Madam, - Samuel Walsh and Gerry McDonnell (February 16th) do not advance the debate as to the ethical or political usefulness of a cultural boycott of Israel very far.
Mr Walsh says he found the letter from Irish academics to The Irish Times in September 2006 (of which I was a signatory) "disgusting, an affront to logic and a shoddy display of covert anti-Semitism". These are serious charges, but he nowhere explains how or in what way that letter displayed any of these traits.
Mr McDonnell is equally incoherent. He reminds us that not all Israeli artists agree with their government's policies. This is true, and a significant number of these brave dissenters are calling for precisely the kind of boycott suggested in the September 2006 letter. He then suggests that the proposal "smacks of isolationism", and raises the example of the treatment meted out to the Jewish community of Limerick in 1904.
The proposal has nothing to do with isolationism: who is being isolationist? It is an internationalist proposal, designed to embody Irish solidarity with the besieged Palestinian people. The charge, again of anti-Semitism - hinted at by the references to Limerick and to the second World War - is a cheap and cynical tactic to shut down discussion, to police debate, and to besmirch those who dare to speak out about a profound injustice.
Anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish prejudice. The critique of a state is not the same as ethnic prejudice. Israel, though it defines itself as a Jewish state, does not speak for every Jewish person in the world.
Those who easily use the charge of anti-Semitism easily eviscerate it of its genuine historical and moral force. Shame on them. - Yours, etc,
CONOR McCARTHY,
De Vesci Court,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.