I have to take issue with Mr Shaw when he states that Palestinians living in Israel have the same rights as Jews. This is a nonsense – even in cities like Lod there is a dividing wall between Palestinians, or Israeli Arabs as Israelis like to call them, thus denying them the right to define themselves.
More than 200 ‘Israeli Palestinians’ have been murdered in the last year and many homes cleared and demolished. The Bedouins have had their village demolished and land in the Negev Desert seized. There are certain roads and streets they are forbidden to walk on and the ability to get planning permission to build is impossible. So much for equality.
I wonder if Mr Shaw would consider it genocide if 14,000 Jews were killed and two million displaced. Israel is a terrorist state and the Zionist project from the beginning was to take over all of Palestine “from the river to the sea”, as expressed by Ben Gurion and Begin among others. The attacks on Christian churches and mosques supports the fact that it is a state for Jews and Jews alone.
Why is the term antisemitic monopolized when it could be applied to Palestinian Druze and others, and indeed is a term invented only two centuries ago. Israel is not made up solely of Holocaust survivors but a high percentage of Africans and adventurers from Europe and the US in a colonial settlement. In the last 20 years, 180,000 Americans converted to Judaism. Do they become semitic right away?
Finally, one thing to note: in international law the excuse of “the right to defend itself”, as Israel claims, cannot be claimed as an occupier.
Israel is a terrorist state waging war against a people in the West Bank and Gaza in genocide and ethic cleansing, just as they did in 1948 to create Israel.
Francis Rice
Belfast BT11
Ukrainian troops should not be training in Ireland
A REPORT in The Journal on November 26 2023 reveals that “a group of Ukrainian military officers have been training in Cork this week as part of a Nato partner country initiative”. Ukraine has been engaged in a war with Russia since February 24 2022 and is therefore a belligerent in this war. Successive Irish governments have declared Ireland to be a neutral state since 1939. Article 11 of the Hague Convention (V) 1907 on Neutrality states that: “A neutral power which receives on its territory troops belonging to the belligerent armies shall intern them, as far as possible, at a distance from the theatre of war.”
The Hague convention on neutrality is recognised as being customary international law and is therefore applicable to all states.
Ireland is in breach of international laws on neutrality by allowing Ukrainian soldiers to be on Irish territory and to be involved in training and assessment at Lynch Camp in Kilworth, Co Cork.
Several independent polls have found that a large majority of the Irish people strongly support the continuation of Irish neutrality. Therefore, the Irish government is also acting against the wishes of the Irish people.
Nato wars of aggression against Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq contravened the UN Charter and left these countries in chaos, so Nato has illegally usurped the role of the UN. The government’s stated intention to remove the Triple Lock, which necessitates UN approval for more that 12 Irish Defence Forces members service overseas, is a further example of the abandonment of Irish neutrality and the abandonment of our commitment to ‘rules based international order’.
Edward Horgan
Castletroy, Co Limerick
Ideological pipe dream
Mr O’Fiach – ‘It’s clear DUP is wrong footing political parties’ (November 21) – believes the talks between the British Secretary of State and the DUP is evidence that other political parties are being sidelined. How the boycott by the DUP has continued so long without obvious consequences could lead to such a view.
My own observation is that Mr Heaton-Harris and Mr Donaldson have been involved in a sort of verbal two step. It goes as follows:
Mr Heaton-Harris and Mr Donaldson go into private sessions. They emerge with Mr Heaton-Harris telling the media that ‘good progress’ has been made. Mr Donaldson and the DUP are complicit in this, despite his and their protestations that they are not. Worse though is how Mr Donaldson and the DUP have apparently succeeded in allowing serious debate in unionism and loyalism about health, education (so important) and social deprivation in the economy to be relegated in favour of debates on the shapeless notions of ‘Britishness’.
So no, I do not think Mr Donaldson and the DUP have gotten one up on other parties. What they have done is create a reductionist agenda wherein the social, educational and economic plight of an electorate is bypassed by an ideological pipe dream in the ascendant.
Manus McDaid
Derry City
Those who govern must be united in protecting our ethnicity and cultures
DESPITE the violent thuggery unfairly visited on Dublin city centre, many concerned people worry that a culture clash is impending. Anyone suggesting such a scenario is labelled a racist or worse by a somnambulant government, religiously following the European Union dogma of uncontrolled immigration.
Sinn Féin, vying to form the next government, simply blame Minister for Justice Helen McEntee and the Garda Commissioner, neatly ignoring the sad fact that the number of people already homeless has surpassed 13,000.
A salient fact which the sleepwalking government might consider: respected economist Tino Sanandaji forecasts that within a generation, Swedes will be in a minority in all Swedish cities. Will the populations of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Derry wish to be the same? Surely those who govern are united in protecting our ethnicity and different cultures whatever their hue. Then the chairperson of the Irish Muslim Council can tell commuters that it is once again safe to visit Dublin city centre.
Wilson Burgess
Derry City
