Madam, - As long as Israel continues to treat the lives and livelihood of Palestinians with a contempt epitomised by the apartheid-like wall which makes daily life intolerable for the Palestinian people, there will be conflict in the Middle East. No censure will come from the US administration, which has taken the lead from Israel in its own actions in that part of the world.
It is a policy of attack in the name of "self-defence", without due care for civilian casualties. Such policies cannot be defended. As a citizen of Ireland I ask my Government, through the agencies of the UN and EU, to lead by example in condemning without reservation the present attacks in Gaza and Lebanon. No form of "self-defence" which involves attacks on a separate, sovereign State, can be justified.
I do not condone suicide bombings or kidnapping. The terrible consequence of past and present policies, they will continue as long as Israel refuses to deal honourably with the people of Palestine. - Yours, etc,
KAREN McDONNELL, Bloomfield Park, Dublin 8.
Madam, - In the past, when members of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have been captured or kidnapped in Southern Lebanon, Gaza, or the West Bank, the response has been immediate and robust. This has invariably involved the use of armoured units and the air force. Consequently, there has been collateral damage amongst the local civilian population and large-scale damage to local infrastructure.
The government of Lebanon knows this only too well, as do Hizbullah, Hamas, and Fatah. The two missing servicemen in southern Lebanon were kidnapped from Israel and their continued detention is indefensible. The situation could easily be resolved by their release and the withdrawal of the IDF back within its own borders. - Yours, etc,
BRENDAN McMAHON, Elmwood, Naas, Co Kildare.
A Chara, - No one denies that Hamas and Hizbullah have committed acts of great brutality for which they have rightly been condemned.
They have also been excluded from participation in any Middle East dialogue because of this brutality. Even the government of the Palestinian territories has been frozen out because of Hamas's failure to make an unqualified renunciation of violence, among other things. It is not even, unlike Israel, allowed "the right to defend itself."
I don't see the murder of innocent civilians, many of them children as encompassed by any right to defend oneself. The entire world, it appears, is united in this view.
Except, that is, when Israel does it. Then we retreat from outright condemnation and diplomatic isolation and are reduced to pious twitterings about "disproportionate" Israeli responses.
How many children murdered is proportionate? - Is mise,
Senator BRENDAN RYAN, Seanad Éireann, Dublin 2.