It is telling that on these letters pages Israel’s advocates regularly mirror and thereby demonstrate exactly what is wrong with the actions of that state.

So now that the deal between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is more or less done and dusted, it’s time for the independents to have their days in the limelight.

Your article ‘Defamation laws — Promises must be fulfilled’ (Irish Examiner, Tuesday, May 3) highlights the vital need to maintain a free and unencumbered Press which, together with the Public Accounts Committee, represents the last bastion of democracy in this country.

I have two books on my bookshelf which I have never read. 

I try hard to get on with life and ignore the horrors in Palestine, but sometimes a piece of news literally makes me weep. Imagine if this had happened in Belfast during the Troubles.

The LÉ Roisín has set off on a humanitarian mission to the Mediterranean. I wish the crew well in their assignment, and a safe return home.

Dervla Murphy (Viewpoints, 30 April) writes that “Livingstone may not be everyone’s pin-up boy but he does know his history” and quotes various facts about negotiations between the Nazis and the German Zionist organisation in 1933.

The explosive cross-ideological responses to Ken Livingstone’s ludicrous remarks about historical Zionism, Hitler, and National Socialism encapsulate the vicious dichotomy at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict.