Mosque
MosqueIsrael news photo: Flash 90

A pro-Israel British lawmaker has received death threats for daring to defend the Jewish State in an exchange with a pro-PA constituent.

Conservative parliamentarian John Howell was offered police protection due to threats generated by published correspondence with a pro-Palestinian Authority activist from Watlington in Oxfordshire.

The activist, Harry Fear, had sent Howell an email on March 10 in which he asked what the MP was doing “to see that Israel halts the military actions that are taking place in defiance of international law and basic human decency.”

Included in the email was an old photograph of a building exploding that had made the rounds on the Internet in 2009. The caption stated, “Only a few hours ago, Israel felt it necessary to inflict this destruction and death on the [Gaza] Strip.”

The MP replied, “And what is your position, Harry, on the 100 rockets which have landed in Israel over the weekend?”

The exchange was posted on Fear's blog and Facebook page with the MP's contact information and instructions to write to Howell “civilly, expressing discontent with his conduct.”

The Zionist Federation of the UK, meanwhile, is calling on the public to write letters expressing support for the lawmaker.

The MP received about 30 emails, some of which he characterized as “worrying,” from “pro-Palestinian and Arab fanatics, some from the UK and some clearly not, some equally threatening.”

One person calling himself “Jihad Alshamie” wrote a series of emails and said, “It is people like you who deserve to die.”

Howell pointed out in comments to the media that “you have to take seriously a threat when it says, 'I would like to see you dead.' It is not just a question of me,” he added, “it is my family and my staff. All it takes is one person out there who is weird enough, with a distorted view of life, to make an attempt to carry this out.”

Last week one jihadist in southern France succeeded in murdering a rabbi and three young Jewish children at the Otzar HaTorah Jewish day school in Toulouse. He also murdered three French Muslim paratroopers in nearby Montauban the week prior.

An elite unit of French commandos attempted to capture the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist in a siege of more than 30 hours. Mohammed Merah ultimately died in a hail of gunfire, however, when he tried to escape by jumping out the window of the apartment in which he'd been trapped.