Don't confuse me with facts -- I've already made up my mind about what the truth is! This statement illustrates Stephen Clark's ahistorical perspective on the Middle East and particularly Israel ("Don't help Israel," Forum, Nov. 3). I can dispose of his inaccurate assertions in short order.

1. Israel and Egypt both receive this foreign aid package as a condition of their signing their 1979-80 peace accord. Israel receives this aid as a loan guarantee, and it must spend the money here in the United States and make regular loan payments.

2. Clark chooses to ignore these historical truths: Jews have lived in the area continually for the past 3,000 years. The last Ottoman census in Palestine, before the end of the 1800s, indicated that at that time there were more Jews living in Jerusalem than Arabs. Zionist immigrants to Israel from the late 1800s to the end of World War II settled on land purchased from Arabs by the Jewish Agency or they settled on unoccupied land. The United Nations partitioned Palestine into Jewish areas and Arab areas in 1948.

Clark should get his history from objective books and not anti-Semitic Web sites.

Mark Saichek

Salt Lake City