Coral Ash and Labour peer Jeremy Beecham respond to Brian Eno’s article on Israel and the Eurovision Song Contest

Would the likes of Brian Eno, Roger Waters and Peter Gabriel also seek a boycott of the Oscars in support of the #MeToo movement (We must not let Israel use Eurovision as a political tool, 18 February)?

Perhaps they’d like to introduce an embargo of their music being sold to the US as a protest against Trump’s policies; at least they’d be putting their money where their mouths were.

Singling out the entire state of Israel as opposed to legitimate criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government policies is both divisive and discriminatory, and will not solve the myriad problems currently engulfing much of the Middle East.

It is only by building cultural bridges that real change can be elicited; the goal of peace achieved.

As Mr Gabriel once sang, making one group “Not one of us” only leads the other to conclude that “It’s only water in a stranger’s tears.”

Coral Ash

Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire

• Brian Eno refers to Israel as an “apartheid-like state”. It would be interesting to know his definition of an apartheid state. I don’t recall South Africa in the apartheid era having black citizens serving, as Israeli Arabs do, as members of parliament or on local councils, with the right to vote in elections and, in a celebrated case, preside as a judge in the trial of a former prime minister.

That is not to imply approval of the Netanyahu government’s policies, especially in relation to the West Bank.

Flawed as aspects of Israeli policy are, they do not compare with the tragedies of Yemen or the slaughter of 500,000 Syrians and the displacement of millions more, topics that I don’t recall being the subject of a piece in the Guardian by Mr Eno.

Jeremy Beecham

Labour, House of Lords

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