A WEST Somerset minister has written to every member of his congregation appealing for them to help the people of Gaza.

Alcombe vicar the Rev Kenneth Cross said Gaza’s entire population ‘is at risk of being wiped out by starvation and killing’.

Mr Cross said: “I am taking the unusual step of contacting everybody in our benefice churches over a matter of grave international, political, and humanitarian concern, with the purpose that, rather than succumb to paralysis or despair, we find the courage to take whatever small acts we can within our power.

“I encourage you to do your own research, make your voice heard by means of and contribute through those organisations which seem to you to be most authentic and effective.

“I make no apology as your incumbent and priest in calling every single one of us to take whatever small actions we feel we can.

“They may seem so small.

“But, we take each small step entrusting our work into the hands of the God who is Love.”

Alcombe’s St Michael the Archangel Church is part of the Grabbist Hill Benefice with Dunster, Timberscombe, and Wootton Courtenay.

Mr Cross, who denied being antisemitic, accepted Hamas terrorists had ‘been complicit’ in the violence affecting Gaza, but said the Israel Defence Forces was ‘responsible for the death of civilians who they fire at or who are being starved to death by their brutal blockades’.

He said: “Such acts, by any standard, are criminal.

“Genocide was a crime against humanity in the 1940s.

“Genocide is a crime against humanity in the 2020s.

“Without discrimination.

“We as Christians are called to love the whole of the human family.

“That includes Jew and Muslim, Palestinian and Israeli, and many others.

“However, when a particular people are being systematically exterminated by violent means, we are to take a side.

“We take the side of the powerless and the broken.

“This is no less true in the 2020s than it was in the 1940s.”

Mr Cross said his message was not a party political matter, although it was ‘unapologetically a political statement’.

He said: “Because everything we do or omit to do, is a political act.

“We cannot avoid being political, because we are all connected as the human family.

“To act now is a profoundly spiritual thing to do.

“Authentic faith in Christ is quite simply always embodied in our works.

“The greatest commandment is to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

“Neither is there anything antisemitic in all of this.

“Many Rabbis and Jews are in absolute agreement and are calling for an end to this horror, on the basis that such acts are a betrayal of what the Torah is all about.

“We Christians owe the foundations of our tradition to the ancient Hebrew peoples, one of whom is our Lord Jesus Christ, and today we share a spiritual inheritance with modern faithful Jewish peoples.”

Mr Cross said every West Somerset resident had some complicity in the shape of the world today.