Paul Findley has the honesty and courage, rare qualities amongst US politicians to uncover Israel's continuous mistification of the true history of its conflict with the Palestinians. The tragedy of the Palestinians is that at Oslo Arafat, under pressure from the US Government, had to agree for Israel to have 78% of british mandate Palestine in return for his people having the right to create a Palestinian state on the remaining 22%. Instead of Israel honouring this deal and eventually evacuating the West Bank and Gaza i.e.those 22% under occupation , the Palestinian people were confronted with a constant expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on their own land in the last 9 years whilst Israel and the US Government even today continue to blame Arafat for not doing enough to ensure the security of the settlers i.e. of the occupation itself whilst scores of Palestinians are killed or assassinated, houses and civilian infrastructure demolished on a daily basis etc....!! To add insult to injury, the Palestinians find themselves suffocated by a more brutal israeli occupation than ever, condemned by numerous UN resolutions and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch etc..because of the number and frequency of human rights abuses , collective punishment committed against entire palestinian populations in the West Bank and Gaza. In the last 16 months alone Israel's military machine has caused the death of over 1000 Palestinians and more than 12000 wounded producing legitimate resentment and utter despair amongst its victims. Findley's book is a small contribution to the truth, since most of the mainstream US media is dominated by a blatantly pro-Israeli lobby that will go to any length to distort history and facts hollywood style in favour of a deceitful version of what is really happening in the occupied territories. The victim becomes the aggressor and vice versa and Sharon is cosmetically described as a hawk when he is a recidivist war criminal awaiting judgment in the Belgian courts for worse crimes than those of Milosevic.(BBC The accused)

P. Findley states what is obvious:there will not be a genuine and lasting peace in the Middle East, particularly for the Israelis and the Palestinians as long as this cruel occupation, with Sharon's ever escalating state terror and daily victims on both sides is allowed by the US government to continue. President Bush insults the intelligence of any decent knowledgeable person by constantly blaming the Palestinian victims (the oppressed) and condoning/supporting their Israeli aggressors (yesterday's oppressed under the Nazis, turned oppressors today). Under these conditions, the US sponsored "Peace Process" is proving to be a disgusting masquerade under which the US still pretends to be an honest broker whilst rejecting any sensible compromise that in addition to providing security to the Israelis would at last free the Palestinians from Israel's deadly and humiliating occupation and provide them with an independent state on their own land living in peace with Israel. Paul Findley is a voice of reason , fairness and justice , once great american values, in an ocean of media lies on this bloody conflict (whose indirect innocent victims were american last September): hopefully more voices like his will eventually produce a just and peaceful solution, based on a 2 state formula, and will lead to cooperation and better lives for all the people of the region after all the suffering of the last 40 years.

A memo to our readers: Mr Anthony Yuja also recommends a new book by Cristopher Hitchens (The Trial of Henry Kissinger)