THERE is no excuse now for Rishi Sunak, David Cameron or any of the UK Tory government to continue to allow arms sales to Israel, now that the International Criminal Court has applied for an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr Netanyahu has presided over a genocide of the Palestinian people, bombing refugee camps, hospitals and schools, killing innocent men women and children.

READ MORE: Keir Starmer silent as ICC seeks arrest warrant for Israeli leaders

But it shouldn’t stop there. There are many more within the Israeli establishment who have participated, including IDF soldiers torturing and murdering civilians. And let’s not forget those Israelis who have blocked emergency food aid getting to the Palestinians.

If the UK Government does not cease to arm Israel then it too should be on trial for supporting Israel’s genocide. No more excuses are good enough, it’s time for the UK Government – and its Labour party tribute act – to stand with the victims of torture, murder and genocide. Israel should be banned from all sporting and cultural events until Netanhayu and others answer for their crimes against humanity.

Cllr Kenny MacLaren
Paisley

ON behalf of the Scottish Socialist Party, I would like to thank the 7500 people on Princes Street in Edinburgh who signed our petition over the past month calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

It is clear decent people across the world have been horrified by the events they have witnessed in Israel and Gaza during these past six months.

Millions of us have marched in protest at both the murder of 1300 innocent Israelis and the bombardment and murder of 35,000 equally innocent Palestinians.

READ MORE: Stephen Flynn warns UK 'complicit' as ICC seeks Netanyahu arrest warrant

Our petition urged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to use his considerable influence to stop the war in Gaza, end the occupation of the Palestinian territories and release the Israeli hostages. It has been sent to Downing Street to remind the UK Government that the people of Scotland want a ceasefire.

We want to see an end to the fighting and a start to the talking. And we want him to use his considerable authority to impress upon the Israeli government in particular that there is no military solution to this conflict. That much we have all surely learned from 80 years of killing.

Peace in the Middle East can only be achieved and sustained on the basis of mutual understanding, shared prosperity and equal rights – economic, social and political – for all the peoples who inhabit those lands, Palestinian as well as Israeli.

The Scottish Socialist Party has been campaigning for peace, justice, equality and shared prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians for more than 25 years. We advocate those objectives as part of our vision of a peaceful, democratic, negotiated solution to the Middle East conflict. They have, in my view, never been more necessary.

Colin Fox
National spokesman, Scottish Socialist Party

I HAVEN’T started off a Sunday with a belly laugh in ages but reading that Rishi Sunak thinks I am an extremist made me howl with laughter. Then, having recovered, I felt buoyed up. He obviously does in fact fear we have a case, and therefore will try any trick in his dwindling repertoire to malign those of us who believe independence is the only way forward.

READ MORE: Why branding Yessers as 'extremists' threatens Scotland's democracy

The only one trying to get at the independence movement is Rishi and his rotten borough pals. That we instil such a reaction in him is a positive. This Conservative government are the extremists – extreme taxation, extreme inflation, extreme shortages in funding for the NHS and education, extreme unemployment – to name but a few extremist results of too many years of extremist Conservative rule.

Let’s get a push on and get independence front and foremost, and get away from the extremist views and policies of a multi-millionaire who is running short of ideas.

Frieda Burns
Stonehaven

IN response to Andrew Haddow’s suggestion (Letters, May 16), if there is a kind KC that doesn’t charge a fortune, let’s get going on the Prime Minister’s slanderous remarks regarding Yes movement participants. Count me in.

I also couldn’t agree more with Jim Taylor in the same edition regarding prefabricated homes, which are cheap, easily built, and now come in flat packs or container form.

Ken McCartney
Hawick

SO Gordy Broon is out writing articles again, and yet with the common, driving mission to eradicate child poverty, he cannot bring himself to acknowledge, support or work collaboratively with John Swinney to try to end this “curse” in Scotland. So I would like to ask him...

Is the task not big enough, Gordon? Is the cause only worth pursuing at a UK level, lest it confer some political advantage on the SNP?

READ MORE: Former Scots chief constable to lead Gordon Brown's 'multibank' anti-poverty scheme

Gordon, you don’t have a listening ear in London. Starmer and Reeves have a different agenda and if eventually they decide to move on the two-cap limit will it be the next parliamentary term? Or the next? Can we wait?

You know we can’t, and if your commitment to this cause is as strong as you tell us it is then you would work with the devil to make a difference. Yes, even John Swinney!

So I guess it’s time to put up, Gordon, or continue to wring your hands, write your articles and know that when push came to shove, your party politics won out.

I Easton
Glasgow