Common Sense

From two letters I found (here) in response to a terrible article:-

...The civil war between Palestinians and Jews (November 1947-April 1948) and international war between Arab states and Israel (May-December 1948) would not have been necessary had the Palestinians and Arab states accepted the UN plan for a Jewish and an Arab state in Palestine.

Nor should we accept, as Hari does, Ilan Pappe's inaccurate version of events. It is true that Israeli armed forces did engage in the forced removal of civilian populations, but it is also the case that Palestinian and Arab forces did the same. Indeed, the General Secretary of the Arab League [Azzam] promised a "war of extermination". Such statements could not be easily dismissed as mere rhetoric just two years after the Holocaust. Jews were, to use Pappe's term, ethnically cleansed by Arab forces (for example at the Etzion block and the entire Jewish Quarter of the Old City).

The Jewish and Israeli conduct in the wars has to be seen in the context of a struggle for survival...

John Strawson
Reader in Law, University of East London


Sir: There are currently about one million Arabs living in Israel and no one is killing or evicting them.

David Kravitz
Netanya, Israel