Sir, – We in European Movement Ireland have been left in a state of shock by the horrific attacks in Brussels. Our deepest sympathies go to those who were injured or lost their lives in the atrocities, as well as their families and loved ones.
Brussels is a city which many Irish people know well; an attack on this heart of Europe is an attack on all of us. European Movement Ireland would like to express our solidarity with the people of Brussels, including our international colleagues and the thousands of Irish people who live, work and study there.
Such attacks on innocent people are an affront to our shared European values of democracy, inclusiveness and peace – values which we need now more than ever in the face of the dark forces of terrorism, extremism, hate and violence. Now is not the time for knee-jerk reactions or for creating fortress Europe, but rather the time to act together in solidarity in our measured response to these threats which we all face. – Yours, etc,
NOELLE O’CONNELL,
Executive Director,
European Movement
Ireland,
Dublin 2.
Sir, – Emotive hashtags on social media have become the modern currency of outrage, despair and grief, so it is to be expected that the response to Tuesday's horrific attacks in Brussels is similar to what followed the attacks in Paris. A picture is worth a thousand hashtags, of course, and so the world's cartoonists, including Martyn Turner (March 23rd), are, once again, to be commended for taking up their pencils in defiance of terror. – Yours, etc,
NIALL McARDLE,
Ontario,
Canada.
Sir, – Martyn Turner's "cartoon" did not plumb new depths but it merely showed that things haven't changed in the least at The Irish Times over the 100 years. To use the dead of Paris and Brussels to parade his usual anti-republican bias is an absolute disgrace. To tarnish 1916 with what happened in Brussels is beneath contempt. – Yours, etc,
OWEN SMYTH,
Monaghan.
Sir, – I am deeply upset that you choose to publish the photograph by Ketevan Kardava of the woman whose clothes were torn away from her body in the bombing in Brussels on your front page (March 23rd). That she had to experience that dreadful incident is heart-breaking enough, but to have her vulnerability in the immediate aftermath exploited in this way is shameful. I’m aware that the image appeared elsewhere in various media but I thought it would have been far beneath the standards of any decent broadsheet to exploit in this way. – Yours, etc,
MARY BRENNAN,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – We are members of the European Union, as are Belgium, France, Germany and many other states. That means that we are one. An attack on Belgium, France or anywhere else in Europe is an attack on us all. I feel this is a message we need to repeat and emphasise.
The idea of the European Union is to unite in a case like this but I do feel each member state needs to express that it feels attacked when any other member state has been attacked.
Europe will stand together. – Yours, etc,
ELAINE DOLD,
Tralee,
Co Kerry.
Sir, – Simon Foy (March 24th) asserts that the attacks in Brussels were against "our shared European values", implying that these values are all positive. I'm not so sure. Be that as it may, his suggestion that Ireland should join "our allies" in Nato is both opportunistic and misguided, especially as his stated objective is "ridding the world of the ideology that inspires these young men to commit mass murder", and his suggested method for doing so is "military intervention". Surely it is obvious that you cannot extinguish ideology by force. I would have thought it obvious, too, that Nato is part of the problem, not the solution. – Yours, etc,
DOMINIC CARROLL,
Ardfield,
Co Cork.
Sir, – Alone among your reporters and commentators, Ruadhán Mac Cormaic tentatively suggests that the indiscriminate savagery to have struck Brussels should be seen in context: "Without an end to the conflict in Syria, the flow of radicalised, battle-hardened Europeans willing to inflict mass casualties at home will continue" ("Security and political chiefs face searching questions", March 23rd).
All too often the actions of terrorists are interpreted as being without motivation, emanating from some free-floating and incomprehensible hatred. The European Union, in seeking the causes of and remedies for terrorism, seems incapable of facing the most simple solution – to change its foreign policy which, usually in alliance with the US and in defence of what are speciously called “western interests”, all too often entails supporting vicious regimes and bombing their unfortunate subjects, usually in the Muslim world. In an Irish context, the surrender of Shannon Airport to the US war machine, in violation of our professed military neutrality, undoubtedly makes us a potential target.
Where Ruadhán Mac Cormaic errs, I believe, is in omitting mention of the open wound that is Palestine, and the European Union’s role in arming and diplomatically backing the Israeli state and its project of completing the dispossession of the Palestinian people. Were the EU to “consider the beam that is in its own eye”, we might all be safer. – Yours, etc,
RAYMOND DEANE,
Dublin 2.
Sir, –Many experts state that the wrongs of the West from the past and present are the real reasons for these barbaric acts, yet ignore the fact that this does not explain why Christians are being ethnically cleansed from their homelands in the Middle East. – Yours, etc,
DERMOT COOPER,
Hong Kong.