In his letter, { "Missed the point" March 22}, Raymond MacDonald is indulging in massive distortion of the facts on the ground. To accuse the Palestinians of propaganda and terrorism is the height of audacity. The Palestinian people, as David Doake stated, were subjected to dispossession and ethnic cleansing 55 years ago, followed by illegal Israeli occupation for over 35 years. They have been exposed to imprisonment with no charge or trial, torture,extra-judicial assassination, daily humiliation, demolition of thousands of their homes and expropriation of their property for the creation of illegal colonies. All these acts are in violation of virtually every article of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are in fact war crimes, as defined by international law.

To accuse the Palestinians of terrorism is a mendacious statement. Israel created terrorism in the Middle East, and practiced that against Arabs, Europeans, Americans and Jews. It would take pages to detail that, but it has been shown on the pages of this newspaper {Nov.,4,2001}. It was summed up accurately by the late Professor Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and Chairman of Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, who stated :" There is nothing new in the fact that Israel is a terrorist state, which almost from its inception has used its intelligence [from the early 1950s, the Mossad] to assassinate people on foreign soil with any violence or terror it considers necessary for its ends." As to the Palestinians, international law and the UN Charter entitles all peoples under foreign occupation, including even the Palestinian people, to resist such occupation.

The staement by Mr. MacDonald that Israel is being subjected to undue practice of double standards is incredible. The facts are completely the reverse. There is no better example than the contrast with the current crisis in Iraq. When Iraq illegally occupied Kuwait in 1990, no one entertained negotiation with Saddam Hussein about withdrawal and a million troops were dispatched to evict Iraq from Kuwait. Israel remains in illegal occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory for over 35 years, and the US is calling for negotiation between the occupier and the occupied. When Iraq was accused of refusing to comply with UN resolutions, econmic sanctions were applied by the US and its allies. Israel stands today in defiance of over 70 UN resolutions and the US provides Israel with billions of dollars and the armaments needed to maintain its illegal occupation and oppression of the occupied people. Devastating war is being waged today against Iraq because it is accused, by the US and UK, of holding weapons of mass destruction [WMD] and non-cmpliance with Security Council resolution # 687, of April 3,1991. Clause # 14 of this very resolution states that WMD should be dismantled from Iraq and all countries in the Middle East. Israel has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, and has used chemical weapons in 1997, on the orders of prime minister Netanyahu who sent his Mossad agents, using Canadian passports, to assassinate Khalid Meshal in Amman, Jordan. Nothing is heard about Israeli compliance with this resolution.