THE Rev Adrian Glasspole evidently believes Palestine started the recent round of attacks (Letters, March 16). This is not the case.

The leading Israeli English language newspaper (Haaretz) confirmed that the attacks were initiated by the Israeli Air Force which launched a strike to kill Zuhir al-Qaisi and that “ten rockets fired into Israel after the attack”.

Rev Glasspole is also poorly informed on Israel’s record of discrimination. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in a new report states that Israel denies Palestinians (including Bedouins) equal access to land and property through a number of discriminatory laws on land issues. CERD “strongly recommends” that Israel revokes any legislation that does not comply with the principle of non-discrimination.

The committee explicitly addresses the situation of vulnerable indigenous Bedouin communities in Israel. It calls on Israel to halt its policy of home demolitions and forced displacement.

The committee berates Israel for the increase in the arrest and jailing of children and their trial by military courts, and the policy whereby prisoners are held without charge or trial. The report is available on the York Palestine Solidarity Campaign website yorkpsc.org.uk

Eamonn Morrison, Haxby Road, York.

• WITH reference to Adrian Glasspole’s letter of March 16, to suggest that “Israel is the only state in the Middle East where there is no religious discrimination” is just too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

Israel expels and imports its electorate at will; any person of the Jewish faith anywhere in the world is by right a citizen of Israel and can migrate there to steal Palestinian land with impunity, while exiled Palestinians are denied the right to return to the land they were born on.

Israel is not alone in the area for creating an extremist religious state, but unlike most of the others it has no desire for a peace that would halt its expansion to the mythical Israel that “God gave them”.

Worse, the Israeli government is at this moment preparing itself and the USA for yet another war with still more of the WMD lies, a war that could escalate into the Armageddon that 50 million Christian extremists in the US are signed up for as the ‘Rapture’.

R Westmoreland, The Oval, Pocklington.