Madam, - While I have sympathy for Alan Shatter's concern about the resurgence of anti-Semitism (November 26th), I feel he is wide of the mark in blaming it, as usual, on the education systems of Israel's neighbours. The greatest single agent of the spread of anti-Jewish sentiment in the Middle East is television. No words are needed; video coverage of Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza is usually enough. Palestinians speak the same language as viewers from Dubai to Casablanca and television has given those people a voice which did not exist in 1948.
The role of elements in the Jewish Diaspora in shoring up support for Ariel Sharon's hardline tactics is quite well understood in the Middle East. Westerners may know there is a huge divergence in opinion concerning Ariel Sharon within the global Jewish community, but very little Jewish dissent is ever heard in places like Deheisheh and Burj Refugee Camps. Decent people like Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom are sidelined as irrelevant by the Israeli mainstream.
Settlements all over the West Bank and Gaza are granted gleaming new schoolrooms and medical centres by North American and European Jewish benefactors. The appearance of the Star of David on road-blocks in the occupied territories is a sickening example of the way in which Israeli settlers have hijacked religion to promote their political ends. To the Palestinians who fight the occupation it does seem at times as if all of Judaism is against them.
Israel is not Judaism - it is merely a prominent thread in a very rich culture. This message needs to be put across to Arabs by Jews who do not agree with the policies of Ariel Sharon. We live in a very ignorant era when "Muslim" means "terrorist" and, in the Middle East, "Jew" means "colonist". The re-emergence of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is a sad reflection of the deaf times we live in. - Is mise,
CATHAL RABBITTE, Athenry, Co Galway.