Letters to the Editor: Third World War lurks in the Middle East
Beirut, Ammar/ap Airstrike Israeli Rises From Dahiyeh, Smoke Picture: In Hassan Photo Of An Lebanon The Site
I wish to refer to Fachtna O’Raftery’s letter in your publication of October 5, regarding an article penned by Dorcha Lee recently in his assessment of the powder keg which is now the Middle East.
Dorcha Lee and I studied together in the cadet school in the early 60s, were commissioned together and are occasionally in contact regarding matters military and indeed Irish security with the emerging threats from the east to our country’s borders of land, sea and air, and our county’s apparent lack of responsibility and cohesive planning for securing the fibre optic cables going east/west in the Atlantic, in our nation’s territorial waters.
Today even we read of millions of euro being returned to the exchequer by the secretary of the Department of Defence and Minister Micheál Martin.
I have to agree with the case put forward by Fachtna O’Raferty.
Having spent three years of my military career in the Middle East, I resent the fact that in Lebanon alone, 47 Irish soldiers lost their lives in the cause of peace.
The vast majority of these needless deaths I will lay at the feet of the State of Israel and their ruthless proxies of the late Saad Haddad’s South Lebanese Army, who were recruited, trained, armed, paid and controlled by the Israeli Defence Forces.
Following one such tragic event, I presided over an UN created Court of Inquiry in 1987 into the brutal murder of an Irish Corporal from the Western Command, who was deliberately murdered as he performed his duty at the entrance to his Camp in Brashit, South Lebanon, by the Israeli Defence Forces and their proxies.
The UN Court of Inquiry found the State of Israel guilty of premeditated murder of the Irish UN Peacekeeper, who left a young wife and young children, deprived of a wonderful Irish soldier and father for life.
I have written in the past about the expansionist policy of the State of Israel.
Israel is now twice the land mass that was awarded to it by the League of Nations in 1947 (to become the United Nations a few years later).
Nobody begrudged the Jews a homeland after their slaughter in the gas chambers of the Hitlerite regime, and welcomed stability in the Middle East.
However, nothing can condone or justify the brutality of the State of Israel, for the appalling slaughter of the innocents in Gaza and now in Lebanon, whose people have suffered so much. Similarly, I condemn unreservedly Hamas and Hezbollah.
I say to Israel... hand back the lands stolen from the Palestinian people, and from those forever suffering in the West Bank of the Jordan River.
Give the Palestinians their statehood, and live in peace with your neighbours.
The Third World War is lurking close by.
The first proposal for the two-state solution, which is/was a separate Jewish and Arab state, was made by the British Peer Commission report in 1937.
It is long overdue for both Palestinians and Israelis to return to this proposal and adopt it.
To those in Ireland and around the world who side with the terrorist organisations in Southern Lebanon, Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen, what would your position be on the Israeli/terrorist war if it could be clearly shown that all three of these organisations have in their manifesto and ideology, the removal of the State of Israeli from the face of the earth and the killing of Jews worldwide?
Would your position change?
Israel is now fighting a war on three fronts.
It must stop and stop immediately,
Otherwise, the planet is possibly entering a Third World War.
Suzanne Harrington suggests that we “teach critical thinking and digital media literacy at school, bake it into the curriculum from day one; teach kids how to spot fake news, mad lies, AI memes of six-fingered humans presented as real”.
But how can we do this in an education system dominated by religion?
Our children are currently taught to accept as fact outlandish stories based on nothing more than blind faith.
Perhaps it is we adults who need to learn critical thinking before we attempt to teach it.
Recently the American Chamber of Commerce flagged serious concerns raised by US multinationals operating in Ireland, regarding the parlous state of the energy and water infrastructure.
The Chamber was also highly critical of the National Planning Framework, as it does not address the needs of the multinationals, as well as the paucity of ambition reflected in the framework document, relating to in particular energy and water infrastructure upgrades.
Depending on renewables and piping water from the Shannon to Dublin, will not in the short term resolve the urgency of delivering a critical infrastructure, to satisfy the utility needs/demands of multinational companies operating in Ireland into the future.
Unless the government acts in a positive and responsive manner, to address these infrastructure shortcomings, Ireland’s competitiveness to further attract foreign direct investment, as well as its economic wellbeing, is at serious risk.
Having marked a full year since the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on Israel and the resulting carnage rained down by the Jewish state on over 40,000 Palestinians, it was fitting that the team behind the Indie Cork Film Festival would screen a joint Palestinian/Israeli documentary called on opening day at the Arc Gate cinema on Sunday last.
tells the story of a young Palestinian activist named Basel Adra from Masafer Yatta in the West Bank who has been fighting his community’s mass expulsion by the Israeli government’s occupation since childhood.
Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta as the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) destroy the homes of families with huge diggers and earth-moving machinery in order to provide the area with a “military training ground”.
He is friends with Yuval, an Israeli journalist of the same age as they witness the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank.
The film, which has won over 16 awards at international festivals this year, is a harrowing depiction of the cruelty and psychological warfare that Israel carries out towards their neighbours on a constant basis.
One particular shocking scene shows a cement truck unloading its contents into a water well used by Palestinians for themselves and their animals as newly arrived “settlers” stand around smirking at their Arab neighbours.
was filmed between 2019 and October 2023 in an ordinary and impoverished part of the West Bank.
Its people are stoic and say they will never surrender what is rightfully theirs to an apartheid state intent on driving them from their lands.
It is essential viewing for anyone who wants to see what it is really like for innocent families to live under constant fear from an Israeli dictatorship.
One would fear the danger of Ireland becoming top-heavy with ministerial departments. Ostensibly, proposals were recently posited for a new Department of Infrastructure within government.
I contend that the last thing we now need is a new ministerial department.
Political skills are critically important for a minister.
However, I contend that they aren’t the only skills required to be an effective minister.
I believe that our ministers need good governance skills too.
Such skills don’t arise naturally, as it’s my assertion that ministers have to be taught such expertise.
It seems to me that many of our ministers are not trained in these skills.
As opposed to the creation of a new state department, one senses that such strategic ministerial training, would be a far more viable option in tackling the challenges which this country is now having to face.