Madam, - I thank Sean Gannon (October 13th) for his reply to my letter of the previous day about Israel's nuclear arsenal. His letter is very interesting, in that it does not seek to deny - quite the contrary - the existence of an Israeli nuclear arsenal, but rather, with some extremely specious arguments, to justify it.
This contrasts with the official position of Israel, which will neither confirm nor deny the existence of a nuclear weapons programme. One good man, Mordechai Vananu, spent 18 years in prison for revealing its existence and is still prevented from leaving Israel.
I can agree with Sean Gannon about one point. I am not suggesting some kind of precise ethical equivalence exists between Israel and North Korea. At least in Israel there are some voices raised against the military policies pursued by that state, for instance in its recent, fourth, invasion of Lebanon. Seeding the fields of southern Lebanon for decades to come with baseball-sized bomblets cannot be something with which anyone with a conscience can be comfortable - and there are many Israelis who do not feel it is wise or justifiable. North Korea, by comparison, is a pantomime state, supported only, and somewhat reluctantly, by China. It is a crypto-fascist state based on a leadership cult and military force; its people are impoverished and starving.
I believe that the main reason why Israel did not deploy its nuclear arsenal in 1973 was probably because neither the USSR nor the US was willing to risk such an escalation and both intervened forcefully with their clients.
Be that as it may, the David and Goliath analogy constantly favoured by supporters of Israel is hardly a fair depiction of a region where the disproportionate use of murderous force has been a consistent feature of Israeli policy. Anyone who recognises Israel and wants it to survive - which I do - must surely see that only a change in this policy and a negotiated peace with justice can prevent the emergence of new generations of insurgents and new horrors to come. - Yours, etc,
PIARAS MAC EINRI, Model Farm Road, Cork.