A LEADING British imam has warned that relationships between Islamic and Jewish communities in Britain have become “fragile and fractured” as a result of Israel’s year-long onslaught in Gaza.

And Imam Qari Asim, chairman of the Mosques & Imams National Advisory Board, said that Israel’s military expansion of its attacks into Lebanon has created an “apocalypse.”

But he praised those members of both communities who were maintaining dialogue.

Today marks the first anniversary of Hamas’s attack, which prompted Israel’s onslaught on the people of Gaza, in which at least 42,000 Palestinians have now died.

Mr Asim said that despite the fragility in relationships between the communities, he had had “a number of open and frank conversations” with Jewish faith leaders “about the pain, trauma and heartbreak that British Muslims feel when they hear on their screens the cries of young children.”

And he paid tribute to those who have “come together to keep communication open between both communities.”

He said: “Despite the extremely aching and traumatic last 12 months, I see that brave members of our respective communities have continued some form of dialogue.

“These encounters and activities show that no matter how fractured interfaith relationships between the two communities may seem in this country, people of all faiths and beliefs stand together when they see a stain on our national moral conscience.”

Another imam has criticised the normalising of the deaths of thousands of Palestinians: Sabah Ahmedi, known as “the young imam,” said there had been a “complete injustice and double standard” over Palestinian deaths.

“You’ve got 50 or 60 people being killed in Gaza [being seen] as normal whereas if one or two people are killed in the West, it’s such big news,” he said. “They’re the double standards.”

One of Britain’s best-known liberal Jewish rabbis, Jonathan Romain, who has led the Maidenhead Synagogue since 1980, told the PA news agency that British Jews have been left feeling targeted and less secure in Britain in the past 12 months. Many were shocked by the speed at which anti-Israel feeling “quickly morphed into anti-Jewish feeling,” he said.

He added that while he is optimistic about the likelihood of a long-term peaceful solution in the Middle East, peace in the near future “looks pretty impossible at the moment.”