10 MARCH 2001, Page 28

From The Rt. Hon. the Lord Gilmour of Craigmillar Sir:

It was surely unwise of Conrad Black to accuse Taki of writing a piece 'almost worthy of Goebbels' and to accuse the BBC, Independent, Guardian, Evening Standard and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office of being 'rabidly anti-Israel'. It was, after all, not Taki or any of the British institutions attacked by Mr Black, who — I am quoting the late and much lamented Chaim Bermant in the columns of The Spectator (5 March 1994) — turned the Jerusalem Post, 'once a great paper, [into] one of the most rabid Jewish publications in the English language'. It was Conrad Black who did that, and Bermant was pointing out that Mr Black's claim that his paper did not promote 'virulent Judaic nationalism' was unjustified.

Seven years later Mr Black is still dispensing virulent Israeli propaganda. He seems incapable of recognising either that, having taken 78 per cent of Palestine, Israel is certainly not entitled to any more of it, or that the brutal, racist (because it fosters apartheid) and illegal occupation, to which Israel has subjected the Palestinians for more than 30 years, is intolerable and disgraceful. Some 5,000 Israeli settlers and the Israeli army still occupy almost 30 per cent of the Gaza Strip and take an even higher percentage of its water, leaving more than one million Palestinians to make do with the rest of it. If any other country in the world had been guilty of such behaviour, the BBC etc. would not have been alone in objecting. There would have been almost universal condemnation. Even Mr Black might have mildly disapproved.

Because of the power of the Israeli lobby in the United States, few American politicians or journalists give anything but the Israeli version of events. Fortunately, that has not yet happened here; and that of course is what Mr Black is complaining about and seeking to alter.

Ian Gilmour

House of Lords,