Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 11:45 AM

Subject: How about the facts?

Dear Mr. Mansbridge:

I found your interview,[June 23], "One on One", with Ehud Olmert, very disapponitnig. As a journalist, who is well acclaimed, you did not ask the relevant questions dealing with the facts on the ground.

Olmert made the statement that Israel, as a democracy, is entitled to hold nuclear weapons. Pray, who provided this license? And since when is Israel a real democracy? Many Israeli thinkers and intellectuals describe Israel as a democracy for Jews only. Israel practices, in its own laws, clear discrimination against its own Muslim and Christian citizens, not to mention the brutal oppression that it practices in the Occupied Territories, in violation of virtually every article of the Fourth Geneva Convention. These violations are considered war crimes, under international law.

Moreover, you appeared to imply, in your questioning, that the bombing of the Iraqi reactor, by Israel, in 1981, was legitimate and you were asking if the bombing of Iran is similarly planned.

Furthermore, I did not hear you once asking the question as to when will Israel comply with international law and repeated Security Council resolutions and terminate its illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory that has been allowed to stand for 40 years.

It is time that serious and balanced journalism must deal with the facts critically, so that our Canadian public are enlightened and well informed

Yours sincerely,

Ismail Zayid, MD.

Halifax, Nova Scotia,