There is something quite pretentious about Desmond Fitzgerald’s description, (Letters July 7), of Israel as a “...successful, vibrant, progressive and equal state...” as, and not forgetting the billions of dollars of subventions from the US, the commentary from within Israel is somewhat different.

Not even Shlomo Sand asserts that most Jews share no DNA with their co-religionists (Daniel Teegan, Letters, February 7) since that would mean that the majority of individuals of that faith are a hitherto undiscovered species. Humans share 99.9% of DNA with all other human beings.