The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was not motivated by purely philanthropic considerations. More Machiavellian factors were at work.

Partly an attempt to appease the consciences of the Allied wartime powers who failed the Jewish people in their hour of need by refusing to bomb the railway lines that led to the Nazi death camps, the creation of a

separate Jewish state out of the British mandated territory of Palestine could not be other than a continual source of dissension - since the overwhelming population was Arab - but one the great powers thought they could manipulate to their own advantage in the strategically important oil-bearing Middle East.

The policy was merely an update of the old imperialist strategy of divide and (continue to) rule. In this respect, both Palestinians and Israelis are victims of wider geopolitical considerations of powers such as the US and the corporations that effectively control its foreign policy.

If the US government really wished to end the Palestine-Israel conflict, it could do so tomorrow by forcing the Israeli government to come to a just and equitable settlement with the Palestinian people by threatening the severance of all economic and military aid. That the Bush administration chooses not to do so is evidence the US has no real interest in the resolution of the conflict but needs it, and the terrorism that goes with it, to justify its attack on Afghanistan, Iraq or wherever next it intends to strike.

Finally, to equate any criticism of Israeli government policies as tantamount to anti-Semitism is absurd, since both Jews and Arabs are Semitic peoples.

-Fred Shipton, Bristol Gate Estate, Brighton