London-born Lucy Dee, murdered with her two daughters by Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank, loved Marmite, tea and scones her siblings have shared. 

In a statement, her siblings Benjamin Shaw, Gaby Sweidan and Stephanie Trompeter said: “Lucy grew up in London and like many other normal English girls attended the local state school, walking there each morning. 

“She loved tea, Marmite, scones, watching the Sewing Bee and many other quintessentially English activities and was going on holiday, just like any other British citizen, when her and our two nieces were murdered.” 

The siblings, who returned to the UK on Sunday, after sitting shiva at the family’s home in the settlement of Efrat, also referred to Foreign Secretary James Cleverly’s letter to her widower Rabbi Leo Dee, in which he offered unequivocal condemnation of the murder of Lucy and her daughters at Hamra Junction in the West Bank. 

In his first full interview with the British press, the grieving rabbi, 52, hit out at the Foreign Office's original statement on the attack which he said was “typical” of the Foreign Office’s previous policy to blame the victims and placate a general public in the UK that has been educated to be anti-Israel.” 

The statement followed recent JC reports revealing that the Foreign Office staff in Jerusalem had taken part in a fun run in “defiance of the Israeli foreign occupation” and that its top diplomat had met a senior Palestinian cleric who compared Jews to “apes and pigs.” 

“The old school policy of governments and the media denying the absolute evil of terror has led to terrorists feeling their acts are acceptable and the media follows suit,” Rabbi Dee said. 

But Dee was full of praise for Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, believed to be away when the first statement was put out, who he described as a “truthful politician.” 

“The Cleverley Declaration, as I would like it to be referred to, is a landmark document in the morality of nations,” the Oxford-educated rabbi said. 

The minister had “set the new standard for responding to terror and I am certain that this will be adopted by other governments and all media. His clear message is, from now, that terror is always evil.”  

“Terror against innocent victims is condemned outright. No qualification, no stab in the back, no blaming murder on the victim, no room to believe that maybe the terrorist might have been right.” 

The rabbi, who served at the United Synagogue in Radlett from 2011 to 2014 when the family made aliyah thanked the Foreign Secretary and “all of Rishi Sunak’s government for their bravery.  

“To do what is right, when it is not a popular trend, is unusual in our days of making decisions based on polls and ratings.