Smug adolescent

So David Baddiel is “not very fussed” by the chant “From the river to the sea.” He’s cool with it. Like he was cool with saying, in his book Jews

Don’t Count, “F**k Israel.”

To be precise, he was emphatically indifferent to it; bagels and American TV comedians were a far more important part of his identity.

Do we really need this smug, narcissistic adolescent in the JC? If he wants to be cool, let him be cool somewhere else Rhoda Koenig

London SW2

I share David Baddiel’s despair at the failure of “apparently caring progressives“like Charlotte Church to recognise the offence caused to Jews by her promotion of the musical version of From The River To The Sea (Sorry,Charlotte Church. I’m a fan. But thing is,I’m also Jewish, 29 March). I also agree with Rachel Moiselle that in Ireland, Jews have been betrayed by the progressive movements they have long supported (How October 7 exposed Irish feminists as hypocrites, thejc.com, 29 March). Unrequited love. Some of the most prominent progressives have been Jewish.

Progressivism, which arose during the Enlightenment to improve the human condition through social reform, has helped create the more caring and egalitarian society that most of us enjoy.

Today, progressives have become consumed by identity politics, with its hierarchy of victimhood in which Jews don’t count. Progressivism is no longer progressive and the sooner the likes of Baddiel realise that the better. It is a dead parrot. It is no more. It has ceased to be.

Stan Labovitch

Windsor