Madam, - Dermot Meleady (January 27th) asks why I describe the Lebanese Phalange as neo-Nazi.
Pierre Gemayel founded the Phalange in 1936 after his return from the Berlin Olympics, where his admiration for the Nazis' organisational abilities inspired him to import their "ideas of order" to Lebanon. The Phalangists' subsequent opposition to the introduction of any form of democracy in Lebanon was one of the factors contributing to that country's civil war.
On even more dangerous territory, Mr Meleady recalls the Nazi collaborationism of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Need I remind him that in 1940-41 the Zionist Stern Gang, which included Israel's future prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, offered to participate in the second World War on the side of Hitler? They proposed to establish "the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich, [ which] would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East". - Yours, etc,
RAYMOND DEANE, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Dame Street, Dublin 2.