John Wong (BDN, Oct. 22) sings the praises of Israel’s hard-nosed response to terrorism. He also approves of the Israeli police’s use of “searches, checkpoints, patrols and security cordons.” Aside from the loss of individual rights and freedom which President Bush has told us is the reason for this “war,” there is another serious disadvantage to this approach: It doesn’t work. Look at the record.

Wong and other admirers of Israel’s eye-for-an-eye approach to terrorism should judge the effectiveness of this approach. Has it achieved safety and freedom from fear for Israeli citizens? To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, are they better off now than before they started putting settlements in occupied Palestinian territory? The answer is clearly no. Things have gotten worse and show no signs of improving. It is no accident that more Israeli citizens are being killed since Ariel Sharon took office and intensified Israel’s iron- fisted and simplistic approach to a complicated problem.

I wish the Bush administration had more carefully considered Israel’s lack of success against a far more identifiable adversary than the one we now face while designing our own response to terrorism.

John Alexander

Old Town