There were more Jewish than Arab refugees

Good letter in the British newspaper The Independent, which lately seems to be having an anti-Israel hatefest in its columns and letters pages. But Jeremy Woolf has got his comparative numbers of refugees slightly wrong: it was not a similar number of Jewish refugees who were forced to leave Arab countries - but a greater number (870,000, of which some 600,000 went to Israel).

"Sir: Harry Perry (letter, 13 September) seeks to suggest that Israel should cease to exist because of its theft of Palestinian land. It is open to question whether Israel forced all these refugees to leave, and a number of Arabs remained in Israel. But even assuming some were forced to leave, he overlooks the similar number of Jews from Arab lands who, equally uncompensated, were forced to leave the countries where they had lived for centuries. Most of these Jews moved to Israel and joined the already sizeable Jewish population of that country.

"The truth is that the partition of Israel/Palestine has many similarities to the partition of India into India and Pakistan. However, I do not hear the critics of Israel's right to exist also claiming that those countries are apartheid countries with no right to exist.

"Israel has made it clear that it is prepared to accept a Palestinian state in most of the territories occupied in 1967. However, Hamas and similar groups have yet to reciprocate."

JEREMY WOOLF