Regarding Fast Buck$’ letter (Echo 22 May). In 1948 while 700,000 Arabs fled Israel, 150,000 very sensibly stayed and their 2,080,000 descendants living within the borders of Israel are citizens of Israel enjoying the freedoms and prosperity that most citizens of Arab countries can only dream of. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people live freely in Israel whether they are Jews, Muslims or neither.
There is no connection between the ‘Sea Peoples Philistines’ of ancient times and the Palestinians of modern times, genetically, culturally or historically. It is similar to the relationship between the Australian Aborigines of 1788 and ‘those who call themselves Australians’ today. They merely live in the same localities at different times.
Fast Buck$ is naive in his acceptance of the ‘historical’ sections of the Old Testament. These are not true accounts of the settlement of Israel and Judea but propaganda written in the time of King Josiah (648 BCE – died 609) who did attempt a genocide of all non-Jewish temple worshippers from the river to the sea but failed miserably.
It is similar to the propaganda now written by Hamas and the PLO. The Israelites did not conduct a Philistine holocaust but suffered one when their elites were exiled to Babylon after conquest by Nebuchadnezzar. The Philistines suffered the same conquests by much larger, more powerful Middle Eastern empires as did the Israelites and had disappeared as a distinct ethnic group hundreds of years before Jesus.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
