Madam, - The acquittal of five people accused of causing unlawful damage to a US military plane at Shannon Airport in February 2003 has serious implications (The Irish Times, July 26th). If the jury did find in favour of the defendants on the basis that this politically-motivated vandalism was an attempt to save lives - "lawful excuse" - than a dangerous precedent may have been set.
France has a long tradition of supplying despotic Arab regimes with conventional weaponry and military expertise, most recently in the case of Saudi Arabia, whose Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz met President Jacques Chirac in Paris last Friday to sign a lucrative "defence co-operation agreement". Saudi Arabia has been cited repeatedly for human rights violations. It is a country where homosexuality is punishable by death, where women are denied the most basic freedoms and petty thieves are liable to have their hands amputated. It is reasonable to assume that some of the material the French will supply to Riyadh will be used to bolster the grip of the ruling royal family at the expense of political prisoners languishing in Saudi jails.
Can I take it then, that the next time a French military jet transits through Dublin airport, I can breach the perimeter fence and attack it with a hammer, enjoying the full protection of Irish law? This action would surely serve to highlight French complicity in Saudi repression, attracting the glare of unwelcome publicity that might contribute to an eventual change of policy from the Elysée Palace; lives could be saved.
I suspect my actions would not, however, win the approval of an Irish jury. Under the new dispensation it would appear that only America and Israel can be held to such exacting standards.
Irish media coverage of the conflagration in the Middle East confirms this. Israel is vilified for defending herself, while America is berated for failing to intervene.
The role of other nations in this tragedy has excited less comment. I am thinking mainly of Iran, a theocracy in which free speech is non-existent and journalists have in the recent past been executed for daring to challenge the mullahs.
Since 1979 Iran has been exporting death and destruction around the world in the name of Islamic revolution, using its proxies - Hizbullah being merely the latest. Iran's rulers have used every conceivable tactic to distract and divert the West while they build a nuclear bomb. On the day Iran was referred to the UN Security Council for refusing to resume negotiations over suspending its nuclear programme, Hizbullah launched its incursion into Israel. Iran's agenda was neatly articulated by Ayatollah Ali Khameni when he spoke a fortnight ago of Israel being "an infectious tumour for the entire Islamic world".
When a frivolous, gullible and biased Irish media elects to ignore the obvious and harp on about Guantánamo Bay and President Bush's atrocious locution, the elephant in the living-room is ignored in favour of the mouse behind the skirting board.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's leader, said last weekend that "Hizbullah is not fighting a battle for Hizbullah, or even for Lebanon. We are now fighting a battle for the Islamic nation". Is anybody in Ireland listening? - Yours, etc,
PHILIP DONNELLY, Lower Hodgestown, Donadea, Naas, Co Kildare.
Madam, - The Government has spent a lot of money sending us questionnaires about active citizenship. This week we had a perfect demonstration of active citizenship from the Dublin jury which found that the Ploughshares Five had a "lawful excuse" for decommissioning a US warplane at Shannon. These truly active citizens have told the government that there is no lawful excuse for the use of Shannon as a stopover to slaughter, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine,the Lebanon, or (eventually) Iran and Syria.
Let us therefore see some active citizenship from the Government itself, by the restoration of a civilian airport to legitimate civil uses. - Yours, etc,
JOHN ARDEN, MARGARETTA D'ARCY, St Bridget's Place Lower, Galway.