Madam, - It is hard to know what to make of Liz O'Donnell's review of Madeline Albright's memoir, Madame Secretary (Books, January 24th).
It is disappointing to realise that someone who has had a major hand in Irish foreign policy could be so naïve in reviewing the public statements of such a recently prominent international figure.
First, Ms O'Donnell seems to have lost all of her critical faculties: her only remotely cavilling remark is that the ordinary reader might get lost in the detail of Albright's book. Second, and at the most basic level, it seems not to occur to Ms O'Donnell that Albright, like any political figure in her position, is in the business of writing a self-justifying narrative.
In keeping with this naïvety, Ms O'Donnell is incapable of recognising, for example, Albright's mangling of Soren Kierkegaard's aphorism about living life forwards but writing history backwards. Flowing from this, she is incapable of telling us whether Albright mentions the most brutal and unpleasant remark of her tenure as Secretary of State, that the death due to UN sanctions of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi children was "a price worth paying".
Lastly, she raises the old canard that the Palestinians at the Camp David summit turned down "the best offer they would ever get from the Israelis". This myth was exposed comprehensively by Robert Malley, an American participant at the summit: the vaunted Israeli "offer" (of territories not Israel's to "offer" in the first place) was never presented formally or on paper, and hence was hardly an offer to be taken fully seriously. Ms O'Donnell quotes without demurral Albright's crass quip that the Palestinians weren't prepared to "yield a dime to make a dollar" - an extraordinarily vulgar formulation for a people who have already lost 78 per cent of their homeland.
One hopes that Ms O'Donnell's recent journey to the Gaza Strip will have revealed to her the moral idiocy of Albright's remark. - Yours, etc.,
CONOR McCARTHY, Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Dublin 1.
Madam, - Senator David Norris says he feels betrayed by what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza (The Irish Times, January 23rd). I would point out that the Israeli people feel betrayed by the repeated Palestinian rejection of decades of attempts to resolve the conflict peacefully.
It is terrible that innocent Palestinians are suffering because of security clampdowns, but why drop the buck into the lap of the Israelis only? It is deceptive to claim that Israel is the stronger party. Fair analysis of the history and status quo of the region demonstrates that there is a formidable array of powerful Arab dictatorships arrayed against Israel. They must bear a large portion of responsibility for landing the unfortunate Palestinian people in this dreadful situation. - Yours, etc.,
PAT O'SULLIVAN, Knocknacurra, Bandon, Co Cork.