The current conflict in Israel is every Christian’s business

Writer Michele Guinness is of Jewish ancestry and suggests that choosing sides is the wrong approach to the heartbreaking situation in the Middle East.

Every time there is trouble in Gaza there seems to be a surge of antisemitism in the UK. But this time it’s more than ‘trouble’, awful as it always is. This is a terror attack; on a grand scale. Simchat Torah - the “Rejoicing in the Law of God” - is one of the most exuberant festivals in the Jewish calendar. The yearly cycle of the reading of the first five books of Moses is complete and the scrolls are paraded around the synagogue accompanied by singing and dancing. They are kissed as an expression of the joy it is to have such wise and wonderful rules to live by.

This year it fell on a Sabbath, an even holier day (Saturday 7 October). In Israel thousands of young people gathered for the Supernova music and arts festival and the revelry was at its peak when a volley of rockets fired into their midst heralded the arrival of gunmen who simply and methodically shot at everyone in sight, leaving hundreds dead. Throughout the rest of the country entire families have been murdered in their beds or with their hands tied behind their backs forced to watch the massacre of their children. Forty children have been reportedly killed in one kibbutz* alone; babies have been beheaded, a large number of civilians from toddlers to the elderly and infirm have been taken hostage and women have been paraded through the streets of Gaza as if part of a celebration. [Please note that the footage captured on this video may cause distress]