In her book review, on April 26, of Queen Noor's memoirs, "Leap of Faith", Irshad Manji accuses Queen Noor of imbalance in her comments about the Palestine question. If there is any imbalance, it is clearly evident in Ms. Manji's review.

The expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland was a systematic process of ethnic cleansing planned and effected by the Zionist leaders, going back to Theodor Herzl, Ben Gurion, and remains the policy of current Israeli leaders. Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister confided in a letter to his son, Amos, in 1937, that when the Jewish state comes into being, " We will expel the Arabs and take their places."

As to whose land is Palestine, besides Mahatma Ghandi, history and authoratitive historians state clearly that the Palestinians are the true indigenous people of Palestine. Professor Maxime Rodinson, Professor of History, Sorbonne University in Paris, and who is Jewish, stated clearly in his book "Israel and the Arabs,1968" : "The Arab population of Palestine was native in all the senses of the word and their roots in Palestine can be traced back at least 40 centuries."

Ms. Manji questions Queen Noor's statement that "Jews, Muslims and Christians had lived peacefully in the Middle East" for centuries "until the rise of Zionism." That is a historic fact and I will let none other than Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, testify to that. In a testimony before the Anglo-American Commission, in 1946, in Jerusalem, he stated: " ! would not like to do any injustice. The Muslim world has treated the Jews with considerable tolearnce. The Ottoman Empire {of which the Arabs were a major part} received the Jews with open arms when they were driven out of Spain and Europe, and the Jews should never forget that." Unfortunately many have forgotten that.