D MARTIN’S letter of February 22 talks in obscure terms about people “indoctrinated from infancy to hate”.

In case we miss the point we are offered a list of eight countries with substantial Muslim populations which, according to Martin, fit the bill.

We are told about the responses to the alleged Israeli assassination of Iranian scientists, but Martin fails to notice the elephant in the room, Israel’s massive nuclear arsenal. Israel began its nuclear programme when their government was closely collaborating with South Africa’s apartheid regime. They later received assistance from several NATO powers.

Documents released after the collapse of the apartheid regime show that in 1975 South African defence minister PW Botha asked for warheads and Israel agreed to arm his state with nuclear weapons.

The world is fortunate this nightmare deal never went through.

Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty despite its estimated 300 nuclear missiles.

That the world would be safer with a nuclear-free Middle East is beyond doubt. In Israel itself polls show 64 per cent of the population want disarmament.

Israel, the only nuclear power in the region, must be forced by the world community to relinquish its deadly arsenal.

Terry Gallogly, Lowther Court, York.

• In October 2009, Mohamed ElBaradei [former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA] stated that there was no evidence whatsoever of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran, that Israel was the number one threat to peace in the Middle East, and that unlike Iran, Israel refused IAEA access to their nuclear programme (independently estimated to include 300 missiles).

For these words and a long-term commitment to peace in the area, the US forced his resignation. Now, with a more compliant leadership, the IAEA still provides no evidence.

Despite the obvious parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan, a majority of the electorate have fallen for the lies and the carefully created Islamophobia that will secure the whole region for US oil interests.

It would be ridiculous to believe Israel could bomb a sovereign state on the (professed) suspicion that they might one day develop a weapons programme, were it not for the fact that they bombed Iraq and Syria with the same excuse in 1981 and 2008 respectively.

Could any other country on earth get away with such unbridled aggression? (Other than the US, of course.)

R Westmoreland, The Oval, Pocklington.