"The statements that there was "no massacre at Deir Yassin" and that "no one has ever found evidence of an ideology of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians" (Letters, May 2) cannot be allowed to stand. Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is meticulously researched and referenced, citing Israeli and Zionist material as well as Arab sources. In it, for example, Pappe reports Herzl's view that "cleansing the land was a valid option" and quotes from the alleged "liberal" thinker Leo Motzkin in 1917: "Our thought is that the colonisation of Palestine has to go in two directions: Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel and the resettlement of the Arabs of Eretz Israel in areas outside the country. The transfer of so many Arabs may seem at first unacceptable economically, but is none the less practical. It does not require too much money to resettle a Palestinian village on another land.""