Madam, - Raymond Deane, chairman of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, writes (May 5th) that "between 1987 and 1999 Israel had the distinction of being the only state with pretensions to democratic status actually to have legalised such torture".
Pretensions? It is the only democratic state in the Middle East. No Arab in the Middle East enjoys more democratic rights and freedoms than Israeli Arabs. Israel's major decisions, such as whether or not to hand Gaza unilaterally to the Palestinians or to use what it calls moderate force during interrogations, are taken openly in the glare of the media, and constitutionally.
He goes on to state that "torture only arouses an international outcry if photographic evidence makes it into our newspapers; once again, Israel escapes with impunity". Escape with impunity? Israel is regularly castigated. The phrase would be better applied to every Arab and Farsi state in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Authority. Every single one of them (bar perhaps Iraq and Afghanistan) is a dictatorship that routinely practices torture as state policy.
If Mr Deane truly cared about human rights he would direct his ire at those dictatorships before selecting Israel.- Yours, etc.,
TONY ALLWRIGHT, Killiney, Co Dublin.