Letters in The Guardian : 12/3/2004


Max Hastings complains that Zionists are demanding that people make a grotesque choice between Zionism and anti-semitism. He then falls into the Zionists' trap by complaining of the antics of "Jewish lobbies" and the lack of courage of "overseas Jews". He ends by demanding that the "world's Jews ... persuade" Israel to mend its ways.

Hastings makes the same mistake accidentally that the Zionists make deliberately. He should be focusing on Israel's ethnic cleansing, its apartheid laws and its relentless aggression towards the Palestinians; instead he focuses on its Jewishness.

Mark Elf
Dagenham, Essex

As one, albeit an atheist one, of "the growing number of Jews who express dismay about the behaviour of the Israeli government", I can only say thank God for Hastings' spot-on article. We need more on the same lines.

Brian Robinson
Milton Keynes, Bucks