From: Dr. Michael Berenhaus [mailto:mberenhaus@comcast.net]
Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 7:35 PM
To: wash post staff
Subject: Story turned upside-down

Dear Editors, Ombudsman,

In In Jordanian Camps, a Sense of Nihilism (Apr. 7, 2007), we read “…Gamal Abdel Nasser, then a burly Egyptian major (later Egypt’s president), held out for four months against Israeli troops in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.”

“Held out?” The fact is, it was an Israeli hodge-podge of soldiers, fighting for their lives and the lives of their families, who "held out" and repelled the invading Egyptian army. The Washington Post version turns the story upside-down, making it sound as if the Egyptians were rightly there – instead of invading the sovereign nation of Israel, which then, as today, only wants to live in peace with its neighbors.

Michael Berenhaus