Letter from an angry Israeli reader

“I was a member of the British Labour party for some years and seeing that old man being manhandled the way he was out of the Labour conference made my blood boil and almost brought me to tears.”

Dear Editor,

I know I no longer live in the UK, but I was a member of the British Labour party for some years and seeing that old man being manhandled the way he was out of the Labour conference made my blood boil and almost brought me to tears. When I see the sort of people who are ministers in Blair's government I say to myself, “is this the Labour Party of Aneurin Bevan, Hugh Gaitskell, even Harold Wilson?” Who or what are these people doing in a party that was born out of the struggle of the workers for better conditions, in the work place, schools and hospitals, what is going on? Charles Clarke makes me sick, if people like him are the price the party has to pay to govern the UK, then better it were in opposition.

Next week is the Jewish New Year. It has been both on a personal level and a national level a lousy year here. When we here in Israel get to a stage that a person like me, with the left wing anti-Zionist views I hold, is glad that Ariel Sharon won this week’s vote in the Likud, things are really bad. I was actually frightened that Netanyahu would win. They say “Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know”. But in this case it was which Devil was worse and bibi, as he is known here, is the worse of the two.

The Israel correspondent for marxist.com was right when he wrote that the real reason Sharon evacuated Gaza was so that he could use it to show the people of Israel that he is still a tough guy and that he is capable of hammering the poor Palestinians who live there into the ground. Anyway, one can only hope that the people in the UK, Israel and the US will open there eyes to the reality of where our so-called “leaders” are leading us and stop it. If not we are all going to hell.

Warmest regards,

Mordachai