John Grills (May 31) advocates obtaining a pledge from candidates in today’s election to support the state of Israel if elected. This is one of the favourite methods of gaining control of the lawmakers of a country much as the Israeli lobby has almost complete dominance of the US Congress and foreign policy. The more money voted by Congress for Israel the more is returned to the congressmen and women as “election expenses” by the lobby, the main source of wealth accumulation by these ‘public representatives’.
The Israeli right wing Likud Party through its lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has what John Grills has not, a surfeit of Jewish billionaires who contribute to election candidates who have made the pledge and to the opponents of those who have refused. The lobby for Palestinians, in contrast, depends on people with empathy, not dollars, and is a poor shadow of AIPAC.
Add in the Zionist neocons, appointed to top posts in the government and White House and the Palestinians have no chance of influencing the state. It’s a fact that no critical discussion of Israel and its crimes can take place in US media.
In the UK we have Conservative Friends of Israel with a membership of around 80 per cent of Tory MPs, Labour Friends of Israel and Lib Dem Friends of Israel. Israel’s behaviour, such as the three vicious assaults against Gaza, needs to be atrocious before politicians in the UK will voice any criticism of ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ – one of the main paeans of propaganda by the hasbara. Mr Grills mentions “one of the most intractable problems... the Israel/Palestinian conflict” without elaborating on the decision of the Israeli leadership in 1967 to colonially settle the West Bank and East Jerusalem, contrary to international law and the Geneva Convention. In the subsequent 50 years Israeli leaders have diplomatically supported the ‘two-state solution’ while actively sabotaging every international attempt to bring it about.
The ‘intractable problem’ is the refusal of Israel to obey the law and return to its pre-1967 borders.
EUGENE F PARTE
Belfast BT9
Narrative driving bombing atrocities is incomprehensible
Paris, Nice, Berlin, Brussels, Manchester, Kabul, London and cities throughout the middle east. The narrative driving this brutality is incomprehensible. The idea that murdering innocent children and other innocent people in the name of a god, is not just your divine duty but a one-way ticket to eternal salvation, is beyond comprehension.
For those who believe in God’s greatness, his power and hugeness the creator of all things seen and not, from bugs to humans from star to the universes, the question is why do some of his followers believe he is offended by the diversity he apparently is responsible for?
An oxymoron I believe.
Religious certainty is predicated by faith and demands, obedience, not to challenge the perceived wisdom, ideas, traditions, rituals, texts and the related mythology. When all this is embraced by groups, it gives them a sense of superiority and security.
Religion is a comforting source of certainty for many hundreds of millions of people and it is this myopic certainty of their version of god that allows them to see others as inferior, stupid, to be converted even killed, at best pitied or misguided.
My father lived and died a Hindu and saw his faith as one of many routes to the one creator but the principle that underpinned his beliefs was the concept of Sanatum Dharma.
On a human level this means duty, an instrument of unity, a belief in a universal ‘human hood’. If religion is to mean anything it must be an endeavour which at its core is a duty to respect, serve and support your fellow human being not the pious pursuit of some eternal salvation or some evangelical campaign to grow the club. Religious certainty is also often conflated with the term truth. The idea that one religion possesses the one and only truth has been one of the most seductive and at the same time one of most destructive ideas since the creation of god.
Finally, let me be clear, I do not blame God for the crimes against humanity perpetrated in his name. However, if you take the Hindu principle that “divinity lies within all of us” what these individuals are doing is not just a crime against humanity but I hope I am right to assume, painfully disturbing and offensive to God.
Injustice in societies are not fought by embracing the hegemony of religion. If politics is about ideas and the opportunity to improve the human condition it is this that must be embraced.
SUNEIL SHARMA
Belfast BT5
We live in interesting times
The world experienced ‘the great leap forward’ imposed by Mao Tse Tung during the Cultural Revolution in China. It brought about the deaths of millions at the hands of the Red Guards and widespread famines. He drove hundreds of millions to ‘self sufficiency’ by the force of his ideology. He ended up with a ‘kill all sparrows’ campaign to stop them consuming the meagre harvests, resulting from the massive dislocation of the peasant farmers. He is still regarded as ‘the great helmsman’
Now the world is experiencing ‘the great leap backward’ to be imposed by Madam May, remainer to leaver, welfare cap to whatever the oafs want, ‘the great u-turner’. She will drive 48 per cent of remain voters out from the economic benefits of the EU. She will by the force of her ideology, exit the single market, 500 million of the most sophisticated consumers in the world.
‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ – her very own cultural revolution. To date she is regarded as ‘the Wonder Woman – the great stabiliser’.
The parallels are obvious, but it also looks like she is forgetting her very own sparrows, she’s killing off the farmers, destroyers of national wealth by their outrageous subsidies. And she has impoverished us all by the 20 per cent loss of value in the pound sterling. Bankers and businessmen are watching and waiting in the wings.
As the Chinese would say – we live in interesting times.
FRANK MURRAY
Kinlough, Co Leitrim
Messines remembered
In 1916 my father went ‘over the top’ with the second battalion of the Irish Guards at the Somme to attack the German lines but the battalion was decimated with German machine guns. In 1917 he took part in the third battle of Ypres at Messines but was wounded in action in his left arm while manning a machine gun post.
At Messines the Protestant unionist side and the Catholic nationalists were fighting together with the common purpose of defeating the Germans but in reality they were fighting with cross-purposes of defending the Empire and defeating Home Rule on the Protestant unionist side and with the purpose of defending the freedom of small nations and supporting Home Rule on the nationalist side.
After the war my father returned to Tyrone and an Ireland polarised along sectarian lines. He was a constitutional nationalist all his life but regarded his military service in France as a futility. Sectarianism still exists in Ireland and this national sickness needs radical treatment by the federal reform of the Kingdom’s Constitution.
MICHAEL GILLESPIE
Kilfennan, Co Derry
