SIR - The Lib-Dems need to change their name. To Illiberal Undemocrats.

The way they have treated David Ward, MP, for his word of solidarity with the Palestinian people as they react to Israeli bombings and invasion is far from the great liberal tradition of Gladstone and Menzies Campbell, when the party would defend to the death the right of anyone to express unpopular opinions.

But in this case, his opinions are not unpopular. All the evidence is that Israel has long lost any measure of sympathy for its supposed position as an island of democracy in the Middle East. It is now regarded by most reasonable people, not blinded by Zionist “Hasbara” (black propaganda), as a pariah state, only maintained by American finance and weaponry.

That propaganda claims that Israeli rockets, which have killed hundreds of civilians, are a response to the rockets from Gaza, who have killed only one or two (one of them not by a rocket, but by a mortar shell). The truth is the opposite: Hamas rockets are a response to Israeli attacks.

David Ward has now apologised. For what? For being truer to the liberal tradition than his masters?

Karl Dallas, Church Green, Bradford