Lack of empathy with the Palestinians' plight

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/22/lack-of-empathy-with-palestinians-plight

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It is a sad reflection on the parlous state of the domestic opposition that a spokesman for the Israeli Labor party can conceive of criticism of overwhelming force in self-defence only as a demand for more dead Israelis (A thirst for Israeli blood, 21 July). By Hilik Bar's logic, there is no limit to the number of Palestinian women and children who may have to die or suffer horrible injuries in pursuit of an objective that is unachievable by military means. The thought that proportionality might involve a reduction in Palestinian fatalities never occurs to him. In addition to this shocking lack of empathy, his blinkered "context" only reaches as far as the current round of rocket attacks, while completely ignoring the consequences of a 47-year occupation. Now that Ed Miliband has joined those publicly critical of the land invasion of Gaza, which has added greatly to the toll of death and destruction, Hilik Bar would do well to recognise that patience with an untenable status quo, even of erstwhile sympathisers, is beginning to run out.Dr Anthony IsaacsLondon

• The shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine (Report, 22 July) appeared for a while to have distracted world attention from the potentially greater tragedy unfolding in Gaza. There is a connection between the two events. Hamas is firing rockets indiscriminately at Israel's population centres, including its international airport. If just one of those missiles were to strike an aircraft, innocent passengers from all over the world, not just Israelis, would become victims of Hamas's lethal war against Israel. The international community has a responsibility to help Israel and other governments put a stop to the criminally irresponsible firing of missiles at inadmissible targets – including civil air space whether over Donetsk or Tel Aviv.David StoneEmeritus professor, University of Glasgow

• It is, to say the least, ironic that Hilik Bar imagines how the UK would react to rockets rained down by terrorists from the Isle of Man. He seems to have forgotten that a violent conflict lasting about 30 years raged in Northern Ireland with considerable extraterritorial assistance from within the territories of the Republic of Ireland and the United States. Mercifully, whatever mistakes and wrongs committed by the British government, there was nothing like the wanton overreaction to which the Israeli government has frequently resorted. The Republic of Ireland was not subject to air raids or temporary occupation. By contrast, this summer the murder of three young Israeli men has resulted in all-out war after the Israeli government resorted to brutal reprisals rather than restricting themselves to the routes of calm criminal investigation or international diplomacy. The point about proportionality is not that there should be matching death rates but rather that disproportionate escalation to extreme violence is self-defeating and will simply generate further similar violence in the future.Felix ThompsonDuffield, Derbyshire

• If the British had bombed and mortared houses in Catholic districts of Northern Ireland to kill hundreds of innocent supporters of Sinn Féin and their children, and tried to justify it on the basis that it was trying to stop IRA terrorism, there would have been a world outcry, not least from the US. But because Arabs have no constituency in the west, and people who criticise Israel are deemed to be antisemites, all we get is mealy-mouthed "on the one hand, on the other hand" editorial hand-wringing, even from the Guardian, whose writers are surely more aware of the iniquities of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians than more rightwing papers.

It is time for the world to unite against Israel, a rogue state whose actions in the Middle East over the past seven decades have caused suffering and injustice over a longer period than any other so-called democratic state.Karl SabbaghAuthor, Palestine: A Personal History

• While writing of the critics of Israel's disproportionate response to the Hamas rockets, Hilik Bar could have instanced an example very close to home. In our struggle against Nazi Germany, the Germans bombed and damaged some of our major cities. We responded by totally devastating almost every one of theirs, causing hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. This massive disproportionate response was supported overwhelmingly and enthusiastically by the British public. The only way to ensure there is no disproportionate response is not to attack in the first place.Paul MillerLondon

• Hilik Bar, the subtext is not about proportionality of deaths but about the question of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and its consequences.

Israelis do not have to die to gain sympathy. They simply have to question why the Palestinians' democratically elected representatives are waging a concerted and murderous attack on the entire Israeli population, when they fire their rockets from a tiny patch of Palestinian land in Israel. Of course Israel has the right to defend itself; other countries deal with terrorism in more measured ways; Spain and Eta, the UK and the IRA. Neither country bombed the organisations because they were asking for change.

Israel needs to believe that their rights for existence will always be asserted by the UN, America and its allies. The Palestinians are merely asserting their rights before they are ground out of existence in their own country.Anna TognarelliMarple, Greater Manchester

• In 1948, aged 12 in Pretoria, I joined Habonim, a Zionist youth organisation modelled on the scouts. A year or so later, a Zionist speaker came to address us. He told us that the Zionist aim was a Jewish home covering the whole of Palestine and South Lebanon up to the Litani river and also Mount Hermon. "What about the people living there now?" I asked. They would leave, he replied, just as the Arabs had left Israel. Even the Boers hadn't gone so far as to expel the Natives from South Africa, I said, and left Habonim. Seen in that light, Israeli policy of invasion and annexation has had a consistent flow, interrupted only by defeat by Hezbollah in South Lebanon. Hilik Bar's description of a "thirst for Israeli blood" to outsiders looks much more like a thirst for Palestinian blood for the offence of being there at all. Israel could have a ceasefire by agreeing to lift its illegal blockade of Gaza. Do not those who suffer such aggression have a right to resist? Where is the line between resistance and terrorism?Michael Sterne Sarisbury Green, Hampshire

• Your leading article (A futile war, July 22) mentions the benefits of having the PLO back in charge of Gaza rather than Hamas, but it fails to point out that the opposite move is more likely. It was Israeli intransigence when the PLO was in control there earlier that created the formation of Hamas in 1987 as an outcome of Palestinian frustration with what was seen as the "moderation" of the PLO. Similarly today, if Hamas cannot deliver real progress towards a Palestinian state, it is likely to be superseded by even more extreme jihadis, probably associated with Hizbollah as in Lebanon. After all, every civilian death in Gaza is another catalyst for recruitment to the jihadi ranks.Michael MeadowcroftLeeds

• Please allow me to ask a simple question: why has Hamas chosen to spend its energy and resources on building extensive tunnels to attack Israel rather than on bomb shelters for the Gazan population?Russell BarashElstree, Hertfordshire