ALLOW me briefly to sing the praises of the peaceful protestors outside Barclays Bank in Skipton ('Protest outside town bank' Craven Herald, January 25).

The stoical members of 'Three Peaks for Palestine' are raising awareness of their claimed Barclays Bank's links to Israel.

Whilst UK politicians have waged wars of weasel words with one another, the leaders calling for anything but the necessary permanent ceasefire, 'the most moral defence force in the world' has destroyed over 60 per cent of Gaza Strip homes and internally displaced some 1.90 million Gazans (over 20 Wembleys-full).

To date, over 26,000 civilian Gazan deaths have been recorded, including over 10,000 children (one child death every 15 minutes for over three and a half months, some 250 of whom did not reach their first birthday).

The UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered that there should be no acts of genocide against Gazan Palestinians. That is to say, it largely restated international law derived from the 1948 Genocide Convention without ordering a permanent ceasefire explicitly.

However, it did order six provisional measures (e.g. preventing acts of genocide, enabling the provision of basic services and humanitarian aid, and ensuring the preservation of evidence related to alleged acts of genocide), with which compliance is virtually impossible without a permanent ceasefire.

To conclude, on December 1, the former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (dealing with individuals rather than states, as the ICJ), Luis Moreno Ocampo, declared in a TV interview, "The siege itself is a genocide".

So there we have it: whilst our politicians have failed us, those stoical members of 'Three Peaks for Palestine' demanding "Stop bombing Gaza" are spot on. Thank you.

Richard Sykes

Skipton