IN his public encyclical to the folk of Lancaster (9 May), Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue first condemns the supposedly brutal treatment of Palestinians by Israel and then adds that "the Israeli people also suffer appalling tragedy from suicide bombings.

Neither activity can "be justified either militarily or morally."

The implied equivalence between the "occupation" and the bombings is disgraceful.

Israel is not carrying out terrorist attacks on Palestinians.

There was no massacre at Jenin.

Terrorist attacks on Israelis began decades before Israel took a square inch of the West Bank or Gaza, areas that Israel conquered not as some imperialist act but in a war for its survival.

From 1948, when Arab countries tried to destroy the Jewish state that been established by the UN alongside a Palestinian one, until 1967, Gaza and the West Bank were occupied by Egypt and Jordan.

Far from helping the Palestinians, both occupiers kept their brethren in camps and callously used them for propaganda.

Did the good Bishop's predecessors speak out then?

By contrast, Israel welcomed Jews evicted from Arab countries.

It is Arafat who, by squandering and stealing the millions given him to improve the lives of his people, has caused the greatest suffering.

What has the Bishop pronounced on that?

Israel has continually offered land for peace, notably in the return of the Sinai to Egypt, and has never sought to annex the present territories.

What it has sought is security.

The Bishop asks for consideration of the recent Saudi peace plan, which calls for Israel's return to the pre-1967 borders.

If Israel's 1967 conquest is the source of the problem, what were all the wars prior to 1967 over?

Israel has been saved from destruction all these decades not by the good will of Christians but by the might of the Israeli Army, for which I, for my part, thank God.

In World War II Jews learned not to rely on the kindness of others, least of all that of Pope Pius XII.

The Bishop laments the violation of "some of the Holy Places." He fails to say which side seized the Church of the Nativity and took its occupants hostage.

The Vatican uttered not a peep of condemnation of the desecration of Jewish sites by Jordanian Arabs from 1948 to 1967.

Perhaps the Bishop will tell the Citizen why, even after the present Pope's moving visit to Israel, the Vatican still refuses to recognize the state diplomatically.

When the Bishop starts issuing missives about the plight of victims elsewhere around the world, then I will be prepared to take his concern for the treatment of Palestinians by Jews as motivated by decency and not something less.

Perhaps he will send me copies of past passionate letters to the Citizen about the slaughter of Muslims by Christians in Bosnia, the gassing of Kurds by Iraq, the killing of 25,000 Syrian Arabs by their own President, current slave trading in the Sudan by Muslims, and the killings on both sides in Northern Ireland.

Professor Robert Segal

Dept of Religious Studies

Lancaster University