Madam, - In his letter of December 15th, Kenneth Baker, press officer of the Israeli Embassy, says my article of December 8th was "based on many factual falsehoods". However, he did not cite a single example.
But he did raise a much more worrying issue. He said that Israel regards "the future independent state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people, wherever they may be". Note the sleight of hand in those last four words, "wherever they may be".
They explain the fear haunting the Palestinian citizens of Israel, the minority who managed to avoid expulsion in 1948 and have lived as third-class citizens ever since - because, apart from a few tokens, the non-European Jews of Israel are a deprived second class, as was explained to me when I visited the homes of Yemenite, Moroccan, Iraqi and Iranian Jews in the slums of south Tel Aviv this year.
Israeli leaders are afraid of two Palestinian "demographic time-bombs" As well as population growth in the occupied territories, they fear the demand from the growing number of Palestinian Israelis that Israel give them equal rights - anathema to those who, as Mr Baker says, regard "Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people". Israeli leaders are discussing proposals to strip Palestinian Israelis of citizenship and force them to become citizens of the bantustan which they wish Mahmoud Abbas to accept.
We saw all this before, in South Africa. Let us hope that the day is not far away when the Jews of Middle Eastern origin see that their best hope for a just future is in alliance with those other victims of European racism, the Palestinians. - Yours, etc,
JAMES BOWEN, Chairman, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Cork.