Mr. Stephen Tannebaum, in his letter:{"Waiting for an apology" July 31}, reproduces a series of myths related to Zionism and Islam. Palestine is the ancestral home of the Palestinian people, whose ancestors, the Canaanites and Jebusites, lived in this land since history began. Professor Maxime Rodinson, who is Jewish and was professor of international law at the Sorbonne University in Paris, stated in 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 forty centuries." The Hebrew tribes came to the Land of Canaan as invaders and were driven out by other invaders, the Romans.

As to Israel's practises against its Arab citizens, the testimony of the late Professor Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, tells it as it is. He stated: " It is my considered opinion that the state of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of this term. In this state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin. This racist discrimination began in Zionism and is carried out today mainly in cooperation with the institutions of the Zionist movement."

As to the charges of Islamic intolerance, I think the testimony of Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, in Jeusalem in 1946, tells the facts. He stated : " I would not like to do any injustice. The Muslim world treated the Jews with considerable tolerance. 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."