Sir, – Eamonn McCann's latest attack on Israel ("Everyone is an anti-Semite for Israel's ultra-Zionists", Opinion, February 6th) conveniently ignores the fact Israel is the only UN member that Iran has threatened with annihilation.
Are Israelis right to detect anti-Semitism at work when they are uniquely singled out for criticism? Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister made this point in a speech to the Knesset on January 20th: “Of course, criticism of Israeli government policy is not in and of itself necessarily anti-Semitic. But what else can we call criticism that selectively condemns only the Jewish state and effectively denies its right to defend itself while systematically ignoring – or excusing – the violence and oppression all around it?”
What are we to make of the fact that in recent months McCann has written three entire columns criticising Israel or Israelis in the strongest terms? I don’t recall a single one in a similar vein about North Korea. He devoted one column to Saudi Arabia and his few references to Iran seem quite muted in comparison to those about the world’s only Jewish state, a country the size of Wales.
Why does he take at face value statements by Iran? This is a country long-practised in the Shia doctrine of taqiyya, a form of dissimulation not unlike the "mental reservation" so often deployed in the past by the princes of the Roman Catholic Church. Iran supports Bashar al-Assad and arms and finances Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran stones women to death and hangs sexually abused girls like Atefah Sahaaleh, dissidents and homosexuals from construction cranes so that they slowly choke to death. This continues under the so-called "moderate" President Hassan Rouhani. – Yours, etc,
KARL MARTIN,
Bayside Walk,
Bayside,
Dublin 13.