Deir Yassin (contd.)
Sir: So Miss Connell (Letters, 7 January) still insists that Begin in his book The Revolt wrote: 'The massacre was not only justified but there would not have been a State of Israel without the "victory" at Deir Yassin...', and that though it was omitted from the edition I used, it was in the one published by Henry Schuman, New York, 1951. Was it indeed? I have now managed to obtain a copy of this edition and the words she quotes are still not there.
However I think I have found the source of Miss Connell's error. The quote appears to have been a fabrication used by the well-known PLO propagandist, and former Director of the Institute of Palestine Studies in Beirut, Sami Hadawi, and is to be found in his book Bitter Harvest. As for Mr Hadawi's reliability as a source, Miss Connell should know that he was reported in the Jewish Chronicle of 15 August 1975 as having made a speech to a student group in Auckland, New Zealand, in which he said that Hitler's genocide of the Jews was just Zionist propaganda.
David M. Jacobs, 23 Worley Road, St. Albans, Herts.
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