Reading RG and Fair Muslim's letters, I feel one may be committing a grave injustice by lumping all anti-establishment groups as terrorists.

I would certainly agree that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group are terrorists in the traditional meaning favoured by authorities in that they would employ violence to coerce, intimidate and subordinate the will of others for their own ultra-religious agenda or anarchic nihilism.

But I disagree that Palestinian resistance groups may be likened to the al-Qaeda. The Palestinian resistance are fighting for their land and people, and against the oppression of the Israeli overlords. Unlike al-Qaeda, they have a political-social-economic objective for their own people. Their aim is to establish the statehood they have been denied.

The unfortunate fact that neighbouring Arab countries interfered with their struggle by launching a war against a new-born Israel in 1948, and in that course clouded the issue of the undeniable Palestinian rights to their own land, is besides the point.

It would not be surprising if those Arab countries - like Egypt, Jordan and Syria - were more interested in grabbing chunks of real estate rather than helping the Palestinians. But in losing the war to the Israelis, they committed an enormous disfavour to the voiceless Palestinians - by turning them into a forgotten people.

It was only Yasser Arafat and people like Leila Khaled, who made the world stand up and recognise the existence of a displaced people.

The Palestinians are doing exactly what Menachem Begin and his Irgun Zvai Leumi did for the Jews against the British colonial power. So, if they are terrorists rather than freedom fighters, why then are Begin and his cohorts freedom fighters and not terrorists? Surely, what's good for the goose should be good too for the gander?

Now, who bombed a hotel in Jerusalem, left suitcases of explosives in a foreign embassy in Rome, hurled grenades into cafes, murdered captured soldiers in cold blood, attacked police stations, and - get this - conducted bomb attacks on buses? In all cases indiscriminately killing innocent civilians. Hamas? PLO? The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade?

All these acts of 'terrorism' were conducted by the Jews against the British between 1945 and 1947. What then would be the difference between the Jewish terrorists and the Palestinian freedom fighters; or, if one prefers, Jewish freedom fighters and the Palestinian terrorists?

Why did the Israeli Knesset in 2002 honour the memory of a killer thug like Avraham Stern, leader of the terrorist group Lehi, who murdered a civilian, Count Bernadotte (the United Nations Security Council-appointed mediator for peace in the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine) but yet condemn Arafat regularly for his anti-Israeli resistance?

It is ironical for Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross during WWII, had successfully obtained the release of 21,000 prisoners including 6,500 Jews from extermination in Nazi camps, only to die at the hands of a Jewish assassin.

And why is Ariel Sharon - notoriously associated with the Sabra-Shatila massacre and well-known for his brutalities against the Arabs - elected by the children of the Holocaust to be the prime minister of Israel and also welcomed as an honoured guest at the White House by the president of the United States who scorned Yasser Arafat?

However, and unfortunately, Fair Muslim had to unnecessarily bring in the factors of Islam, the Holy Quran and Muslims into the discussion whether on the inequitable treatment of the Palestinians by successive American administrations, or the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

By doing so, he is only clouding the issue of Palestinian rights - in many ways like the Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians had done in 1948.

One doesn't have to be a Muslim to see the injustice and American bias. One doesn't have to embrace Islam to speak out against the disingenuous American interpretation of UN Resolution 1441 while blatantly ignoring UN Resolution 242.

One doesn't have to quote the Holy Quran to be outraged by US close-eyed tolerance of Israeli atrocities while criticising Palestinian aggressive behaviour. The Palestinian cause should be one for all people with a sense of fair play and concern for an oppressed people, denied their rightful land.

It is precisely this conscious but irrelevant defining of religious affiliation or tribalism that gave rise to the issue mentioned by reader John in his letter Seeing Iraq War sans ideological blinkers .

While John wrote a very good letter, which I agree with mostly, I disagree with him on one of his points - that many American Christians who had supported the American invasion of Iraq didn't do so with a sense of religious calling and anti-Islamic antagonism.

The American Christian right gave their support for Bush in his 'crusade'. Whether Bush (and his advisers) felt that their core supporters in general have a weak grasp of international affairs and that a Christian label associated with the saving of the 'Holy Land' would engender even greater support or that he had subconsciously recalled the 'crusading' word for use because of his own belief is now irrelevant.

He obtained their massive support, even in his re-election.