A new Holocaust
From Lucy Mandelstam
Sir: Melanie Phillips’s mention of the ‘annual hate-fest’ on the streets of London filled me with despair (‘Hezbollah cells await Iran’s orders’, 5 August). Last month I celebrated my 80th birthday. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to live so long. I survived four years in Vienna under Nazi rule, and three years in concentration camps. After the end of the war I was a refugee for three years, spending those years mostly in displaced persons’ camps in Europe and Cyprus, finally coming to Israel. I had hoped to live out the rest of my life in relative peace. It was not to be.
I have been in Israel now for 58 years and I have lived through another few wars, but a great part of the world still debates whether to recognise us or not. No other country’s right to exist is ever questioned; why ours?
I know there are many reasons that I could name, but I am sure that Melanie Phillips is right: hatred is the driving force. Anti-Semitism is stronger than ever, even if it is called by another name, such as anti-Zionism. Our history has been so twisted out of shape that people have forgotten that the Jews in British-occupied Palestine were called Palestinians.
When I was a child in Vienna, people used to shout at us, ‘Jews to Palestine’. Now that I have lived the greater part of my life here, it seems I still have no right to my own country. Where can I go? When I was liberated in Germany I never thought of revenge, I didn’t hate anybody, all I wanted was to start a new life in my own country. It never entered my mind to go among Germans and blow them up or avenge myself in any other way; I only wanted to get away from them and start a new life.
I am very sad these days; it seems as if there will never be peace for us. I am not worried about myself, I even find it comforting that I am at the end of my life, but I am thinking of my children and grandchildren and the kind of future they are facing. I wish I had an answer.
Lucy Mandelstam
Natanya, Israel
From H.V.F. Winstone
Sir: A small thing. Hezbollah is not the ‘army’ of God but the ‘party’ of God.
In the context of Melanie Phillips’s biased view of Hezbollah, the difference is significant.
H.V.F. Winstone
Bideford, Devon
From David Morrison
Sir: Melanie Phillips writes that Iran is pledged to ‘the genocide of the Jews, as a prelude to destroying the West and infidels everywhere’. I have difficulty reconciling this with the fact that a seat is reserved in the Iranian Parliament for Iranian Jews. Does the genocide pledge not apply to Iranian Jews?
David Morrison
Belfast
Iraq increases terror threat
From K.S. Umpleby
Sir: Your leading article (‘Against isolation’, 5 August) quotes Tony Blair: ‘…there is increased terrorism today because we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. They seem to forget entirely that 11 September predated either. The West didn’t attack this movement. We were attacked.’
Before we forget entirely, and Mr Blair is allowed to rewrite history, it should be remembered that Iraq played no direct or indirect part in the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. If it were otherwise, Mr Blair, and indeed Mr Bush, would have fallen over themselves in their eagerness to share the evidence with us.
A continuing problem for Mr Blair, and one which will certainly follow him into the history books, is explaining why he involved Britain in Bush’s war in Iraq at all. Invoking 11 September simply won’t do — it is dishonest. Furthermore, it may be that the ‘new global ideological struggle’ would have happened anyway, but it is now clear that the original critics of the war were correct — the mess that is Iraq has greatly intensified the terrorist threat that removing Saddam Hussein was somehow meant to address.
K.S. Umpleby
London W3
Of silk and ermine
From Lord Trefgarne
Sir: It was a pity that Michael Beloff chose to take a swipe at the hereditary peerage in his otherwise excellent piece on Oxford University (‘Oxford needs inspiration’,
5 August).
Back in 1999, during the passage of the House of Lords Act through Parliament, he was hired by a group of hereditary peers (including me) to appear for them before the Committee for Privilege — and paid a not inconsiderable fee for doing so. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!
Trefgarne
London SW1
Cuba after Castro
From Derek Smith
Sir: Peter Hitchens (‘Fidel’s end will not bring happiness’, 5 August) concedes that Castro’s Cuba offers a decent health service in comparison with other poor countries. The biggest obstacle to the maintenance of basic health services in poor countries is the international market in health professionals.
Elsewhere in the Caribbean, as in Africa and elsewhere, well-qualified doctors and nurses readily find lucrative employment in North America and Europe, leaving hospitals and clinics largely in the hands of overworked and poorly trained staff. But emigration from Cuba is forbidden. If these restrictions were lifted, the resulting mass exodus would destroy Cuba’s health service.
Those who hope for a speedy liberation of Cuba from the communist regime should be prepared for some adverse consequences in the short term.
Derek Smith
Hamilton, New Zealand
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