Your leader (6 April) on Richard Goldstone's revised and more sympathetic take on Israel's "guilt" in its conduct of the Gaza war is uncharitable and a typical piece of liberal-left special pleading, always seeking to stress the negative and failing to put any proper context. During the war in Gaza in 2009, around 700 Palestinian non-combatants were killed. To take only one other example, the ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, at the same time, resulted in up to 20 times the number of civilian deaths, but this civil war never seemed to concern the UN human rights council or your paper to the same or a proportionate degree.
The UNHRC, which commissioned the Goldstone report, is a tainted political body. Only a few years ago it was chaired by Libya, whose membership has just been suspended. Other members include Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, presently slaughtering their own people protesting for democracy. The council is currently chaired by a Thai representative, whose government was criticised earlier this year for failure to fulfil its pledges to hold human rights abusers accountable in 2010. At least 90 people died and 2,000 were injured in street battles in Bangkok.
As Jonathan Freedland points out in his article (Where's the Goldstone report into Sri Lanka, Congo, Darfur – or Britain?, 6 April), it is Israel that is singled out at every UNHRC meeting, while the much greater need to control human rights abuses in some of its member states or their associates is ignored. Freedland also makes the point that much current Arab unrest is due to their own governmental problems, not the failure to settle the Israel-Palestine dispute, customarily blamed for all the ills of the Middle East.
Michael Steel
Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire
• Jonathan Freedland is right to highlight the disparity in the treatment of Israel and other states in the Middle East, not to say the rest of the world. What his article lacks, however, is an acknowledgment that this emphasis on Israel is due in no small part to western foreign policy which has kept the despots and dictators in place in "Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain", while giving Israel free rein to oppress the Palestinians and colonise their land.
Hosni Mubarak was kept in power by the US because he played the game and put Israel's interests above those of his own people. Israel's abysmal human rights record continues thanks to US political, military and financial support. In reality Israel couldn't care less about "bias" in the "academic, cultural and, yes, the media sphere" as long as US backing is there for the ongoing expansion of the territory it controls.
Sure, let us have "Goldstone reports" on other countries and bring them up to speed on human rights and international laws, but Freedland appears to be saying that if we can't have them all then Israel should be let off the hook. If that happens, it will prove the point that Israel deserves a greater "volume of attention" precisely because it is allowed by its western sponsors to act with impunity.
Ibrahim Hewitt
Senior editor, Middle East Monitor
• While Arab regimes are oppressive to maintain the governments in power, Israel's oppression goes to the heart of its existence as a state to which Jews from around the world have more right to live than the native non-Jewish population. This involves the ethnic cleansing of the native Arab population in order to secure and maintain a Jewish majority.
Other states have carried out ethnic cleansing in the past. But Israel owes its ethno-religious majority to a recent, current and ongoing campaign of displacement of the indigenous population. That was true of the US, it was true of Australia. It has been true of many states. But Israel's crimes are more recent and, therefore, its continued existence is predicated on its human rights.
Mark Elf
Dagenham, Essex
• Western hypocrisy is the reason that so many people focus on the particular conduct of Israel. When a single Chinese dissident disappears the US, Britain and others instantly respond (Report, 4 April). When the Israeli government was killing 700 civilians in Gaza, the US, British and other western governments said nothing.
Peter Nicklin
Newcastle upon Tyne