Don’t judge Jews by Israeli government’s actions

I do not believe there are pages missing from Kin Bentley’s history books, as Dave Nicoll suggests (“Some missing pages in history books”, The Herald, March 20).

Nor could I find anything in either of Bentley’s recent letters “justifying the absolute glee” with which the Hamas October assassins acted.

Bentley did explain that their hideous deeds did not come out of a vacuum, but that explanation no more justifies their deeds than a recognition of weaknesses in the Treaty of Versailles justifies the atrocities of the Nazis.

“Judea,” Nicoll claims, “has always been the land of the Jews.”

The ethnic identity of a land’s original inhabitants is often virtually impossible to determine.

Who, for example, were the first inhabitants of SA? Certainly not the Dutch. Still less the British. Nguni peoples? Khoisan peoples were here before they were.

And before them?

Mrs Ples?

The idea that “the holy land” belongs to the Jews seems to have some support in Hebrew Scriptures, but religious texts are notoriously unreliable in establishing historical truth.

Yet even from these scriptures it appears that the Jews were not the first inhabitants.

Abraham, the founder of Judaism, and his people came from near the mouth of the Euphrates, and settled — rather insecurely — among people who were already there: the Canaanites.

A stay of several centuries in Egypt was followed by the Exodus and the violent capture from local Canaanites of land which Jews believed the Almighty intended them, as “the chosen people” to possess.

And there are examples from other cultures, of non-indigenous people whose seizing of the land of local people has been based on a claim to be “the chosen people ”— Voortrekkers, Cecil Rhodes and (according to Virgil’s Aeneid) Trojan refugees arriving in Italy.

Bentley is probably right to suggest that the ultimate solution to Israel-Palestine issues is a single secular state, however unlikely this may seem at present.

But let us remember that Judaism and Islam have much in common, theologically and historically.

Over the centuries both have suffered horribly, particularly at the hands of Christians, whereas on the whole Jews living under Islamic rule have been treated well.

I appeal to readers not to judge Jews or Jewish culture by the present actions of the Israeli government, of which many Jews themselves are deeply critical.

I may have no time for Netanyahu or his government, but I believe that Jewish culture has made the world a better place, especially in terms of new ideas, the arts and service to humankind. John Jackson, Makhanda