Please send letters for the website, clearly marked FORUM, to Julia Dawson at: julia.dawson@emap.com or The Architectural Review, Greater London House, Hampstead Road, London NW1 7EJ, England. View from Ramallah reaction Sir: I will be grateful for the publication of the following. I was very surprised to find Mr. Kay’s article 'View from Ramallah', in the AR May 2002 edition.  In this article, Mr. Kay, a Jewish (?only if questioned by an anti-Semite?) architect and a British national, expresses his very personal and subjective impressions from a stay in the town of Ramallah during the recent Israeli Defense Force (IDF) campaign ?Defensive Shield?. Wondering why a subjective diary of an eyewitness to a military campaign finds its place on four pages of AR is only natural.  When we, at the University, subscribed to AR we thought it was a serious professional journal about architecture, not a forum for political discussion.  The fact that Mr. Kay is an architect does not seem to be a sufficient excuse for publishing this article, as nothing in it has anything to do with architecture.  Even Mr. Kay’s admiration for the design of the Israeli tanks, although marginally touching the issue of design, seems not to strengthen the argument for publishing his article in an architectural journal. Frankly, I cannot recall another case in which AR’s interest was focused on another war anywhere else in the world.  It remains a riddle, therefore, why the editor of AR has found it appropriate to publish this article in his journal:  Is it pure ?anti-Israelism??  Anti-Semitism?  I find it curious that a British national, whose country sent a flotilla to protect the Falkland Islands thousands of miles away, should publish a venomous article in a journal that is also distributed in the US soon after this country justifiably sent, after September 11, its mighty air force across the world to destroy terrorist bases in Afghanistan, an operation in which countless innocent people were also killed.  It should be very clear that Israel launched operation 'Defensive Shield' in order to stop terrorists that operate out of Palestinian towns located only ten miles or even less (!) from their targets within Israel. Perhaps Mr. Kay is of the opinion that only superpowers have the right to protect their citizens? The Palestinian claim to be acting out of despair and helplessness against the Israeli occupation is misleading, if not a lie.  Ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, an independent state covering 97% of the territory of the West Bank, and other Israeli territory in exchange for the remaining 3%.  Arafat was offered the parts of Jerusalem (Israel’s capital!) in which Palestinians reside, and even the Old City of Jerusalem was to be divided between Israel and the independent Palestine.  Mr. Barak also offered to dismantle all of the Jewish settlements located in territory that would have been included in the Palestinian state. In response to these unprecedented proposals, the Chairman of the Palestinian authority, Mr. Yasser Arafat, started a war of terror against Israel.  Why? Because what was offered to him was not enough. Two US presidents, Bill Clinton and George Bush, have laid the blame for the collapse of the Middle East peace process squarely on Mr. Arafat. His true intentions were made clear in a private conversation with the former Prime Minister of Indonesia, Mr. Abdul Rahman Wahid, who was later kind enough to tell the world in his memoirs that Arafat’s acknowledged to him that his ultimate aim was the total destruction of the State of Israel.  Arafat wants Israel to simply disappear, and he could not care less whether it falls into the sea, evaporates into the air or murdered by terrorists. During the month prior to Operation Defensive Shield, one hundred and twenty six Israelis were brutally murdered while sitting in restaurants, shopping in markets or riding a bus.  Hundreds of others were seriously wounded; many of them have been maimed for life.  In proportion to the size of the population, this is equivalent to more than four thousand American deaths – more even than the number of fatalities in the September 11 attack. The might and the aggressiveness of the American action against the country hosting the terrorists was, by all means, not less than that of the Israeli activity in the West Bank, yet Mr. Kay has not found it in his mind to write of the misery of millions of poor Afghans whose country has been devastated because it happened to be the base of a terrorist network. Last but not least is the paragraph about the sunglasses.  Mr. Kay describes seeing broken sunglasses in an optometrist’s store, as evidence of wanton destruction carried out by Israeli soldiers.  His association was instant – this reminded him of a visit to Auschwitz, (Medical Aid Ophthalmic Centre: Echos of Auschwitz??), where he saw piles of reading glasses that belonged to Jews that were gassed and cremated there.  Perhaps Mr. Kay should be reminded that each of the reading glasses in Auschwitz represents a person – one of the six million murdered by the Nazis. The broken sunglasses in Ramallah represent no more than the loss of a few dollars worth of merchandise. Deplorable, may be, – but no more than that. Any comparison of the IDF with the Nazi army, the Gestapo or the SS is pure demagoguery. But then that apparently is what Mr. Kay really is – a shameless demagogue (who also happens to be Jewish).  And I ask him:  Are you out of your mind?  Are there no limits? Yours etc Dr. Yair Etzion, Architect Israel