The Israeli army’s deputy chief of staff has drawn a rebuke from Israeli ministers for comparing pre-Holocaust Germany to trends in Israel today.

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.

Betty Purcell (Irish Examiner, November 2) makes some grossly inaccurate accusations against Israel and calls for a boycott against the Jewish State.

A Palestinian witness has disputed the Israeli army’s account of a fatal shooting in the West Bank. Israel’s military said a Palestinian woman was shot as she attempted to stab a soldier at a checkpoint.

In the past, Japan has acquiesced to terrorist demands. But recent threats by Islamic State jihadists have exposed Japan’s lack of options, writes Yuriko Koike

Several rockets have struck the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and the Israeli military says it has responded with artillery fire.

In yet another spiteful act, Israel has delayed the transfer of €104m in monthly taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinians.

Dr Kevin McCarthy’s [Irish Examiner, January 2] defence of Israeli policies cannot go unchallenged. 

A Palestinian has thrown acid at a Jewish family in the West Bank, after which a passer-by shot at the man and wounded him, the Israeli army said.

While Dr Kevin McCarthy (Letters, November 24 ) may well be correct that “Israel will respond to synagogue attack”, one aspect is not widely known.

Israeli special forces stormed a West Bank hideout early yesterday and killed two Palestinians suspected of the June abduction and slaying of three Israeli teenagers.

I can sympathise with the sentiments of Isaac Barr, of Michigan, with regard to living in Haifa as he did in 1948 as a 14-year-old (Irish Examiner, Wednesday, September 10).

A Palestinian negotiator says his team will quit Egyptian-brokered talks on ending the Gaza war unless Israeli negotiators return to Cairo.

At least thirteen people have been killed in a tank shell attack on a United Nations school in Gaza, where hundreds of Palestinians had taken refuge from Israeli attacks.

Israeli aircraft have struck 30 houses in the Gaza Strip, killing a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group and two of his sons.

Israel launched a large-scale ground offensive in the Gaza Strip yesterday, escalating a 10-day military operation to try to destroy Hamas’ weapons arsenal, rocket-firing abilities, and tunnels under the Palestinian territory’s border with Israel.

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a five-hour United Nations-brokered “humanitarian” pause to their nine-day battle, offering the most encouraging sign yet that the fierce fighting could come to an end.

There has been much discussion about the refusal of Ashers Bakery to bake a cake that would have a slogan supporting gay marriage.

The Israeli army has re-arrested 51 former Palestinian prisoners in a furious search for three missing teenagers believed to have been abducted in the West Bank.

Israeli warplanes today struck a target south of the Lebanese capital Beirut.

Israel is to pay university students to post supportive messages on social media networks without identifying their government backing.

The airport in Israel’s Red Sea resort of Eilat has been closed on orders of the military.

Iran and Russia have joined the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in condemning a rare Israeli air strike on Syria.

I refer to Mr Paul Farrell’s recent letter on the recent findings of the Israeli court.

The Israeli army has closed the West Bank border for the first two days of the Passover holiday, which begins at sundown.

THE websites of Israel’s army and intelligence services were down yesterday, two days after a hacker group appeared to threaten the Jewish state over its interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla.

Bereaved families of three Irish soldiers killed by a landmine in Lebanon 22 years ago said they have finally been vindicated.

Egypt today permanently opened the Gaza Strip’s main gateway to the outside world, bringing long-awaited relief to the territory’s Palestinian population and a significant achievement for the area’s ruling Hamas militant group.

I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Dignity

PALESTINIAN president Mahmoud Abbas described as “abominable” a weekend stabbing attack which killed five Israelis, including a baby, in their beds in a West Bank settlement.

The tree at the centre of deadly clashes along the Lebanon-Israel border was in Israeli territory, the UN peacekeeping force said today.

A coalition of pro-Palestinian groups said today it plans to send a second aid flotilla to Gaza, dismissing Israel's promise to ease its blockade as not bold enough and defying Israeli warnings against any new sea-based activist operation.

British peace activists today threatened legal action to force an international inquiry into Israel’s storming of an aid flotilla headed for the Gaza Strip.

RACHEL Corrie was 10 years old in 1990 when she made this speech: “I’m here for other children. I’m here because I care. I’m here because children everywhere are suffering and because 40,000 people die each day from hunger.

A flotilla of ships carrying tons of supplies for the Gaza Strip will set sail for the blockaded territory today, the organiser said.

Comedian Frankie Boyle has written an open letter slamming the BBC governing body’s “cowardly rebuke” of his jokes about Palestine.

Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the military to allow Palestinians to travel on the part of a major highway that runs through the West Bank, handing Palestinians their biggest victory yet against Israel’s practice of reserving some roads for Jews.

The Israeli army says its soldiers mistakenly shot and wounded an Egyptian policeman along the border between the two countries today.

Israel’s military used reckless force in Gaza earlier this year, resulting in needless deaths and damage, a group of former Israeli soldiers said in a report today.

A VETERAN UN war crimes investigator acknowledged his probe of possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas – which included interviewing dozens of victims and poring through the files of human rights groups – is unlikely to lead to prosecutions.

An increasingly disturbing picture of the Israeli army’s conduct in the Gaza war has emerged as more troops described wanton vandalism to Palestinian homes, humiliation of civilians and loose rules of engagement that resulted in unnecessary deaths.

THE choice of former US senator George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East shows that US President Barack Obama is serious about changing the direction of US policy there, experts say.