‘La, la, la’ is not enough

Sabrina Miller’s insistence on the need for open discussion on Israel/Palestine issues (Jewish schools must discuss Palestinian views, 17 September) is spot on. Those who assume that any antiZionist must have antisemitic motives are self-defeating. This just adds fuel to the claim that Israel’s supporters have no valid arguments, when in fact a spotlight on some of the (often maddeningly historically inaccurate) arguments could soon show them up.

One example is the assumption that the “Nakba” and refugees must have been caused by the formation of Israel, when in fact the rejection by Arab leaders of a Jewish state alongside an Arab one, as provided for by the UN, and the ensuing war were the main cause.

As Ms Miller says ,screaming “la,la,la” at your opponent is no good -especially as “la” is Arabic for “no” or “not”.

Jeff Lewis

Whitefield M45

In the same issue as Sabrina Miller pleads for schools to allow “critical voices” of Zionism to be heard, Fiyaz Mughal states that the most vocal of Muslims now want to see the destruction of Israel and the erasure of Jewish self-determination (How Islamists were behind the dehumanisation of British Jews, 17 September). Why does she ignore the unpalatable eliminationist intentions of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, which no talk of “occupation”, “settlements” or “Palestinian human right” can sugar-coat?

It is about time that we made the right counter-arguments to the Arab narrative: on this, she is correct.

Schools could indeed do a better job of demolishing unchallenged myths and lies for instance, the trope that Jews are “white colonial settlers”. The real victims of Arab imperialism and Muslim colonialism have been the indigenous Jewish and other minority communities. The Jewish Nakba, the forced exodus of almost a million Jews, affected more people than the Arab Nakba.

More must be done to teach, as the author Matti Friedman puts it, “that most Jews are in Israel not because of the Nazis, but because of the Arabs”.

Lyn Julius

HARIF — UK Association of MENA Jews