Madam, – Alan Shatter (January 13th) is right to highlight the litany of disrespect for human life shown by Hamas since its inception.
He goes on to list the conditions set by the international quartet (the EU, Russia, US, UN) for Hamas to meet before it should be permitted to enter any peace process.
However, Mr Shatter fails to mention that Israel has also made no serious effort to fulfil the conditions set out in the same quartet road-map for peace in 2003. The road-map called on Israel to cease assassinations of Palestinian leaders and activists, end house demolitions, freeze development of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, remove the settlements built after 2001, and ease movement restrictions on the Palestinian population. No meaningful progress has been made on any of these issues.
A progressive policy by Israel to tackle the underlying root causes of Palestinian violence and aggression would directly address these substantial human rights grievances. The overwhelming use of military force does not. It is only further alienating the Palestinian people and will certainly not bring the long-term peace and security which the Israeli and Palestinian peoples deserve.– Yours, etc,
DAVID WHITE,
Stonebridge Avenue,
Clonsilla,
Dublin 15.
Madam, – Charles Krauthammer has surpassed himself – and that takes some effort on his part – but in doing so he has done us all a favour in reminding us why the passing of the neo-con agenda in the US is one to be celebrated.
He asserts that it would be shameful for a ceasefire to happen now before Hamas is removed. In fact what is shameful is the plight of children clinging on to the dead bodies of their dead mothers, or the Red Cross not being allowed to care for the wounded, or the potential flooding of large areas of Gaza with raw sewage, or the fact that 1.5 million people are imprisoned without charge or trial in the worlds biggest prison. The list is endless.
Mr Krauthammer is just exhibiting the same cold, calculated, neo-con world view which has been seen to fail miserably in Iraq and South America – and even in his own country where millions are below the breadline and the economy stutters from one crisis to another – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Church Road,
Blackrock,
Cork.
Madam, – On the current conflict in the Middle East, there are two principal fallacies which cloud the thinking of the already nebulous "international community" to a point of irrelevancy.
One is that nothing can be achieved through military conflict. Regrettably, history has shown us that this is far from true. European settlers employed guns and biological weapons to clear most of the North American continent of its native people, while the fact that I, an Irishman, am writing this letter in English owes much to the military superiority of Anglo-Saxon invaders over my Gaelic forebears.
Through the principle of might makes right, military supremacy also secures moral high ground by forcing weaker combatants to resort to guerrilla tactics, nowadays dismissed under the dysphemism "terrorism". One need only be casually acquainted with history to appreciate the irony of Britain, France or the United States claiming that violence achieves nothing.
The second fallacy is to confound weakness with virtue. The fact that Hamas lacks sufficient means to execute its threat of wiping Israel off the map in no way excuses its desire to do so. A relevant thought exercise in determining the balance of morality in this conflict is this: Imagine it were possible to swap the respective arsenals of Hamas and the Israeli army tomorrow. Does even the harshest critic of Israel for a second believe this would result in anything other than a second Holocaust?
Thus, the current campaign being waged by Israel is neither senseless nor depraved. Rather, it follows exactly the military and moral logic of the international community itself. Any positive step towards peace must be premised on this reality. – Yours, etc,
GRAHAM STULL,
Brussels,
Belgium.
Madam, – Senator David Norris (January 12th) sees fit to pursue his ridiculous comparison the Gaza situation to the Warsaw Ghetto by citing a series of totally false analogies which are easily refutable, point by point.
1. "In Gaza a sizeable ethnic group is concentrated in a tiny area under the arrogant and contemptuous supervision of military overlords." This at least is true. The people of Gaza are in effect being held hostage by a murderous band of military overlords, the Hamas terrorist organisation, which uses them as human shields with total disregard for their safety.
2. "This entire population group has been slowly strangled in preparation for military incursion." The strangulation is a result of Hamas using all resources for amassing rockets, instead of seeing to the needs of the civilian population. Recall that when Israel vacated Gaza in 2005, it left a thriving greenhouse-based economy, which Hamas saw fit to destroy.
3. "There has been an almost total collapse in terms of sewage, food and energy delivery as well as medical facilities." This is in spite of the thousands of deliveries of truckloads of supplies by Israel since 2005. Israel has also since 2005 been supplying electricity and other energy to Gaza – in full knowledge that munitions manufacturing is one of the uses to which it has been applied.
4. "The outside world has been deliberately kept at bay and apart from Al-Jazeera virtually no independent reporting is permitted while the noose has been remorselessly tightened."
Has the good Senator, from his eyrie in the mountains of Cyprus, failed to notice that Gaza is the most reported area in the world today? In military campaigns, for example the Falklands, the press are excluded from the battlefield for their own safety. In a confined area such as Gaza this is imperative – and the Israelis know only too well that, should reporters lose their lives, the IDF will be blamed.
5. "There have been attempts on the part of the besieged to overcome supply difficulties through the digging of tunnels." Yes, true. But the "supply difficulties" – that is, primarily the supply of rockets from Iran – seem to have been overcome, as shown by more than 6,000 rockets shot into southern Israel in the past few years.
6. "Resistance has been organised by commando groups and this has been met by the unleashing of a massive mechanised assault." Resistance to what? May I remind Senator Norris that there has not been a single square inch of Gaza occupied by Israelis since 2005? The "resistance" that Hamas talks about is to the very existence of a Jewish state, which it makes very clear in its covenant.
The final point made by Senator Norris is that "Hamas was legitimately elected in Gaza". This is absolutely correct, just as Hitler was the democratically elected leader of the German people. But that did not prevent Britain from declaring war on the whole German nation, with far less provocation than Israel has had to endure from Gaza over the past three years. – Yours etc.
ALLAN SOLOMON,
Watford,
Hertfordshire,
England.
Madam, – The profusion of letters to
The Irish Timeson this subject is both heartening (in that readers recognise the enormity of a political situation that is outside of the local), and depressing (in that firm and resolute positions are adopted with conviction and immutability on either side, with little expectation that either side will even minimally modify the view of the other).
The language used is becoming repetitive. On the one side, there are comments such as "Hamas is using the civilian population as human shields"; on the other, "the Israelis are responding with disproportionate violence to Hamas rockets, and the monstrous death toll on the Palestinian side proves this".
The only way to break into new understanding, it seems to me, is to read the narratives of those writers whose personal interests might have been to stay with "their side", or "keep quiet on the issue", but who were overcome by a determination to seek out difficult truths, at great expense to themselves.
The case of Ilan Pappé, now lecturing in history at the University of Exeter, is exemplary. Born in Israel to German-Jewish parents who fled Nazi persecution in the 1930s, he was a lecturer in political science at Haifa University from 1984 to 2007, until he was forced to resign because he dared to state that "Zionism is a clear ideology of exclusion, racism and expulsion". I challenge anyone to read his book
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and not be educated into truth by its fair-minded, detailed, calm and disinterested argument.
Two people who have done much to bring young Israelis and Palestinians together have been the Argentine-Jewish conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim and his close friend – now, alas, deceased – the Palestinian-American academic and writer, Edward Said. Together they set up the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1998, consisting of musicians from Israel and Arab countries.
Barenboim, when interviewed last week on BBC radio about the Gaza situation, showed he has a humane and sagacious grasp of the situation in Gaza. Edward Said's writings on the Palestinian question demonstrate the most profound responsiveness to what he saw as a catacylsmic failure of understanding, and a gross abdication of responsibility on the part of Western governments to play some positive part in a resolution process.
Just before he died in 2003, Said wrote: "Palestinians feel that they have been turned into exiles by the proverbial people of exile, the Jews. It is as if the reconstructed Jewish collective experience, as represented by Israel and modern Zionism, could not tolerate another story of dispossession and loss to exist alongside it."
At the very least, it behoves us all to try to understand this conflict by immersion in some fresh reading. That would at the very least disallow astonishing comments such as the claim by Senator Eoghan Harris (January 9th) that "Israel's actions in Gaza are morally acceptable, achievable and aimed at the general good". – Yours, etc,
CIARAN COSGROVE,
Glenageary,
Co Dublin.
Madam, – One description suffices: Israel's incursion into Gaza constitutes the first great war crime of the 21st century, with the possible exception of rebel forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
This argument has nothing to do with the theocratic Hamas and its pea-shooters. When a high-tech modern army moves into a civilian area and is prepared to kill as many civilians as may stand in the way of its aims, or get in the way accidentally, woolly words and obfuscation will not do. An army which leaves children to starve beside the bodies of their dead parents is beneath contempt.
It's interesting that the usual contrarian journalists, who like nothing so much as expressing their "difference" from the "politically correct", rather as teenagers express their differences by dressing in the same way, are boringly, predictably and callously uninterested in those slaughtered by the Israelis. But then, Arab lives have a lesser value.
What can we do? One, shout as loud as we can about the savage and unjust nature of these deeds. Two, don't buy anything from Israel. – Yours, etc,
PIARAS MAC EINRI,
Model Farm Road,
Cork.
Madam, – I congratulate
The Irish Timeson opening its pages to an extensive and well edited debate on all aspects of the Israe-Palestinian controversy, not least its impact on Irish politics.
In that regard, may I raise the question of Chris Andrews TD's one-sided input to that debate. By calling for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland, Mr Andrews shows scant regard for the complex nature of the arguments and instead opts for the simple "solutions" already voiced by knee-jerk activists.
His statement is an embarrassment to all who value genuine debate and should have been withdrawn, even on "mature reflection". – Yours, etc,
NIALL GINTY
(Conor Cruise O'Brien Society),
Killester,
Dublin 5.
Madam, In response to international criticism of its actions in Gaza, the Israeli government seems to be propounding that the end justifies the means. This is an extremely dangerous and utterly flawed philosophy.
There is no justification for Israel's current operations in Gaza, which constitute nothing short of crimes against humanity. – Yours, etc,
SARAH-KATE FOLEY,
Rossymailley,
Westport,
Co Mayo.