In his letter (The Weekend Sun, August 14, page 35) A Smith takes me to task for doing what everyone else does, namely calling a group of people ‘Palestinians'.

Hard to know what A Smith's point is.

Whether I call them Palestinians or just human beings, they would still be the same inhabitants of the region, living where their forebears have lived, according to all reputable sources, for many centuries, which is longer than Europeans have lived in New Zealand, and in many cases for thousands of years.
Whoever they are, they are not, as an earlier correspondent aptly pointed out, figments of our imagination. A Smith implies that they do not have a right to their own land.

We are lucky that we have secular government in New Zealand, as in other western democracies. Secular governments are, by and large, more rational and humane in their response to the Israeli-‘Palestinian' impasse than are many Christians.

R Rimmer, Welcome Bay