Sir, – There is a continuing effort by some commentators to minimise by comparison the deaths of the women and children of Gaza, bringing in the argument that “Sure there’s worse going on in the Middle East” and “Sure far worse happened in Central Africa”.
The death of any innocent child by deliberate military action should call forth the anger of everyone. To try diluting the Gaza atrocities by drawing up some sort of perverse league table is simply not good enough. Trying to draw our attention away from the Gaza crisis by pointing to further atrocities that have been or are taking place elsewhere will not minimise the suffering of the orphans and widows of the bombed-out towns of Gaza.
As many have pointed out, this situation will not improve until we look at the root causes. Time and again, those who have been to Gaza and the West Bank report on the appalling discrimination and hardships which are visited daily upon the Palestinian people by the methods and policies used by the Israelis to keep them in check. To expect that no consequences will issue from this deliberate quotidian oppression is unrealistic.
Every Israeli citizen deserves to live in uninterrupted and secure peace, free from the despicable rocket attacks being perpetrated by Hamas. Palestinians also deserve the equivalent peace.
It is obvious at this stage that the creation of a Palestinian state will be the only true long-term solution to the problem. Those with the power and the means to properly start working in that direction should waste no further time. Too much blood has already been spilled. Too many infants’ lives have already been obliterated. – Yours, etc,
CAPT JOHN DUNNE,
St Georges Street,
Douglas,
Isle of Man
Sir, — It was with no small sense of amazement that I read a letter from David Stewart (August 6th) and wondered at his comments. Mr Stewart appeared to defeat his own purpose in his first paragraph when he wrote that the Israeli government was certainly winning “... the intellectual arguments (largely), but losing in the court of world opinion (indisputably)”.
Therein lies the rub. If reason is ignored and then replaced by the wishy-washy “looks wrong, sounds wrong and feels wrong”, in Mr Stewart’s words, then I suggest that he and others with a similar line of thought would lead us down a path where reason and logic (and also the rule of law, for what is law but reason and logic?) are to be ignored in favour of what Mr Stewart described as a “smell test”. Is this to be how international law shall be defined?
As to the rest of his letter, Mr Stewart chose to describe the state of Israel as being the same as the pre-1992 apartheid South Africa. I trust that I was not the only reader who found such a sentiment to be a travesty rather than a truth. Israel is still the only truly democratic state in the Middle East whereas we should all be aware that apartheid South Africa was controlled by a white minority, unlike now. – Yours, etc,
NOEL LEAHY,
Knockbrack,
Abbeyfeale,
Co Limerick