Readers' Letters: Hate and fear breed more hate and fear in Middle East

I thought that I was pretty hardened to Man’s basest instincts and behaviour. I was one of the generation taken to watch Judgment at Nuremberg as a child, as many of us were in the early sixties to make sure we did not allow ourselves to fall for the lies about the Jews that the Nazis had foisted on the German people; one of the more liberal populations in Europe before the 1930s.

Palestinian women and children flee yesterday in the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip sparked by Hamas attacks on Israel last weekend (Picture: Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)

Inevitably, when people have no access to different views, ie free speech, the warped beliefs of those whose message is one of hate, who will demonise one or more parts of their own population, will gradually come to be accepted. Thus, the German people came to believe that the Jews were at one and the same time the bankers who bled Germany white, and the Bolsheviks out to overthrow the very society they (supposedly) controlled, as bankers!

Now, despite grave misgivings about Israel's conduct in preventing the Palestinians having a state of their own and seizing their lands on the West Bank, we see Hamas terrorists murdering innocent civilians: men, women and children in cold blood.

However, two wrongs do not make a right. The Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, must be removed and replaced by a democratic government. Equally, Israel itself needs to ensure that the Palestinian people have their own state. If not, the horrors of the current carnage will simply continue. Hate and fear breed more hate and fear.

Peter Hopkins, Edinburgh

Simplistic words

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly says he is in Israel to “demonstrate the UK’s unwavering solidarity with the Israeli people” (your report, 12 October). How dare he speak so simplistically on behalf of the entire UK population? It goes without saying that everyone of feeling is appalled by the terrifying suffering of those caught in a war zone, whatever side they are on, but to speak so simplistically on behalf of the British nation is to ignore the decades of unspeakably brutal oppression and privation suffered by the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli nation. It was a volcano waiting to erupt. I’m relieved to note that Sir Keir Starmer was more measured in his response.The word “Hamas” is not synonymous with the Palestinian people any more than the word “Nazi” was synonymous with being German.

Joyce Gunn Cairns, Edinburgh

Poor prospects

Alistair Carmichael’s article (Perspective, 13 October) and Sir Keir Starmer’s conference speech are both timely reminders that the UK stands behind the UN-backed two-state solution for Israel/Palestine. Unhappily, it was the Israeli government’s steady ignoring of that and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to deal with the moderate Palestinian leadership which led to the disastrous Hamas control of Gaza. There is little chance of his altering his appalling policy.

David Steel, Selkirk, Scottish Borders

Casualty of war

The Allied war medal given at the end of the First World War is embossed with the words, “The Great War for Civilisation”. We appear to be back to square one. No one is safe if evil is not called out for what it is. This is not a question of taking sides. What is especially troubling is that flying flags or other such tokens has been promoted several times recently in circumstances far less horrific yet the same authorities have deemed it not appropriate in the case of the shocking atrocities in Israel.

Our current society is being battered by pressure groups that shout loudly, carry far less public support, yet appear to be getting their way. Double standards are everywhere. Our civilisation is indeed in another war and the first casualty is the truth.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Pure semantics

We in the western world, wrapped in a comforting protective blanket, watch atrocities against innocent people in the Middle East then waste our time arguing the semantics as to whether the BBC should or should not refer to the actions by Hamas as “terror”. Where did our common sense go? Almost every day we have instances that prove academics may well be educated and clever but are devoid of common sense….

If it walks and talks like a duck, for sure it's a Donald.

Stan Hogarth, Strathaven, South Lanarkshire

No choice

If 10,000 British people were murdered, 25,000 injured and 1,000 abducted by sadistic mass-murdering racists over a weekend, we would demand that the British government move heaven and earth to free the hostages and destroy the organisations behind the atrocities.

Why should little Israel, with a seventh of our population, be any different? We know that the Israeli and foreign hostages are in the hands of depraved sadists in the Gaza Strip. We also know that the founding charter of Hamas commits them to kill all Jews.

Only the strongest pressure will force the vile terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to yield up their prisoners. In the circumstances, only a complete siege of Gaza, which is effectively a conurbation, stands any chance of success.

Otto Inglis, Crossgates, Fife

Limits needed

Your comprehensive and insightful Leader (10 October) anent Hamas’s “War Crime” ends with the judgment that “those who murder hundreds of innocent people are the enemies of peace”. How tragic it is that our Prime Minister and other international leaders have rushed to give carte blanche to the Israeli Government’s determination to bomb Gaza to bits without making it clear that there must be limits to “retaliation” too, if peace is genuinely the objective.

An instinctive impulse for revenge can make criminals of us all. When in 1945 my Leading Aircraftman father arrived in Hamburg he wrote home of the horror of finding the whole city in ruins, “nothing but rubble”. When, much later, we all learned that in one week – actually when victory was near-assured – ten thousand tons of bombs had been dropped, killing some 40,000 German men, women and children, with the justification that public morale had to be destroyed, that took some living with on our part.

(Rev) Jack Kellet, Innerleithen, Scottish Borders

Selfish cyclist

In response to Marjory Chalmers’s letter (13 October), my 78-year-old brother was walking along the pathway to the local Sainsbury’s supermarket at Craigleith, Edinburgh. This pathway has a clear sign saying “Cyclists Dismount” but a cyclist on her bike approached him from close behind, startling him and causing my brother to lose his balance. He fell to the ground and smashed his face, badly damaging his nose and jaw.

Some good souls took him to the Western General hospital where he is still detained for treatment. As my brother has a heart condition, the selfishness of this cyclist has also caused a delay in a scheduled cancer operation. The level of stress to my brother is now considerable.This incident highlights the possible outcome of selfish cyclists ignoring a notice which is there to safeguard both themselves and pedestrians.

The female cyclist merely announced she was on her way to the gym and cycled off.

E Findlay, Edinburgh

Trust science

GDP can be a dodgy measure. Ireland scores so high because it is a tax haven, and Norway because its oil and gas production is so big, whatever its effect on the climate. So prudence is in order before using it to justify Scottish Independence by mimicking them, as Mary Thomas suggests (Letters,11 October). We have been there before. Remember the “Arc of Prosperity”, brought crashing down with the help of people like Fred Goodwin?

As a measure of real and permanent benefits for all humans, not just those living in a particular nation, I prefer scientific discoveries; the UK outstrips all European countries added together in making them, with 12 Nobel Prizes in Medicine this century (11 have been awarded to scientists in the other European countries).

Science is international, but needs a national support system. A good example is June Almeida, who was born and educated in Glasgow, trained as an electron microscopist in Canada, and was then supported by the UK Medical Research Council at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in London where she discovered human coronaviruses.

Hugh Pennington, Aberdeen

Beware vapour

Neil J Bryce (Letters, 9 October) thinks the rising level of CO2 is not a cause of global warming. While CO2 is a minor atmospheric gas, its increased abundance is contributing to the warming trend.

Human activities add to these effects. However, the most abundant greenhouse gas is water vapour; this is increasing because warming of the oceans causes more evaporation and so more water vapour to cause more warming (a positive feedback).

Steuart Campbell, Edinburgh

Over the top

Richard Dixon of the Green movement accuses Rishi Sunak of “costing us the planet” (11 October), when all Rishi has done is slow down movement towards environmentalism. As Britain is responsible for about 1 per cent of world CO2 emissions, the comments of Dr Dixon are way over the top!

William Ballantine, Bo'ness, West Lothian

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