CAROLE CRAIG,
Sir, - During the Indian independence movement Prime-Minister-to-be Nehru said that he rejected violence because of the kind of people that violence created. We have already seen in the form of the suicide bombers what 35 years of fighting Israel's illegal occupation of their land has done to the Palestinians. Less attention is being given to what it is doing to the occupiers.
Because of Israel's policy of almost universal military service it is ordinary young Israelis, not professional soldiers, who tear up people's documents and strip-search old men at checkpoints; ordinary Israelis who kick down the doors of Palestinians houses, who shoot through doors, who use their tanks to make sure that ambulances cannot move so that people shot in their homes bleed to death or pregnant women in labour cannot get to hospital.
When the current conflict is over, and Sharon has achieved his dream of settling the Palestinian problem by forcing them to flee the any territory that Israel claims (what happened to them in 1948 and 1967 after all), I wonder what kind of society will have been created for Israel, filled as it will be with people who have done these things. - Yours, etc.,
CAROLE CRAIG,
Arnott Street,
Dublin 8