Letters to the Editor: Ireland should shun Joe Biden for aiding Israel's attack on Gaza

Readers share perspectives on the conflict in the Middle East

Palestinians walk past the building destroyed in the Israeli Bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Gaza City on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Hajjar)

Shame, and shame forever, on the US delegation to the UN who have vetoed the call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Now, reluctantly, they have deigned to acquiesce, albeit to a much diluted wording of the recent resolution.

Of course, the US and the other permanent members of the UN security council have always manipulated the whole UN system to suit their own selfish machination. What a travesty of the raison d’etre of the UN mandate.

From the George Bush days of contrived Iraqi invasion manipulations, the recent decades of contortions in the UN security council have engendered despair globally as the permanent members therein have blatantly misused their power positions to carve up the world.

US president Joe Biden is a thundering disgrace as he shamefully kowtows to Israel’s bloodthirsty racism and current genocidal adventurism, supplying it liberally with finance and munitions while they pulverise Gaza, against all UN sensibilities.

The cheek of Biden swanning around Ireland last year to impress Irish-American voters in the US. Ireland should offer him and his ilk zero succour or welcome, given his crass support for Netanyahu and his murderous military machine.

It appears that self-defence has now exponentially burgeoned to genocide if a nation state suffers a dastardly terrorist attack.

Thus, 1,200 of ours are brutally massacred, so we butcher ten times that and more, levelling the other country and its population to the ground.

And then what?

Joe Biden would like to present himself as someone of decency and decorum, but he has blown his cover and he will surely reap the whirlwind of electoral disintegration, his camouflage and reputation well and truly in tatters.

One has to wonder at these wars of convenience which can be conjured out of a bizarre security lapse to afford unfettered opportunity for settling private scores and all for selfish gain.

Iraq, Gaza, and the like suffer the ultimate decimation, aided and abetted by curious once-off major security breaches in two countries that boast the nth degree of hyper-security. Strange coincidence or what?

Shame on Biden, bringing that shame on the great county of Mayo, and by turn to Ireland, who all have obsequiously striven hard to canonise him.

His day of electoral reckoning will come, along with the whole US-UN farrago which has served only the few. All this to say nothing of Russian or Chinese malevolence in constant motion.

“Peace and goodwill to all” is one of the traditional clarion calls for Christmas.

Wherefore art thou now, sweet peace and warm goodwill? Gone to grave, everyone, it seems.

When will we ever learn?

Jim Cosgrove, Lismore, Co Waterford

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Netanyahu must be forced out

I believe there is going to be a broader conflict in the Middle East if we do not get a two-state solution. I applaud US president Joe Biden on his actions regarding a show of naval forces in both the Mediterranean and Red Sea. His actions surely prevented Iran and Hezbollah from attacking Israel from the north and saved many Israeli lives. 

The Israeli government is creating an unstable environment in the Middle East by alienating friendly Arab and Muslim states by not committing to a demilitarised Palestinian state with self-rule. We need a broad alliance to keep peace in the Middle East and prevent US troops from dying due to Netanyahu’s self-absorbed ego.

My son-in-law is being called into active duty in the Middle East. It is about time for Joe Biden to tell Netanyahu to resign. Also, he must talk to the Israeli president to grant Netanyahu a pardon so he does leave.

Tell Netanyahu he must resign or the US naval forces will be recalled and Israel can be on its own. Netanyahu is devious, not trustworthy, and must be forced out.

Jon Dolen, Green Valley, Illinois

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Self-defence claim

The claim that Israel has the right to self-defence has been the stock reply to any criticism of the Israeli war in Gaza and its assaults on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

It is regularly trotted out by the Irish political and media establishment and political leaders in the US and its allies including the UK and EU.

In relation to the occupied territories, which includes Gaza, it is a legally dubious claim because a state cannot claim self-defence as it enforces a colonial occupation.

I would like to point to one example from Irish history which, I believe, undermines the argument of Israeli self-defence.

In 1641, the dispossessed Gaelic Irish of Ulster rose up against the Anglo-Scottish colonial-settler plantation.

During the uprising, planters were killed and English and Scottish pamphleteers went to great lengths to detail the atrocities they claimed the Irish committed against the planters.

In fact, the number of ‘victims’ in some accounts was greater than the number of planters.

Cromwell, fresh from his victory in the English Civil War, came to Ireland and used the alleged atrocities as an excuse for mass murder and ethnic expulsion.

In a modern parallel to Cromwell’s threat to Catholic landowners to go ‘to Hell or to Connaught’, the Israelis are intent on forcing the Palestinians to Hell or to Sinai.

If we were to apply the arguments put forward by the Irish Government in relation to Palestine to the situation in 1641, we would have to condemn the Gaelic Irish for using violence against the plantation and accept that Cromwell’s response was justified as a means of defending the English state. (Cromwell probably had a stronger justification than the Israelis because it was highly likely that, had Ireland escaped from English control, it would have sought an alliance with Catholic powers in Europe, which were hostile to England, to guarantee its independence).

Most Irish people would not accept that analysis, though one can never be sure in the case of the present leader of Fianna Fáil. 

However, the Irish political and media establishment expect the Palestinians to meekly accept the Israeli plantation and all the suffering and death that has sprung from it.

One further point: If it accepted that Israel has the right to use violence as a response to the attacks on October 7, doesn’t it follow that that Palestinians have a far stronger moral, political, and legal right to use violence as a response to all the acts of violence visited upon them by the Israeli state since 1948?

Because, after all, it was the Palestinians who were dispossessed, and international law does not recognise Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territories.

Jimmy Corcoran, Gurranabraher, Cork City