Madam, - Recent reporting on the escalating and disproportionate attacks by the Israeli armed forces is an indictment of our spineless Government's handwringing reaction.
The Israelis' contention that they are carrying out "pinpoint" attacks on Hizbullah activists is a complete sham. How many more innocent people will have to die before somebody with the power to make a difference decides to take action to stop the slaughter?
The weasel-words of Condoleezza Rice that any ceasefire would be a fraud reflects the unstated satisfaction of the US Government with current Israeli policy. The inaction of our own Government reflects poorly on a nation with a proud humanitarian record. - Yours, etc,
PETER CLIFTON, Peatlands, Midleton, Co Cork.
Madam, - Mary Raftery (Opinion, July 20th) is right. In the face of this palpable wrong - this appalling bombardment of Lebanese civilians by Israeli planes - each of us has a duty to speak out.
I cannot believe how anyone can seek to justify the Israeli attacks. The reports of children dying in the rubble of their homes, of whole families being wiped out as they try to flee the bombing, are utterly horrific. The tragic consequences of such a disproportionate reaction to Hizbullah provocation make the inaction of the international community, including our own government, wholly indefensible. - Yours, etc,
IVANA BACIK, Law School, Trinity College, Dublin 2.
Madam, - All my adult life I have been an ardent supporter of the struggle for freedom of the Palestinian people. I have witnessed with my own eyes the daily suffering they endure under occupation. I fervently support the goal of a secular democratic state in Palestine/Israel where Jew, Muslim and Christian can live together in peace and equality. Yet these strongly held views have never prevented me from stating my unqualified condemnation of the killing of Israeli civilians by the armed wings of Hamas, Hizbullah and others.
What I find shocking, therefore, is the total failure of those whose sympathies lie with the state of Israel to condemn, without equivocation, the murder of hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces in recent days. I can only conclude that they believe that these people are not as deserving of life as Israelis are. There is only one word for an attitude that justifies and lauds the murder of innocent human beings because of their nationality: racism. - Yours, etc,
Dr COLM BREATHNACH, Cedar Brook Walk, Cherry Orchard, Dublin 10.
Madam, - Paddy Monaghan, of "Irish Christian friends of Israel" (July 20th), writes "to express support for Israel". Judging by both the tone and content of his letter, he should as a Christian be not so defensive and uncritical of Israel's disproportionate reactions in its ruthless bombardment of the sovereign state of Lebanon, where many Christians have been among the victims.
His partisan support for Israel makes a mockery of the message of justice and peace announced by Jesus, a message which all Christians are obliged to uphold, rather than becoming an uncritical ally of any side in a conflict where the Geneva Conventions are deliberately ignored .
He calls upon the Irish Government to deal with the "root cause of the conflict", which he perceives to lie with Syria and Iran. He fails to understand that the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes back to 1948; but without raking up the rights and wrongs of the past, the need now is for Israel to recognise the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to have their home in Israel and for Palestinians to respect the Jewish people's right to co-exist in harmony and justice in the same homeland.
As a Christian I dissociate myself from the extreme position of these so-called Irish Christian Friends of Israel. Muslims, Christians and Jews must learn to co-exist in a world where extremists and fundamentalists of all these major religions of the world have distorted and disfigured their revealed message: that all people are equal in the sight of God, Allah, and Yahweh. - Yours, etc,
BRENDAN BUTLER, The Moorings, Malahide, Co Dublin.
Madam, - There is no justification for Israel's devastating bombardment of Lebanon. As a response to the abduction of two Israeli soldiers it is massively disproportionate and the consequences in terms of the loss of innocent life and the destruction of the infrastructure relied upon by ordinary Lebanese people were entirely predictable.
Israel is also doing exactly what Hizbullah (and its supporters in Iran and elsewhere) wants it to do. It is escalating the conflict with potentially catastrophic consequences for the whole region. In particular, it is likely that the Israeli attack will serve only to destabilise Lebanon and radicalise the large element of its population which up to this point has rejected Hizbullah terrorism.
Supporters of Israeli aggression tell us that the bombing is justified by the firing of rockets into Israel from south Lebanon and the abduction of Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah. While there is no justification for the rocket attacks on Israel, which clearly target civilians, and while the abduction of Israeli soldiers is utterly to be condemned, it must be remembered that the rocket attacks came after the beginning of the Israeli bombardment and that Israel itself abducted two Gaza civilians on June 24th. - Yours, etc,
LENNY ABRAHAMSON, Leinster Road West, Rathmines, Dublin 6.
Madam, - Last Friday's letter from Noam Chomsky et al. makes mention of "a doctor and his brother" who were kidnapped by the Israelis, claiming that incident was "scarcely reported anywhere except in the Turkish press". However, after a brief trawl through the Internet I find it mentioned by - among others - the Observer, Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Agence France Presse, Associated Press, CNN and Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.
Furthermore, the source for this story seems to an Israeli Defence Forces spokesman. The "doctor and his brother" accordingly become "two Hamas members believed to be planning a large attack against Israel". Additionally, the "doctor" in the story is a 31-year-old medical student lately returned from university in Sudan: I could not ascertain from the story whether he had ever practised medicine anywhere, though the letter seems to imply that the Israelis plucked the scalpel from his hand and dragged him away from sick patients.
Although the missive from planet Chomsky alleges that all this is indicative of "the double standards repeatedly employed by the West", one could just as easily draw the opposite conclusion - namely that we care so little about Hamas attacks on Israel that they fail even to raise an eyebrow in the West, whereas once Israel decides to act, everyone is a critic.
What Chomsky seems to be implying is that, put simply, "Israel started it". He cannot say this directly because it is untrue - not to mention childish and irrelevant - so he turns to innuendo and obscure references to the Turkish press, since he knows that his acolytes are too lazy or ignorant to check his footnotes or supply the missing context for themselves. The timeline Chomsky offers also suffers from the flaw that spokespersons for the Popular Resistance Committee boasted after the raid on Israel that they had been planning it for two months.
This letter is just an example of dishonest innuendo wrapped around with a lot of windy rhetoric. We do not need "the world's greatest intellectual" to remind us that war is horrifying: Chomsky's simple demonologies and ludicrous conspiracies are just fantasies that in their own small way are standing in the way of peace. - Yours, etc,
MAURICE FOLEY, Raheny, Dublin 5.
Madam, - I laughed out loud at Tom Carew's attempt (July 19th) to show us by using statistics why it was OK for the Israeli army to kill children. It was a classic. Let's hope we hear from him again. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL CUDDY, Thor Place, Stoneybatter, Dublin 7.
Madam, - The European Union should send a rapid response group to the Middle East. As Ireland has recently signed up to EU "battlegroups", there is nothing to stop Irish MEPs from initiating such action. Israel has prevented the assets and supports of the European Union - i.e. food and medicines - from reaching hungry, needy and fearful men, women, and children. The battlegroup should be sent to monitor how the assets of the European Union are being treated, and not to engage in military action.
I am sure that the simple arrival of a battlegroup representing 25 nations would send a message to Israel that it cannot bully the European Union as it is bullying the Lebanese and Palestinians. - Yours, etc,
PETER KENNEDY, Sutton Park, Sutton, Dublin 13.
Madam, - Among the numerous bits of military hardware mentioned by observers of the current Israeli attack on Lebanon, two are noticeable by their absence from dispatches. What happened to the (in)famous "smart" missiles of the Gulf wars? And amid the "rain" of Hisbullah missiles falling on northern Israel, where are the Patriot missiles - those paragons of US technology that were to render Israel immune to Arab missile attacks?
The media that so slavishly extolled these technical wonders in recent Middle East conflicts are very quiet. Does their silence indicate a healthier scepticism, or simple embarrassment? - Yours, etc,
PHELIM MURNION, Páirc Thiar, An Spidéal, Gaillimh.