Sir, – Dr Vincent Durac suggests that lack of hope and poverty are behind the Hamas invasion of Israel (“Palestinian hopelessness drove Hamas attack on Israel”, Opinion & Analysis, October 9th).
However, if this were true, would not the Palestinians involved have returned to Gaza laden with Israeli fridges, computers, food supplies and luxuries? Instead they shot dead elderly Jewish women at a bus stop, gunned down hundreds of unarmed youths at a music festival and raped many Israeli women and girls who were then either murdered or carried off back to Gaza. Hamas and their associates openly boasted on social media about their crimes against civilians.
What drove the Hamas attack was both its dependence on Iran and its jihadist-type hatred of Jews and Western liberalism. Women were targeted especially because they were Jewish and emancipated. Even dead young women weren’t spared with at least one being driven around in the back of a Hamas truck as some sort of naked trophy. – Yours, etc,
KARL MARTIN,
READ MORE
Dublin 13.
Sir, – A music festival, with thousands of youngsters enjoying themselves, becomes a scene of barbaric ethnic cleansing, with indiscriminate murders of unarmed civilians. As your paper notes: “The Israeli rescue service Zaka said its paramedics removed about 260 bodies from a music festival attended by thousands that came under attack. The total figure is expected to be higher.” (News, October 9th).
Your editorial (October 8th) writes of Hamas, “its callous targeting of civilians cannot be justified”. That’s it.
The previous page explains everything. It is all Israel’s fault, with the headline that “Palestinian hopelessness drove Hamas attack”, and which contains such nonsense as “Israel prohibits Palestinians from leaving or entering Gaza except in extremely rare cases.” Really? What about the over 10,000 who commute from Gaza into Israel every day to work there?
Some perspective is missing here. – Yours, etc,
JOHN O’KEEFFE,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – While the Palestinian dilemma certainly merits international pressure towards a peaceful resolution, Dr Durac’s opinion piece is mind boggling. Since when does murdering children and young adults at a music festival and beyond constitute an acceptable expression of hopelessness?
Hamas is a terrorist organisation determined to wipe Israel from the map. Their credibility as a negotiating partner for peace has been destroyed by their own actions. – Yours, etc,
LAURA BARNES,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – Mark Weiss’s article “Sheer magnitude of Hamas attack is difficult for Israelis to grasp” (News, October 8th) includes the questionable statement that “Israel can leave Gaza but Gaza can’t leave Israel”. Despite Israel dismantling its settlements in Gaza strip in 2005, it has never relinquished control of Gaza’s maritime waters, its airspace or the flow of goods and people into the territory. Instead it has used its power to enforce a blockade since 2007 which has seen the territory’s GDP decline by 50 per cent and caused much hardship to Palestinians. The fact that Gaza is very much under Israel’s control is evident with even former British Conservative prime minister David Cameron describing the blockaded Gaza strip as a “prison camp” and an “open-air prison” in 2010. This comparison has been echoed recently by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories Francesca Albanese.
Clarifying Gaza’s status is important as it provides very needed context to the conflict we are witnessing. The conflict is not between Israel and a militant group based in a territory that it left almost 20 years ago. Rather it is a conflict between Israel and a militant group based in a territory it has kept under siege since 2007. – Yours, etc,
OWEN O’LOUGHLIN,
Cherrywood,
Dublin 18.
Sir, – In years gone by, media outlets often repeated the UN’s prediction that the Gaza Strip would be “unliveable” by 2020. That year has come and gone, and this damning indictment of global political inaction was quietly dropped.
Palestinian human rights have barely been granted a footnote in agitation against the Israeli state’s imminent judicial overhaul, or indeed in global media coverage of it. For many governments, and media outlets, Palestinian human rights remain an inconvenient truth.
It is unrealistic – not to mention unethical – to expect Palestinians to be content with their worsening lot; either in the Gaza Strip, where over two million people, mostly from refugee families, have been imprisoned for 17 years, their electricity cut off at the stroke of an Israeli minister’s pen, or in the West Bank where Palestinians are confined to fragmented enclaves while illegal Israeli settlements expand relentlessly. Successive Israeli governments have scornfully dismissed the possibility of negotiations. The blueprint of a “two-state solution” has long been overtaken by grim facts on the ground.
We must mourn each untimely death, but we must also look to the root cause of the carnage; global complicity in Israeli expansionism. The EU must suspend the Israeli state from the Euro-Med Trade Agreement; Israeli authorities have never complied with the human rights stipulations which “form the very basis” of the agreement.
In Ireland, the right course of action is clear; our Government must admit that human rights organisations are correct in their well-documented accusations of apartheid. Fine Gael must quit stonewalling the long overdue Occupied Territories Bill, and must cease delaying the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill.
Enacting this legislation is simply doing the decent thing. Then, perhaps, our political leaders can mourn fatalities, and condemn atrocities, with credibility and a clear conscience. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN Ó ÉIGEARTAIGH,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – The Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the establishment of illegal settlements, the continuous ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people since 1947 to date, the denial of their very basic human rights, the violations of international law, and the international community’s silence fuelling these injustices beget violence and more violence.
It’s unacceptable to expect people enduring decades of oppression, disrespect, and desecration of their mosques and holy sites, with their plight ignored by the world, to sit tight and not fight for a better life.
The Palestinians have the right to exist, to live, and to return to their home villages. These rights are enshrined in international law.
Any comments or analysis of the present situation that refuse to take these injustices into consideration are dishonest, immoral and dehumanising. – Yours, etc,
SÉAN Ó BRIAIN,
(On behalf of Comhlámh
Justice for Palestine),
Dublin 2.
Sir, – There has been much to legitimately criticise about Israeli government policy towards the Palestinian people over the last few decades. A considerable proportion of the Israeli state’s actions have been both wrong and counterproductive in terms of ensuring Israel’s security and fostering peaceful co-existence with their neighbours. However, the actions over the last 48 hours instigated by Hamas appear intended to end any chance of a two-state solution ever happening. Hamas are clearly opposed to any form of embryonic efforts towards peaceful coexistence between Israel and its neighbours.
The cheerleading from the most performatively woke elements of the Irish political spectrum is abhorrent, so many of whom appear incapable of supporting an independent state for the Palestinian people while condemning the actions of the last few days.
How does it serve the cause of the Palestinian people to target civilians, to abduct and sexual assault women and parade their bodies through the streets to cheering crowds? Going from house to house to take families as hostages and human shields? Murdering ordinary people in the streets in preference to engaging with the Israeli military?
Giving organisations like Hamas, who are much more interested in dominating their own people than they are in securing a homeland and prosperous future, a blank cheque of support is not about social justice or equality. It’s about a naive worldview that is incapable of nuance or understanding complexity. While their supporters have been cheerleading brutality and criticising the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, the leaders of the Irish Left have been slow to comment. Once they’ve rehearsed their talking points, they’ll emerge with whataboutery. They will let the choice of the most violent path go unchallenged. Saying “There is no alternative” is their way of avoiding the hard choices that lasting peace usually involves. – Yours, etc,
DANIEL K SULLIVAN,
Dublin 3.
