It was encouraging to read in the Worcester News (29/7/14) that the Worcestershire and England player Moeen Ali wore wristbands declaring his support for the people of Gaza.

In the short article, it was stated that ‘Israel launched an air offensive against Hamas militant forces’.

Let’s be clear about this: the Israeli army is deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza.

The Dahiya doctrine states that the Israeli army will deliberately target civilian infrastructure.

Richard Falk, an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years, wrote that under the doctrine, "the civilian infrastructure of adversaries such as Hamas or Hezbollah are treated as permissible military targets, which is not only an overt violation of the most elementary norms of the law of war and of universal morality, but an avowal of a doctrine of violence that needs to be called by its proper name: state terrorism.”

In an email to my friend Colin sent 29th July, Ahmed in Gaza wrote: “again, mosques, schools, clinics, hospitals, houses, factories, stores, civic defence and ambulances were targeted, doctors, paramedics, civilians, babies, women, men, elderly, animals, birds, trees…all were targeted and either killed, destroyed or uprooted!”

Neil Laurenson

Worcester