Letters to the Editor: Time to heed Samia al-Atrash's words about the horrors in Rafah
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Well done for publishing the heartbreaking testimony of Samia al-Atrash on your front page — ‘I whispered in her tiny ear, asking her to tell my sister, my mother, I love them’ ( , June 18).
It is hugely important that the voices of those enduring the horror in Gaza are heard and amplified. Nobody could fail to be touched by Samia’s words. She makes clear the horrifying impact the Israeli attack is having on ordinary families across the Palestinian enclave.
What is happening to the civilian population in that tiny area is simply unconscionable. The death toll — many, many thousands — includes so many children like little two-year-old Massah and four-year-old Lina. It is outrageous that the so-called “international community” has not intervened in an effective manner to stop the killing.
The EU, US and other states in the “global north” were quick to bring in economic and political sanctions against Russia and Iran, but there is still no sign of any meaningful sanctions against the rogue state of Israel, despite repeated breaches of international humanitarian law.
The Government of Ireland has recognised the state of Palestine, a useful symbolic gesture, but this is nowhere near enough. Ireland needs to move beyond symbolism to practical action against Israel, such as enacting the Occupied Territories Bill. How many more Massahs and Linas must die before sanctions are brought against Israel?
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I wish to thank the for publishing Samia al-Atrash’s conversation with Colin Sheridan.
Samia tells us: “This is what happens daily under the Israelis. And the silence of the world encourages it.”
By publishing this moving and powerful document you have taken a step towards breaking that silence.
Mick Clifford’s eulogy for the European Parliament careers of Mick Wallace and Clare Daly is most interesting for what it doesn’t say — ‘Daly and Wallace crashed out due to their weird reinterpretation of peace’ (Irish Examiner, June 14).
Acknowledging that the pair had been brave and barrier-breaking TDs, the column says things got ‘weird’ in Brussels.
Clifford doesn’t say, however, that they defended the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or supported Assad; that’s presumably because, being a proper journalist, he looked into these common allegations and found them to be untrue.
Instead, he turns to the mushier accusation that they ‘gave the impression’ of being soft on some foreign regimes, and were popular on Russian and Chinese TV.
Assuming the latter to be true (I imagine it’s been somewhat exaggerated), it’s hardly surprising or unusual that dissidents in one regime are honoured in another: it happens all the time on both sides.
Clifford’s one specific instance of something Daly said — that the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighurs is not a genocide — is followed by a quote from Amnesty International, which (as Clifford doesn’t point out) has also not called the treatment of Uighurs a genocide.
Can we try one more time to review the record, without the propaganda?
It seems obvious to me that
these two barrier-breakers got to Europe and — just as they had done with women’s rights and Garda corruption in the Dáil — looked for the hardest fights, then fought them.
On EU militarisation, on Nato aggression, on Palestine, they set about learning all they could, even when that meant talking to someone’s idea of official enemies; then, defying the guardrails of Brussels groupthink, they shared what they found.
You don’t have to agree with what they said; but anyone who thinks they were ‘kneejerk’ wasn’t listening to the level of detail with which they dug into the issues they commented upon.
Up to 2019, in Dublin’s reasonably liberal democracy, they were seen as a healthy corrective. Since then, in the EU’s sham democracy, the masters of war had other ideas.
That’s the biggest thing left unsaid in Clifford’s retrospective: Wallace and Daly were subjected to a sustained campaign to ‘give the impression’ that they were, at best, embarrassingly out of line.
Given that campaign, we should say fair play to them for the five hard years they put in; and for coming so close, in election fields that had novel fractures and challenges, to winning another five.
Ireland, like Germany, is refusing to consider a small proportion of nuclear energy as a reliable support for increasing levels of unreliable renewable energy.
This refusal to remove our ban on generation of a small proportion of electricity by nuclear energy, is as determined as Germany’s continued phasing out of a large proportion of their existing nuclear power; both countries driven by outdated public concerns.
The infrastructure required for large-scale production of wind and solar is behind schedule in Ireland, as it is in Germany, due to bureaucratic delays and the tendency of citizens to approve of renewable energy projects but “not in my backyard”.
Though there is progress in the deployment of renewable energy production facilities and infrastructure, it is nowhere near fast enough in either country.
What has Denmark ever done for us? A country that has given the world wind turbines, standardised shipping containers, and Lego has also given us the bird capturing Larsen trap. Invented in the 1950s by a Danish gamekeeper, the Larsen trap is used to capture alive members of the Corvidae family which includes magpies, rooks, etc, as a ‘pest control measure’ by gun club members, gamekeepers, and anti-wildlife landowners.
The Larsen trap comes in many forms but its profile is based on a wire mesh square or a circular structure.
It works by using a call-bird, a previously caught magpie or crow, which is kept alive in the special decoy compartment of the trap.
Uncaught territory holders think a single call-bird is an intruder and will try to drive it away.
They fly down on to the trap, fall through a collapsing floor and find themselves trapped too.
Captured birds, before being brutally killed, face the stress and fear of cage confinement.
Some captured birds will suffer thirst, hunger, and starvation; others will sustain broken beaks and head wounds from futile attempts to smash their way to freedom.
In Ireland, legal cover is given to the use of the Larsen trap subject to compliance with the Wildlife Acts (Approved Traps, Snares and Nets) Regulations 2003, and Section 35(5) of the Wildlife Acts.
Given the secretive nature of pest control activity, it is impossible to know if Larsen trap usage meets the legal requirements of bird welfare.
In addition, Larsen traps are indiscriminate and often trap non-target species such as cats, birds of prey and foxes.
The Larsen trap has been banned in many countries including Denmark.
In Ireland, a recent appeal has been made to Malcolm Noonan, the heritage minister, to ban the Larsen trap as it has no role in bird conservation and only acts as a mechanism for those with a detestation of Corvidae family members to give vent to their rage.
In a slogan rewording of another famous Dutch export, we can say with authority; the Larsen trap is probably the cruellest bird trap in the world.