NATALIE WYNN,
Sir, - While C.E.J. Caldicott (April 25th) made many valid and balanced points, I would like to respond as follows: Firstly, before comparing Bethlehem to the Warsaw Ghetto (where people were forcibly deported from across eastern and western Europe as well as Poland, then incarcerated, starved and finally "liquidated") please bear in mind that the head of the order of priests trapped in the Church of the Nativity has repeatedly told the media that the gunmen besieged there entered the church by force, shooting the lock on the door, and also that they are holding hostage the religious concerned.
If the Israelis had wanted to desecrate this Christian holy site in order to capture the gunmen by force, they would have done so long ago. These are armed terrorists who are seeking not refuge, but a cynical publicity stunt, which so far has been extremely successful.
Secondly, while I do not necessarily agree with everything the Israelis are doing, I feel compelled to react when unfounded allegations are made, such as: "for women and children to be butchered indiscriminately, and for their families to be denied the right of identification and burial of their own", etc. Anyone who attempts to put forward another side to the story is accused of being an "apologist for mechanised barbarism", because most of the world chooses to believe the propaganda.
I can accept that people perceive official Israeli sources to be biased. But how is it, on the other hand, that the repeated accusations by the Palestinians (also a biased source) of genocide, massacre of civilians, indiscriminate bombings and so on, are accepted at face value and mindlessly regurgitated? Can the public not at least have the decency to wait for these allegations to be investigated? - Yours, etc.,
NATALIE WYNN,
Dublin 6W.