A chara, – Your editorial on Micheál Martin’s trip to the Middle East (“The limit of the EU’s frozen policy”, September 5th) quotes the claim by the Department of Foreign Affairs in 2011 that “We are not hostile to Israel. We are critical of policies, particularly in the occupied Palestinian territories. These are not the same things.”
They are precisely the same things, as would be proven seven years later when Israel’s so-called Nation State Law proclaimed that “national rights in Israel belong only to the Jewish people. That is the founding principle on which the state was established”.
That founding principle is the basis of what Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organisations Yesh Din and B’Tselem (among others) have called a system of apartheid. Israel’s criminal practices against the Palestinian people do not merely constitute a few scattered “policies” needing to be tidied up, but the very essence of the Israeli state.
If Mr Martin seeks to whitewash this reality then his Middle East trip will have been a waste of time. – Yours, etc,
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RAYMOND DEANE,
Dublin 7.
Sir, – Your editorial rightly observes that Dáil Éireann’s unanimous position that the Israel state’s illegal settlement project amounts to “de facto annexation” is at odds with the “pro-Israeli positions of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany” which have “EU policy development by the throat”.
It would be equally true to say that that in its refusal to admit that the Israeli state is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people, Ireland’s current Government is at odds with consensus among human rights organisations, along with current and former special UN rapporteurs, the Harvard Law School and numerous other experts.
I welcome Micheál Martin’s visit to the region, but little good can come of attempting to appease a belligerent and expansionist Israeli government or pandering to their knee-jerk claims of victimisation. Given the EU’s frozen position, what is needed is a principled, unilateral move.
Having played a leading role in the global struggle against the South African apartheid regime, Ireland is well placed to make such a move.
By enacting the Occupied Territories Bill, and the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestments Bill, both of which are modest and necessary responses to gross state-sanctioned criminality, we can act upon our “national commitment to human rights and the rights of oppressed peoples”, and move beyond the EU deadlock which amounts to the ongoing facilitation of wholesale war crimes. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN Ó ÉIGEARTAIGH,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – Surely what your editorial terms the “pro-Israel positions” of Hungary, the Czech republic, Poland and Germany are simply based on common sense and grounded in reality?
Those who lecture Israel about its security polices overlook the coherence of Islamist ideology and the risk it poses to both the world’s only Jewish state and mainstream Muslim political entities. Mahmoud Abbas was elected Palestinian president in 2005 for a four-year term and has refused to hold elections ever since. This is because any election held on the West Bank and in Gaza will result in Iran-backed Hamas coming to power and installing an Islamist regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel. A Hamas-run administration would also pose a threat to Egypt and Jordan.
Militarily weak Europe, and especially Ireland, is hardly in a position to guarantee the survival of the Jewish people in their ancient heartland if that should happen. – Yours, etc,
KARL MARTIN,
Bayside,
Dublin 13.
Sir, – The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has chosen an opportune time to visit Israel and Palestine.
It will give him an opportunity to raise with the Israeli government and occupation authorities the proposed destruction of an EU-funded school and clinic in Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron hills. The school, which serves a community of 200, was funded by the EU, and therefore by EU taxpayers. The clinic serves a community of 210 and was funded by the European Commission Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection and Italy. The plan to demolish a clinic funded by a humanitarian organisation suggests that Israel does not share the humanitarian values of the European Union. – Yours, etc,
Rev MARTIN O’CONNOR,
Churchtown,
Dublin 14.