Madam, - Apologists for Israel's actions in Lebanon and Gaza dismiss any concerns about the "proportionality" of the response. They strongly defend Israel's behaviour and draw spurious analogies with the US reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbour or Britain's response to the London Blitz.
If these supporters consider the killing of hundreds of innocent women and children, the targeting of Red Cross ambulances, the blowing up of a UN observation post resulting in the death of four unarmed observers and the destruction of roads, bridges, schools and hospitals to be a "proportionate" response, perhaps they might let us know what they would consider a "disproportionate" response. - Is mise,
TOMAS McBRIDE, Wood Road, Carrigawley, Letterkenny, Co Donegal.
Madam, - While I agree with your correspondents who wish to see an end to the killing of women and children in Lebanon, I note that most of them offer either no long-term solution or else utterly unrealistic solutions to the current underlying issue: what to do about Hizbullah.
Those who call only for an immediate cessation of "disproportionate" Israeli actions offer nothing by way of security guarantees for Israel. An immediate ceasefire by Israel will indeed end the killing of the Lebanese but will not protect the Israelis.
Others of your correspondents who call for dialogue fail to take account of the need for two parties to conduct a dialogue. For Hizbullah and its patron, the government of Iran, have stated on innumerable occasions that their idea of a solution is the total destruction of the state of Israel. Hizbullah and Iran have no interest in talking to the Israelis as their only solution is the annihilation of the Jewish state, which President Ahmedinijad of Iran, in a monstrous outburst of virulent anti-Semitism, has likened to a tumour on the face of the earth.
Calls have been made to use the Good Friday Agreement as a model upon which to base an agreement between the parties in the Middle East. This, I suggest, is the wrong model as the IRA did not seek the total destruction of the British state, but rather had defined goals which it was prepared to discuss with the British government.
I do not profess to have the answer to the current crisis. But I believe that the Israeli government has a legal and moral duty to do whatever it can to defend its citizens from unrelenting attacks by a group which has no interest in building a future of peaceful coexistence with the Israelis. - Yours, etc,
TREVOR TROY, Plás Connacht, Baile Átha Buí, Co na Mí.
Madam, - I listened yesterday to Michael D Higgins discussing this matter on radio with Alan Shatter, and it was evident that the central issue was being missed: what right has a race or a religion to own a state, and to treat non-members as second-class citizens?
There are echoes of the civil rights problem in Northern Ireland. Indeed, some Northern loyalist communities identify with Israel and fly the Israeli flag.
The demolition of the Israel apartheid State is becoming increasingly an objective for its victims and for those who identify with them. The problem is how to develop a political process which will replace it with a democratic state occupying all of Palestine, having equal political rights for all its citizens, whether Jew, Muslim, Christian or whatever, and with workable power-sharing politics.
As long as the state of Israel and the organisations supportive of the Palestinian refugee victims of the 1948 "ethnic cleansing" (Hamas, Hizbullah, etc) think in purely military terms, we have a no-win situation. Somehow there needs to be identified an analogue of the Hume-Adams process, which in the end succeeded on persuading both protagonists that neither could ever win militarily, and a system was set up enabling (we hope) political compromise within which civil society might in the end develop.
To give such a process space to develop, it is important that Israel should exercise restraint, and world pressure be directed at Israel and its US paymaster. How would the world have viewed Britain if in the context of the 30-year war in Ireland the British had retaliated by destroying all Irish infrastructure in response to IRA bombs in England? - Yours, etc,
ROY JOHNSTON, Rathgar, Dublin 6.
Madam, - The Irish Film Institute's rejection of Israeli embassy sponsorship, already in place, for the film Walk on Water directed by Israeli Eytan Fox is totally and utterly wrong. It is not within the IFI's remit to enter the political arena, or indeed the remit of any body of a similar nature in receipt of public funds. Is the IFI now forced to withdraw its August brochure which in relation to Walk on Water contains the phrase "Bought [ sic] to you with the assistance of the embassy of Israel"? Who is buying whom? - Yours, etc,
LOUIS LENTIN, Leinster Road, Dublin 6.
A chara, - Brendan McMahon (August 2nd) says that a "quick- fix" ceasefire would benefit only Hizbullah.
I bet if the hundreds of innocent civilians killed in Lebanon could speak now, they would beg to differ. - Is mise,
SIMON Ó TORPAIGH, Hillside, Dalkey, Co Dublin.
Madam, - According to your edition of August 1st, members of Sinn Féin were present at anti-Israeli demonstrations outside the American embassy in Dublin. I find this ironic for two reasons.
First, by rights Sinn Féin should be supporting the Israelis, with whom they have more in common, both historically and in attitude, than the Lebanese or Palestinians.
Secondly, it is hypocritical of Sinn Féin, who spent years making friends with American diplomats and politicians, raising money in the United States, and gaining political credibility, to now criticise American foreign policy and military involvement in the Middle East.
This is a typical case of "biting the hand that feeds you", and a sickening example of the opportunism and hypocrisy of Sinn Féin. - Yours, etc,
JS CAMPBELL, St Luke's, Cork.