It is with great sadness I write this week’s opinion article.
No, it’s not that trading in the pub industry is challenging these days, nor is it that I do my monthly outgoings and incomings without my usual anticipation for summer trading. It is about the elephant in the room. It is about humanity. It is about all of us and what will the future generations make of it if we do not talk about it.
The daily massacring of women and children was bad enough but when starvation is used as warfare and we see emaciated, hungry children and elderly men and women daily in the media, it affects me. It affects me to my core. What if that was my daughter, my mother, my father?
I cannot sleep at night, I am filled with a sense of hopelessness and helplessness.
Hospitality needs to stand up
I cannot get through the day for the heavy heart I carry.
I am angry. It is not right that people are starved for warfare. I do not condone what Hamas did, I am strongly against antisemitism or any form of discrimination and speaking out is very important.
Eating and drinking is about sustenance, celebrations and togetherness. Mostly, it’s about survival. When people are being deprived of their basic right to survive not because of a natural catastrophe or abject poverty but power and warfare, I am sickened to my core.
In my opinion, it is time that we in hospitality too stand up against starvation as warfare.
Put a stop to this awful war
We are the food and drink industry, and the more people speak up, the more noise we make, the more chances there are that we may get through to our governments to help put a stop to this awful war.
I applaud [Israeli chef Yotam] Ottolenghi for having condemned it. All of us should condemn it. I could have never imagined that in 2025 humanity would condone this atrocity.
Please help, speak out. We need hospitality to stand up against Israel’s warfare. Aid needs to get through. Humans need to be fed and even if we fail, we can at least say we tried.
Let us not be part of this shameful legacy. Write to your MPs, do anything you can, I know I have.
