Sir, – For a country which produces so many clever people, the Israeli government has been behaving very stupidly. It is winning the battle (undoubtedly) and the intellectual arguments (largely), but it is losing in the court of world opinion (indisputably).
I used to be a strong supporter of Israel, but on the present conflict I ask myself a simple contemporary question: does it pass the “smell test”? And the answer is a resounding no. Its disproportionate response looks wrong, sounds wrong and feels wrong. There is no taste involved, but even my “sixth sense” tells me it is wrong. After John Kerry used the apartheid word a few months ago, I told an Israeli friend I thought his country was heading for the place pre-1992 South Africa occupied. Now I suspect late July 2014 will go down as the Soweto moment. – Yours, etc,
DAVID STEWART,
Ahoghill Road,
Randalstown,
Co Antrim
Sir, – Canon Patrick Comerford has strongly attacked Israel (“Israel denounced by senior Irish cleric”, August 4th), partly based on what he sees “night after night, on television screens and impartial news outlets”.
Since Canon Comerford is a former Irish Times journalist I would have expected him to have a more insightful view of the media's coverage of Gaza. The UN's John Ging told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation last week that Hamas "are firing their rockets into Israel from the vicinity of UN facilities and residential areas. Absolutely."
Why, with so many journalists in Gaza, have none ever bothered to capture even one image of Hamas launching rockets from civilian areas or close to UN schools and camps? The media in Gaza are in effect “embedded” with Hamas. Yet strangely, this is the first conflict where Western journalists never take any photographs or TV footage of the fighters they are embedded with. Why?
Why do journalists spend so much time loitering around Gaza’s hospitals like ghoulish “stage-door Johnnies”? Why do the media film suffering children in these hospitals in an exploitative manner that would not be tolerated in the West? Why do the media blindly accept that every wounded civilian is a victim of Israeli fire and and not Hamas’s misfiring rockets, booby traps or exploding arms dumps? These same journalists fail to report that Hamas uses Gaza’s main hospital, Shifa, as a base. They also fail to point out that the figures they use for Gaza’s dead and wounded are actually supplied by the Hamas-controlled health authority.
Unlike Canon Comerford, I am not convinced that the media are “impartial” when it comes to the world’s only Jewish state. – Yours, etc,
KARL MARTIN,
Bayside Walk,
Dublin 13
Sir, – Capt John Dunne has stated that he hopes the political and economic model that is Israel does not spread to its neighbours as “the undertakers would never be able to keep up”.
He is in for a shock the day he decides to read about what is happening in the countries which border Israel, not to mention the whole Middle East. He might notice that Isis has almost completed the murder and removal of Assyrian Christians from Iraq, one of the oldest sects of Christianity. – Yours, etc,
DERMOT COOPER,
Leighton Road,
Causeway Bay,
Hong Kong
Sir – When 170,000 Muslims are killed by other Muslims, as in Syria, nobody gives a damn. When one percent of that number is killed by Israelis defending their country the “international community” gets bent out of shape. – Yours, etc,
KEITH DAVIES,
South Eagle Rd,
Newtown,
Pennsylvania
Sir, – Your correspondent Niall Ginty (August 4th) tries to argue, ridiculously, that the actions of the Israeli military against the defenceless population of Gaza are part of a defence of Christianity against Islamic fundamentalism.
This, and every other argument offered in favour of what Israel is doing to the imprisoned population in the Gaza ghetto, rings hollow. There is a very simple solution to the problem Israel has with the ineffectual Hamas rockets — give Palestine back to the Palestinians! – Yours, etc,
GERRY MOLLOY,
Collins Avenue,
Whitehall,
Dublin 9