In the killing fields of Gaza where heavily-armed Israeli troops in Merkava tanks and US-supplied F16 strike aircraft, fire high-explosive missiles into a civilian population in acts of collective punishment – to date, over 2000 lives, the majority of which are unarmed civilians including hundreds of women and children, have been taken.

Meanwhile, in the skies above the 1.8 million souls who are crammed into the densely populated Gaza enclave, unmanned drones fly close overhead to the houses, schools and hospitals, 24/7, in an illegal act of terror to frighten and intimidate the civilian families who have been deliberately held by the Israelis at subsistence level for now over seven years by an illegitimate blockade of essential supplies.

In the hospitals, Palestinian doctors are denied the essential drugs and dressings to aid the hundreds of casualties that keep arriving by the hour. The dead are wrapped in sheets and buried as soon as possible as the families weep on the roadside by their destroyed houses. They cannot understand how the United Nations can be blind to such a gross violation of human rights, day after bloody day.

Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, the pavement cafés and restaurants continue their busy trade as Israelis drink their lattes and eat pitta. Then, after an afternoon swim, many will again report for duty, as conscript soldiers, to destroy more lives and bulldoze more Palestinian homes – oblivious to the frightening parallels with the Germany of National Socialism, post 1933.

At night, after returning home to Bat Yam, or Herzlia, they will tuck their own children into bed; maybe make love to their wives before a last cigarette and then to sleep. They are too far away to hear the sobbing of the bereaved at the side of the road a few kilometres away, or smell the pungent odour of death from the mangled, decomposing bodies still within the remains of the building that their armoured tank shelled just yesterday. In the heavily populated Gaza City, hundreds of newly orphaned children now weep silently whilst hundreds of others lie injured.

The killing fields in Gaza await a level of civilian death and destruction not witnessed in such silence and mute acceptance, since WW2. And still the killing continues; the stealing and settlement of land likewise proceeds apace despite world condemnation – whilst the cafés in Tel Aviv still do a roaring trade confident in the sure knowledge that their cousins in Congress will continue to fund and support these acts of atrocity.

Meanwhile, the ever-active propaganda machine disseminates its message thru the Israeli foreign ministry offices, worldwide, to the effect that the thousands of civilian deaths were ‘unintentional collateral damage’ and that the Israeli army is the most caring in the world. And, notwithstanding the incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, many gullible souls still swallow the propaganda, as the Israeli government spokesman tells us, on BBC News, that his country is the real victim – as he struggles to keep a straight face.

However, obviously David Cameron believes him as he continues to sign the export licences that help equip the planes that fire the missiles that destroy the schools that kill the children and their parents.

Many of us were proud to be British and to have served in our armed forces to defend freedom and democracy – which included fiercely protecting the lives of innocent women and children in war zones and areas of conflict around the world.

Now, we are an accessory to these atrocities. May God forgive us.