I hardly know where to start in replying to T Beswick's letter ‘Israel really is true democracy' (‘The Weekend Sun, March 27').
Since I have more respect for Israelis than he appears to, I'll mention yet another Israeli, the historian Benni Morris, author of books like ‘The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949', which argues from Israeli sources that the Palestinian Arabs didn't leave voluntarily - like the Palestinians have been saying all along.
An American Jewish historian, Norman G Finkelstein, mentions in ‘Image and Reality of the Israel- Palestine Conflict', British scholar Erskine Childers and Palestinian scholar Walid Khalidi on those ‘Arab League broadcasts telling the Palestinians to flee'.Both the Americans and British were monitoring the radio frequencies at that time and place, and they never heard any such orders.
Turns out many Palestinian villages couldn't afford radios either. How did they heard non-existent orders with non-existent radios? T Beswick, we're all ears.
I think B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, should get some respect for monitoring official and unoffical Israeli abuses. This is the side of the Israel-Palestine conflict we don't hear about. Expelling an entire population on ethnic grounds constitutes an extreme form of gerrymandering the electorate. So, no, Israel doesn't pass the elementary test for democracy.

Wesley Parish, Mount Maunganui.