Another White Island

Your editorial, ‘‘Finding answers for the grieving’’, claims the chief question regarding the White Island disaster is ‘‘whether tourists should have been allowed on the island when volcanic activity was rated at level 2’’.

The events of that Monday have already provided us with the answer to that question.

The editorial continues: ‘‘Hydrothermal eruptions are nearly impossible to predict’’. If that’s the case, why allow anyone except for scientists to visit a place like White Island?

I’m confused. Is the writer suggesting visits may continue, or that they should cease? It is noted that White Island holds an undeniable pull for tourists. Perhaps prior to the eruption it did.

The question of tourist numbers and dollars must be set aside because this is not an issue to sit on the fence over. As a country we need to ask ourselves the real chief question here: Do we want another White Island? Equivocate on the matter and we might well end up with one.

Seth Capillago, St. Albans elite. Everyone is afraid of being accused of anti-Semitism. The safe step is to look the other way.

As for criticizing other regimes, Grainger knows nothing about my history or about the letters I have written to various outlets, or the comments I have made on community radio, over many years.

But in the last few years, after visiting the West Bank and Israel, my thoughts and readings have particularly been focused on the plight of the Palestinians.

That’s because of what I have seen myself. Quoting Arundhati Roy about witnessing oppression, "Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it".

I haven’t been to Gaza but I know people who have. Also I have met a few Gazans.

The silence over what is being done to those trapped people, including of course, so many children, is obscene.

Where is humanity?

Lois Griffiths, Strowan