the US empire together.

The US has sown the seeds of its own destruction by pursuing conflict rather than cooperation with other nations. It has squandered trillions on bombs and neglected the needs of its own people.

The collapse of the American empire will hasten the break-up of the UK, a political entity that no longer makes any sense. That’s good news not just for Scotland, but for the other peoples of this disunited kingdom.

Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh

THE October 7 surprise attack of Hamas on the south of Israel surprised me, like it doubtless did many others, but I was not completely taken aback.

It was a bloody attack in which a great number of Israeli civilians were killed or abducted, including at least 260 people killed by the Hamas attack on a festival.

Of course this deserves strong condemnation, since targeting civilians is not only inhumane but prohibited by international humanitarian law, which declares clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants.

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So I understand the common (especially Western) sympathy with the Israeli victims, because I share the feeling. But there my understanding stops.

Because the almost hysterical “we stand with Israel” reactions, especially from the Western world, complete with Israeli flags hanging from their official buildings (luckily not in Scotland!) is not only hypocritical. It is disgusting!

Disgusting, because it implies support to Israel as a state, and that is – to say it mildly – controversial.

The bloody Hamas attack and subsequent abduction operation divert attention from the important fact that since 1967 Israel is the occupying power in the West Bank, Eastern Jerusalem and Gaza (still occupied according to international law since Israel controls the Gaza borders, airspace and territorial waters).

Not only does Israel refuse to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories despite UN Security Resolution 242 (1967), it is guilty of torture of prisoners, administrative detention, bloody military attacks in Gaza and the West Bank with thousands and thousands of civilian victims, the building of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, extrajudicial execution, apartheid, etc, etc.

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Despite this brutal occupation the EU never took any sanction against the state of Israel, which made them complicit in the Israeli occupation and oppression.

According to international law, every people has the right to rise up against an occupation, which includes armed resistance.

So Hamas, as any other Palestinian organisation, has this right, but of course according international humanitarian law it must refrain from attacks on civilians.

I wonder whether the EU will also condemn Israel – which right now launches a bloody attack in Gaza by bombing Gaza for a whole week, with more than 2200 deaths, as well as denying the Gazan population water, medicines, fuel and food supplies – in the same strong terms as it condemned Hamas.

Astrid Essed
Amsterdam

IT really amazes me that with the increasing war and tensions between Israel and Palestine the UK Government seems to be strongly supporting Israel.

The Prime Minister on Thursday said we all stand by and support Israel. A bit presumptuous, is it not?

The BBC is supposed to educate and inform, but over the past week I have heard not a jot about the UK’s involvement in the creation of Israel, or Israel’s continued expansion beyond her originally agreed borders.

READ MORE: Craig Murray: I was detained under terror laws after Palestine protest

A few years ago on a walk through East Lothian I visited a church at the hamlet of Whittinghame on the original Balfour Estate. A J Balfour’s input into the creation of an Israeli state was not inconsiderable.

In the Whittinghame Kirk there was a leather-bound Bible with AJB inscribed in gold letters on the cover.

What for me was even more interesting was the comments made by Palestinian visitors to the church, who left their comments in the church’s visitors book.

One Palestinian wrote in March 2011: “It all started here”. A second wrote: “If Balfour could see what he has done, would he have done it? (PS lovely church)”. A third wrote: “ Balfour’s country is still here, but he had no right to give away ours.”

It was all very thought-provoking.

Ian Archibald
Edinburgh