The answer to Doris Levinson's question (Letters, July 21) is simple.

Israel was founded upon the theft and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Any small good Israel may now do is vastly outweighed by its continuing policy of brutal suppression of the Palestinians.

If Palestinian resistance to Israel is wrong, so too were all of the resistance movements against occupation and deportation during the Second World War.

I am ashamed that successive British Governments have endorsed Zionism from its very inception.

Israeli (and American) acceptance of the just cause of Palestine is pre-requisite to any peaceful resolution of the impasse. Alas, I can see no reason for optimism.

-Mike Strong, Brighton