Police and protesters, Trafalgar Square, October 14
[Alisdare hickson via flickr/wikimedia commons cc-by-sa-2.0 detail]

• ALTHOUGH your newspapers (November 2 and 3) reported recent climate-change protests, the very large protests against the Israeli attacks on Gaza have curiously gone unreported.

Perhaps this silence is to do with the dominant narrative that the protests manifest anti-Semitism and support for Hamas’s appalling actions.

Now, that narrative may apply to a few protesters, but there is no good reason to believe it applies to most or to the Jewish groups also opposing Israel’s actions, though certain bad arguments have been given.

Here is a quick trio.

— First, why, it is asked, are the protesters not protesting against Hamas’s horrendous actions?

The answer is because the United Kingdom government is daily objecting to Hamas. What needs to be challenged is the UK’s support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

— Secondly, the protesters must be supporting Hamas, it is claimed, because they explain Hamas’s actions, referring to decades of Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians.

The claim does not stack up. To explain – indeed, to understand – is not thereby to justify.

For example, my explanation of the car crash is that the drivers were drunk. I may even understand why the drivers had got themselves into an alcoholic haze. That does not mean that I supported their drunken driving.

The protesters can explain Israel’s actions, but obviously they do not think those actions are justified.

— For a third objection, supporters of Israel’s actions insist that protesters are clearly denying Israel the right to defend itself.

That objection is ungrounded. Israel’s right to defend itself is not a right to do whatever it thinks necessary to defend itself.

Some actions are morally “beyond the pale”, such as Hamas’s butchery and Israel’s maiming and killing thousands and thousands of innocent Palestinians, adults and children.

Overall it is surely worth reflecting on a couple of basic points.

These conflicts rest on the belief “this land is mine”; but whatever justifies that claim to territorial ownership?

Further, although I write as a humanist and atheist, I applaud some words attributed to Jesus: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

That also applies to nations.

PETER CAVE, W1