ISRAEL AND THE UN

Like Terri Byrne ( Letters, January 14), I am proud to be a Kiwi after our cosponsorship of UN Security Council resolution 2334, and I have emailed Foreign Minister Murray McCully to tell him so. The attack by vandals on McCully’s electorate office, in which the words “traitor” and “Jew hater” were painted on his walls, speaks volumes about the ignorance, dishonesty and nastiness of the thugs responsible.

The only friends Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have in 2017 are fascistic or excommunist despots such as the leaders of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Belarus, to say nothing of Vladimir Putin. So dire is the situation in Israel proper, and occupied Palestine, that former prime minister Ehud Barak is standing again for public office, despite being in his seventies, to try to provide Israelis with an electoral alternative. In Barak’s words, the present Government is “dragging Israel over a cliff”.

All power to your arm, Mr Barak. John Watkins (Katikati) Adam Rutherford says DNA testing shows Jewishness is a culture, not a biology (“Shaking the family tree”, January 7). Perhaps the UN should tell Israel there’s been a mistake – it has no ancestral right to Palestine and should leave. Chris Bowen (Lower Hutt)