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Your correspondents, S.J.Fisher and Marc Schindler { " Blatant hypocrisy" Nov. 1} regurgitate the tale of Israeli democracy . Israeli democracy is indeed 'unique' in its application only to some of its citizens. Maxim Ghilan, the Israeli journalist, wrote: "Israel is a Western-type democracy for Jews only.....Arabs, who are citizens of the state of Israel, are less fortunate.....They are not granted equal economic privileges, are prevented from access to public housing and loans, given only 'to those who served in the IDF[Israeli army] and allied services' , bodies into which most Israeli Arabs are not admitted..... Arabs in the territories conquered by Israel since 1967 have no rights whatsoever. Their children are shot, beaten up and jailed. Their men assassinated. Their women are brutalized......Foreign settlers jeer at them , provoke them, squat on their homes and on their land. International law concerning the behavior of conquerors in conquered land [The Fourth Geneva Convention] is openly flouted." Is this the democracy to brag about? Israeli violations of human rights in Israel and the occupied territories have been condemned by all international bodies, including Amnesty International, UN Human Rights Commission, International Commission of Jurists and Israeli human rights groups, including B'Tselem, amongst many others.

Mr. Schindler says: " there are no Jewish minorities in Arab countries any more." Let me remind him how Israel's leaders achieved that. In 1950-1951, Israeli leaders sent their agents, like Mordechai Ben Porat, to toss hand grenades into the crowded Masouda Shem-Tov synagogue in Iraq, killing worshippers, and blaming it on Arabs, to 'persuade' reluctant Iraqi Jews to emigrate to Israel. Jews throughout history were treated with tolerance by Muslims and Arabs. Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, stated, before the Anglo-American Commission, in Jerusalem in 1946: " I would not like to do any injustice. The muslim world has treated the Jews with considerable tolerance. The Ottoman Empire [of which the Arabs were a part] received the Jews with open arms when they were driven out of Spain and Europe, and the Jews should not forget that."