State of emergency
Sir: As someone who spent time undertaking research in Israel and Egypt, living for almost a year on Kibbutz Re’im, one of the communities attacked on 7 October 2023, I find myself in agreement with much of the description in your leading article ‘State of denial’ (26 July) – but not the conclusions. Many of us are aware that Israeli intelligence knew what was being planned for 7 October, but did nothing to prevent it. Why? The horrors that have happened since have played into the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters as they seek to create a Greater Israel, with no room left for a Palestinian state. Hence the need for recognition now, while there is still some territory left.
Just last year I witnessed first-hand, with my colleagues on the International Development Committee, the ‘apartheid’ that exists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This has left Palestinian communities with less and less land, or indeed rights, as the illegal settlements have been given seemingly free rein to proliferate and expand. The spirit of the Balfour Declaration that protected the rights of both the Jewish and non-Jewish people must be respected and this is why I am in favour of recognition of a state of Palestine now, before it is too late.
Dr Brian Mathew
MP for Melksham and Devizes
Enough is enough
Sir: I have enjoyed reading your magazine for more years than I care to remember. Sadly, however, your leading article this week displays a profound failure to ‘read the room’. Along with most of my friends, my initial reaction to the terrible events of 7 October was to support Israel. After 20 months of hard pounding, that support is difficult, if not impossible, to sustain.
You may well be right that it would be a major error to recognise a Palestinian state. You may be right that Hamas uses aid as a weapon to ‘reward compliance and punish internal opponents’. Hamas may well regard ‘every innocent life lost as another propaganda win’. Nonetheless I cannot condone an article that does not even suggest that enough is enough and that Israel must cease its so-called war on Gaza, which is causing such immense hardship and so many civilian deaths. That is what a true friend of Israel would urge on them.
I think you will find that this is the view of many of your readers and of all people with any heart at all.
Johnny Cameron
Pewsey, Wiltshire
Sold down the river
Sir: It is good to see The Spectator carry a main article on the predatory vulture funds that have ripped the heart out of so many good UK businesses – often turning their equity into debt, greatly to the disbenefit to both shareholders and employees (‘Soul suckers’, 26 July). At last there appears to be a wider recognition that the City, by welcoming these rip-offs, has let the nation down. We cannot indefinitely pay for our massive imbalance of trade by endlessly flogging our national assets to overseas buyers. These businesses are often basic utilities that our own risk-averse pension funds have regrettably failed to invest in, when they could have been custodians of the national interest. One could weep.
Lord Vinson
Roddam, Northumberland
Brewing storm
Sir: Frinton is not faultless (Diary, 26 July). My great-uncle Ernest played tennis for Bedfordshire but in 1932 he overdid it at Frinton, caught pneumonia and died there. His irascible younger brother took over as chairman of the family brewery in Bedford; it survived Hayward’s 20 years, ably managed by yet another brother who for 23 years was also Bedford’s MP – and three of whose sons were killed in war service, as was Ernest’s.
Despite all that, and provided it can also survive Rachel Reeves, the brewery will celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2026.
Mike Wells
Ickwell, Bedfordshire
Unpopular vote
Sir: Rod Liddle is correct to dismiss the government’s decision to extend the franchise to 16- and 17-year-olds as ‘gerrymandering of the very worst kind’ (‘Raise the age of suffrage to 25’, 26 July) Most right-minded people agree that this is not justifiable on the grounds that it recognises what individuals in this group ‘already contribute to society’, as the Prime Minister claims.
Rather, the government’s decision is a cynical ploy to increase their vote share by securing the support of an impressionable section of society that they believe is more susceptible to left-wing ideas. Imagine if the next Conservative government were to fiddle the system for their own benefit in a similar way, to allow those of state pension age to cast their vote twice. Like Keir Starmer, they could justify it by stating that this decision is simply to recognise the contribution pensioners have already made to society through their previous political engagement and tax contributions.
Would this argument be accepted by those currently stating that we use societal contribution as a justification for extending the franchise? I think not.
Andrew Almond
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
Fruit of the unions
Sir: Reference to trade union names (Letters, 26 July) brought to mind the fun that Private Eye had with the names of two print unions I was obliged to join at different times when working in Fleet Street in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Firstly, SOGAT (Society of Graphical and Allied Trades), which became SODIT in the Eye, and then NATSOPA (National Society of Operative Printers and Assistants), which the Eye christened alternatively NOTSOBA, or National Association of Trained Strikers and Overpaid Piss Artists.
Jim Gilbert
Southwold, Suffolk
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