Madam, - Further to the suggestion by Coilin Ó hAiseadha (October 9th) that the Irish Anti War Movement (IAWM) invite Alan Shatter to debate with our invited speaker from Lebanon, Ibrahim Musawi, we would note that we have already done so. He refused quite abruptly. The IAWM also invited Mr Shatter in the summer of 2006 to a debate on the then raging Israel/Lebanon war. The message received then was that he not available. Strangely, this was a response we received from many prominent supporters of Israel to our invitations to debate that issue.
One has to wonder why democratic representatives are unwilling publicly to debate particular issues or with particular people who hold views at variance with their own. Are they afraid that members of the public might hear some uneasy truths that would cause them to question the prevailing view on war and occupation posited by Government and most of the media?
The IAWM has invited many others to the conference this weekend: an Iraqi member of Parliament, a Christian Lebanese MP, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, several British and Irish public representatives, the mother of a British soldier killed in Iraq and a former SAS soldier. Does Mr Shatter wish to ban all these people too, lest they raise issues and provide information that he will find objectionable?
How ironic that Jeffrey Donaldson and Martin McGuinness can meet in Finland with representatives from the opposing Iraqi groups, whose members have all kinds of challenging views; yet public representatives and sections of the media here in Ireland support a ban on a representative of a democratically elected organisation invited here to debate and share his views on such a fundamental issue as the horrific cycle of wars and occupations that have been wrought on the inhabitants of the Middle East? - Yours etc,
JIM ROCHE, Secretary, Steering Committee, IAWM, Rutledge Terrace, Dublin 8.