Revisionism of history

Dear Editor:

History revisionism at its best. Selina Robinson was forced to retract a factual statement.

In the 1800s Mark Twain visited what is now modern Israel and commented how much of it looked like barren unpopulated desert and swamp.

It was the Jews that were already there plus Jews returning from a 2,000-year exile that transformed much of this land into productive industries, cities and agriculture of fruits and vegetables.

Tel Aviv is a city created out of nothing in the early 1900s. Most of the coast was very sparsely populated.

The irrigation of the valleys of the deserts had not produced anything for millennia. It was the Jews who made the desert bloom.

The fact that a government minister in Canada is forced to retract a factual statement is indicative of rewriting history to deny that Israel has a claim or right to any part of modern Israel, including the coast, the Aravah, the Negev, the Golan. It is not just Judah and Shimron, or Jerusalem. It is all of Israel.

This revisionism would deny us Gadera, Hadera, Beersheba, Netanya, Haifa, Acco, Caesarea, all the kibbutzim, the Kinneret and so on.

The funny thing is that when Israel left Gaza in 2005, it was full of greenhouses, which Hamas destroyed. We left them means of food production and they turned the land it was on into production of death.

Israelis take great pride in new technology that help agriculture and medicine and industry and things that help societies worldwide (i.e. the Intel chip).

New weapons are a necessity with our neighbours, but bring no pleasure.

Avi Ickovich

Victoria