Madam, - Declan Kiberd describes Israel's Lebanese "adventure" as being orchestrated by the US, all the while ignoring the fact that the conflict began after Hizbullah kidnapped Israeli soldiers from Israeli territory and then began firing rockets at the civilian population. He also makes the bold statement that "Israel's survival will depend not on its willingness to provoke the zealots but on its willingness to share space and a sense of history with its Arab neighbours' while ignoring the fact that most of Israel's neighbours at best claim that it has no right to exist or, at worst, that it must be "wiped off the face of the map" as was stated by the Iranian president Ahmadinejad.
Mr Kiberd goes on to talk of the UN's role in the Israeli-Lebanese conflict. How does Mr Kiberd suggest that the UN will implement its decisions towards Lebanon and Israel when all previous resolutions have made no significant difference to the stability in the region and when countries like Iran openly ignore the security council and the IAEA? I wonder if Mr Ahmadinejad would really want to "share space and history" with Israel, and if not what are Mr Kiberd's feelings about that?
He also asks how the traditional values of Israel could be reconciled with policies which mimicked the evil done to Jewish people through history. Is he really comparing a sovereign nation's right to exist to the Nazi extermination of six million people?
While Israel's response in Lebanon has undeniably been heavy handed, their attacks were directed at Hizbullah, not civilians, despite their results.
He speaks of solidarity with the Arab peoples of the Middle East, whom he says are seen as pariahs and outcasts. He is right if he means the average citizen in most Arab nations, who have no democratic freedoms and are ruled by mostly un-elected governments, who suffer laughable human rights and have few prospects of ever changing their situation. ALL the people of the Middle East, Arab and Jew, deserve our support, solidarity and a future free from conflict, but as long as political posturing exists, on both sides, this is a long way off. By the way, he neglects to mention the plight of the Kurds who are the truly dispossessed people of the region, so his Native American analogy would be better used to highlight their situation.
It is far too easy to pick sides, point the finger and say that one of them is to blame. To do so suggests that we have learnt nothing from our own recent history.
The Irish people have a unique insight into the situation in the Middle East, but we seem to be too easily swayed by the uninformed few who present only one side of the argument instead of looking beyond the rhetoric and sound bites and finding out the real story. As with everything in life, there are two sides and the truth is always found somewhere in the middle. Mr Kiberd would be well advised to remember this next time he puts pen to paper. - Yours, etc,
ROBERT BLOCK, Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2.
Madam, - Declan Kiberd writes (August 22nd) that the Arabs in the Middle East are the "New Jews". Apart from being a rhetorical flourish too far, it relies heavily for effect on the Lawrence of Arabia fantasy that Arab unity is some type of political reality. However, replacing fiction with truth would not have oiled the wheels of the rest of the piece's polemic, I presume. - Yours, etc,
JOHN HARPUR, Trim, Co Meath.