Insurance policy zionism?

There was a letter I missed in the Independent a couple of days ago. Here's a piece:

As a Jew living outside Israel, I think it is important we have somewhere safe to go the next time someone tries to exterminate us. When Hamas is programming its children to hate the Jews and to be martyrs for its cause, it might not be time to trust them yet.

Well, not surprisingly, there's been an objection to such insurance policy zionism (I heard Stephen Marks call it that once). And the Independent was big enough to publish it:

Sir: James Goldman says: "As a Jew living outside Israel, I think it is important we have somewhere safe to go the next time someone tries to exterminate us" (letter, 14 May).

So Mr Goldman, currently living comfortably in law-abiding, democratic Britain, believes that Palestinians, ethnically cleansed from their land, should stay as refugees while Israel keeps their land, and that Israel should keep and settle in all land gained since 1947, despite this being against the Geneva Conventions. Then if he and his co-religionists are persecuted they can go to a place where Jews have persecuted a people to make space for them; he seems indifferent to the immorality of this concept.

Yet he then complains that Hamas programmes its children to hate the Jews. But is it not natural for a people to detest the people who have kept them under occupation for 40 years while it steals their land? Furthermore, this detestation would surely, extend to those in the Diaspora who condone these unjust actions by Israel.

William Garrett

Harrow, Middlesex

Well actually I wouldn't say it's natural but it is understandable.