WHAT a load of ill-informed diatribe from Mr Wareing concerning Israel and Palestine (You Say, March 4).

One has to remember that the pre-1948 period was a very different time to the one in which we are living in now.

At that time, it was considered perfectly acceptable for us to destroy whole Arab villages and slaughter the populations in retribution for the deaths of British officials.

In fact, the British Empire was guilty of exactly the sort of things that are currently being used as examples of Saddam Hussein's inhumanity.

If Mr Wareing understood the roots of Zionism in the Dreyfus Affair of the 19th Century, he would know it is not the evil that many claim it to be.

Thus far, it has successfully put together a Middle Eastern democracy, something no Arab country has managed.

It does not have the expansionist plans of many other Middle Eastern states, as the limits of Israel's borders are clearly laid down in the Torah.

Nor is it fuelled by the aggressive fundamentalist proselytising that is reminiscent of the Crusades of the Middle Ages.

We in the West should be grateful for the sake of liberty that Israel is there.

BEN EATON,

Stourport-on-Severn,

Worcestershire.