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.

Hamas fire rockets from school buildings, and from other sensitive places, to invite retaliation to enable them to give the media outlet, Al Jazeera, and via them the world, propaganda photographs of the ensuing dead innocents.

No doubt, it is a hugely complex problem in Israel and the Middle East generally, but I would hope that a little balance could be shown in Ireland, but it seems to be too much to expect that from “the habitually protesting Left and their lesser-spotted cousin, the caring Liberal”. Probably not a chance. Well-written Gerard Howlin — it’s great to see sanity so well-presented!

Dermot Walsh

Woolhara Park

Douglas Road

Cork