Matthew Stevens

1/2 A note to Piers Morgan… Within living memory, one third of the world's Jews were systematically exterminated. Six million people murdered, not in some distant, uncivilised corner of the world, but in the heart of Europe, where Jews had lived, worked, contributed and integrated into society for generations. The Holocaust is not simply a chapter in a history book for Jews. It is embedded in our collective memory. It explains why we worry about our families' security, why we are cautious about whom we trust, and why we know that the veneer of civilisation can be frighteningly thin. Our neighbours turned against us. Others simply stood by and watched. The re-establishment of Israel in 1948 was supposed to ensure that never again would Jews be dependent on the goodwill of others for their survival. And this was no arbitrary piece of territory. It was our ancestral homeland, from which Jewish sovereignty had been extinguished by the Romans nearly 2,000 years earlier. Throughout the centuries of exile, persecution and expulsion, Jews never stopped yearning to return. The United Nations recognised that right to self-determination in 1947. But from the moment Israel declared independence, its neighbours sought its destruction. Despite the vast expanse of the Arab world, they could not tolerate a Jewish state on a sliver of land roughly the size of Wales. And rather than help resolve the refugee crisis created by that conflict, the international community established a system through UNRWA under which refugee status could be passed down through generations, perpetuating the Palestinian refugee question rather than resolving it. My own father was a Holocaust survivor from Poland. Yet I am not a refugee, nor would I dream of claiming to be one. Why should the descendants of Palestinians be treated so differently? When British India was partitioned in 1947, millions were displaced. Yet the international community did not establish a permanent, hereditary refugee system to perpetuate that conflict indefinitely. Israel, meanwhile, has spent nearly eight decades having to defend its very existence. Peace has been offered, rejected, negotiated and repeatedly undermined. Whatever the failures on both sides, the Jewish state's fundamental right to exist should never have been in question. And this is what you, Piers, seem so spectacularly incapable of understanding. When Israel comes under attack, Jews around the world don't simply see another foreign conflict. We see the potential destruction of the one place on earth that guarantees we will never again be defenceless. When we witness the explosion of antisemitism, particularly online, so often disguised as righteous opposition to Israel, we recognise something terrifyingly familiar. We've seen this movie before. We know how it ends. The difference today is that Israel exists. Its people are armed, proud and determined. Jews will never again be marched helplessly to their deaths without the means to resist. And the Islamist extremists who openly call for Israel's destruction make no secret of their wider ambitions. Israel is not their final destination. The West is next. Yet you seem to treat all this as another opportunity for confrontation, controversy and clicks. You present yourself as the fearless, impartial referee between competing opinions, but there is a profound difference between genuine journalism and providing a lucrative platform for those who demonise the world's only Jewish state. Of course Israel can be criticised. Its government can be challenged. Its military decisions can be scrutinised. But there is a world of difference between holding a democracy accountable and relentlessly feeding a narrative that questions its legitimacy while ignoring the historical trauma and existential fears of the Jewish people.