I don't usually publish correspondence about my pieces - especially when they disagree with me! - but I received this email about my Telegraph piece and I thought it made a numver of valid points and deserved an airing (my correspondemt was happy to let me publish it):

I've been reading your blog for several years and I basically agree with most of what you say.

But I'd like to make a comment about your article in the Telegraph on the Israel/England game.

I realise that anti-semitism is a problem, and that we have an obligation to identify and speak out against it wherever it arises. I realise also that sometimes people ask seemingly innocent questions which, consciously or not, betray deep-seated prejudices about Jews and their place in society.

Sometimes, though, those prejudices are not without foundation, and it is important to recognise that too.

I am a British Jew, a staunch supporter of the England football team and a long-standing West Ham season ticket holder.

But being Jewish does make me different - from other England fans, and indeed from other West Ham fans.

I've had a season ticket at West Ham for 15 years, but when the fans at Upton Park make hissing noises at Tottenham games and sing "Hitler was a Cockney", I actually want Spurs to win. Serves the neo-Nazi b*stards right, if you ask me.

And yes, when England plays Israel - a country created from the ashes of the Holocaust, a country which provides hope and the right of return to Jews across the world, a country whose existence would have prevented the deaths of millions of European Jews in the 1940s - I want Israel to win.

It's not because I'm not loyal to England - I am. I love this country and would not choose to live anywhere else.

But I'm loyal to Israel too, and I feel it needs my support more. Perhaps because I see it as more vulnerable, more isolated, less respected, less loved.

So back to the question you ask in your article ... why should anyone be in doubt as to which team you want to win?

Because of people like me, I guess. Because people realise that some groups, including British Jews, often have loyalties to two different countries.

That might cause anger among right-wing nationalists, and among unreconstructed Conservatives like Norman Tebbit, but let them be angry.
Let them rail against those who fail the "cricket test". Let them call me disloyal. I don't really care. Do you really think I should?