Israeli oppression

Before Alexander Mckay (“Believe it or not”, Letters, 27 December) says any more about people in Israel practising their beliefs in absolute freedom, he should go and visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and count, as I did, the number of armed police and soldiers standing around outside.

He can then go down the road and see the same, and the checkpoints, outside the Dome of the Rock.

I suspect that many Palestinians are as interested in their civil freedoms as their religious ones – such as spending hours forced to queue to go through checkpoints to move from one place to another, including for work, and sometimes being refused permission altogether. Palestinians seeing a wall built, cutting off their own land from their livelihoods. Palestinian children, girls and boys, being tried in military courts where they do not understand the language, with legs and wrists shackled, many having been arrested and dragged out of their beds after midnight. Palestinians having their houses demolished for crimes they did not personally commit, and not being able to build new houses or improve them. Palestinians not being able to vote in government elections and being unable to return to somewhere they have lived all their lives, for example Jerusalem, if they go abroad and, for example, study for a period.

You don’t need to be a “kneejerk Israel-hater”, as Alexander Mckay calls it, to understand that this is just not acceptable in this day and age.

PHIL TATE Craiglockhart Road, Edinburgh