I am an English non Jew, who has always appreciated and respected Jewish people, even identified with them in certain ways: respect for the intellect, the search for righteousness in the face of worldly incomprehension, etc. I recently took a short course in Judaism with the Open University, during which I was very much moved by the integrity of vision, and the purity, and universality, of the moral quest I found there. I was prepared to accept Judaism as the cradle of Western civilized values.

So, I have taken an interest in Israel, and in the way she exemplifies those values... It has been a steep, and devastating, learning curve. May it suffice to say that the one point of relief and hope has been the few groups, among them Gush Shalom, who are willing to protest the ghastly inhumanity of your state's pursuit of another people's territory, not to say humanity.

Your spokespeople on our radios stake their claim on the land of Palestine on a two thousand year old covenant with God. Whether or not one can accept the literal truth of that statement, surely God is nothing if not a moral concept? By jettisoning every conceivable standard of morality-humanity-in your approach to the security of your citizens, haven't you by now relinquished at least that justification of your existence as a nation among others?

Please keep publishing letters that point out the obvious truth that anti- Zionism is not anti -Semitism.

Lia Young