This letter is a response to the description of Israel on The Washington Post’s website.

Michael

From: Dr. Michael Berenhaus [mailto:mberenhaus@comcast.net]
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 9:08 AM
To: washington post
Subject: Your piece on Washingtonpost.com


Dear Mr. Morley,

Thank you for your piece on Israel and the Middle East Conflict. Overall, I found it excellent, accurate, and filled with useful information. However there is one point, when you refer to “Palestinians displaced by the creation of the Jewish state”, that I think comes across as misleading. When David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, announced the creation of Israel on May 14, 1948, NO Palestinians became displaced. This would seem to prove that it was not the "creation" of the Jewish state that caused the refugee situation.

It was not until five neighboring Arab countries and the local Arabs started a war to eliminate Israel that some (not all) of the Palestinian Arabs fled. It was the Arab war – actually the fact that they lost the war – that caused the displacement. This may seem to you like a quibble about wording, but it is more than that; it is a matter of not blaming the wrong party.

I have a similar "quibble" in regard to your statement that “Israel has been at war with Palestinians…for more than half a century.” I think that you may really mean that the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab countries have been at war with Israel". The point is, again, it was not Israel that made war on the Palestinians; it was the other way around.

I hope you will take these as factual corrections that would improve an already excellent piece.

Michael Berenhaus
Potomac, Maryland