Sir, - It took a painting and the genius of Picasso to bring home to the world that attacks from the air on civilians with no defences is a crime beyond which powerful nations travel at their peril. The painting of Guernica indicts for posterity one nation's capacity for savagery and ignorance.
Today we need another Picasso to shock the world awake to what the State of Israel now stands for. As gunships, rockets and tanks overrun a land not theirs to crush and kill innocent women and children in the name of security, Israel brings her own brand of savagery and ignorance as a solution for her failures to try and make peace work. Israel can blame Arafat all it wants, but what it is doing is fascism at its most brutal and ignorant.
How ironic that a people almost annihilated by fascism should now adopt the same tactics against defenceless civilians. Are there any "good Israelis" there to speak out? Why do we and the other civilised nations of Europe have diplomatic relations with this gangster state? We need another Picasso. - Yours, etc.,
Laurence Power, Celbridge, Co Kildare.