Israel could not have broken a ceasefire that never really existed

IN her letter (January 14), Miriam Cotton claimed Steven King’s column (January 7) on Israeli actions in Gaza embodied an astounding “distortion of fact and history”.

However, her letter was so full of such distortions and inaccuracies that I had great trouble finding even one ‘fact’ that was correct.

The only one that could be justified was this: “To take just one glaring example, Hamas did not break the recent ceasefire” but that was not, as she continued, because “Israel did when it killed six people in November at the end of what had been six months of serious attempts by Hamas to engage in a dialogue”.

The fact is the ceasefire had never really existed since there was hardly a day when Hamas or its surrogates did not fire several Kassam rockets at clearly civilian targets such as the Israeli towns of Sderot and Ashkelon — not just “the occasional rocket fire from the more extreme groups in Gaza” as Eamon Dyas has claimed (Letters, January 14).

Perhaps if Ms Cotton is going to write about the situation she at least ought to get her facts right and not, as it seems, rely exclusively on press releases and information emanating from Palestinian or similar sources.

Martin D Stern

Hanover Gardens

Salford M7 4FQ

England