Sir, – Naomi O’Leary (“Von der Leyen has torched her image in Ireland”, December 14th) is wide of the mark if she believes the whole of Ireland’s attitude to Ursula von der Leyen is reflected in the opinions of one professor in Maynooth, no matter how eminent. He does not speak for me.
Dr von der Leyen’s actions have to be seen in context. As a German she, and a great many of her generation, are extremely sensitive to the fate of Israel because of the terrible things done to the Jewish population of Europe by their forebears during the first half of the last century.
Israel’s modern tragedy is that its leadership is controlled by the outrageous Binyamin Netanyahu and his cohort of extreme right-wing bullies.
There is plenty of opposition to this leadership within Israel, as can be seen by anyone who reads its paper of record, Haaretz. This is the country’s oldest surviving newspaper. (Its English language version is bundled with the New York Times international edition.)
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The problem for all Netanyahu opposition now is that the Hamas attacks of October 7th were deeply traumatic within Israel, and led to the perception that the country is facing an outright existential crisis.
There is little doubt that if Dr von der Leyen had known what was about to happen to the civilian population of Gaza she would have been more circumspect regarding her decision to visit Israel after October 7th. But hindsight, of course, is a wonderful thing. This applies to university professors as much as to Irish Times columnists. – Yours, etc,
SEAMUS McKENNA,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.