I WAS appalled to read James Graff's review of my book, The Garden and The Gun in your April issue. I'm not concerned about whether he "liked" it or not. He seems to have mixed views on that score, which is fair enough. What I object to in the strongest terms is the way he has so crudely distorted my writing on the Palestinians.

Any book on Israel is bound to attract attention from people with a strong ideological bias, so I have been frankly surprised that of close to 30 reviews in Canada, only four have used their interview or review as a platform to promote their own politics. Two of these were right?wing Jews, one of whom accused me of promoting anti?Semitism and being a Palestinian propagandist; two were pro?Palestinian. But only Graff has dared to buttress his "thesis" ? in this case it is that I am pro?Israel and anti?Palestinian ? by stringing together quotes and adjectives taken out of context, by ascribing sarcasm where none is present, and by grossly misrepresenting the tone of my writing.

Mr. Graff shows signs of having skimmed through the book to discover evidence to buttress his prejudices. So he finds that the Israelis were all "warm, friendly characters," while the Palestinians are the opposite. Does he really consider my chapters on Miriam Levinger and Eliakim Haetzni, two hate?filled militant settlers on the West Bank, to be "warm and friendly"? Or the intolerant yeshiva students I dined with in Mea Shea'rim? He accuses me of calling Palestinian attacks "terrorism." As a writer, not a propagandist, I reserve the right to call terror by its proper name, regardless of whether it emanates from Palestinians or, Jews. By the same token he has missed the warmth I felt for many of the Palestinians I encountered. He has missed every nuance and shade of grey ? the complexity, in other words.

I travelled to the West Bank just before the Intifada. broke out and observed people living with a hopelessness that would inevitably explode, as it did. I described what I saw there and the pain I felt at seeing it, both as a foreign journalist and as a Jew. I brought the same perspective to my travels within Israel, itself. The Garden and the Gun is a plea for understanding, compromise, and human rights that transcends politics.

Erna Paris Toronto

James Graff replies: In her heated attack on my review of The Garden and the Gun Erna Paris accuses me of daring to buttress my criticism of her uni?dimensional and negative portraits of Palestinians by gross misrepresentations. She implies that I deliberately missed the nuances by which she expressed the warmth she says she felt for many of the Palestinians she encountered. But Paris does not cite one, multi?dimensional, positive portrayal of a Palestinian. If her readers must look for nuances and subtleties of tone and context to discover such warmth in the treatment of one group, but not in the treatment of another, are they indeed being treated with equal humanity? We are used to distorted portraits of Arabs generally, and Palestinians in particular, as violent, cruel, uncaring, irrational, manipulable, devious land oversexed. Expressing some human concern (which in some quarters takes courage) by reporting their suffering at the hands of Israelis and painting some in greys and not just blacks may, by contrast, seem to be "balanced" and "positive." But it isn't ? and Paris still fails to see this. It is as if a nod in the direction of their humanity is really an embrace of that humanity. Paris might grasp my criticism if she re?read her book imagining that it was about Afrikaners and Blacks and not about Israelis and Palestinians. Paris claims that unlike my "political" review, her message of understanding, human rights, and compromise "transcends politics." Does she really believe that taking human rights seriously in South Africa, Central America or anywhere else, including Israel, "transcends politics"? What is the anti?Apartheid struggle all about? What is the Intifada about? I view the right?wing Israeli settler movement, of which she disapproves, as a logical extension of the original Zionist settler movement that she so admires. I view the attitudes towards the "natives" that provide the dynamic for colonial settler states as basically inconsistent with respect for human rights and understanding of the "other." These attitudes at best permit a nod to the humanity of those to be dispossessed or subjugated by the settler regime that may view, as Paris does, any attacks by the natives on their military or civilians as "terror" and their own attacks as "legitimate self?defense." Paris tries to delegitimize this perspective by labelling it "propaganda." She implies that I had no right to express my understanding of the dynamics of colonial settler ideologies in reviewing a work that clearly expresses one. My plea is for greater understanding than Paris was able to achieve, for full and equal individual and collective human rights, and for the political and territorial compromises they require. Raising consciousness can be upsetting, especially for those who mistakenly believe that they are in no need of it.