Rabbi Leo Dee, whose wife and two daughters were murdered in a Palestinian Arab terror attack in the Jordan Valley in April 2023, has written a searing letter to British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, accusing him of directing his moral outrage at Jews living in Judea and Samaria rather than at the institutions that, Dee says, have encouraged and rewarded Palestinian Arab terrorism.

“I am perhaps the British citizen who has suffered most directly from Britain’s misguided policies towards Israel and the Palestinians over the past 25 years," Dee begins.

His wife, Lucy, and daughters Maia and Rina were murdered when terrorists opened fire on their car in the Jordan Valley.

“My Oxford-educated wife, Lucy, and my British-educated daughters, Maia and Rina, were brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists," he writes.

Dee then draws a direct line between the murder of his family and the policy he is now challenging, stressing that since the attack, the terrorists’ families have been eligible for payments from the Palestinian Authority under its “pay-for-slay" system.

Terrorist organisations, he argues, have been allowed to flourish in an environment sustained in part by international funding.

“And now you propose boycotting products made by Jews living in the West Bank," Dee writes.

“You insist that you are not against Israelis. Yet you are prepared to single out Jewish Israelis like me for economic punishment. That is the hypocrisy I find so difficult to accept."

Dee acknowledges that innocent Palestinian Arabs have also been killed by Israelis. But he argues that there is a fundamental moral distinction between civilian deaths occurring amid terrorist attacks, armed clashes and military operations, and a system that financially rewards convicted terrorists and the families of attackers.

“For decades, Palestinian terrorism has killed thousands of innocent Israelis, like my wife and daughters," he writes. “Yet your moral outrage is directed not at those institutions, but at Jewish businesses in Judea and Samaria."

Paraphrasing the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Dee writes that criticising or boycotting Israel is not necessarily antisemitic - but singling Israel out for standards applied to no other country can be.

And then Dee ends his letter not with a plea, but with a challenge, writing, “If you genuinely believe your policy is principled rather than discriminatory, I invite you to defend it publicly. I would be happy to debate you on television, anywhere and at any time."