Howlin right to chastise Left for anti-Israel talk

Gerard Howlin’s column in yesterday’s Irish Examiner was very well-written and welcome in exposing the hypocrisy of the rent-a-crowd Left (“the habitually protesting Left”). It has astonished me to hear and read the diatribes in Ireland about Israel, from people who have never been anywhere near an indiscriminately fired Hamas rocket.

Islamist terrorists behead people on TV, bomb themselves and countless innocents in shops and crowded streets, fly planes into office buildings, and treat women as inferiors , yet where are the Irish protesters then?

The boycott annoys Howlin, and I am with him all the way. Gordon Darcy proudly informed the nation he was boycotting Israeli goods in his restaurant. I expected more from an Irish rugby international. Israel undoubtedly has faults, but since its inception it has faced hostility from all of its neighbours and is absolutely entitled to defend itself.