To the editor:

Roger Cohen ("Israel's Image Issue," January 29) may be correct about it being harder to generate strong support for Israel in the Jewish community these days, but he's wrong about just about everything else. Ironically, support for Israel in the general population is higher than ever; so much for any belief that Jews are more intelligent than others.

It's astounding when after Israel has repeatedly gone the extra mile, making unreciprocated concession after unreciprocated concession, the so-called "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas has boasted he will never make any meaningful concessions and will never even acknowledge the reality of Israel being the nation-state of the Jewish people, and even Isaac Herzog, the leader of the dovish left-wing opposition here in Israel, has conceded there's no chance of peace in the foreseeable future because of the unwillingness of the Palestinian Arab leadership, the media and columnists like Cohen keep misrepresenting the continuing genocidal Arab war on Israel and blaming Israel for not committing national suicide.

Were The New York Times to report on all world affairs the way it reports on the Arab-Israeli conflict, its banner headline on September 12, 2001 would have read "19 Arab Muslims die in American plane crashes."

Sincerely,

Alan Stein