Letter: Victims of Palestine

Sir: Mrs E Davidson (letter, 5 August) has a point. Shouldn't she sue the German and Austrian governments for her family's lost estate in Palestine in the first instance? It was their predecessors who saw to it that the Jews of Europe were dispossessed and murdered on a vast scale and that the survivors would feel that Europe could no longer be a place in which they belonged as of right.

She then might consider suing the United Kingdom and the former dominions such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand who, with their vast, underpopulated countries, nonetheless did all in their power to minimise the numbers who tried to flee from the horrors in Europe or tried to begin new lives there at the war's end. "One Jew is one too many," was the infamous remark made by a Canadian cabinet member during that period.

Lastly, she might try suing those Arab League members who summarily expelled some 650,000 Jews from their soil in the Fifties. The Palestinians have for decades now been telling the world that they are "the victims of the victims". However, when asking for justifiable reparations, shouldn't they sue those who perpetrated or compounded the original crime and not the victims themselves?

J D NORMAN

London N12