Madam, - I was reluctant to advocate a cultural boycott of Israel until I visited the country for the first time last November and met academics from Tel Aviv university.
There was discussion of the boycott, and some indeed supported it - which we would never know from the comments of Prof Asher Susser ( The Irish Times,February 14th). Others, who might have supported it, felt they were currently powerless in the face of an ongoing government onslaught on the university itself and on academic freedom, with budget cuts, individual contracts and privatisation. Any collective action in favour of boycott, they argued, would only give the government an excuse to take away more of their rights.
I became convinced that a cultural boycott was necessary, if only as an act of solidarity with those in Israel who seek to remove the inequality, discrimination and segregation of their society. Prof Susser denies the existence of apartheid, but I would prefer to quote from Land Grab, by Yehezkel Lein, published by B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights: "The settlement enterprise in the Occupied Territories has created a system of legally sanctioned separation based on discrimination that has, perhaps, no parallel anywhere in the world since the apartheid regime in South Africa."
Not long before my visit, Israeli armed forces had opened fire on members of a Palestinian picnic party. The wounded were flown to a hospital near Tel Aviv, but only one relative was allowed to remain with them, and he was compelled to stay within the grounds of the hospital, which meant he could not leave to buy his meals. If it wasn't for the brave Israeli "women in black" (who had heard about his predicament and brought him food), he would have had to go away or starve.
In Israeli jails there are 1,200 Palestinian women, political prisoners, and 300 minors; they are allowed one letter every two months and no Palestinian visitors. This is contrary to the Human Rights Convention and would not have been tolerated in Northern Ireland during the worst of the Troubles.
Incidentally, I am a Jew. My uncle went to live in the Holy Land in the 1920s to help set up the utopian dream of peace, justice and equality between Jew and Arab. It was only when I arrived there that I realised how mistaken he was. He would have done better to have stayed in the East End of London to struggle for peace, justice and equality in England. - Yours, etc,
MARGARETTA D'ARCY (Member of Aosdána), St Bridget's Place Lower, Galway.
Madam, - Fred Johnston (February 14th) has the advantage on me: as an Aosdána member I am not aware of any motion being brought before the general assembly to be held on March 28th. As yet, I have not received an agenda for that meeting.
If a motion as outlined by Fred Johnston, asking for a cultural boycott of Israel does come before the Assembly, I will most certainly speak and vote against it. I found the September, 2006 letter to The Irish Times by Irish academics disgusting, an affront to logic and a shoddy display of covert anti-Semitism. I would expect Aosdána to be above such things. - Yours, etc,
SAMUEL WALSH, Springfield, Cloonlara, Co Clare.
Madam, - In his letter of April 14th on Charles Haughey and the arts, Fred Johnston mentions that "Aosdána will shortly be asked to vote on a motion to agree a cultural boycott of Israel".
I am not a member of Aosdána, but let me say that I think this proposal is abhorrent. Not all Israeli writers, artists, composers, etc agree with Israeli government policy and they should not be punished for it. The proposal smacks of isolationism and we know where that led the Jews and others in the second World War.
We had one shameful boycott of the Jewish business community in Limerick in 1904. Let us not lend our names to a second one on the Israeli cultural community. - Yours, etc,
GERRY McDONNELL,
Rathgar,
Dublin 6.