Madam, - Prof Benny Morris (February 21st) makes some nasty and inaccurate insinuations. Indeed I am at a loss to know why he includes me in his diatribe at all. He starts with a smear about "Israel-haters". I defy any just person who knows anything at all about my life, my work and my political stance to sustain such a slur. I will not, however, be intimidated from pursuing civil rights for the oppressed, be they Jew, Gentile, Arab, Christian or Muslim.
I welcome the fact that in the midst of his ignorant sloganeering Prof Morris accepts as fully accurate my principal contention, based on the research of the late Erskine Childers, that there were no Arab radio broadcasts urging the Palestinian population to flee. He is also indeed right that the decent, left-wing mayor of Haifa did entreat the terrified Palestinians of his city to stay. History is, after all, complex and there are well-intentioned people on all sides, including in the current tragic conflict in Israel/Palestine.
Conversely, no one's hands are clean, including our own. After the horrendous crime of the Holocaust the European powers decided to salve their consciences at the expense of the Palestinians, many having stood idly by during the Nazi persecution and then callously turned away refugees. For this the Palestinians can hardly be blamed, but they have been made to suffer.
Prof Morris acknowledges that Israeli commanders "were given carte blanche to occupy and garrison or expel and destroy the Arab villages along and behind the front line" and that Israeli leaders decided in 1948 to bar the return of Palestinian refugees. His conscience appears untroubled by these facts, which he calmly accepts.
Having "corrected" me for other people's errors and conflated my contribution to your newspaper with those of other letter-writers with whom I have no association in a curious departure from the intellectual rigour one would expect, he recommends "that the likes of Norris and Landy read some history books and become acquainted with the facts, not recycle shop-worn Arab propaganda". Really? Erskine Childers an Arab?
I will not rudely refer to "the likes of" Prof Morris, for indeed I hope he is unique in his confusion, but I will return his compliment by suggesting that he in his turn consult the work of some of his distinguished Israeli colleagues such as Prof Ilan Pappe and Prof Avi Schlaim. - Yours, etc,
Senator DAVID NORRIS, Seanad Éireann, Kildare Street, Dublin 2.
Madam, - Raymond Deane (February 25th) praises Ilan Pappé for not being "constrained by ideological blinkers". Readers will be interested to know that Pappé is a member of the Communist Hadash party in Israel.
His work isn't even remotely objective, which Pappé himself admits in the introduction to his book A History of Modern Palestine: "My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the 'truth' when reconstructing past realities. . .This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonised not the coloniser; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers."
As for Norman G. Finkelstein, anyone vaguely aware of his work knows he is an ultra-left polemicist, whose alleged "classic" as cited by Mr Deane is in fact a partisan, anti-Israel diatribe. It therefore seems a little hypocritical to accuse Prof Morris of being constrained by ideology, given that the anti-Zionist left, and the work they cite suffers from similar constraints. - Yours, etc,
STEVEN CORCORAN, Lawrence Grove, Clontarf, Dublin 3.