The reader writes:

Your article on Zionists being behind everything includes the myth of the Irgun murdering innocent women and children at deir yassin, and that is simply not true:

Plaut's article (indented) starts with my comments interspersed thereafter.

This week is the anniversary of the events that took place in the Arab village of Deir Yassin in 1948. In recent years, Deir Yassin has been converted into a bludgeon by the Far Left, the Neonazi Right, and Israel-bashers in general.

There was nothing to "convert" in Deir Yassin. Historians and people who were involved on the Israeli side have testified to the reality of a massacre of somewhere between 100 and 150 Palestinian civilians by Israeli paramilitary forces. But that is to be expected given the circumstances, it has happened many times throughout history.

Deir Yassin is the ultimate "Man Bites Dog" news story supposedly based on the inversion of players. It is recited endlessly by the very same people who have nothing to say against a century of countless massacres of Jewish civilians by Arabs. The church in St. John's Wood in London is just one of many examples of outfits "commemorating" the "victims" of Deir Yassin this week.

The above in not accurate. That there was indeed a massacre of Palestinian civilians by Israeli paramilitary groups at Deir Yassin is verified by Israeli soldiers who were involved, and is a generally accepted fact by moderate historians. It is also consistent with many, many other situations where one group was set against another to fight over a "homeland". Perhaps you should ponder the possible reason why photographs of dead Palestinians at Deir Yassin have never been published and are to this date still kept secret in IDF archives, not even academic researchers being allowed to gain access to them.

Deir Yassin was a not-at-all innocent Arab village sitting near the only road into Jerusalem in 1948. In the previous December, the UN had voted to partition what was left of Madatory Palestine into two states, one a Jewish state and the other an Arab state to be named Palestine, of approximately equal sizes. The Jews of Israel accepted the plan, while the Arab states and the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected it. Had they accepted it, a Palestinian state would have arisen peacefully in 1948.

You seem to have no problem with the fact that Israel had no right to Palestinian land, save the "right" given to them by "Yahweh", and that the Palestinians were justified in resisting the annexation of their land and the transportation of Palestinians from land that was being "given" to Israel. There is not a community of people ANYWHERE on the planet that would not resist such a fascist land grab and cleansing of an indigenous population, and that includes Jews. Put the shoe on the other foot and tell me what Jews would have done. It never ceases to amaze me that people like you so strenuously demand rights for the Jewish people while presiding over and advocating the denial of those rights to Palestinians and then complain when Palestinians refuse to accept such treatment.

In response to the UN resolution, Arabs launched attacks against Jews everywhere in the country and in particular placed the city of Jerusalem under siege. The Jewish population of Jerusalem was quite literally starving. The only road into the city passed through the area of Deir Yassin, and the Arab militiamen in the town were stopping all convoys from passing through.

Naturally. When a population is about to be cleansed from a part of their land they will resist, it is natural and indeed a right under the third Geneva convention.

Since Israel had yet to be formally proclaimed, the only Jews doing the fighting were members of three poorly-armed militias. The main one was the Hagana, commanded by David Ben Gurion and the socialist Zionist party. There were two smaller ones operating independently under the command of the dissident "revisionist Zionist" movement, the Etsel and the Lehi.Poorly-trained irregulars of the two latter militias were ordered to attack Deir Yassin to relieve the siege. They did so in ferocious hand-to-hand fighting, in which some Deir Yassin villagers were killed. The Bash-Israel lobby has always maintained that the villagers were "massacred" in cold blood, despite a distinct lack of evidence.

Nonsense. What happened at Deir Yassin was in the context of the broader picture of Israeli forces appropriating Palestinian land to make it part of Israel. Meir Pa'il who was involved in the fighting stated that he:

"started hearing shooting in the village. The fighting was over, yet there was the sound of firing of all kinds from different houses ... Sporadic firing, not like you would [normally] hear when they clean a house." He also stated that no commanders directed the actions, just groups of guerrillas running about "full of lust for murder".

"Full of lust for murder", but they didn't massacre anyone. Let's be reasonable here. Jews are ordinary people and subject to the effects of war.

Those who participated in the battle claim the villagers were killed when the Jewish militiamen fired into homes from which fire was directed at them. The village was successfully taken and the siege of Jerusalem was lifted. Large numbers of Jewish militiamen had been killed in the house-to-house battle for the village. Approximately 100 Arabs in the village died, a number that was later greatly inflated by anti-Jewish propagandists to 250.

Indeed, the number was inflated by some, but not by "anti-Jewish propagandists" but by Palestinians who had just seen their countrymen, women and children murdered in the defence of their land! Does Palestinian death and suffering mean so little to you?

Part of the problem was that the mainstream socialist Zionist parties themselves magnified the supposed misbehavior of the two opposition militias in order to discredit them in the coming political contest for control of the emerging Jewish state. This trend has been echoed in recent years, and Deir Yassin has become the "massacre of choice" for anti-Semites trying to prove the Jews are bloodthirsty barbarians. In part these have based their claims on a document by a Hagana officer, one Meir Peil, who was not actually present at the battle but surveyed the village AFTER the fighting was finished. Peil claimed he thought there had been looting and intentional killing of some villagers. The problem is that Peil is also a leftwing radical and not exactly a neutral source. Other less politicized sources tell a different tale. Even some Arab sources confirm that no massacre took place in Deir Yassin.

Peli's cameraman took the photos that Israel will not release, so Peli was there. You can believe any nonsense that you want, but get this into your head: this is not about "Jews being bloodthirsty barbarians", this is about "Zionists". If you OBJECTIVELY research Zionist history you will realise that these few "Zionist" leaders are indeed "bloodthirsty barbarians", but that doesn't make Jews bloodthirsty or barbarians.

Zionists claim to be the leaders of the Jewish people, when they are in fact leading Jews down a road that will lead them to their own destruction. It is the "Zionists" and "Zionist" thinking that leads YOU to take it as a fact that Jews were somehow entitled to Palestinian land and therefore Palestinians had no right to resist the taking of their land, and if they did, or do, they are "terrorists".

Are you so blind that you cannot see the OBVIOUS injustice that has been perpetrated against the Palestinian people? That the state of Israel was founded on a blatant injustice and that it was the work of the "Zionists" who have now made ordinary Jews in Israel RESPONSIBLE for "Zionists'" criminal acts? Can you see that their thinking has infected YOUR mind to such an extent that you sit there and defend THEIR CRIMINAL ACT?

Meanwhile, a few years back the ZOA issued a new study, Deir Yassin History of a Lie, a 32-page analysis (with 156 footnotes) by ZOA National President Morton A. Klein.

Among other things, the ZOA study shows that the original claim of 254 dead was not based on any actual body count. The number was invented by Mordechai Ra'anan, leader of the Jewish soldiers who fought in Deir Yassin. He later admitted that the figure was a deliberate exaggeration in order to undermine the morale of the Arab forces, which had launched a war against the Jews in Mandatory Palestine to prevent the establishment of Israel. Other eyewitnesses to the battle estimated that about 100 Arabs had died. Despite Ra'anan's admission, the figure 254 was circulated by Palestinian Arab leader Hussein Khalidi. His claims about Deir Yassin were the basis for an article in the New York Times claiming a massacre took place--an article that has been widely reprinted and cited as "proof" of the massacre throughout the past 57 years.

Do not disrespect yourself any longer by continuing to deny the fact that Jewish paramilitaries were "full of lust for murder", however, neither should you understand that their actions mean that "Jews are bloodthirsty barbarians". The only "bloodthirsty barbarians" are the people who pushed Jewish people into a position where they would be in permanent conflict with Palestinians. Ask yourself, what is the likely outcome of such a scenario? Who will "win"?

Meanwhile, there have been numerous exposes of the lies that have been invented surrounding the battle for Deir Yassin and these have largely discredited the Peil "eyewitness" report.

A massacre did take indeed take place, following the events in Deir Yassin, which had occurred on Friday morning April 9, 1948. On Monday morning, April 13, 1948, an Arab mob, chanting "Deir Yassin", massacred a bus convoy of Jewish doctors and nurses who were headed to Hadassah hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. Seventy-eight members of Hadassah's medical staff were murdered in cold blood. Only recently was it revealed that some of the Hadassah nurses had found refuge in the nearby compound of the British consul, only to be turned over to Arabs by the Brits, and the Arabs proceeded to slaughter them in "revenge" for what they thought had occurred at Deir Yassin.

Of course, these things will happen, what do you expect? The key to understanding this is in your comment above that the nurses were "turned over to Arabs by the Brits". This is the source of the conflict. Can't you see it? Can't you see that it is the policy makers and the politicians that have ALWAYS been the bane of humanity, setting one group against another so that THEY can profit from it? As long as you continue to value a Jewish life over a Palestinian life and believe that Jews are the victims and Arabs as "terrorists", you will remain a victim of the nefarious agenda of these "Zionists" and government policy makers.

Both sides used the symbol of "Remember Deir Yassin" in 1948 during the war. There were Jews who intimidated Arabs with the slogan and there were Arab commanders who rallied their populace with the same adage. Meanwhile, what has fanned the flames of Deir Yassin has been the United Nations decision to confine more than three million Palestinian Arabs to refugee camps, promising them the "right of return" to Arab villages that no longer exist.

Indeed, and would you like to comment on, or frame your understanding of the history of Israel in terms of the justice or otherwise of what was clearly the ethnic cleansing of one people by another?

In recent years a group of pro-Arab propagandists in the US have stared holding annual "memorials" for the "victims" of the "massacre" in Deir Yassin. The late Edward Said had been a member and the group includes such people as anti-Semite Norman Finkelstein, Saudi-financed ex-congressman Paul Findlay, and PLO propagandist Hanan Ashwari.

These are people who have never denounced Arab massacres of Jewish children, which were committed not by poorly trained irregulars in the heat of a crucial battle, but by Islamofascist terrorists awash in money and under the direct personal command of the PLO.

In the above, you belie your sublimation to a certain amount of brainwashing of the type promoted by "Zionist" politicians and other government policy makers. Norman Finkelstein is not an "anti-Semite", he is a professor of political science at DePaul University and historian who simply documents the FACTS of the history of Israel. The simple fact is that the history of the state of Israel is founded on an obvious injustice against the Palestinian people. To assert the reality of this injustice does NOT make anyone an anti-Semite.

The cry of anti-Semitism is very clearly being used in repeated attempts to silence any critical analysis of the history of Israel. Such silencing can only benefit the policy makers who benefit from pitting one group of humans against another. You do the Jewish people no service by siding with such people and promoting their agenda. Their agenda has led to the continued suffering of Jews and Palestinians alike. I am therefore prompted to ask you:

"whose side are you on"?

Regards,