I hope the news that Noam Chomsky has appealed to Hugo Chávez on behalf of the detained Venezuelan judge María Lourdes Afiuni might give Nick Dyrenfurth some of the “pause to consider Chomsky’s peace credentials” that he recommends to others (‘Comment’, July). Is it self-evidently “myopic” or “extremist” to accuse the US of promulgating terrorism? If Christopher Hitchens was even partially accurate in The Trial of Henry Kissinger, for example, then surely Chomsky has a case. Are “fair-minded observers” of the Middle East really limited to those who call for a two-state solution? I can see hope for a lasting peace only in a one-state solution – and not too much of it there, either.

Tom Clark

Victoria University, VIC