• DURING the weekend of November 25 and 26 our part of central London experienced a magnificent highlighting of the sufferings of some and a depressing blindness to the sufferings of others.

I write of two large protest marches; one protesting against the Israeli attacks on the Palestinians, mainly in Gaza; another protesting against anti-Semitism.

The pro-Palestinian march was condemned, in part, because many flew the Palestinian flag and failed to highlight Palestinian Hamas’s murder or kidnapping, in total, of around 2,000 individuals, mostly Israeli civilians, including babies, children and the elderly.

The protest marchers against anti-Semitism displayed many Israeli flags; they failed to highlight Israel’s attacks on Gaza, involving the deaths of many thousands of Palestinians and the continuing suffering of hundreds of thousands, mostly civilians, including babies, children and the elderly.

Such blindness to the plight of (certain) others is accompanied by some overwhelming convictions that are yet manifestly false; for example, that all Israelis are complicit in Israel’s attempted destruction of Gaza; for example, that all Palestinians want the destruction of Jews.

Sadly the conflict manifests the truth of Immanuel Kant’s “Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden” (From the crooked timber of humankind, nothing entirely straight can be made).

Whatever the talk of human dignity, human rights and treating all people with respect, when the chips are down, it seems that more or less anything goes; and those with the might decree what is right.

PETER CAVE, W1