Madam, - Please do not be persuaded to dispense with Charles Krauthammer's column in response to John Bielenberg's letter of September 7th.
Mr Krauthammer shows all too clearly the way certain pro-Israeli commentators distort the truth in their defence of the indefensible. Your readers are sufficiently intelligent to see his propaganda for what it is. - Yours, etc,
R.M. LOGUE,
Woodley Park,
Dundrum,
Dublin 14.
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Madam, - I fervently disagree with John Bielenberg's letter. But of much more importance is Mary Raftery's column in the same edition, in which she writes that the state of Jordan has had a "laid-back" attitude for thousands of years.
Jordan was created by the British mandatory authority in 1920 in defiance of a League of Nations order to facilitate a homeland for Jews on both sides of the Jordan river. The British set it up in order to maintain a puppet state in the area, just as they and the French had done with Syria and Lebanon. They brought in a Bedouin from Saudi Arabia and crowned him king and that has been the situation ever since.
This is not the first time that Mary Raftery has written an article on the Middle East that demonstrates her lack of knowledge of the history of the region. Of course she is not alone in this as most people who write about this area seem to believe that history there started in 1967. I would recommend a book entitled From Time Immemorial, by Joan Peters, to anyone who wants to learn something about the Middle East from the time of the fall of the Ottoman empire.
I have no doubt that if this letter is published, Raymond Deane will be charging in to describe this book as rubbish because it contains information that does not suit his version of history. Even at the risk of being mauled by himself I still say: read it. - Yours, etc,
MONTY ROSS,
Templeogue Road,
Dublin 6W.