Re: ‘Can Israel really be called a democracy' (The Weekend Sun, March 13).Wesley Parish questions whether or not Israel is a democratic nation and accuses Israel of ‘habitual use of lethal force against Palestinians'.

He states Israel expelled most of the Arab population in 1948 and then tries to compare this to Spain's expulsion of Jews in 1492.

In fact Israeli Arabs have equal voting rights to Israeli Jews and currently hold 13 seats in the Knesset. Israel is the region's only true democracy.

Israeli Jews would dearly love to live in peace alongside their Arab brethren but when percussion bombs are thrown at Jewish vehicles, when Jews are kidnapped and murdered, when tractors are driven into Jewish pedestrians, when bus loads of Jewish children are blown up, when whole familes are slaughtered in their beds (the list of unprovoked atrocities goes on) then the culprits must face the consequences as they should in any civilised country.

Israel didn't expel anyone in 1948 and in fact encouraged their Arab population to stay - it was the Arab League which urged Arabs to leave Palestine so they could move in and wipe out the Jews.

Since they failed to do this those Arabs, who did leave, were not able to return and the Arab nations have deliberately failed to absorb them ever since; instead using them as political pawns. It's little known that at the same time in 1948 almost the exactly the same number of Jews were truly forcibly ejected from Arab countries - about 800,000 people.

But to compare the voluntary exit of Palestinian Arabs in 1948 to the Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492 is malicious.

In 1948 Arabs were free to choose to leave Israel or to participate in the building of the new nation. In contrast the Jews of Spain in 1492 had no choice - they died if they stayed and many died trying to leave.

T Beswick, Te Puna.