Sir, – Dr Ronit Lentin's recent article is both passionate and noble ("Deep empathy of Irish for Palestinians is in no way anti-Semitic", Opinion & Analysis, February 4th). However, it's also naive and surprisingly simplistic.
For the record, I am a London-born Jew and a long-term resident of Ireland. I also have family in Israel. I have been a consistent critic of the policies of successive Israeli governments towards the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and in Gaza. Immoral, illegal and shameful are adjectives that are impossible to refute. However, while I too would be unwilling to knowingly purchase goods from the illegal settlements, such boycotts are completely ineffective. To have any kind of economic impact the best course of action is to boycott the banks that fund these settlements, as they are wholly subsidised by the Israeli state. The campaign to ban goods is a noisy sideshow that does much to foment a prejudice against Israelis on a personal basis.
On the question of whether the view of Israel among some in Irish society is borne out of historical anti-Semitism, the answer is sometimes. I cannot help my bewilderment at the obsessive focus of attention on Israel’s human rights abuses when 1.8 million Palestinians live within Israel by choice. And in a world where the abuses of China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Turkey and others against their own citizens are on a much greater scale, the argument that Israel should behave better does not have any credibility. Moreover, it succeeds in demoting the significance of the abuse meted out to the victims of other regimes.
It was of no great surprise to me that, after my own article was published recently in which I reflected on the meaning of Holocaust Memorial Day as the son of a survivor, almost all of the 60 comments focused on Israeli abuse of the Palestinians. Some were measured while others showed thinly veiled anti-Semitism and a total ignorance of the politics of the Middle East. None of the commentators knew of my own sympathy towards the Palestinians. I was being judged because I’m Jewish. Somehow, Israeli bad behaviour disqualifies me from invoking the Holocaust to highlight the importance of safeguarding the rights of the individual.
More than one uncomfortable truth can apply to the same issue. If Dr Lentin has lived in Ireland for 50 years, she surely cannot be blind to this particular attitude. – Yours, etc,
OLIVER SEARS,
Dublin 2.