Kitty Ussher MP in the New Statesman

The only conclusion any right-minded person can draw is that the Prime Minister thought it was OK for Muslims to keep dying

I had been looking forward to this particular Sunday. It was the day I was due to go down to the Asian area of my constituency to see an old political friend for the first time in ages. It was a house I had visited often in the past few years; his front room had seen many an election plan hatched and carried out, including part of my own selection battle in Burnley.

Since May 2005 the logistical demands of becoming the town's new MP meant that we had met less often. So when I discovered recently that he was about to go home to Pakistan for a month, I finally made the effort and mangled the diary appropriately.

Three days before he went away, with some sense of achievement - indeed, jubilation - I hurtled into his front room, my toddler daughter in tow, to land once more on the familiar sofa.

What happened next was entirely unexpected. Rather than the smiles and welcomes and cups of tea, I was greeted by a wave of hostility from his family and friends that made me catch my breath. My dismay and disappointment must have been obvious, because they got straight to the point. "Why are you allowing our people to die?"

[...]

But because there are no plausible reasons not to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, at least none that have been adequately explained to me, the only conclusion any right-minded person can draw by simply looking at the facts is that the Prime Minister thought it was OK for Muslim people to keep dying.