Letters

Israel and Hamas – war in the Middle East

A humanitarian crisis

Fri Oct 13 2023 - 00:05

A chara, – As we witness the terrible suffering of people in Israel and in Gaza, let us remember that several things can be true at the same time. Nobody can deny that Hamas have committed unimaginable atrocities and that Israel has the right to defend itself from such acts of terrorism. It is also true that the Palestinians have suffered a great deal for decades (both as a result of actions by the state of Israel and because their best interests have not always been served by their own leadership) and Israel does not have the right to target innocent civilians in Gaza or threaten them with starvation. – Is mise,

KAY CHALMERS,

Douglas,

Cork.

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Sir, – The hesitancy of some Irish politicians to condemn unequivocally the murder of more than 900 Israeli men, women and children by rampaging Hamas terrorists fills me with shame. The gravity of such frenzied blood-letting deserves nothing less than resolute denunciation.

Light up the walls of Government Buildings in Dublin in blue and white to demonstrate a modicum of solidarity.

The right side of history beckons, and Ireland is morally obliged to get off the fence. – Yours, etc,

RUTH TIMMINS,

Curracloe,

Co Wexford.

Sir, – Let’s first be very clear; there is absolutely no defence to the murder of the people at the music festival, there is absolutely no defence to the kidnapping of defenceless Israeli citizens, and there is absolutely no defence to the indiscriminate attacks and murder by Hamas of Israelis and others.

Equally, there can be no defence at all to a response by the Israeli government and military forces that punishes Palestinian civilians – men, women, and children – for the acts of Hamas.

Killing or wounding civilians, destroying their homes, this is inhuman and there is no offset against the crimes of Hamas. The Israeli government and military have benefited from much of the world, including Ireland, turning a blind eye to actions that do not stand up to UN scrutiny.

This cannot happen here.

We must apply the same standards to Israel and Hamas as we apply to Russia in its current war against Ukraine.

Civilians cannot be, and must not be, anyone’s target. – Yours, etc,

T GERARD BENNETT,

Bunbrosna,

Co Westmeath.

A chara, – Barry Walsh asserts that “moderate voices in both Palestine and Israel ... need to be supported by US and EU leaders in a meaningful way” and concludes correctly that “the tenets of international law that arose from the human catastrophe of the Holocaust must be the benchmark and respected by all” (Letters, October 12th).

The elephant in the room, however, is the stark fact that the US/EU alliance has chosen to cosset Israel as a strategic ally for “reasons of state” that disregard and indeed enable its sovereign contempt for precisely those tenets. Meanwhile, its Palestinian victims are consigned to subaltern status and condemned mercilessly when they resist their own persecution.

The fact that Hamas’s recent actions largely – but by no means exclusively – targeted civilians (a trait they share with the practices of Israel’s armed forces and armed illegal settlers) does not suddenly transform the Israeli state from perpetrator into victim.

While the Tánaiste is to be commended for resisting a move to withdraw humanitarian aid from the Palestinians by the Hungarian European Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi, the Palestinian people have as much right to justice and political support as they have to charity.

There is no contradiction between lamenting the needless deaths of civilians on both sides and holding the Israeli rogue state accountable for its ongoing policies of apartheid, occupation, colonisation, annexation and ethnic cleansing. However, as long as powerful Western states continue to facilitate and whitewash Israel’s crimes, the “human catastrophe” in the Middle East will continue. – Yours, etc,

RAYMOND DEANE,

(Founding member,

Ireland-Palestine

Solidarity Campaign),

Dublin 7.