Firing on ambulances
From Emma Williams
Sir: Rod Liddle (‘Why do we tolerate intolerance?’, 17 September) writes that he has ‘heard no reports of Christian or Jewish combatants firing on Red Crescent vehicles’. He might read the Israeli press for enlightenment, or the Red Crescent website. In 2002 Ha’aretz quoted the director of Israeli Physicians for Human Rights saying that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) ‘fires at Palestinian ambulances systematically and as a matter of policy’.
According to the Red Crescent itself, from 2000 to 2005, 341 Red Crescent ambulances have been fired on by the IDF, with 203 staff injured. Dr Khalil Suleiman was killed inside an ambulance while trying to evacuate an injured girl from Jenin refugee camp in March 2002. The ambulance was attacked not only by IDF machine-gun fire but also by a grenade launched at the windscreen. Seen by residents to be screaming through the flames, a second ambulance tried to rescue Dr Suleiman but was also fired on by the army. Every Red Crescent worker I have talked to in the Occupied Territories is aware that Red Crescent markings on their uniform and vehicles give no protection from the IDF.
I fully agree with Mr Liddle that it would be hugely damaging to abolish Holocaust Memorial Day. But let’s not pretend that Muslims have a monopoly on the violations of international humanitarian law to which he refers. That is quite wrong.
Emma Williams Tynron, Dumfriesshire
Previous page
