- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 November 2003 00.53 GMT
This is a bit rich since, as I recall, David was a member of the Communist Party in 1978, while many of those protesting were not even born. He fails to recognise the motivations of the protesters, most of whom are likely to join him in abhorring state or terrorist violence. But, as UK citizens, our first duty is to hold our own government and its allies to account for an unjust and unjustifiable war.
Jane South
Ilkley, West Yorkshire
In his tactic of denouncing as anti-Semitic all those who do not share his world view, David Aaronovitch has sunk to new depths. He seems to believe that anyone who, as I did in a recent New Statesman article, points out the links that exist between the Russian oligarchs, Israel and the extreme Likudniks who currently motor US foreign policy must therefore be allies of David Irving and other Nazi apologists.
But it is Mr Aaronovitch, with his enthusiasm for powerful nations riding roughshod over international law and treating the sovereignty of smaller nations with contempt, who has more in common with those who defend the regime-changing war-mongers of the Third Reich. It is because the US is acting like Nazi Germany on the international stage that millions of us around the world are so passionately opposed to it.
Neil Clark
Botley, Oxford
David Aaronovitch's piece on anti-Americanism was a welcome antidote to the gibberish that passes for comment among people who ought to know better. But he doesn't go far enough.
Anti-Americanism is the new anti-Semitism among the British. Hitler pretty much killed off blatant anti-Semitism in Britain except among obvious lunatics. But anti-Americanism has now jumped into the breach.
In many ways it is simply anti-Semitism in a new guise. Why should liberal-minded people tolerate such venomous nonsense?
Michael Yates
Wakefield, Yorkshire
