• THANKS and congratulations for John Gulliver’s lucid, detailed and helpful analysis of the Labour Party’s “anti-Semitic problem”, (Fringe meeting of the day, but was I the only reporter there? September 28).

I put the term in quotes because it seems we no longer have one definition of anti-Semitism but two: one, the shameful, long historic hatred and bigotry against Jewish people; the other, of recent creation, criticism of Israeli government policies.

Is it not dangerous and intellectually unhelpful to conflate them? Particularly when done for passing political and ideological reasons?

The charge that criticism of Israel government policy must be anti-Semitic, because no such criticism is made as vehemently of other states, has an obvious answer.

It is because Israel as a civilised democracy, in a troubled sea of Middle Eastern tyranny, oppression, and backwardness, is thankfully held to a higher standard of conduct; a standard we do not apply to Saudi Arabia or Iran.

No doubt for many in the Labour Party, that includes the long remembered and admired humanity of its early socialist Kibbutz idealism.

There is a historic parallel. During the fairly brutal conduct of Her Britannic Majesty’s policy against Boer farmers in South Africa during the Boer War (when concentration camps were invented) Victorian Britain was held in scorn and contempt by other countries, for falling below civilised standards; standards which Britain espoused. A scorn and contempt also shared by many in the UK.

Who can say that the world was then wrong in such criticism of the policy of the British government?

Fortunately, democracies like Britain and Israel have a capacity to yield to rationality and justice. That is why, although imperfect, they are better than the rest.

ROBERT SUTHERLAND SMITH
Widecombe Way, N2