Sir, – Those who attack Amos Oz, among them your letter-writer (Here by
right), make one very sad. Oz has spent his lifetime spreading
good-will for Israel to the world. He enabled me to understand the reason
for Israel and helped me go from far-Left critic to progressive firm
supporter. He has helped me understand why a boycott is absolutely wrong,
and a temporary security fence absolutely right.

Oz didn’t say that Jews were there on Palestinian sufferance. He said no
more than Ariel Sharon did, also in explaining Israel to the West.

When the western Left compared the second intifada to the Algerian War and
said De Gaulle’s France was brave enough to leave Algeria, so why didn’t
Israel leave, Sharon replied that Israel could not be compared to France in
Algeria, because France had somewhere else to go, and Israel didn’t.

Oz has helped me and countless others become pro-Israel. It’s too bad
Israelis spill so much of each others’ blood with rhetoric. Often the
Israelis who complain in these pages about how bad Israeli hasbara, and now
public diplomacy, has been, are the same ones who attack a figure- Amos Oz -
who is perhaps Israel’s most long-time and most genuinely persuasive and
effective good-will ambassador to the world.

JAMES ADLER

Sir, – “Defeating Hamas” (Editorial, March 3) was absolutely right that the “facts are simple: Israel is fighting to stop the bombardment of its cities.” When the far Left ignores Palestinian human rights crimes against Sderot and Ashkelon and concentrates on the inevitably ugly side-effects of the Israeli response, it uses deplorable double standards and does not serve the truth.

And yet one can still wish Israel would recognize more the difference between what it has every right to do, and what it is prudent to do.

Israel is a tiny dot on a huge and still-hostile map, and the inescapable conclusion to draw from that hostility is that the war of 1948 continues. The only way to security and peace is to change the map from hostile to friendly, or at least for the map to be amenable to overall agreements – on withdrawal, the 1967 borders and east Jerusalem.

Mutual concessions that generated larger peace agreements would eventuate in the resolution of so many problems, like in Gaza, which would be enfolded in the more basic momentum and pressure toward moderation and peace and security.

As the American Civil Rights song goes: “Keep your eyes on the prize.”

JAMES ADLER