Palestine: the assault on health and other war crimes: Summary of responses

doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7474.1102-c

BMJ 2004;329:1102-1103 (6 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7474.1102-c

Letter

Palestine: the assault on health and other war crimes

Summary of responses

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—As Britain's daily papers reported Israel's historicvote on withdrawing from the occupied territories, the debateabout Summerfield's personal view raged on.^1-3 By 27 Octoberwell in excess of 400 responses had been posted on bmj.com,including two from Summerfield providing the detailed sourcesfor his personal view.

The debate started mainly with opposing views, moving on tomainly views in favour and then more of a mixture. Those whowere opposed to the article were vehemently so: dangerous diatribe,venomous, and slanderous were just some of the descriptionsused. Many of those who may not necessarily have refuted thesentiments expressed in the article objected to what they perceivedas the politicisation of a medical and scientific journal, oras the BMJ simply being out of its depth. They raised the issuesof editorial control and possibly flawed editorial judgment.Some even called for the editor to . . . [Full text of this article]