Madam, - Last week a small but moving ceremony was held in Howth to commemorate the first Palestinian town to be destroyed in the Nakba.
The town was Qisarya, the date was February 15th, 1948. The thousand or so inhabitants were brutally expelled and were never let return. Their descendants still live in exile.
But who cares about these people? According to Prof Benny Morris in his attack on David Norris and myself (February 21st), such people deserve their fate since "they launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine". It seems they were ethnically cleansed because they started a war against peace-loving Zionists.
This is nonsense. As Prof Morris undoubtedly knows, mandatory Palestine was scarred by terrorist attacks that the newly-arrived European Jews inflicted on their long-established Palestinian neighbours, as well as by attacks by Palestinians on those who intended to dispossess them.
The terror attacks by Zionists were explicitly to dispossess the indigenous Palestinians of their land, and turn it into a Jewish state. As Prof Nur Masalha documents in his 1992 work Expulsion of the Palestinians, plans for ethnic cleansing or "transfer" were widely discussed among the Zionist leadership throughout the early 20th century. Prof Morris, at this stage, is perhaps unique among historians in still refusing to see continuities between these plans and the actual ethnic cleansing during the Nakba in 1948.
In other words, the ethnic cleansing was not a result of war; it was a result of the colonial ideology of mid-century European Zionists.
It is, admittedly, awkward to admit this. But it is necessary. Dr Morris's historical blindness may make him a useful mouthpiece of the Israeli government; it does nothing to add to his reputation. - Yours, etc,
DAVID LANDY,
St Thomas Road,
Dublin 8.
Madam, - Since the beginning of this year you have allowed your Letters page to become a new battlefield in the Israeli-Palestinian war of words. The level and intensity is almost identical to what we witness in the Holy land itself.
At times these discussions, arguments and counter-arguments lead only to more intransigence and hatred. As a Palestinian and Israeli, I call on you and your letter-writers to stop wars and start make peace.
Neither Palestinians nor Israelis can change what happened in 1948; both peoples can agree on what happens tomorrow. Help us to make peace for we cannot afford to continue this madness for ever more. - Yours,
Dr NAZIH FAKHER-ELDIN,
Navan,
Co Meath.