• I WAS quite appalled to learn that the Roundhouse is going to host a festival from September 8 to 11 which will aim at “celebrating and showcasing the diverse culture of the vibrant Israeli city of Tel Aviv” (‘Tel Aviv in London…’, Letters, August 3).

Being an Israeli, born and bred, I am only too familiar with the damning legacy of Tel Aviv, a city whose acclaimed university had been built on the ruins of the Palestinian village, Sheikh Muwannis.

The Israeli body Zochrot (remembering), which campaigns for the Israeli state to recognise the moral debt and the injustices caused to the Palestinian people, has requested that the university acknowledges the history of Sheikh Muwannis.

Yet the university adamantly refuses to do so, following the attempts of the Israeli state to totally erase the memory of more than 400 Palestinian villages whose inhabitants were driven away by Israeli forces during the 1948 war.

In the aftermath of the 1948 war, the prosperous Palestinian town of Jaffa was virtually annexed by the city of Tel Aviv, having driven out most of its Palestinian inhabitants.

The few Palestinians who managed to stay in Jaffa were ghettoised in a small quarter while the property and land of those forced out were confiscated by the Israeli authorities which continued the process of destruction in the guise of “planning” and “development” of the Tel Aviv municipality.

The great majority of Jaffa’s original inhabitants have been living for nearly 70 years in Gaza’s crowded refugee camps, being subjected to repeated military assaults and a decade-long Israeli blockade that deprives them of adequate access to food, health care, education, social services, power energy, and proper sanitation.

While Israeli children are free to enjoy the wide range of food and drinks that are triumphantly promoted by the Tel Aviv in a London festival, Gaza’s children suffer from serious malnutri­tion, lack of clear drinking water, safe shelter, and adequate medical services.

Tragically many of those youngsters have been afflicted by mental trauma which left them scarred for life as a result of Israel’s repeated raids, and the indiscriminate air bombing and shelling during Israel’s brutal wars on Gaza (2008, 2014).

If, indeed, the Roundhouse is true to its aims, declaring that “creativity gives us freedom, hope and has the power to transform”, it ought to celebrate the inspiring creativity of Palestinian youth rather than to “revel in the Tel Aviv rich cultural landscape” – a “culture” of a state which violates humanitarian and international law with impunity.

RUTH TENNE, NW6