António Guterres, the UN secretary general, hit the nail firmly on the head when he said the Middle East was on the verge of the abyss, as you advised in your editorial (“The world needs to act to avoid a wider conflict”).
This latest conflict between Hamas and Israel has again inflicted unimaginable suffering on innocent people on both sides. Eventually, international pressure will broker a ceasefire, as we have seen many times before, but we urgently need a radical new plan that works for both Palestine and Israel, while not forgetting the wider Middle East countries. Maybe that plan involves countries not so heavily involved in the current situation.
Not to compare the troubles that Northern Ireland experienced with the situation in Gaza, but look at the benefits we witnessed by getting the right people around the table to talk over problems and bring peace to their communities. Bullets and bombs don’t bring stability, that’s a lesson our leaders need to learn.
Stuart Finegan
Lewes, East Sussex
I am part of the Jewish diaspora and have lived and worked in Israel. The horrific bombing of Gaza will not only further reduce any chance for security or peace but has only strengthened Hamas’s hands, soaked as they are with the blood of both Israelis and Gazans (“I’m an Israeli, but I believe inflicting more harm on Gaza will not bring a solution”, Comment).
Benjamin Netanyahu’s combined bombing and siege horrifies me. Water, food and medical supplies must be untouchable; this is basic humanity. That Hamas perpetrated a savagery on 7 October against Jews not seen since the Holocaust is not hyperbole. Hamas cannot, must not, have the ability to do anything remotely similar again. Solve that and the onslaught ends and, with it, so does Netanyahu. Israel’s bombing of Gaza for effect should never have happened. It must stop. Hamas is the target, not Gaza, and unwrapping Hamas from Gaza’s citizens should be the intent.
The statement by Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, that every Gazan shared responsibility for the 7 October attacks was atrocious and myopic. Delegitimising and demilitarising Hamas with every hostage returned is a key. Universal condemnation of Hamas and their attacks is still missing and the only way for Israel to step back and necessarily reassess is for Netanyahu to resign immediately.
Lou Sandler
Bristol, South Dakota
One more year of misrule
In Andrew Rawnsley’s very stimulating article exploring why “Labour’s double whammy should make the Tories more scared” (Comment), he examines why the government is “profoundly unpopular” and concludes that they are “heading for the exit”.
But the exit is a year away and meanwhile the country remains victim to “a zombie government”, motivated above all to retain power whatever it takes. Despite being patently out of their depth they retain an alarming sense of entitlement. Their lack of moral values has been exposed time after time at a personal and governmental level. Policies are driven by an increasingly desperate search for any issue that might possibly wrongfoot the opposition, stir an element of the public or make headlines in the Tory newspapers.
The government is a disaster, but the country will suffer for probably another 12 months: meanwhile, none of the very damaging problems in our public services are being addressed. Is there no way, in our mature democracy, to rescue our country from this grim situation?
David Curtis
Solihull, West Midlands
A better education at home?
What the pandemic did was pull back the curtain on school attendance as a social norm (“Empty classroom seats reveal ‘long shadow’ of Covid chaos on children”, Comment) as children and their parents saw that they might do better away from the chronically underfunded chaos of the school system.
A rotating cast of supply teachers setting pointless busy-work as they filled staffing gaps after lockdown were helpless in the face of destabilised children who now understood that all rules were arbitrary and might be dropped at any moment.
Is it any wonder that many children and parents might have decided that a better education could be found at home? Pupils will only return to schools when there is something worth returning for, and that requires adequate funding.
Dr Mark Wilsher
Norwich
Surveillance stifles critics
Straight out of the 1984 playbook, it is no surprise that the Conservative government wants to stifle criticism of the dog’s dinner they have created of individual academies, free schools and grammar schools now largely in the hands of a quirky mix of religious interests, private companies, wealthy individuals, opportunists and charities each promoting their own notion of what a school should be (“Now DfE is even keeping tabs on teaching assistants”, News).
Monitoring and creating dossiers on professional educators and banning them from speaking and attending professional conferences and training events by withdrawing funding is evidence of the desperation of the DfE to cover up the disaster that is 13 years of Conservative education policy.
Dr Robin C Richmond
Bromyard, Herefordshire
Burton’s guilt over brother
Regarding Anthony Quinn’s charge of fratricide against Richard Burton; the two were on a bender together when something awful happened (“The secrets of their excess”, New Review).
That Burton felt it to be fratricide should not be discounted: the men came from a mining background; to have caused terrible injury to a brother – a brother literally or figuratively, a workmate was also a brother – was to have broken the most basic code by which people survived; Burton probably never came to terms with it.
Eoin Dillon
Dublin
Nothing like a good lunch
I thought I was going to write in disapprovingly when I saw Jay Rayner’s article (“Call that lunch”, Focus, last week) about it being his least favourite meal, but even he comes round by the end.
As a former eating-lunch-at-my-desk worker, I can confirm there is now nothing better than a long lunch, a glass of wine and the inevitable mid-afternoon snooze. It makes missing a proper lunch all those working years so worthwhile.
Bob Dawson
Greenmount, Bury, Lancashire
Anyone for croquet?
I am increasingly puzzled by the new sports that are added to the Olympics (“The world’s view on extra sports added to the Olympics”, Comment). Some of them seem quite esoteric.
Why sports such as tennis or football, whose players earn thousands of pounds a week, are in an international event founded on an amateur ethos beats me. Why isn’t croquet considered? It is one of the few sports played worldwide on a purely amateur basis in which men and women, old and young, the athletic and the not so fit, compete on a level playing field.
Jonathan Toye
Downham Market, Norfolk
