Letter: Zionist aims

Sir: Noam Arnon (letter, 20 May) really should know better than to claim that in 1929 'no one ever dreamt of a Jewish state'; on the contrary, it had been a Zionist aim since the time of Herzl in the late 1890s. Awareness of this underlay the action of the Arabs who killed the Jews of Hebron, tragic though this was: it was not just through some vague Arab 'lust for Jewish blood'.

Yours sincerely,

MICHAEL LAIRD

Havant, Hampshire