Letters - 01 May 2026
From all aboard to the new book of discipline
All aboard?
Paul Hodgkin (‘Prometheus, Moloch and Gaia’, 17 April) imaginatively helps us understand our response to the climate crisis, citing myth, Freud and TS Eliot to find understanding and hope. Insightfully drawing upon a range of sources, he makes his case that we have to give up our long-held belief in the powerful role of humanity on Earth. Many authorities, including Christian, have for centuries asserted our dominant rights. An ideal of progress has been a western cultural force for a long time.
We are, as Paul says, all afloat on the same blue planet. But we are not all in the same boat: the majority have no flotation aids at all, and a greedy few have palatial mega-yachts and private jets. We certainly need to find out what love demands of us to help counter this massive imbalance.
Gillie Bolton
Antisemitism
The issue in Israel/Palestine is not one of antisemitism or anti-Zionism, it is one of legitimacy. Israel is a legitimate state with a right to its peace and security, but the Palestinians have never accepted this, instead posing as victims of ‘settler colonialism’.
The Palestinian Quaker Jean Zaru advocates nonviolent resistance to ‘occupation’. By this she means not just the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, but the whole of former British Palestine, ‘from the river to the sea’. We know this because she has resisted Israel since 1948 when as a youngster she organised a boycott of the newly-created state.
The prospect of a settlement was remote even before the attack by Palestinian paramilitaries on 7 October 2023. Now it is completely out of the question and the blame rests with the Palestinians, their intransigence, and their false narrative of victimhood.
Mark Frankel
