THE National's front-page headline regarding Stephen Flynn’s plea/put down of both PM Sunak and Labour’s out-of-touch leader, Keir Starmer, highlights once again how the US and UK governments (and others in Europe) really have lost the moral high ground on the utterly deplorable assault on Gaza that has gone far beyond anything most people could’ve ever imagined possible in this day and age.

The silence and lack of real action against Israel and its barbaric ultra-right-wing Zionist government is proof of guilt and complicity in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of an occupied territory called Gaza as well as the totally unacceptable and brutal assaults against Palestinians in the West Bank.

READ MORE: 'Enough is enough': Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer urged to back immediate ceasefire

Again, the response from the US and its UK “lapdog” is lame and deliberately complicit in giving these horrible aggressors free rein to do what they like.

A close friend of mine hinted that perhaps it is time somebody did the right thing and gave these Palestinian people a fighting chance by dropping lots of arms and ammunition to at least defend themselves against an enemy that will kill anybody – innocent family members, unarmed men, women and children who the Israeli Government/Israel Defence Forces cynically deem to be collateral damage. I briefly pointed out that we are not witnessing one of these dramatic epic war movies where the good guys eventually arrive to arm and relieve an oppressed population under siege – this is for real, and we are watching a brutally aggressive apartheid regime in full flow with the global US policeman condoning the massacre together with a compromised but complicit UK Government accomplice.

READ MORE: Children displaced in Rafah ‘equivalent to Scotland’s entire population of under-12s’

Lastly, how ironic it is to observe South Africa and Nicaragua both rightly accusing Israel of all kinds of crimes against humanity and demanding action plus an immediate ceasefire while the silent US and UK government stand back in total disarray having lost the moral high ground.

I personally want to see the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and other vicious cohorts in his coalition government, plus the main offenders within the IDF as well as his main extreme propagandist-spokesman Mr Levy, chased down and formally charged with crimes against humanity with a subsequent trial at the International Court of Justice in The Hague – I call that true justice that should overturn any protectionism attempted by Israel’s complicit Western backers/allies and main providers of the ordnance that has devastated the Gaza infrastructure and killed more than 27,000 Palestinians and injured well in excess of 70,000!!

Bernie Japs
Edinburgh

WHILE not an advocate of SNP MPs not taking up their seats at Westminster following the next General Election, it seems the time has come for demonstrable action to be taken by Scotland’s MPs in support of the savagely oppressed people of Palestine.

The mass slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians and the wanton destruction of their homes and livelihoods must be prevented from spiralling further.

READ MORE: South Africa lodges 'urgent request' with ICJ amid Rafah concerns

Should Rishi Sunak not call for an “immediate ceasefire” before parliament next sits on February 19, Stephen Flynn should lead all SNP MPs out of the Commons and call on MPs of other parties who sincerely share his distress over the tragic predicament of fellow human beings trapped in Gaza to join them.

Sunak and Starmer have had more than enough time to come together to put pressure on Israel and the US to end this deliberately enforced human catastrophe and at the very least agree to the urgent suspension of UK arm sales and military support for an out-of-control despotic Israeli leader.

How many more thousands of innocent men, women and children must be massacred before the UK Government finally recognises that the barbaric actions of the IDF are not defence, but utterly indefensible genocide!

Stan Grodynski
Longniddry, East Lothian

DURING the early years of my life, Hitler was practising ethnic cleansing by trying to exterminate the Jewish population of Germany. The UK and the allies were fighting to defeat him and thereafter leading the plans to give the Jewish people a state of their own.

READ MORE: Labour MSP joked about BAE Systems shares after Middle East bombing campaign

Now Netanyahu is quite clearly practising ethnic cleansing by implementing his openly stated aim of driving out Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank and taking over what he regards as “all the land that God gave the Jews”. This time, however, our Westminster colonial masters and their US ally are backing and arming the aggressor, refusing to demand an end to the collective punishment, cutting aid and thus supporting the ethnic cleansing. Does this not make them complicit in this crime against humanity?

This is surely well beyond even the depths of hypocrisy and double standards that we have come to expect. Time for our Scottish Government to stand up and be counted, publicly declare that this is NOT in the name of the people of Scotland and join with those countries taking Israel to the ICJ for war crimes.

P Davidson
Falkirk

JANUARY 27 was Holocaust Memorial Day. We were asked to light candles and remember those whe were murdered on the orders of a madman just for being who they were.

Pre-World War Two, the word holocaust (Greek origin) was used to describe the death of a large group of people. I wonder if, at some time in the future and when the horrors being perpetrated in Gaza are history, the Palestinians (assuming that there are any left alive) will have a special date to remember those currently being murdered just for being who they are once again on the orders of yet another madman.

David Campbell
via email