Madam, - I see the UN has passed another toothless resolution, this time calling on the Israelis to stop and reverse the security barrier being built on confiscated Palestinian land.
The US voted against the resolution while the EU engaged in a word game before voting in favour: the word "illegal" had to be replaced by "in contradiction to relevant provisions of international law". Is there nobody in public life prepared to stand up and state the obvious a that the wall is simply "wrong"?
The barrier snakes its way through the West Bank, cutting off farmers from their crops, children from their schools and family members from each other.
Water lines are being cut and thousands of acres of fertile land razed in the name of Israeli security.
Maybe a physical barrier will stop most of the suicide bombers today, but a billion dollar piece of infrastructure just entrenches the Palestinians' sense of hopelessness.
Arabs don't blow themselves up in Jewish cafés to gain access to 72 virgins on the other side. They do it because they have nothing now and no hope of a better life.
Jews live with the terrible knowledge that many of their neighbours want to annihilate them and drive them into the sea. They are probably right when they say that outsiders don't really understand what they are living with.
But their new wall will turn middle-of-the-road Palestinians into an almost-refugee class, breeding another generation of hopeless humans ready to pole-vault over the barrier and perpetuate the butchery. Yours, etc.,
ROBERT DUFFY,
Woodshed,
Hacketstown,
Co Carlow.
... ...
Madam, - A disagreement with the policy of Israel towards the Palestinians does not make one an anti-Semite, just as criticism of US policy in the Middle East does not make one anti-American.
No doubt there are people who do hide behind the facade of promoting human rights for the Palestinians to promote their anti-Semitism, but I feel they are in the minority.
The suicide bombings in Israel are an abhorrence, as is the imprisonment of the Palestinian community in the West Bank behind a large wall.
What is at stake in the Middle East, in the US and also in this country is real freedom and long may journalists/commentators such as Fisk, Pilger and Chomsky cut through the contrived media to tell the stories as they are. - Yours, etc.,
BARRY WALSH,
Blackrock,
Cork.