Madam, - I would like to support the complaint of the Israeli Ambassador, Zion Evrony, that Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin took a tougher line on Israel than on Hamas. Alas, Mr Martin is not alone. In Leinster House it is hard to meet a politician willing to say a public good word about a democracy like Israel or a hard word about a gang of thugs like Hamas.
So when Chris Andrews TD (January 5th) calls for the the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, or Senator David Norris (January 6th) complains about "American-accented" Israeli Jews, they are pandering to a cowardly consensus among their colleagues. Many Irish politicians - after a perfunctory statement that the speaker is not anti-Semitic - are willing to subject the tiny Jewish state to a shameful stream of abuse which they would not dream of directing against even the most evil dictatorships on the planet.
Allow me to publicly distance myself from that cowardly consensus. I call it cowardly because it takes no courage, in this or any other century, to come down hard on Jews, even armed Jews. Israel is as massively outnumbered by the forces of the Arab world as were the Jewish fighters of the Warsaw ghetto by the German Nazis.
Does any Irish politician believe that if we were in Israel's place we would act differently? Every day the rockets of Hamas reach further into Israel. If Israel does not reply, innocent Israelis die. If Israel does reply, innocent Palestinians die. It is a cruel choice.
If we were Israeli Jews, we would not turn the other cheek. We would try to defend our small democracy by destroying Hamas. If we were Palestinians, most of us would support the Palestinian Authority. We would not help Hamas, a brutal band of fascist fundamentalists whose "democratic mandate" has no more moral purchase than the "democratic mandate" of Hitler's National Socialist party.
Israel's actions in Gaza are morally acceptable, achievable and aimed at the general good. Following a ceasefire, we will find two fundamental changes. Hamas will find it harder to get popular support for further provocations and the Palestinian Authority will find it easier to defend itself against Hamas thugs. Hence President-elect Barack Obama's prudent silence. It's a pity Irish politicians don't make him a role model. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - The shelling of a UN school in Gaza, killing more than 40 people, was followed by the usual claim that Hamas had used them as human shields. Should that prove true, all must condemn it. But those making this charge in the belief that it exculpates Israel overlook something obvious: the premise assumed in the term "human shield" is not that flesh and bone make good armour; it is that a conscientious enemy will not fire on civilians.
Israel's chosen targets hardly suggest conscientiousness. Indeed, propaganda aside, its army's actions to date are consistent with a ready willingness to kill civilians and use each death as another opportunity to declare that Hamas is responsible.
Those who believe that Israel is acting sincerely for a greater good must ask whether, if Israeli hostages in Gaza replaced equally innocent Palestinian non-combatants, those so-called shields might actually begin to work. Would the line that "we have no choice", that "Hamas is making us do it", then really hold? A greater sympathy on the part of Israeli leaders for Israeli children than for Palestinian children would be understandable, even excusable. But to allow that to inform one's decision as to whether hundreds of innocents may be sacrificed for a supposedly greater goal is to act according to the principle that the life of a Palestinian civilian is worth less - far, far less, based on the latest death toll - than that of an Israeli.
Regardless of one's political position or of who did what first, the morally correct response to Israel's campaign of slaughter and destruction in Gaza is the natural one of revulsion and condemnation. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - The Gaza crisis has shown us, once again, the utter inability of the UN Security Council to protect the world's most vulnerable people. It is obvious that a neutral peacekeeping force is required to protect the innocent residents of Gaza from the cross-fire between Hamas and Israel, but the chances of this happening through the current Security Council structure are non-existent.
Statements and pronunciations have flown back and forth across the Security Council chamber, but when it comes to putting actual force behind those words the council has been sorely lacking. The citizens of Gaza can now join the displaced of Darfur, Congo and Zimbabwe on the list of people the Security Council has proven itself incapable of serving.
Surely the international community can come up with a more effective way of protecting those who need it. Goal has long advocated the need for a neutral humanitarian force to provide protection for aid workers and innocent bystanders during times of conflict.
This force would be free of political ties to any particular country and have the sole remit of protecting those who are trapped in situations that are not of their own making. Given the events of the past few days, it is plain that this is a proposal that needs to be brought back to the top of the international community's agenda. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - Israel's continuing massive military strikes on Gaza are an outrage that the international community must not allow to continue. Palestinian rocket attacks that traumatise the lives of communities in southern Israel are also utterly unacceptable. Both sides must cease fire.
Israel's actions are disproportionate and counterproductive to achieving either security for the people of Israel or peace in the Middle East. Physicians for Human Rights (Israel) have warned that "targeting of civilians and of medical facilities is a breach of international humanitarian law. The targets chosen by the Israeli military include also clearly civilian installations."
Gaza is one of the poorest and most densely populated places on earth. For the past two years, the blockade and previous Israeli strikes had already disrupted electricity supplies and access to clean water. Even before the current attack, Gaza's health system was near collapse. Hospitals are short of medicines, blood and essential equipment. Only half of Gaza's 58 ambulances are functioning.
We call on the international community, and especially the high contracting parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to intervene to stop the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. We call for an immediate ceasefire by all parties and for an embargo on the supply of military equipment to both sides. The international community must also assert unambiguously that there is no military route to peace in the Middle East and redouble its efforts to create a secure and independent state of Palestine alongside a secure and independent Israel. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - My neighbour throws rocks at my house. It continues for months. Many of my windows are broken. My family are terrorised.
I build a taller fence. My neighbour continues to throw rocks - bigger ones, and more often. I build a stronger wall to keep him out. He tunnels underneath. I buy an alarm system and outdoor lights with sensors. I appeal to my neighbour directly. I speak to his family and friends. Nothing seems to work.
Finally, I decide to throw a huge rock through his prized picture window one night. I leave him a note to say I will not rest until his aggression stops. It finally ends.
Let's have a realistic and balanced view of the terrible circumstances in the Gaza Strip. The current crisis started with Hamas rockets. Yes, it is horrible that innocent Palestinians have been killed and injured and their lives are in chaos. But remember that innocent Israelis have had to endure terrorist attacks from Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad and a variety of other terror organisations since the founding of the State of Israel.
Proportionality is a bizarre argument in this case. Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel has a right to stop the rocket attacks from Gaza. Simply because Hamas rockets haven't killed hundreds of innocent Israelis does not alter Israel's moral right to protect its border and its people assertively. Civilian casualties on the scale we are witnessing are rooted in the Hamas strategy of using the neighbourhoods their own people live in, as rocket-launching pads.
Hamas should get on with the business of developing the Gaza Strip peacefully and in partnership with the only neighbour that has offered them a homeland. No Hamas rockets = no Israeli response. Simple. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - The tragic events in Gaza appear to have divided the world into two opposing camps, each passionately arguing the rectitude of their position. It is clear that the Israeli Government has no interest in these arguments. Its mind is made up, and its military strategy immutable.
Ambassador Zion Evonry repeats (January 6th) the Israeli government's mantra that it has every right to respond to the Hamas rockets in order to protect its people, and of course he is quite right; but the military response is outrageously disproportionate, totally counterproductive and ultimately wrong. In addition to the terrible human tragedy it is causing, there can be no doubt that this operation will leave the situation worse than before.
It is surprising that so many pro-Israeli commentators have not reflected on the reason why the good people of Gaza support the actions of Hamas. As everyone must know, including surely Ambassador Evrony, this would never have happened if Israel had not turned Gaza into a prison. It is as simple as that.
The population of Gaza is very young, with about 50 per cent below 15 years of age, and they are being intellectually as well as economically strangled by the blockade. In the past year, many hundreds of graduates from the universities in Gaza, including seven Fulbright scholars who had been accepted into US universities, were not allowed out of Gaza to take up their scholarships by the Israeli government and had to stay at home, doing nothing. No imagination is needed to understand the deep resentment, anger and hostility that this action will cause. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - Given the current events in Gaza it appears likely that suicide bombings will again become a more prevalent feature of life in Israel. Such atrocities are clearly barbaric, but the people of Israel will surely not be surprised if this fairly obvious prediction proves correct.
One cannot dispute Israel's right to defend itself from Hamas rocket attacks, but the manner in which it is doing so is indiscriminate, disproportionate and puts the state of Israel on a moral par with Hamas. The Israeli military might as well open a recruitment post for suicide bombers in Gaza.
Sadly, at an international diplomatic level Israel will get away with its actions. It always does. Hundreds of innocent people in Gaza have not been so lucky.
Finally, I couldn't care less what religion is practised by either side in this conflict. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - Senator David Norris's comparison of Israel's legitimate military operation in Gaza to the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto by the SS (January 6th) is not only a travesty of truth but also a perversion of history. The conditions of the Ghetto were on such a scale of inhuman depravity, with starvation, disease and summary executions a daily reality, that they resulted in a survival rate of less than 1 per cent. The uprising of April 1943 to was in response to the German goal of murdering every single Jew remaining in the Ghetto; 300,000 had already been deported to their deaths at Triblinka. Senator Norris should make it quite clear that he believes the conditions in Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto are incomparable. - Yours, etc,