Madam, - The call from a selection of Irish professors for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions is a manifestation of naivety regarding the Israel's circumstances existence and the position of its academic institutions. Are the signatories of last Saturday's letter to The Irish Times aware that academic institutions in Israel, such as the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have facilitated and are still facilitating thousands of Israeli Arabs access to higher education and academic degrees?
Israel is faced by surrounding governments and proxy organisations which intend to annihilate it. The academics who signed the letter will surely know that the president of Iran has called for the annihilation of the state of Israel. Hizbullah is an Iranian proxy and has declared that all Israelis are soldiers and therefore can legitimately be annihilated by rockets. Hamas is bent on throwing all Israelis into the sea.
All of Israel's "belligerent" actions are a corollary of this situation. A boycott of academic institutions in Israel is meaningless, would not produce any tangible effects, has no moral or practical basis, and would not be beneficial for Irish science when we perceive that Israel has produced many times the number of Nobel prize scientists produced in Ireland. - Yours, etc,
Prof MICHAEL WALD, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering, Rossmore, Durrus, Co Cork.
Madam, - Reading through the list of academics supporting a proposed "ban on Israel", I note that of the 61 signatories, only three (Prof John Coakley, School of Politics and International Relations, UCD; Dr Cathal McCall, School of Politics, International Studies & Philosophy, Queens University Belfast; Garret O'Boyle, Political Scientist) have a position relating to the study of politics or international current affairs. (At a stretch you could extend this list by the further 15 studying sociology or human rights).
I see no reason why we should give any more weight to the opinion of the remaining names on the list than to that of the average armchair analysts scattered throughout the homes of the country. This display, to me, is but another example of the growing number of people in the public eye - the most obvious of which are the Hollywood celebrities - who in recent years seem to have developed vast resources of political knowledge (with the conscience to back it up) and are keen on convincing the rest of us what opinion we should have with black-and-white arguments when the real world is a kaleidoscope of greys. - Yours., etc,
CIAN O'DONNELL, Finglas Road, Dublin 11.