Letters to the editor, 28th February 2025

The protests are aimed at the Israeli ambassador to the UK because she represents the views of Israel’s current right-wing government and she resides in Swiss Cottage.

I acknowledge that there is Jewish opposition to these weekly protests but to claim – as those interviewed have done – that these protests are frightening, antisemitic and are close to three synagogues is disingenuous at best.

The protest is restricted to a very small area next to one of the Swiss Cottage Underground station exits and is at least a ten-minute walk from any of the three synagogues mentioned. Those who feel uncomfortable about the protest can easily avoid it.

Dr Agnes Kory

London NW3

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Reality check

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Gloria Tessler needs a reality check. Her take on the Arab/Israel conflict is typical of the genre in which “feelings” fill the vacuum where knowledge should be.

There are, indeed, two peoples… Arabs and Jews… but both are not “tragic” and nor is there an equivalence of suffering.

The Palestinian Arabs openly admit that they appropriated the “Palestinian” identity (from the indigenous Jews) in the Sixties to usurp the Jews from lands in which no Jewish sovereignty can be accepted. That is their stated Palestinian “cause”.

The Arabs rejected the unanimous will of the League of Nations in 1920 when its authority legalised the division of the defeated Ottoman lands by binding treaties, giving them the lion’s share, so that today’s 22 Arab states cover 5.2 million square miles, while tiny Israel is just 10,000 sq miles.

That rejection is ongoing, and while two million Arabs are Israeli citizens, the one million Jews brutally, ethnically cleansed from Arab states were absorbed into Israel, without clinging to “refugee status”.

Tessler’s historical revision that the UN “promised the land on the understanding that would it would be a federation of Israel and Palestine” is fantasy. The UN’s own charter forbids it from creating states.

The Arab “displacement” was self-inflicted in defeat, just as were some ten million Germans following their defeat in a war of aggression.

Since 2005 when Israel completely left Gaza, bequeathing valuable infrastructure, the Palestinians have waged five unprovoked wars from there against Israel.

Tessler dreams of a future “federation of Israel and Palestine without theocratic powers”, a prospect that she thinks her readers will laugh at.

Wrong, one can only weep at such delusional nonsense in the face of all the evidence that that would mean Israel’s demise.

James R Windsor

Ilford, Essex

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Mourning the Bibas family

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One of the terrible aspects of the return of the bodies of the two little Bibas boys is that Hamas must have wanted the world to know (I mean those few who are looking) that these poor little totally defenceless innocent children were murdered by hand, as can be discovered from post-mortems of their bones. Otherwise, Hamas would surely have found some reason to refuse to return their bodies – the body of Eli Cohen has never been returned although he was hung in Syria over 35 years ago, in spite of repeated requests and although he was judicially executed, which is awful of course, but different from sheer, cold-bloodied murder of a four-year old and a baby and also their poor mother. Are there any of their depravities that Hamas does not want the world to know?

Dr Nina Collins

Leeds

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Not everyone is indifferent to the plight of the Jewish people targeted by genocidal maniacal terrorists on October 7, 2023. The Bibas family have haunted me – an English Christian grandmother – ever since.

I wake every morning, and my thoughts go to them and their family and by extension to all the hostages and their families.

And, indeed, to all your people. Your people, and, because all humanity is one, mine also: regardless of nation, race or creed. Every week I have lit candles for them, and every week I have prayed that they might be freed. I wear a friendship bracelet, made for me by my granddaughter, as a reminder.

It is not enough – nothing could be enough – but it is something. You are not alone. May Blessings be upon you, and all impacted by this horror, now and always.

Kathleen Hallaways

Stowmarket​

Charedi soldiers

The vexed question of the heritage of the Begin 1977 bribe that has led to 60 000 Charedi draft dodgers and an excessive percentage of state budget subsidising that sector need not come to a violent head.

It is of the utmost importance to avoid violence and tickle this trout to deprive our enemies of the photo ops by discreet benefit cutting to save the jail and court costs.

If they want to sit in the streets let them chill – till they realise there is no dinner.

More power to Rabbi Bombach’s elbow and the realisation among many younger Haredi that Hamas – who killed Arabs on 7th Oct ‘23 – will not make any distinction between Charedim and other Israelis.

Frank Adam

Manchester