Argument about the foundation of state of Israel 'unfounded' 

Victoria White’s inflammatory column ‘We are washing our hands of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (July 31), uses the revisionist interpretation of Ilan Pappe to depict the founding of Israel in 1948 as an imposed Nakba (catastrophe) on the indigenous Palestinian Arabs of the era.

She dismisses the work of empirical historians who treat the foundation of the state in an objective manner, by subtly accusing them of supporting the “founding lies” of Israel.

No further reference is made to exactly what lies these are, so one must presume she is referring to the tragedy of the Holocaust. Yet if this is so, what is wrong with that? Our State was founded in large part on the memory of a Famine which was depicted by Irish politicians and academics as a deliberate withering of the population by the British. This continues to the present day, with works like Tim Pat Coogan’s The Famine Plot.