The ill-thought out attempts to justify Israel’s indefensible blitz on Gaza by B Goodwin and J Kaye in Tuesday’s Oxford Mail, made worrying reading.

B Goodwin attempts to criticise opponents of Israel’s action by accusing them of the crime of reading books!

This only serves as an acceptance that anyone who takes the trouble to learn the facts of Middle Eastern history, politics and geography will almost certainly find themselves on the side of the Palestinians.

J Kaye, meanwhile, finds it shocking that a democratically elected authority has as its aim “the destruction of Israel”.

Would he have objected to the wartime resistance movements in France, Poland and Yugoslavia having as their aim the overthrow of the Nazi invaders? How about resistance to Japanese imperial rule in Asia, the apartheid regime in South Africa or to the Soviet-backed Eastern Bloc regimes?

Let’s face it. These people were there first. They had their land pinched, have been forced into squalid refugee camps, have been sealed off from the outside world, and then bombed to bits.

Perhaps some simmering resentment is excusable?

A MATTOS, Cutteslowe, Oxford