A number of readers have written to suggest that the guidelines for talkback responses listed below - in particular the prohibition on use of the phrase "There are no Palestinians" - are fascistic, capricious, anti-democratic, a blatant curb on free speech.

That is not true. The guidelines are not capricious.

The fact is, that you are free to say almost anywhere else that there are no Palestinians, that the whole idea is a fabrication, a myth, that they don't exist because the name is Roman is origin, that they don't exist because Palestine was never a country, that they don't exist because they share language, culture and diet with other Arabs, that they don't exist because it was they themselves who decided, on their own, that they do.

You can even say, as one radical religious thinker did, that not only is there no such thing as a Palestinian, there are no Israelis, either.

You can say this in talkbacks on every other article in this entire newspaper Website. As many ways as you like. As many times as you can stand.

But the prohibition applying to this column is not going anywhere. The reason is this:

I believe that it is a form of racism to tell an entire people, millions upon millions all over the world, that their culture is not a true culture, that their identity is not an identity, that they do not, in fact, exist.

I believe that the reason for denying their existence is to deny the legitimacy of their pain, their aspirations, their longing, the facts of their history, none of which make for a comfortable fit with the history that Zionism originally wrote for itself.

The very idea of the Palestinian Arab represents competition for limited resources of land, the moral high ground, and the self-esteem of long-oppressed peoples.

You can't just wish away the Palestinians. Any more than you can decide, as did one member of the radical religious, that there are no Israelis, either.

How very elegant the solution to the whole of the complexities that Zionism poses: Just decide that there are no Palestinians, and the problem magically disappears. Instant transfer.

The proponents of the idea that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people, and therefore, there are, in fact, no Palestinians, often view their arguments as morally neutral fact, verifiable by a body of morally neutral evidence.

It seems simplicity itself. If only the world would open its eyes to the truth, they say.

Fine. They can say it somewhere else.