23 April 2002
Dear Sir,

One would have thought that the recent mauling she received at the hands of the BBC's Question Time audience would have encouraged Melanie Phillips to think twice before engaging in yet more pro-Israel nonsense (Spectator, 20th April).

Does she think that refusing medical teams access to seriously wounded Palestinian civilians and combatants in Jenin and allowing them to bleed to death is part of the 'war on terror' instead of being a terrible 'war crime' as Amnesty and the ICRC maintain? Does she really think that Ariel Sharon was 'rooting out terror' in the West Bank instead of systematically dismantling the Palestinian Authority and trying to snuff out any possibility the Palestinians may have for establishing their own state? She tries to poo-poo the idea that the Israeli lobby has a damaging influence over the US Middle East policy. Yet what else can account for Israel having gotten away scot free for almost 35 years for having illegally occupied the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem in defiance of numerous UN resolutions? What does she make of President Bush's outrageous remark that Sharon was 'a man of peace'?

She then goes on to complain of "a torrent of lies, distortions, libels, abandonment of objectivity and the substitution of malice and hatred for truth". Quite.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Inayat Bunglawala
Secretary,
Media Committee,
The Muslim Council of Britain