Email to:

• Elisabeth Ribbans, guardian.readers@theguardian.com 

• Paul Webster Paul.Webster@observer.co.uk (outgoing editor of The Observer) 

• Katharine Viner Katharine.Viner@theguardian.co.uk (editor of The Guardian) 

Subject: Urgent: atrocity denial published by The Observer, action needed

Dear Elisabeth,

Parents for Palestine is a UK-based grassroots collective of parents and caretakers from all backgrounds and denominations, calling for a lasting ceasefire and an end to the UK military support to Israel.

We are writing to raise urgent concerns about the article you published on Sunday 6th October in The Observer comparing reporting on the deaths of children in Gaza in the last year, with anti-Semitic blood libel in Medieval Europe. 

Racist atrocity denial is a well recognised phenomenon seen in many conflicts around the world, which exists within a spectrum and an ecosystem of voices. It can take the form of outright denial of atrocities, as we have seen in the mouths of Israeli officials in the last year with the rhetoric of “Pallywood”;  the erosion of the sense of reality around deaths; the dehumanisation of victims; and attacks on the reporting of atrocities, with the aim of making some lives less grievable than others.  

This article fits within the phenomenon described above of atrocity denial by analogising children’s deaths in Gaza with fictional blood libels. 

• We therefore ask for this article to be removed in full, along with a public retraction. 

• Failing that, we ask for the removal of the particular passages highlighted below, along with the inclusion of an editor’s note referencing the numbers of children killed, orphaned and permanently disabled in Gaza in the last year, and the rights of children in conflict zones according to the Geneva Convention. 

• We also ask, as a matter of urgency, that the egregious photograph of a plastic “mock dead baby” be removed immediately.

In particular we take issue with these passages: 

 1.“Here we were again, the same merciless infanticides inscribed in the imaginations of medieval Christians. Only this time, instead of operating on the midnight streets of Lincoln and Norwich, they target Palestinian schools, the paediatric wards of hospitals, the tiny fragile bodies of children themselves.” 

The deaths of children in Gaza are not “the same merciless infanticides inscribed in the imaginations of medieval Christians” but the deaths of more than 14,000 real children, killed in the last 12 months as a result of military action on behalf of a sovereign state in occupied territory. There is nothing imaginary about the deaths of children in Gaza. 

2. “Night after night, a recital of the numbers dead. Night after night, the unbearable footage of their parents’ agony. The savagery of war. The savagery of the Israeli onslaught. But for many, writing or marching against Israeli action, the savagery of the Jews as told for hundreds of years in literature and art and church sermons.”

This attack on reporting on the deaths of children and their parents’ grief, and its conflation with anti-Semitism is a direct attack on reporting on and protesting against the massacre of children. 

3. Ask how Israel is able to target innocent children with such deadly accuracy and no one can tell you. Ask why they would want to target innocent children and make themselves despised among the nations of the Earth and no one can tell you that either. Hate on this scale seeks no rational explanation.” 

This passage veers dangerously close to outright denial: the deaths of children in military attacks on Gaza are a matter of fact, and well documented.  According to Oxfam, more women and children have been killed in Gaza in the last year by the Israeli military than in any other recent conflict, and over 25,000 children have lost a parent or been orphaned.

 In the words of UNWRA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini: “This war is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future”.

In light of the seriousness of the context of racist anti-Palestinian atrocity denial, and the attack on solidarity with highly vulnerable children in this article, we look forward to seeing immediate action on this matter from you. The death of 14,000 Palestinian children is not a trope. 

Failing that, we reserve our right to pursue this matter further in whatever way we see fit. 

Sincerely, 

[YOUR NAME]