Mideast Turmoil

Is Amy Wilentz naive, anti-Semitic or ignorant (“Losing Ground,” Opinion, Sept. 14)? Her article is full of untruths and distortions. According to Wilentz, Yasser Arafat is the sole supporter of peace. Do not insult us.

Arafat has yet to live up to his commitments in the Oslo accords; he has not deleted those sections denying Israel’s right to exist; he openly espouses terrorism in the Arab press; he has incited the Palestinians against Israel way before Israel opened the tunnel; he refers to terrorists as “nationalists.”

No other country has ever given so much in its quest for peace as Israel: Gaza, the West Bank, legitimacy, power, weapons and money to Arafat and the PLO. Israel can only be accused of ignoring the reality of Palestinian hate and its long-term objective of gaining all of Israel by terrorism.

FREDERICA BARLAZ

Marina del Rey

Two thumbs up to Wilentz for hitting the nail on the head. It is high time that someone should alert American Jews that by supporting the existing Israeli government, all they are doing is hurting what Judaism is all about. Maybe Wilentz should present her article to members of Congress in case any of them have no knowledge of what really goes on in the field, or even choose not to know.

LULU EMERY

Woodland Hill

In reference to “Albright Is Right to Go Through With Mideast Visit” (editorial, Sept. 5), I object to the statement, “But to insist, as Israeli officials do, that [Arafat] is ultimately responsible for all terrorist acts is absurd.” One can easily say that the buck stops at the chairman’s desk and Arafat is indeed the chairman.

We cannot attribute terrorist acts just to the organizations that take credit for them, especially in light of extensive reporting of Arafat’s hugs and kisses of those same organizations’ leaders. Arafat must take a major measure of the responsibility and must make major efforts to stem the tide of terrorist activities. If he shirks this responsibility, surely the Israelis will fill the vacuum.

CARMEN H. WARSCHAW, Chair

Jewish Community Relations Cmte., Jewish Federation, L.A.

I was unaware that The Times was publishing Israeli propaganda. “Israeli Freedom Fighters Recall Independence Struggle” (Sept. 8), about the celebration of Israel’s upcoming 50th anniversary, is at best unadulterated cheering for one side of a complex story.

At worst, it whitewashes the enormous crimes that pro-Israeli forces perpetrated on Palestinian civilians: carrying out massacres and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes--ethnic cleansing, really--and refusing to this day to allow them to return, compensate them for their property or even acknowledge that they have been wronged.

The central myth of Israel--that Palestine prior to 1948 was a land without a people for a people without a land--is buttressed by your story, which makes no mention of the Palestinian people who at the time constituted the sizable majority there. Some forms of racism degrade, others simply make invisible.

SAM HUSSEINI, Media Director

Amer.-Arab Anti-Discrimination