Dear Sir... Readers' Views (21/01/17)
The pomp and glitz attaching to the inauguration of Donald Trump stands in glaring contrast to the plight of millions across Africa, where crop failure has produced famine, and to that of millions of refugees huddled against the cold in makeshift shelters across the Middle East and Europe.
Will there be a banquet?
What’s Trump? With the Donald Trump presidency, will it be hearts and diamonds or clubs and spades? What will be his trump card?
Theresa may — on the other hand, she may not. Prudence dictates that we should proceed accordingly.
The Academics for Palestine (Irish Examiner, January 20) “note with the greatest concern reported attempts by the Israeli embassy to prevent University College Cork hosting the conference International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism”.
They write that the conference was originally “scheduled to be held in the UK in 2015, but was thwarted, following a high-profile campaign by the pro-Israel lobby, which branded the event as”legitimising anti-Semitism” allegedly organised by “the Israeli government and its multi-million battle against what it calls ‘delegitimisation’ — shades of the ‘World Zionist Conspiracy’.”
No doubt they agree with Daniel Bernard, former French ambassador to the United Kingdom, that “all the current troubles in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel” and, inter alia, blame the current destruction in Aleppo and Mosul, and the waves of refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean, squarely on it.
As British prime minister Neville Chamberlain commented in 1938 on the Sudeten crisis, it was “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing” and, in any case, “the Jews aren’t a lovable people; I don’t care about them myself”.
His efforts led inexorably to the destruction of Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in Central Europe, theirs may be intended to have a similar effect in the Middle East.
This Weltanschauung was summarised by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and the Gestapo, who was responsible for the Nazi concentration camps and the Einsatzgruppen death squads:
“Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology, it is a matter of cleanliness. In just this same way, anti-Semitism for us has not been a question of ideology but a matter of cleanliness.”
No wonder the conference will, “in the interests of academic freedom, open debate and indeed justice”, ignore Israel’s ‘delegitimisation’, let alone any threat to its survival, when its elimination is believed to be the final solution for all the world’s problems.
The conference is unlikely to help bring “peace in our time” but, as the philosopher George Santayana commented: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
I welcome the fact that University College Cork has postponed the decision allowing its premises to be used for a conference that questions the legitimacy of the State of Israel. However, it is disappointing that the university did not specify redressing the lack of balance in speakers as one of the conditions for rescheduling.
What is billed as an academic conference has a ratio of 45 anti-Israel speakers to two that are pro-Israel. How such a one-sided venture could be described as ‘academic’ is beyond me and I think it’s fair to say that the organisers want to use UCC to give a veneer of respectability to their get together.
Some of the organisers present the conference as an example of academic freedom in Ireland. Yet they are the very ones who campaign vociferously to revoke that same freedom for Israeli academics, protesting against their presence in other countries and protesting against.anyone who has contact with them. Such double standards should never go unchallenged.
As things stand, the conference completely lacks any academic impartiality and I hope that even now, UCC will request that the organizers allow a more balanced list of speakers.
Mrs Forinton (‘Israel conference is not a hate-fest’, 18 January) claims that the proposed conference in UCC on Israel is only about international law and Israel. If only that was the case!
Unfortunately, the great majority of the suggested list of speakers are regular critics of the world’s only Jewish state.
Over the last few years, UK universities have refused to host this conference as they clearly considered it unfair and lacking in balance. The organisers only then tried to hold it in UCC. Thankfully UCC has lived up to its justified reputation for academic excellence and has denied this tainted event the respectability it so obliviously craves.
Claire O’Sullivan’s article on head shops in January 19’s Irish Examiner was an excellent article worth reading. Dr Luke is (as you will read) emergency consultant in Cork’s University hospital and constantly voices his concerns surrounding his experience in treating such cases.
The message of prevention is loud and clear both from Dr Luke and the city councillor. Plain sensible advice, parents play the most important role in drug prevention but must be able to rely on the State to support them and provide immediate treatment if necessary. Young people are the State’s future.
Normalising drug use through decriminalisation as proposed by the Government is not the way. Drug courts for non-violent offences which avoid a criminal record need to be beefed up here in Ireland where the apparent lack of success (Irish Times article Jan) is clearly due to the acceptance of cannabis and methadone use thus causing relapse into addiction.
It is heartening to witness the sense of friendship and rapport that is still a vital component of neighbourliness in the micro-environment of my own rural community.
This spirit of camaraderie is particularly noticeable in the mornings as the custom of walking ‘the ring’, a longish circle of secondary roads, has become very popular in recent years.
It has now developed into a pleasant stress-free routine as participants commence the exercise at times to suit their individual schedules. In fact, these stints are rarely pre-arranged to suit the agenda of others.
On encountering a neighbour, it is customary to turn around and accompany them on their walk regardless of their cyclical objective. One must, of course, tailor ones step to suit the pace of the other person as well.
Some have been known to complete the same circle repeatedly to prolong a particularly enjoyable encounter. The exercise is thus transformed into a pleasant experience as the chit-chat and friendly banter helps to alleviate boredom for both parties.
This charming custom may be likened to the practice of ‘conveying’ which was extremely popular in rural Ireland up to half a century ago. This was an era when welcome visitors were often accompanied on part of their homeward journey.
It seems that people often walked hither and thither repeatedly on these ‘conveys’ as well to prolong the visit. We are, after all, speaking of a time when many rural females, especially, were often confined to the family home due to the largely patriarchal nature of Irish society.
These chats probably helped to dispel loneliness, as well as giving women an opportunity to discuss matters of an intimate nature with sympathetic members of their own sex.
Interesting, the word ‘convey’ was also used to describe the custom of siblings and cousins accompanying emigrants on their sad journey towards the ship in the aftermath of the ‘American wake’. It seems that heart-broken parents rarely embarked on this sad walk as it would merely prolong rather than alleviate their agony.
While the custom of ‘convey’ in its many forms, served a very useful purpose in earlier times, it would seem it is still being practiced, albeit in a very different form. It certainly dulls the monotony of exercising and is, to my mind, preferable to the modern trend of attaching an app to one’s person while jogging along completely oblivious to one’s fellow human beings.
Face-to-face social interaction with others is after all a vital component of daily life despite the advent of so many technological devices.
Your article on astrophysicist Sara Seager (Irish Examiner, Saturday Jan 7) was very interesting. Unlike Sara and James Bond, for whom the world is not enough, the problems and pleasures of this planet are more than enough for me, and probably for most other people.
I hope that we in Ireland don’t spend too much on space exploration, in light of the huge other demands on the exchequer.
I’m glad that Sara has found happiness in family life with her sons and another man after her husband’s death, but I’m surprised she never bothered to learn household skills. I’d say her favourite songs are ‘Calling Occupants on Interplanetary Craft’ (The Carpenters), ‘Starman’ and ‘Life On Mars’ (David Bowie), and ‘A Spaceman Came Travelling’ (Chris de Burgh).
Her favourite TV programme would be Dancing With The Stars, and her favourite chocolate bars (or candy as she would call them) Galaxy, Mars, and Milky Way.
And if she goes on that 55-mile journey, her kids are going to ask: “Are we there yet?”
