Madam, - Nadav Cohen of the Israeli Embassy (February 7th) accuses Senator David Norris (January 31st) of being selective in citing Erskine Childers's claim that Palestinians were not urged over the airwaves to leave their homes in 1948.
Senator Norris was indeed being selective, given the wide range of other authoritative sources he could have cited in defence of his argument. The Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1988) that "there is no evidence that the Arab states and the Arab Higher Committee. . .issued blanket orders or appeals to the Palestinians to leave their homes".
In The Birth of Israel (1989), Simha Flapan, another Israeli historian, wrote that "the contention that the Palestinian Arab leadership appealed to the Arab masses to leave their homes. . .makes no sense at all. The Arab armies . . . needed the help of the local population for food, fuel, water, transport, manpower and information."
Other Israeli historians who have demolished the myth of the "Arab broadcasts" include Tom Segev and Ilan Pappe.
Mr Cohen may object that some of these historians are left-wing revisionists, but Morris is a right-wing Zionist who has asserted that his only objection to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 was that it didn't go far enough.
Heading for the bottom of the barrel, Mr Cohen dredges up an Economist article from October 2nd 1948, but neglects to mention that it was written from Cyprus by an anonymous correspondent using an uncorroborated Israeli source.
In a sense, this debate is irrelevant as well as obsolete. Article 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the right of all refugees - in all circumstances - to return to their homes. UN General Assembly resolution 194 brings this universal principle to bear on the specific issue of Palestinian refugees: "Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date. . ." - Yours, etc,
RAYMOND DEANE, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Dame Street, Dublin 2.