Madam, – For a lawyer, Tom Cooney (January 27th) seems to have a shaky sense of the meaning of words. Academics based in Ireland have called for a moratorium on EU funding of “Israeli academic institutions” (Letters, January 23rd). Mr. Cooney incorrectly thinks this is a call to cut funding to “Israeli academics”.
There is a big difference, underlined by the fact that the signatories to the call included several Israeli academics working in Ireland. Like the rest of us, they are asking that the EU stop funding institutions of the Israeli state until it abides by UN resolutions.
Israeli universities are deeply involved in the occupation of Palestinian territories. For example, Bar Ilan University awards degrees to students of the College of Judea and Samaria, which is located in the illegal West Bank settlement of Ariel, while Tel Aviv University supports research programmes in the same college.
Mr Cooney resorts to the lowest trick in the book, by alleging that the signatories share the mindset of a 13th-century anti-Semitic English cleric. The signatories include both Irish and Israeli Jews. Would Mr. Cooney label these with the oxymoronic phrase “self-hating Jews”, so beloved of apologists for the criminality of the Israeli regime?
Mr Cooney criticises us for not including a call on the EU to cut funding for academics in Iran. This should be recognised for what it is – a resort to another of the Israel-apologists’ clichés, namely the claim that criticism of Israel is a form of anti-Semitic “singling out”.
This tactic always deserves contempt but, on this occasion, it also invites ridicule. Mr. Cooney seems unaware that Israel is the only non-European state which is treated as an EU member for the purposes of awarding research grants and contracts.
The signatories are EU taxpayers who do not wish to contribute funds to institutions of the Israeli state that are assisting in breaches of international law.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, — David Landy (January 28th) describes the war on Gaza as “more a massacre that has killed over a thousand people [by implication civilians] and hundreds of children” The reason for the inflated numbers of civilian casualties claimed by the Palestinians is a simple matter of how terms are defined. For Hamas’s purposes anyone not in uniform is,
ipso facto
, a civilian even though it has told its “operatives” to wear civilian clothing, something outlawed by the Geneva Conventions.
Hamas also defines anyone under a certain age, probably 18 though possibly older, as a child, even when they are manning Kassam rocket-launchers. These teenagers are the equivalent of what we in England call “feral youths”, who regularly terrorise run-down inner-city housing estates.
So much for those who naively parrot Palestinian propaganda as if it were verified fact.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – “A cartoon of a tombstone bears the words ‘Arabs 1948-2009’. ‘Arabs need 2 die’ and ‘1 down 999,999 to go’, said others” (Report by Lara Marlowe,
The Irish Times
, January 29th). These were among the slogans left behind by Israeli soldiers in a Palestinian house. Could we please have a public condemnation of this blatant anti-Palestinian racism by the Israeli Ambassador and Alan Shatter TD? Yours, etc,