Opinion

Deal with facts, not myths and wishful thinking

IT MAKES a great change indeed to deal with an Israeli supporter who is prepared to deal with facts, not myths and wishful thinking.

Firstly, I cannot dispute the facts as Andrew J Shaw quotes them (June 25). Only problem is he is starting in the middle of his Palestinian/Israeli story. The start was when Britain, by force, ethnically cleansed another country and installed strangers of another religion in those stolen homes and lands (like Britain did in Ireland).

There is no dispute the Palestinians paid the ultimate price for someone else's crime (the Holocaust).

Palestine as a country or its citizens had neither part nor input into that atrocity full stop - it is fact. If one was to read Andrew's letter not knowing the history they would think the Arabs just woke up one morning and decided they would hate the Israelis. Not so. They were living in Palestinians' legally owned homes and lands, a fact which doomed Palestinians to refugee status for posterity. As like the Irish they would never have the weaponry to defeat their adversaries who had the world bully's war machines at hand.

Bizarrely while Britain was ethnically cleansing Palestine they fought two world wars, allegedly to put a stop to this very act.

Until the Palestinians (who are Arabs) are given rite to return to their stolen homes and lands and their borders are respected there will never be peace in the Middle East. That is a fact. There are only two ways to become the legal owner of a home or land - buy it from the legal owner or to have it willed or gifted to you. There is no other way.

So, as Andrew is a man for facts I ask him personally did the Israelis, now resident there, adhere to this fact?

I await his reply and will only be interested in the facts.

PETER McEVOY

Banbridge, Co Down