Skewing the evidence 1

No reasonable person can defend ignorant or intemperate denunciations or harassment of other scholars, be they pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian ("Forget reds under the bed, there's Arabs in the attic", THES , October 17). But I wish Hamid Dabashi would not stretch the evidence.

He states that he went to a rally in spring 2002 because "an Amnesty International expert had told the BBC that there was evidence pointing to a massacre (in Jenin)". Dabashi did not say whether it occurred or not.

In September 2002, he gave an interview to a pro-Palestinian website, electronicintifada.net, in which he said "innocent people in Jenin, Kandahar, Shalamcheh or Baghdad are brutally massacred".

There was no Jenin massacre, as the United Nations report in August 2002 showed.

Allan Tulchin
George Mason University, Virginia, US