GRAEME SOUNESS: Israel is a country I have always loved visiting

I have grieved this week for the babies and children, both Israeli and Palestinian, caught up in the horrors which have engulfed the Middle East.

Israel is a land I’ve visited at least a dozen times and whose people always extended me an extraordinary warmth when I arrived as an outsider not sharing their faith. It’s no exaggeration to say that a trip I took to Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, for my step-son Daniel’s Bar Mitzvah some years back, was one of the most interesting and enjoyable experiences of my life.

Neither will I ever forget my first visit, with Liverpool in 1978. I took Shabbat one Friday night at the home of lawyer and politician Ruvi Rivlin, his wife, son and daughter, in Tel Aviv. Ruvi, who went on to become president of Israel, ended up giving me a tour of Jerusalem, which became a personal lesson for me in the history of the Holy Land. I was too young to appreciate it. I wish we could do it all again now.

I thought of Ruvi last weekend, and also of the family of my old Liverpool team-mate Avi Cohen, a wonderfully gifted player who we signed in 1979. I know that so many people I have met out there will be suffering now.

The atrocities are a stain on humanity. Random killing perpetrated by the agents of a terrorist organisation who – make no mistake - should be called ‘terrorists’, though some media outlets, for reasons beyond me, choose not to do that. We are not talking about flag-waving demonstrators. The victims include babies and children, for goodness’ sake. There is no greater abomination.

It also shames me, as a proud Briton, to see that British Jewish parents feel it is now unsafe to send their kids to school. And that British Jewish schoolchildren are taught what to do if a gunman turns up at their