Morally perverse to compare Gaza to the Nazis’ systematic killing of the Jews

Ted O’Keeffe (Letters, 3rd October) says that the war in Gaza, in July and August this year, was a bigger world problem than ISIS or ebola.

This claim perfectly encapsulates the mentality of Israel-haters everywhere: complete divorce from reality, and morbid fixation on demonising the only Jewish country in the world.

Mr. O’Keeffe draws a clear analogy between the Holocaust and Israel’s actions in Gaza. It is morally perverse to equate the Nazis systematic murder of six million Jews with a brief military operation of self-defence against a terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip. Nor is Gaza a ghetto, as Mr. O’Keeffe says. Again, this is a sinister reference to the ghettos the Nazis created for the Jews, where many perished from disease and starvation, before survivors were sent to the death camps.

What is most striking about Mr. O’Keeffe’s letter is that it does not condemn Hamas, which dragged Israel into this latest conflict. This is despite Hamas’ Islamic fundamentalist ideology, which is similar to that of ISIS, its murder, torture and oppression of Palestinians in Gaza, the corruption and cynicism of its leadership, and the fact that during the recent war it indiscriminately fired 4,500 rockets at Israeli civilians, while using its own women and children as human shields. There was no use of chemicals or gas by the IDF during the war, as Mr. O’Keeffe outrageously claims.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, however tragic, and which will hopefully be ended through negotiation and dialogue, is not the “cancer” spreading throughout the Middle East, as he says. The cancer in the region is the growing conflict between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam and the concomitant terrorism that goes with it, of which ISIS is merely the most extreme manifestation.

Dr. Derek O’Flynn

Embassy of Israel

Dublin