Letters to the Editor: How long can we let Israel’s brutality carry on?
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How long can we pretend to accept the obscenities we are hearing from the current Israeli government about their actions in Gaza and the West Bank?
In Gaza, we are looking at genocide and ethnic cleansing, and pretending, as we always do, that we do not have enough proof to act. Yet, we have to watch its results every day. It is something amazing coming from a Jewish state.
Gaza is not a strip but a ghetto where the people cannot leave, harassed from one end to another and back again. Constantly bombed, shelled and deprived of food, medicine, and care.
The Israeli government and its allies have offered two defences only: the right to defend themselves and a charge of antisemitism.
On the first of these, when the opportunity existed, they did no such thing. Despite endless warnings from allied intelligence services, they did nothing. When the attack came, they had no military units within reach, nor did they warn their own local citizens, not even the youngsters at the festival. They ignored their own border guardians, who warned them repeatedly.
The antisemitic allegation will need a separate letter.
Benjamin Netanyahu himself has a very tenuous, if any, relationship with truth. He needs a war to stay out of court. As everyone talks of peace getting close, he thinks up new conditions. When that doesn’t work, he starts a new war.
What he is doing in Gaza and the West Bank does not count as defending Israel.
We do have an obligation to continue defending Israel but not in our current fashion. Our long-term wish has to be peace and friendship between Israel and its neighbours. Difficult, but not impossible, absent Israel’s insane cabinet.
Frank Kennan, Mountrath, Co Laois
Get children back on the ‘write track’
Reports are telling us that children’s handwriting is now so bad that it has been suggested in Britain that teenagers need lessons in secondary school to improve parents’ ability to read what their children are writing.
It’s my assertion that this decline in handwriting standards is down to the fact that so much of the writing that kids do today is now carried out on digital devices such as smartphones and tablets and that it’s all typing and texting.
The popularisation of tech is definitely affecting the way that we communicate, especially with our handwriting.
I think all of these changes have transmogrified the landscape apropos handwriting.
However, I do think that handwriting is an art form and, with any art form, it requires practice. I believe that we must strive in encouraging our young people to get back to writing in longhand or the cursive writing that we were taught as children in school.
Let’s inspire our children to find people to write letters to. It’s my contention that if we teach young children the art and craft of letter writing, not just as a tool of communication but also as a way to express themselves and their individuality, they will find this art fun. One can even add to the joy of letter writing with coloured pens too.
Let’s not forget that letter writing is something that we did as kids when we might have been away from home. Those were the times when we wrote home, or when our friends were away, we would write to them too.
I really do think that writing is a lovely idea. Sadly , it would be true to say that it’s a dying art. This is why we should try to preserve it.
John O’Brien, Clonmel, Co Tipperary
A journalist you could really trust
Regarding the death of David Davin-Power.
He always made us feel like he had spent the hours and minutes before broadcast gathering information and making notes in a Columbo-style frenzy of improvisation and enquiry.
He always made us feel like we were looking over his shoulder and getting first sight of his notes. That’s a skill, a trait, a habit, and a talent. Few ordinary people have it.
He never hyper-ventilated but the hair was always slightly rebellious and the collar was often loose. But when he looked into the camera, you knew what he was imparting was the product of serious journalistic endeavour. The facts were never loose. And the big thing always was: when David Davin-Power was telling us something, we knew that it was true, accurate, and well thought out.
RTÉ. There’s a reason people in this country have high regard for the people who bring us the news in that organisation.
And thankfully we have superb journalists across the board in many media organisations in this wee country.
Witness the state of the media in America. And witness the state of their public discourse.
Journalism. For my money, the most important profession there is in this awful “truthy” and fact-free dissembling and disconcerting time.
Michael Deasy, Bandon
We must act now to stop Netanyahu
Sheila O’Riordan’s letter on the killing of the teenage son of the paediatric head of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza by the Israeli military is yet another heartbreaking account of the brutality of the Benjamin Netanyahu-led government that continues to defy all reason and humanity (Letters, Inhumane Israel, October 31).
As I write, reports are also emerging of a rocket attack on the Irish peacekeepers’ Camp Shamrock base in southern Lebanon.
Taoiseach Simon Harris said on Tuesday, ahead of dissolving the Dáil, that “the most important thing, I would imagine, before one knocks on a door and asks for a vote is to make sure we’ve passed the USC cut that will benefit that household behind the door”.
Surely the most important thing in this general election campaign is who is going to stand up for the thousands of innocent Arabic children and civilians who are being systematically exterminated by the Israeli military.
What will it take, the deaths of Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon, God forbid, before our wishy-washy leaders actually do something instead of issuing thoughts and prayers through saccharine press statements? Everything else pales into insignificance.
Tom McElligott, Listowel, Co Kerry
Ditch road bollards
A visitor mentioned the proliferation of plastic wands/bollards in our city during the jazz fest to me. Some are broken, some missing, some bent but all are hideous polluters and degraders of our environment. Plastic bollards will never win out against the combustion engine but, despite this, they are replaced regularly, usually by ones of a different colour.
On Pope’s Quay, in one part, motorists have to bend or break a wand in order to exit from the driver’s side. A concrete kerb exists already but it had to be topped up with plastic wands.
There is no logic, no consistency, no coordination, no practical function, and no aesthetic. Cycle lanes are great but not at the cost of sinking our lovely city under a sea of hideous plastic bollards.
James Murphy, Lee Road, Cork
Try a new name
With an eagle on the flag, it is easy to see why Connacht Rugby’s A team are called the Eagles in the forthcoming Provincial ‘A’ Championship. But the other three teams in the Interpros have very prosaic names.
With a stag on the rugby emblem (and the Munster three crowns flying over the Martello tower where Stately plump Buck Mulligan resided), why not call the Munster team “the Bucks”? With the Irish for Leinster being Laighean, its A team could be called “the Cubs”. Finally, with a nod to the Táin Bó Cúailgne, Ulster’s could be called “the Bullocks”. Such names are far more engaging than a mere ‘A’.
Pascal Ó Deasmhumhnaigh, Iniscorthaidh, Co Loch gCarman