
British Israelis urge Government to act on Gaza starvation
Starmer and Lammy were urged to end the UK's trade and partnership agreement with Israel until it allowed 'food and medicine into Gaza in significant quantities'.
READ MORE: UK firms sent Israel thousands of military items despite export ban
The letter said: 'We are watching in horror the images coming from Gaza of malnourished babies and children.
"Since the 2nd of March 2025, Israel's hard-right government has banned all aid from entering the Gaza Strip.
"This hermetic siege is by far the longest and harshest ever to be imposed on the Strip.'
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government were referred to as 'the most extreme in Israel's history', noting that hostages from the October 7 attack have also been affected by the famine imposed on Gaza.
Yair Wallach, an associate professor at SOAS University of London, urged other Israelis in the UK to sign the petition, writing on social media platform Bluesky that "pleading with Netanyahu's rogue government will not do".
READ MORE: Irish broadcaster calls for 'discussions' on Israeli Eurovision involvement
Palestinians are becoming increasingly desperate as a result of Israel's assault on Gaza, with the United Nations saying what little food is left in supermarkets is unaffordable for most and that 80% of the population are dependent on the contents of aid trucks stuck at the border.
New plans were announced earlier this week regarding the seizure of the Gaza Strip, which would see hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced and forced into the south, worsening the already dire humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
At least 61 people have been killed by Israeli strikes since this morning, with the total death toll since October 7, 2023, sitting at over 52,000.
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Daily Mail
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This ancient wisdom is backed up by scientific research which shows that, when done with skill and experience, preventative fires produce less smoke than uncontrolled blazes and even help sequester carbon. Efficient winter burns brush across the surface of the wet ground, leaving the moss and peat below untouched. Famously, you can place a Mars bar on the ground in the midst of a preventative heather fire and it won't melt. Yet this Government doesn't do ancient wisdom. And it doesn't do science. It does the religion of 'rewilding'. Beloved among metropolitan eco warriors, this obsession opposes traditional farming methods and demands that the landscape and its ecosystems be returned to the chaos of nature. As a fad it's relatively new, but even so it has done enormous damage. It is hard not to believe the drive to rewild our uplands – which effectively means abolishing managed grouse moors – is being led, at least in part, by the metropolitan Left's sheer animosity towards country sports in general and gamekeepers in particular. Among other things, the creed of rewilding outlaws precautionary winter burns on our hillsides. The result of such bans is that year in, year out, the vegetation keeps growing. And out-of-control vegetation can lead to out-of-control fires. It is a particular irony that Ms Rayner's constituents in Ashton-under-Lyne, east of Manchester, were among those who could see the flames on Saddleworth Moor. For the blaze started on land where Natural England, the Government's environmental quango, was carrying out its rewilding vision by banning winter burns. Despite the evidence, the Labour Government, driven by Ms Rayner, is now attempting to ban preventative fires on swathes of English upland, with plans afoot to outlaw burns on hills and moors with a peat depth of 30 centimetres (11in) or more. The claim is that this would protect the peat. The zealots at Natural England want to go much further still, however, and – by threatening to withdraw subsidies to landowners – is attempting to outlaw burns on hills with a mere 10cm (4in) peat depth. Covering pretty much all English peat land, this means vast areas of the countryside would see vegetation building up with no control. It would be like putting jerry cans of petrol on our hillsides. Sooner or later, they will catch fire. The snobbery facing country people is best summed up by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which, needless to say, is pushing for the ban on burning heather in the winter months. In fact, the RSPB is running what amounts in my view to a campaign of slander against country people. And that, in turn, is fuelling intimidation. One RSPB executive, for example, told listeners to BBC Radio 4's Today programme that gamekeepers were a 'co-ordinated gang of armed criminals roaming the uplands'. The same type of language is used in RSPB press releases. The result? Threats against, and even physical attacks on, gamekeepers, who will be especially vigilant this week as the Glorious Twelfth marks the start of the grouse shooting season. Yet gamekeepers are the heart of the countryside. If the craziness directed at them does not end, then jobs will be destroyed. Rural communities will disintegrate. Moorland hotels, taxi drivers and restaurants all rely on the seasonal income set to be destroyed by the vilification from the RSPB on the one hand and the mindless stupidity of Natural England on the other. Labour's old motto was that 'things can only get better'. 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