Letter: Muslims and the bombs: Islamic teaching; peace process; Israeli actions; Iranian resistance

Sir: David Cashdan (Letters, 28 July) asserts that while Hizbollah attracts civilian targets, 'Israeli policy has consistently targeted military installations and personnel'. But your own Robert Fisk ('A brutal salvo in long-range Mideast war', 27 July) reminds us that one year ago, when Hizbollah killed nine Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon, the Israeli response was an artillery bombardment which 'targeted southern Lebanon' (hardly a military installation), 'killing more than 120 civilians - many of them women and children - and putting 300,000 refugees on the roads north'.

What the supporters of Israel are so reluctant to acknowledge is that Hizbollah and Hamas attack Israeli targets, not because Israel is a Jewish state, nor even, as Chaim Bermant writes ('Bombs that give us strength', 18 July) because they regard it as 'a Western outpost in a Muslim world' - which of course it is - but because the Israelis are occupying and colonising land that does not belong to them, in south Lebanon, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and, especially, East Jerusalem, and pushing around its rightful owners.

Only when they stop doing so will the 'peace process' have any real meaning.

Yours faithfully,

MICHAEL ADAMS

Budleigh Salterton,

Devon

28 July