I have just read Frances Ryan’s column (Disabled Palestinians are facing horrors piled upon horrors. I think of their suffering every day, 4 October). Among the many tragedies and inhumanity in the Middle East that we have read about, I find it gut-wrenching on a personal level to hear these nightmarish stories of thousands being left unable to use their “legs” (what I call my wheelchair) because it lies beneath the rubble that was once their safe place – their home; or going without essential medical treatment, and thus suffering well-avoidable declines in health.
It is terrible that more and more are added to the legion of people destined to be unable to run, to hide, to care for themselves or to protect their loved ones, as the hours and days go by.
After reading the article, I stared at the words for a long time. I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. Having a disability, as I do, is never simple or easy; sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s impossible. What the Palestinian civilians are going through is incomprehensible to me and surely a war crime?
Emma Vinicombe
Alfreton, Derbyshire
