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We the undersigned condemn any hypocritical and selective approach to the Arab revolutions. While Syrians discover mass graves (Report, 18 May), the so-called "international community" still lacks consensus on asking the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to leave despite the mounting death toll already surpassing Libya's before the Nato campaign. The death of more than 800 Syrian demonstrators and the arrest of thousands renders al-Assad's rule illegitimate. We call on people around the globe to defy their respective governments' hypocrisy, to delegitimise the Syrian dictatorship and hold people in position of power responsible for crimes committed against the Syrian people.
Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature, Columbia University
Inderjeet Parmar, professor of government, Manchester University
John Sidel, Sir Patrick Gillam professor of Iinternational and comparative politics, LSE
Mary Kaldor, professor of global governance, LSE
Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics, MIT
Rainer Baubock, professor of social and political theory, European University Institute
Richard Caplan, professor of international relations, Oxford University
• Defining US trade and aid support as "infiltrated civil societies, domesticated political parties and dependent economies", as Soumaya Ghannoushi does (Hands off our spring, 26 May), potentially seeds further suspicion and unrest in an already precarious situation. The tyrannies of the region tolerated or encouraged anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism to divert discontent from themselves – it is a discourse tainted by its past associations. North Africa, like the rest of the world, needs peace, freedom, human rights, aid and trade, not more demagogues.
Sigrid Rausing
The Sigrid Rausing Trust
• There is no necessary incompatibility between the "Jewishness of Israel" and the "citizenship rights of its 20% Arab inhabitants" as implied by Soumaya Ghannoushi. On the contrary, Israel's declaration of independence pledged equality of rights for all its citizens irrespective of race, religion or gender. The Or commission, which reported on the second intifada, called on Israel's Jews to recognise her Arabs as equal citizens, and her Arabs to recognise Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people. Much still needs to be done to fulfil the pledge of equal rights, but that is surely a better route to peace in the region than one based on the notion that Israel itself is occupied territory which must be reclaimed.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
• The triumphant visit of President Obama to the UK so soon after the assassination of Osama bin Laden leads to the impression that we support and condone this action. If America and Britain still have "the ability to lead the world, not by force, but by example" (Editorial, 26 May), then our example should have been to abide by the rule of law and bring Bin Laden to trial, not just gun him down.
Clare Stewart
Nottingham