A lesser evil
Sir: Your editorial 'Shifting sands' ( 23 Jan- uary) was sadly misleading.
Why should Washington adopt identical criteria towards all and every UN resolu- tion? Such blind consistency is incompati- ble with the more discriminating approach to the substance of each particular UN decree.
Thus, the UN resolution demanding the repatriation of the Hamas supporters may have a legalistic basis, but it deserves as much sympathy as the Hamas themselves. These extremists have assassinated hun- dreds of Palestinians merely because they tried to reach a modus vivendi with Israelis. Their declared policy is to wreck the Israel- Arab peace process. Does the exiles' rela- tive discomfort compare with the plight of the Kurds who lost 5,000 of their people in a single poison gas attack? Does it match Saddam's genocidal campaign against the marsh Shias or his attempts to frustrate the UN inspectors' search for secret stores of chemical weapons?
Deep down, shifting the debate from Iraq's crimes to the alleged double stan- dards of America's policy has a lot to do with the fact that Israel is the bete noire of the Third World and of some of those who share its more underdeveloped values.
Lionel Bloch
9 Wimpole Street, London WI
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