Readers respond to recent letters and articles from the Israeli ambassador Mark Regev, Karma Nabulsi, Giles Fraser, and a group of artists and activists who wrote about Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

Mark Regev’s response (Letters, 14 December) to Karma Nabulsi’s article (In Jerusalem we have the latest chapter in a century of colonialism, 13 December) suggests that those who question the current behaviour of Israel are questioning “Israel’s right to exist” and that this is antisemitic. As none of my Jewish friends are very happy about the current Israeli policy of stealing the land of occupied neighbours and killing the latter in large numbers when they attempt to retaliate, I must know a lot of antisemitic Jews.

A narrative that denies the right of Israel to exist | Letters Read more

This approach is typical of Regev, more PR man than diplomat, who prefers cheap emotive effects and the use of ad hominem mischaracterisation to the more respectable task of actually engaging with an argument. In this case, Regev well knows that the question of a state’s “right to exist” is largely meaningless. States do not come into being through the exercise of “rights” but through violence, and neither the biblical nor the modern state of Israel has been an exception to this rule. States survive when their existence is accepted by their neighbours as a pragmatic fact, but these days Israel does nothing constructive to achieve that acceptance.

As for Israel being a Jewish “historic homeland”, this rather suggests that the Promised Land was once empty, just waiting to be occupied by God’s chosen people. Is this what Regev believes? If not, shouldn’t it be given back to the Canaanites?

Michael Pyke

Shenstone, Staffordshire

• The Israeli ambassador, Mark Regev, says that it is racist to question the right of Israel to exist. So would he say that it is racist to deny a homeland to Kurds, Tibetans, or Palestinians, for example? Probably not. But why not? Is he saying that Israel is a special case?

Toby and Pam Ebert

Ilfracombe, Devon



In Jerusalem we have the latest chapter in a century of colonialism | Karma Nabulsi Read more

• Valid as Karma Nabulsi’s criticisms of the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government are in relation to the peace process, her equation of Jewish settlement in Palestine, with which Jews had an affinity for millennia, with European colonialism over the centuries is misplaced. There was no state of Palestine in 1947, but there could have been if the Arab states had accepted the UN resolution to create two states instead of attempting the very “illegal military conquest” and consolidation of territory by force which she ascribes, correctly, to those European colonialists, and incorrectly to the nascent state of Israel when attacked at birth by its neighbours, and again by Jordan in 1967.

Jeremy Beecham

Labour, House of Lords

Artists attack Trump over Jerusalem move | Letters Read more

• Last week’s letter by activists (Artists attack Trump over Jerusalem move, 12 December) falsely accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem. In reality, the Arab population of Jerusalem has risen significantly over the past half-century: from around 68,000 in 1967 to 315,900 in 2014. Such ludicrous and demonstrably false claims should be rejected by all fair-minded people.

Far from “trying to erase” Palestinians from the city, the Jerusalem municipality is investing heavily in improving education, infrastructure and urban development in East Jerusalem. Under the leadership of mayor Nir Barkat, the city has developed a plan unprecedented in scope and budget allocation to reduce gaps in East Jerusalem. The municipality has opened community centres, an employment centre, and childcare centres. Education reform is essential to the city’s investments in the eastern neighbourhoods – we have opened 800 new classrooms and, through an innovative financial model, there are an additional 1,000 classrooms in the pipeline. All of these initiatives to improve quality of life are developed in close collaboration with local East Jerusalem leadership.

In the words of the mayor: “All the city’s residents are my residents; all the city’s children are my children” – and the city will continue to invest in the future of all Jerusalemites.

Rachel Greenspan

Spokesperson for Jerusalem municipality

Jerusalem – for Christians, Jews and Muslims – is both a city and an idea | Giles Fraser: Loose canon Read more

• In his interesting article (Jerusalem – for Christians, Jews and Muslims – is a city and an idea, 15 December), Giles Fraser writes: “Yet following the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in AD70, the Jewish people experienced nearly 2,000 years of exile from this holy place.” He overlooks the fact that in 637, when Jerusalem fell under Muslim rule, the ban on Jews in Jerusalem was lifted. Few returned, though. So they were not exiled for 2,000 years.

Jill Hamilton

Oxford

• Much as I enjoy Giles Fraser’s weekly columns and agree with him that Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is “unhelpful”, Fraser too is guilty of locating in Jerusalem something that does not belong there – namely, “Jacob’s famous dream of a ladder connecting heaven and earth”. The biblical account of this locates it at Bethel (Genesis 28:19), which was some 11 miles north of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Professor Ian Leck

Woodstock, Oxfordshire

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