Angelo Jansen (2 January 2008) has problems with the JVP writing to the UN condemning the bombing of the Gaza Strip by Israel. I certainly have no great love for the JVP - having experienced at first hand the violence committed by them in 1988-89. Be that as it may, Jansen’s defence of Israel reveals a lack of familiarity with the history of the Zionist state.

I say Zionist, since the state is based on racism. But for a slight accident of history (it was my Jewish great grand parent who was male - Jewish ancestry being matrilineal) I, who have but a tenuous link to Palestine, would automatically have been an Israeli citizen with the right to dwell there; whereas the Palestineans, whose ancestors have been living there for millennia, are denied access to their homeland.

Jansen speaks of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews, which was indeed a truly horrific crime. Yet why does only Israel get reparations for the Nazi crimes? Hitler started off by killing Communists, Socialists and Jehovah’s Witnesses before he turned on the Jews. A greater proportion of Gypsies than Jews were murdered by Hitler’s thugs, but there was never any question of reparations, nor indeed the establishment of a Romani state.

Anyway, the Nazi crimes against the Jews do not justify Israeli crimes against Palestinians. And it should also be emphasised that, until the creation of the Zionist state, Jews were not subject to persecution in the Arab countries - indeed leading Sephardi Jews, e.g. Isaac Israeli ben Solomon and Maimonides, enjoyed privileged positions within Arab society.