Madam, - When John Kelly criticises "the Jewish lobby", does he simply mean "the Israel lobby", as Profs Mearsheimer and Walt put it? Or better still, does he simply mean the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)?
AIPAC is undoubtedly one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington and deserves its criticism - in my view it has served neither country in its name well. But to call it a "Jewish" lobby is problematic. It is a coalition of Jews and non-Jews who support a certain American policy towards Israel and the Middle East (one that many, if not most, American Jews do not). For simple demographic reasons, the majority of its supporters are non-Jews, many belonging to fiercely pro-Israel evangelical Christian churches. It has always had closer ties with the Republican Party than the Democrats, even though American Jews are one of the most reliable (if small) Democratic voting blocs.
As an American Jew, I see no sense in which AIPAC is "my" lobby. It doesn't represent me, and it doesn't advocate on my behalf. Other lobbying groups are more accurately described as "Jewish"; each Jewish denomination has a lobbying arm, and Jews often work in inter-faith lobbying efforts - for example, to stop torture or human trafficking or address poverty at home and abroad. There are also other lobbying groups which, while much smaller than AIPAC, present other views on Israel policy in Washington, such as the New Israel Fund and the American arms of Rabbis for Human Rights and Peace Now.
AIPAC (or even "the Israel lobby") is a fair target for criticism in a democratic society. But "the Jewish lobby" is too amorphous, too close to old accusations of a shadowy cabal of Jewy-Jew-Jews who puppeteer the world's governments and banks, cackling all the while. Invoking that spectre has a terrible history and does nothing to address the real suffering on the ground in Israel and Palestine. I'm sure that wasn't Mr Kelly's intent. - Yours, etc,
JOSHUA EDELMAN, Dublin 1.
Madam, - I found Ruairi Quinn's reasoning (January 8th) totally unacceptable. I have always recognised the holocaust as a shameful chapter in the history of Europe. While we rightly expect Europeans to feel guilty, we Palestinians, the victims of Israel's illegal occupation, do not believe that Europe can expiate its guilt by covering up, or more usually ignoring, Israeli atrocities at our expense. Such an approach is perceived in the region as complicity, and feeds radicalism and anti-Western sentiment.
Bearing in mind that in 1948, the year of the Palestinian Nakbah (catastrophe) the Israelis perpetrated a blatant ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians by wiping off the map more than 400 Palestinian villages and expelling their indigenous inhabitants. In this context I would like to remind Mr Quinn and your readers that this Palestinian Nakbah was never a frozen moment in history, but is an ongoing process.
Early last year a group of German bishops visited the Holy Land. During their visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial site in Jerusalem, one of them remarked: "This morning we saw pictures of the Warsaw ghetto at Yad vashenm and this evening we are going to the Ramallah Ghetto. . .It's infuriating. Israel has the right to exist but this right cannot be realised in such a brutal manner" (The Irish Times, March 8th, 2007).
Finally, I would like to call on all those in the West who cannot distinguish between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israeli atrocities to acknowledge that failure of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations will lead to the end of the state of Israel (morally and demographically). It is thus incumbent on them to support such negotiations rather than cater to Israel's belief that it is above all man-made laws. - Yours, etc,
Ambassador HIKMAT AJJURI, General delegation of Palestine, Dublin.