Sir, - What is responsible for the anti-Israeli bias in the Irish media? Is it the primeval nationalism lurking in the Irish psyche that somehow identifies the PLO and the Palestinians as the equivalent of our own Provos and northern nationalist community, and the Israelis with the "foreign occupying power"? Or is it a residual anti-Semitic undercurrent, the legacy of our neutrality during the second World War when the Irish attitude to Germany was "our enemy's enemy is our friend" - even though that friend was engaged in the extermination of every Jewish man, woman and child in Europe?
Why is there such collective amnesia among media-persons concerning the following facts? Only a few weeks ago Mr Barak the Israeli Prime Minister offered to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians, an offer which, had it been accepted by Mr Arafat, could have propelled the region into permanent peace. Yet, Mr Arafat immediately rejected that offer.
At the beginning of the Israeli Palestinian peace process, the then Israeli Prime Minister Mr Yitzhak Rabin, accepted the written assurances of Mr Arafat that "the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence" and proffered the Israeli perspective: "We, like you, are people - people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you in dignity, in affinity as human beings, as free men." Yet not only was the peace process punctuated by Israelis killed through the fanatical actions of Palestinian suicide-bombers, but last week Mr Arafat sanctioned the release of dozens of Hamas terrorists responsible for such bloodshed. Is that the decision of someone acting in good faith?
The simplistic depiction of the Palestinians as the "good guys" who are oppressed by the Israeli "bad guys" is something that all television and print journalists should be ashamed of because it fuels ignorance of the facts as well as contributing to the spread of misinformation concerning the Middle East. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Noreen O'Carroll, Blackrock, Co Dublin.