3 min read
Pride in Israel
It was a privilege to attend the rally for Israel at Trafalgar Square on Sunday with my son. We both found it so moving as we approached and saw a sea of Israeli flags. It made us both feel so proud. There was a great feeling of solidarity and friendship in the air. We met a charming young lady in the crowd who is not Jewish and has lived in Israel for many years who understands the plight of the Jewish people and has attended every rally in support of Israel. What a courageous lady she is.
The whole event was so well attended and organised and the talks were moving and inspiring. We left feeling that in these extremely challenging times for Jews world wide we are not alone, which is comforting. I would like to thank the Jewish security services and the police for making us all feel so safe.
Helen Leon
London EN5
V I was present at the well-attended rally last Sunday. What a missed opportunity. All those present supporting Israel with their Israel flags could easily have moved on at the end of the rally to demonstrate outside South Africa House in Trafalgar Square , against South Africa’s heinous referral of Israel to the International Court of Justice and the antisemitic removal of David Teeger as captain of the South African Under 19 cricket team.
Why can’t our community think laterally?
Jonathan Metliss
Chairman
Action Against Discrimination
David Aaronovitch argues that the two-state solution remains indispensable, despite the savagery unleashed on October 7 (Two-state solution is the only solution, not a luxury belief, 12 January).
The problem with his argument is partly one of bad timing, given that Israelis are reeling in the aftermath of the darkest day in their history. Worse, mainstream Palestinian politics provides no glimmer of hope that old style rejectionism has ever gone away. The gerontocrat Mahmoud Abbas revels in any chance to delegitimise Israel in international forums. He tells his people that Israel is a colonialist usurper regime with no right to the land while his PA, the so-called good guys, encourages hatred against Israel in schools and mosques, as well as the media. Even worse, his western backed government offers financial rewards for those who carry out its murderous deeds.
This undoubtedly explains why most Palestinians, according to polls, supported the Hamas attacks, with a greater majority among those surveyed in the West Bank. One can understand why Israeli ministers argue that only a fundamentally reformed PA can take over Gaza, a prelude to a long term settlement. Until then, two states is a pipe dream, and it is no “luxury belief” to say so.
Jeremy Havardi
Director, B’nai B’rith UK Bureau of International Affairs
Your correspondent, Warren Grossman (Misunderstanding, Letters, 12 January), states that, “peace will only come when the Arabs accept the Jewish rights to sovereignty in their ancient homeland”. Prior to that he refers to the right of Israel to sovereignty on all of the land west of the Jordan river.
This would make sense if this territory was more or less uninhabited, but he does not say what should happen to the two million plus Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank. Is he suggesting a binational state from the river to the sea with full and equal rights for all? Is he suggesting a state wherein millions of inhabitants would be denied civil rights, but would be granted all rights of healthcare and bin collections? And that they would be satisfied with this?
At the other end of the argument, David Aaronovitch writes that a two-state solution is the only solution. The problem with this argument is that not only would Israel need to grant this but the Arabs would have to accept this. Why does he think they would? At Camp David in 2000 President Clinton persuaded Ehud Barak to offer such a state but in the end Arafat could not accept it. In the January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats, whilst its charter called for the eradication of the Jewish state.
Even after October 7, all opinion surveys of Palestinians show that were elections to be held today, Hamas would win comfortably. There is nothing in recent history to suggest a sizable majority of Palestinians would be content with an independent state on the West Bank as a final settlement.
Both sides of the argument would be better served with the introduction of an element of realism.
Martyn J. Wolff
London NW4
In a world in which Israel can be charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice, is it not time for an authoritative investigation into Genocide by Indoctrination? Specifically to expose the all-pervasive education of the youth of Gaza and the West Bank that the highest aspiration is death in the act of killing Jews. Surely the world needs to be educated that this is real genocide.
Brian Sacks
Israel