• IN his response to my letter (We must not be blind to the injustice faced by Palestinians, August 16), Dr Barry Hoffbrand argues that I did “not provide the context of the destruction of ‘Palestinian villages’…”, (Look at the context of the conflict in 1948, August 23).

He goes on to supply his own “context”, claiming that it was the invasion of five Arab armies that turned the land into “ravaged war-zone”.

Yet Dr Hoffbrand seems to ignore the fact that the inhabitants of those Palestinian villages did not launch, or take part, in the Arab armies’ invasion, but were expelled, or threatened with impunity by the Israeli armed forces.

In response to Dr Hoffbrand’s portrayed “context” I feel obliged to convey the actual reality of the Palestinian mass displacement, as memorised in my own contribution to the book Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists, Cambridge Scholars Publishing: “I witnessed the dark realities of dispossession in my own eyes when few months after the creation of the State of Israel my class visited the razed villages of Husha and Kasayier. We saw the ruins and the desolation of the lively villages which have disappeared from the face of the earth…

“No one was there apart from some barking stray dogs and wild cats. The razed houses were stripped of their contents and their dwellers. Few stone walls were still standing erect facing bare yards covered with a heavy blanket of prickly grey thistles, shrivelled vegetables beddings, and withered cactus shrubs.

“The almond and fruit trees have all gone. The farming fields of the ruined villages were expropriated by the newly-born Israeli state and leased later to our kibbutz and to the neighbouring municipality which built on them a mass of grey concrete estates for new Jewish immigrants.”

This was, indeed, the tragic fate of nearly 400 villages and about 750,000 Palestinians who were dispossessed of their land, homes, fields, and assets, making way for the creation of the State of Israel which continues to rule over the displaced Palestinians, denying them their inalienable rights for a nation-state.

RUTH TENNE
NW6