Letters
Palestine: whose country?
Sir: Writing of Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial, Lionel Bloch (Letters, 23 March) says that we 'catalogued some weeks ago in the London Review of Books every minor blemish [we] could find in the book'. We didn't. To have done so would probably have required an entire issue of the London Review of Books. What we did (as did Charles Glass in the Spectator and others elsewhere) was to show that the book is ridiculous and is factually wrong at every important point something which most people would re- gard as a fairly major blemish.
Every significant document which Ms Peters attempts to use as evidence beginning with the Balfour Declaration and continuing via the Hope Simpson Report and the Palestine Royal Commis- sion to the Anglo-American Survey — is distorted or misunderstood. All Mr Bloch's 'facts' are untrue and have already been refuted. Contrary to his letter, Ms Peters's discreditable thesis has been destroyed; and Mr Bloch's attempt to rebuild it is merely a wanton waste of your space.
Ian Gilmour, David Gilmour
House of Commons, London SW!
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