Israelis and Palestinians

Barry Rubin accuses the State Department of doing PR for the PLO’s “terrorism” (“How Low Will We stoop for Arafat?” Op-Ed Page, March 22). He needs a lesson in semantics.

On the same date, I heard Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) address the 19th anniversary convention of the America-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in Washington. He stated that “Israeli bombs from the air” are also a form of “terrorism.”

These retaliatory raids have snuffed out many thousands of innocent lives over the decades. And in the 21 1/2 month-old intifada , the Israeli occupying army in Palestine has killed, conservatively, 650 unarmed civilians.

Yet, what draws Rubin’s ire are a series of small, doomed Palestinian guerrilla actions during the intifada . Very few Israeli civilians were killed. If they were, such actions indeed constituted “terrorism.” But who has heeded the words penned by an Israeli woman caught in the action against a nuclear-weapons base when she worried about surviving: “This must stop. Our leaders must talk.”

Certainly not her own government, which adamantly refuses the PLO’s offer of negotiations--not because the PLO’s hands are unclean, but because it embodies the national aspirations of a conquered but defiant people to be free and independent.

Is Rubin opposed to self-determination? If so, one can easily understand his diversionary essay, even while we hapless U.S. taxpayers continue to hand Israel $3.5 billion each year, to prolong its cruel occupation.

ANTHONY SAIDY

Los Angeles