‘UNDERSTANDING For Suicide Killers; Less For Their Victims’

A MASTERPIECE of a Reader's Letter:

To: The Editor, DAILY MAIL June 22, 2007

From: e-mail w.leaf@ntlworld.com

Andrew Alexander (June 22) shows understanding for suicide bombers who kill Israeli families in school buses, cafes and shopping areas, but little for their victims.

My own understanding comes from studying evidence that Palestinians are taught hatred from nursery school onwards, with atlases that obliterate Israel and textbooks that demonise Jews. Suicide-bombers are lionised in repulsive Children's TV programmes and emulated at gruesome "summer camps." That despicable indoctrination, plus incendiary sermons in the mosques, explains why Israelis are brutally murdered.

Talk of justification is perverse. Three-quarters of the original Promised Land destined for "close Jewish settlement" by international agreement became Jew-free, Arab (Trans)Jordan! Yet, repeatedly - in 1937 (Peel Commission), 1947 (UN Partition Plan), 1967 (Khartoum Denial) and after - a Palestinian state sharing the tiny rump was rejected. That includes Israel‘s offer in 2000 of all Gaza, 97% of disputed Judea/Samaria (the West Bank) and a capital in Jerusalem, centre of the Jewish faith. The "intransigence" is therefore not Israel's.

What I do not understand is why Mr Alexander should deny the perennially persecuted Jews of all peoples self-determination. Why may they not live in peace in their own UN-voted homeland - where Christians, Muslims and Jews have equal civil and religious rights, unknown elsewhere in the region - after 3,800 years of Jewish presence (despite Islamic invasions, expulsions and riots), when the 21 Arab League states surrounding Israel already occupy 800 times as much land?

(Yours sincerely)

WALTER LEAF
e-mail w.leaf@ntlworld.com