We must wake up to human rights abuses by Arabs in Palestinian Gaza

It’s remarkable how selective apologists for the myth of a Palestinian state are about what offends them.

Brendan O’Brien (Irish Examiner, Letters, June 13) calls for a boycott of an Israeli film and TV festival, but has nothing to say about women in Palestinian Gaza living under Sharia Law.

Nor has he anything to say about the context of the books used in Palestinian schools, which perpetuate the same disgusting images of Jewish people that the Germans used. No other political authority is so openly racist. Not even in apartheid South Africa did the white government depict native Africans in such terms as Palestinians depict Jewish people.

For someone who so easily take offence, it’s a pity Mr O’Brien seems ignorant of the fact that Israeli-linked film festivals include productions from all sectors of Israeli society, Jewish and non-Jewish. So he wants them boycotted, too?

Mr O’Brien is quite delusional if he thinks Israel is to blame for all the problems of the Palestinian people, or that if it were not for Israel that the region would be a beacon of peace, progression and modernity.

Arab states are some of the richest in the world and still some of the most corrupt, backward and repressive. There is no evidence, at all, that another Arab state, in the form of a Palestinian one, in addition to the one they already have, which is called Jordan, would be any different.

It’s long past time when people stopped pandering to the delusion of Palestinian apologists. If they really want peace in that region, then they need to start publicly accepting the fact, like it or not, that Israel exists and that whatever peace terms are agreed will not change that.

Nor will it magically remove the millions of Israeli Jews and Israeli-Arabs who live in that region. Just as the Palestinians’ friends in Sinn Fein/IRA were defeated and had to accept the reality that Northern Ireland is part of the UK.

Mr O’Brien might care to point out how Palestinian society makes room for any view that is not that of a heterosexual Arab Muslim male?

When will a film festival in Palestine ever include films by women, Jews, gay people or the disabled?

When will Palestinian society provide the same level of human rights as Israel does?

When will the women of Gaza not have to live under Sharia Law ?

Desmond FitzGerald

Canary Wharf

London