Hamas is to blame for plight of Gaza citizens

In a crass attempt to reinforce a Boycott, Diversify and Sanction (BDS) campaign against Israel, Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the US campaign to end Israeli occupation made an outrageous anology with apartheid South Africa in order to dissuade actors attending the Oscars not to accept a gift bag containing trips to Israel (Irish Examiner, February 26).

The plight of Gaza’s citizens is the sole responsibility of Hamas. Hunger, homelessness and unemployment is the consequences of Hamas’ abuse of the very people that so naively elected them to government a decade ago.

Increasingly, celebrities of conscience have realised that a cultural boycott of Israel is based on a constructed BDS narrative that distorts a reality of Hamas’ utter contempt for the ‘ordinary’ citizens of Gaza.

The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Jennifer Lopez, Guns n’ Roses and Bruce Springsteen do not need to be “bribed” by “free luxury 10-day holidays” — they are amongst the richest people in the entertainment industry.

They choose to go to Israel out of a moral conviction that it is the right of citizens in the only liberal democracy in the Middle East to have the same choices as the BDS warriors in the West.

Dr Kevin McCarthy

Kinsale

Co Cork