I do appreciate Marina Hyde’s irony and dry humour, I really do (Glastonbury chanters or the Southport hate-tweeter – throw the book at one, you must throw it at them all, 1 July). However, whether the Glastonbury incident constituted a criminal offence or not, her lumping together of Bob Vylan and Lucy Connolly is a case of intellectual apples and pears.
During last year’s riots, people were actually attacking and attempting to burn alive asylum seekers in hotels. No one is in a position to attack the Israel Defense Forces, who are the ones allegedly committing war crimes – eg burning and blasting people to death in cafes populated by students on the shores of the Mediterranean – and a military force that our own government is still giving arms and intelligence assistance to.
But I do take her point about how the criminalisation of these incidents sets 50% of the population against the other 50% – and I’ve probably just proved her point.
Desmond Hewitt
Marlborough, Wiltshire
• Marina Hyde is right. If this is still supposed to be a liberal democracy we must be very reluctant to lock people up for what they say, however hateful and offensive we find it. It is tragic that progressives have conceded the cause of free speech to their reactionary rivals, whose insincerity is breathtaking.
Jonathan Allum
Amersham, Buckinghamshire
• Ephraim Mirvis, the UK’s chief rabbi, said Bob Vylan’s appearance at Glastonbury was a “national shame” (Allies of BBC chief Tim Davie fear latest controversy may damage his leadership, 1 July). I think that the Israeli government’s treatment of the people of Gaza is a national shame for Israel. To echo Owen Jones (1 July), all the people getting aerated over Bob Vylan and not over the senseless, barbaric killing of civilians in Gaza have become detached from reality. Let’s call it what it is – genocide. My mother, a Holocaust survivor, would be turning in her grave.
Monica Gripaios
Hovingham, North Yorkshire
• There is much ado about “appalling hate speech”, as Keir Starmer put it. What troubles me more is the appalling hate silence.
Bob Simpson
Durham
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