How does she know?

I read your article “Baroness Royall tackles root of ‘anti-Semitism virus’ in Oxford Labour Club” (August 4). The baroness raises two issues in her report that should not go unchallenged.

The first concerns anti-Zionism. The baroness recognizes that anti-Zionism is used to disguise anti-Semitism, but she states that anti-Zionism is not, in itself, anti-Semitic. I strongly disagree.

We can divide anti-Zionists into two broad groups: Jews and non-Jews. There are Jews whose hostility to the idea of a Jewish state is based on personal experience that finds living in the Diaspora pleasant and nonthreatening. There are others who feel they have been deprived, either directly or indirectly, of due recognition by Israel. Others find that living in Israel or accepting its customs interferes with their chosen life style.

We Jews can debate these matters among ourselves, but this is not an area in which non-Jews should be involved. People who are not Jewish should recognize that the relationship between Jews and non-Jews has been far from satisfactory, and it is conceit if someone who is not Jewish tries to tell us what is best for us. It reeks of the patronizing attitude of former colonial overlords.

The other issue concerns the popular trope that all governments can be criticized, including the government of Israel.

This trope is slovenly. It omits a crucial word: validity. Criticism that is ill-informed, distorted, based on ignorance or the type that descends to abuse does not meet that criterion.

ALBERT JACOB Beersheba