Sir, - The core of Ed Abrahamson’s article seems to be that people are critical of Israel because they are essentially anti-Semitic and he references the Holocaust as part of a continuum of behaviour (“October 7th was a piercing, shrieking alarm call for all Jews”, Opinion, October 9th).
To repeat what is often said but ignored by Abrahamson in his piece, the conflict in Israel/Palestine did not begin on October 7th, 2023. Thousands of Palestinians were killed in Gaza before then. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has reported that in the 10 years before 2023 there were 3,837 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, 2,929 in Gaza.
Moreover, even if we accept the figure of 119 children dying of malnutrition in Gaza, as he references, it is truly shocking that a doctor says this provides evidence of “food-delivery efficacy” while thousands of tonnes of aid are a few kilometres away and barred from entry to Gaza by Israel.
Turning to the West Bank, Abrahamson repeats the view that settler violence there is down to a small number of extremists when all the evidence shows it is supported and financed by the Israeli government. - Yours, etc,
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PAUL ARTHERTON,
Belfast.
The reality of Zionism
Sir, - Ed Abrahamson writes that “while there have always been some Jews who do not support the Zionist construct . . . for most Jews it is a core belief”.
Research carried out by the Jewish Federations of North America last year, however, showed just 37 per cent of American Jews identify as Zionist. In Britain, a similar picture is painted by research carried out last year by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, which found that anti-Zionism has increased among all age groups of British Jews since 2022.
Conflating Zionism and Judaism is intellectually dishonest and ties the Jewish religion – which has a rich and proud history of standing for justice, equity and humane values – to the actions of a state that tramples on the dignity of Palestinians by bombing civilians and expanding settlements.
Such a conflation also ignores the reality that Zionism has far more non-Jewish adherents than Jewish ones. In the United States, Christian Zionists outnumber Jewish ones, largely evangelical Christians who believe that a Jewish state in the Holy Land is necessary to usher in the second coming of Jesus.
The reality is that millions of Jews worldwide explicitly reject Zionism and view it as a failed project because of settler violence and the dispossession of Palestinians. - Yours, etc,
MOYA O’SULLIVAN,
Kells,
Co Kilkenny.
