Madam, - Your correspondent Brendan McMahon (July 19th) characterises my use of the word "blitzkrieg" to describe the hammering of Lebanese civilian targets and infrastructure by the Israeli army and air force as "crass" and ends rhetorically "shame on you, Senator Norris".
I am not ashamed. I have always stood for the human and civil rights of ordinary people be they Palestinians, Gays, Jews, Christians or indeed Muslims.
Over the years I have been a good friend to the state of Israel.
Moreover I honour those Israeli Jews like my former partner Ezra Yizhak who constantly puts his life in danger from the largely American settlers who have invaded Arab land, by fighting to defend the human rights of Palestinian subsistence farmers in the villages around south Hebron.
If my use of terms such as "blitzkrieg", "apartheid", "ghetto" etc sting, so much the better.
Perhaps it will sting the conscience of those who consistently ignore the human rights of Palestinians.
I cannot turn a blind eye to the pictures of small children roasted alive like chickens on a supermarket spit as civilian convoys obeying instructions from the Israeli attackers to leave their village are bombed, the wholesale destruction of infrastructure, bridges, hospitals, water supplies, roads, airports etc. in retaliation for the "shoot and scoot" antics of Hizbullah in launching missile attacks across the border at Israel. This is indefensible in international law.
I am very surprised at the vapid and ineffective response to this from the international community. If such actions are justified, so would have been the flattening of Dublin, Dundalk and Drogheda by the British air force in response to the London, Brighton and Birmingham bombings by the Provos to say nothing of Canary Wharf.
I wonder what comment Mr McMahon would have made in these circumstances.
Meanwhile attention is diverted from the consequence of similar attacks on the unfortunate and largely refugee population of Gaza, a tiny area into which a huge number of displaced people have been forced by Israeli expansion.
In recent days in 40 degrees heat these people have been struggling to survive with no electricity for most of the day, water, sewage and health services obliterated by the Israelis.
What is this other than an open air concentration camp? - Yours, etc,
It horrifies me that a state that proclaims its Jewish identity should sink to this level.
Olmert like his master George Bush blunders about in the china shop of the Middle East creating havoc and achieving results that directly counter the best interests of their respective countries.
I worry greatly at the United States's action in deliberately frustrating the calls for a ceasefire. I am concerned that in this proxy war it may suit fanatical elements in the Bush regime to help to inflame the situation until there is an apparent justification for an Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear power plants. - Yours, etc,
Senator DAVID NORRIS, Seanad Éireann, Dublin 2.
Madam, - I hope others will be roused to counter the sheer moral inversion of your distinguished correspondents (July 21st), John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter and Jose Saramago with their predictable outrageous attack on Israel and its self-defence.
They speak of "the liquidation of the Palestinian nation", when it has been publicly and proudly proclaimed by Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah, other Jihadis and their fellow travellers that it is Israel that should be "wiped off the face of the earth".
It is of tragic significance that our intellectual "leaders" on the Left should continue to support the genocidal pronouncements by Arab militants, support illegal incursions, kidnappings, justify or overlook any outrage in defence of "the disinherited and crowded poor", always portraying the Palestinians as passive victims of Israeli and US aggression and injustice.
No mention of the violent intimidation of their local populations by Hamas and Hizbullah, no mention of the total unaccountability of these militia to anyone, no mention of the targeting of civilians to spread terror, suicide bombings of buses, the deliberate location of combatants and their vast accumulations of munitions, hidden in basements in residential areas, endangering their local populations whom they claim to defend, no mention of Sharia, no mention of rampant anti-Semitism taught in schools, appearing daily in the Arabic media.
It is a supreme irony that some sections of the Left, by embracing "Islamic resistance", put themselves on the same side as neo-Nazis, totally beyond the pale of Western values. Shameful moral bankruptcy. - Yours, etc,
ROB WEATHERILL, Crosthwaite Park East, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
Madam, - You have given Tom Cooney of the Faculty of Law at UCD space to interpret international law on terrorism (July 18th.)
As I interpret Mr Cooney it appears that the UK government has the right to attack the Republic of Ireland because some IRA activists find refuge here irrespective of whether the Irish government wish to have IRA activists in the State or not.
On this same basis Israel has declared war on Lebanon and brought a country trying to rebuild itself from civil strife and invasion by Israel to its knees. Israel created Hizbullah and now destroys Lebanon's infrastructure and kills hundreds of its civilians because two soldiers are kidnapped.
Until the Faculty of Law at UCD develops an even voice to condemn the ghastly wall, built on Palestinian land, that makes prisoners of most Palestinian citizens, they should keep people like Tom Cooney under wraps. - Yours, etc,
LAURENCE POWER, Temple Manor, Celbridge, Co Kildare.
Madam, - Given the mayhem unleashed by Israel and the ongoing slaughter of innocent children, is it not time that the world community asked the honest and obvious question? Is it possible to sustain a Jewish state in the middle of a Muslim region? - Yours, etc,
JIM O'SULLIVAN, Rathedmond . Sligo.