Howard Jacobson describes his humane pity at the suffering of victims in Gaza, his righteous anger at the inhumanity of people justifying atrocities, and finally outrage at the antisemitism which reserves victim blaming – “they got what they deserved” – for Jews (“Victim-blaming is a crime to so many progressives. Except when it comes to Jews”, Comment).
My mother watched my grandfather, like Israeli hostages, “manhandled into a car” and taken away to Dachau. My great-grandmother died in another Nazi concentration camp where, like Palestinians, she was denied food, water and medicine. So, like many, I am historically affected by the atrocities we are witnessing in Israel and Gaza; not as a Jew but as a human being.
Nobody with any humanity will attempt to justify the murder of innocent civilians by Hamas or by Israel. Still less will they blame the victims on either side. But it is not antisemitic to recognise that responsibility for current events lies in Israel as well as in Gaza. The Israeli government is not the victim in Israel, nor Hamas in Gaza. Hamas wants to destroy Israel, using any means possible. Israeli governments ignore UN resolutions, deny Palestinian rights, and encourage settlers to steal Palestinian land at gunpoint.
The blame for recent atrocities lies with the Israeli government as much as with Hamas. That is simply fact, not victim-blaming. The victims on both sides, as always, are the helpless and the innocent.
Ian Graham
Altrincham, Greater Manchester
Israel has just lost 1,400 people, including babies, children, women and the elderly, in the most barbaric, heinous attack against Jewish people since 1945.
Women were raped before being butchered. An additional 200 are being held hostage, presumably in appalling conditions. This extraordinary evil knows no bounds. It is therefore understandable for Israel to want to totally rid Gaza of Hamas, the terrorist group that governs the enclave to the terrible detriment of both Israelis and Palestinians, the latter group being subjected to Hamas’s use of human shields. Those who suffer in Gaza have Hamas to blame.
Let us remember that Gaza’s government is a Hamas government, and it just declared war in the most savage fashion. What nation would allow Hamas, or its equivalent, to get away with its actions? Would it be responsible for Israel to allow Hamas to remain the government of Gaza, or would it be wiser for this governing body to be deposed? Should such an existential threat to Israel remain undisturbed?
Sebastian Monblat
Surbiton, London
To read the piece by Jacobson is to join in his sorrow. Playing the blame game, or looking the other way and adding to the hatemongering, only continues this state of chaos and destruction. How can murder be justified on any side?
Bringing everyone to the table to talk is the only way out of this mess. And the neighbours have to attend, too. For the sake of all of our children.
Alisa N Smith
Frankfurt
Prisons are for the convicted
There is a relatively simple solution to the problem of prison overcrowding (“Our filthy, violent prisons shame us all. Here’s why we should care”, Comment).
There are about 15,000 prisoners on remand in prisons in England and Wales, one-third of whom are awaiting sentence while the other two-thirds are as yet untried. This snapshot figure of the population disguises the fact that 54,000 prisoners are held on remand across a year, a fifth of whom are eventually released without being convicted and without compensation.
If sending someone to prison is by definition a punishment, and Martha Gill’s description of prison conditions in England and Wales demonstrates that this is the case, it cannot be morally right to send someone to prison who has not yet been found guilty of any offence.
Labour should not be promising to build yet more prisons but should instead create new remand centres where people who cannot be relied upon to come back to court when a date is set for their trial can be held until sentencing. No one who has not yet been convicted of a crime should ever be sent to prison.
Dr Kenneth Smith
London E2
Growth comes at a price
Your editorial “Labour is ready to govern but can it deliver on growth without spending?” refers to the “Labour commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions” and to the pledge by the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, of “commitment to ‘growth, growth and growth’”.
If there were ecologists advising the party, rather than economists, they would point out that growth requires energy and currently most comes from the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil), which produce carbon dioxide emissions.
Net zero carbon emissions and growth would seem to be incompatible. To achieve both net zero and growth requires the massive undertaking of replacing fossil fuels by solar, wind and wave energy sources, which do not raise the global temperature.
Michael Bassey
Coddington, Newark, Lincolnshire
New towns and wildlife
The article (“No jetpacks and monorails, new towns just need to be places people want to live”, Comment) proposing large-scale developments of thousands of houses in the countryside of England – the second most densely populated country in Europe – fails to mention wildlife. Week after week, the Observer reports on the catastrophic decline of wildlife and yet we still seem to be intent on a destructive path that pushes animals into an ever-decreasing habitat.
Stephen Dorril
Netherthong, West Yorkshire
Unnatural salmon farming
Chefs who refuse to serve farmed salmon are right to do so (“ ‘We won’t serve it’: top chefs back drive to cast farmed salmon off the menu”, News).
Salmon farming is similar to the intensive farming of pigs and poultry, in that it keeps the animals in hideously overcrowded conditions where they cannot carry out their natural behaviour patterns; it involves the mass administration of antibiotics, contributing to the rise of life-threatening antibiotic-resistant bacteria; and it pollutes the surrounding environment.
Iain Green, Director, Animal Aid
Tonbridge, Kent
Fount of conceptual art
I enjoyed your article regarding Fountain, attributed to Marcel Duchamp, and applaud Glyn Thompson for identifying its true provenance (News). However, Julian Spalding’s dismissal of his contribution to modern art seems unjust. With his The Large Glass, Bicycle Wheel and Readymades, Duchamp invented conceptual art. And while cubism was invented by Picasso and Braque, Duchamp was the first to use the style to depict movement, as in his Nude Descending a Staircase.
Richard Trendall
Devizes, Wiltshire
