The problems with tunnel vision

Your reader Deborah Maccoby ( August 26) questions whether it occurred to Melanie Phillips that the tunnels Hamas builds are for self-defence in preparation for another “murderous onslaught by the IDF” (paraphrased). I can’t answer for Melanie Phillips but that certainly didn’t occur to me any more than it occurred to me that the thousands of rockets Hamas aimed at the civilian population in Israel, that precipitated the last conflict, were not in fact belligerent but instead were peace offerings. Melvyn Lipitch, London SW3

Deborah Maccoby exhibits a level of ignorance beyond comprehension. Has she forgotten that Israel withdrew from Gaza 10 years ago? Every incursion into the strip by the IDF since that date has been in reaction to continued bombardment, which has become

Perhaps, with her undoubted experience of tunnelling, Ms Maccoby could advise the IDF how to discover and seal off tunnels where the exact routes and entry points were unknown to the Israeli authorities until the army entered the strip? Why should Israel leave the parts of the tunnels within Gaza undamaged thus allowing Hamas to remove the seals and rebuild?

Has Ms Maccoby written to the general press protesting at the deaths of thousands of Arab civilians brought about by the actions of Russia, the USA, UK and other European armies in the Middle East and the tribal slaughter throughout Africa, or is her ire directed solely towards Israel whose only desire is to live in peace with its neighbours? Alan Miller London N16