Letters to the Editor: Ex Labour leader needs to get his facts right on party policies

One 'Irish Examiner' reader states: 'I voted for Holly Cairns, but with her anti-working farms policies for rural Ireland, I now know I made a dreadful mistake'. Picture: Moya Nolan

Former Labour Party leader and government minister Pat Rabbitte recently opined on national radio that there is no policy difference between the party he once led and the Social Democrats.

It is unfortunate that a former politician as experienced as Mr Rabbitte would not bother to actually check the policies of the Labour Party and Social Democrats before commenting on them, as one policy difference in particular leaps out.

Since January 2018, the formal position of the Social Democrats is that Part 4 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 should be repealed and that a harm-reduction approach to sex work be pursued in Ireland, in line with the positions of Amnesty International, UN AIDS, the World Health Organization, HIV Ireland, and others.

On the other end, the Labour Party not only supports Part 4 of the 2017 Act, but its current leader was a key driver of that law, and the party’s position is one in favour of criminalising sex work out of existence, regardless of what the evidence shows, in line with groups like Ruhama, which has links to some of the religious orders that once operated Magdalene laundries in Ireland.

Were the two parties to ever merge, this would pose a problem, as the Social Democrats will not give up their firm support of evidence-based policymaking, and the Labour Party, particularly under its current leader, is extremely unlikely to resile from its ideological stance on sex work.

Mr Rabbitte is free to believe whatever he wishes, and while politics in the US and UK at present struggles with facts, facts do still matter here in Ireland, or at least they should.

Tomás Heneghan, East Wall, Dublin 3

Holly Cairns has failed farmers

I voted for Holly Cairns, but with her anti-working farms policies for rural Ireland, I now know I made a dreadful mistake.

Cairns and her turbo climate-change convenient bandwagon does nothing to encourage or give hope to working Irish farmers who wish to continue in their chosen profession of being traditional farmers.

In her position as a feminist, I would rather see politicians like her defending female farmers on their own land from the threatening trespassers who deliver the message that they can tramp across farms without permission and declare in this new “era” that farmers do not really possess their own land.

The anti-farms growing outrage by “acceptable” bullies are only getting started in their quest to scare people from their farms and livelihoods. Address these pressing real issues, Ms Cairns, if you wish to help farmers.

Farmers are still under protection of Irish law, are they not?

Or are they seen as merely clodhoppers by the precious new breed of pseudo-environmental politicians?

Robert Sullivan, Bantry, Co Cork

Israel is not a ‘normal’ state

There are supporters of Israel who continue to insist that it is a normal state and that Palestinian Arabs are treated the same as Jewish Israelis.

However, the truth is that Arabs living in Israel and within the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are discriminated against in practice and through legislation, and human rights organisations now routinely describe what exists as apartheid.

Amnesty International recently concluded that “Israel imposes a system of oppression and domination against Palestinians across all areas under its control — in Israel and the OPT, and against Palestinian refugees — in order to benefit Jewish Israelis. This amounts to apartheid as prohibited in international law.”

Examples of legislative discrimination include the draconian Absentees’ Property Law that granted the Israeli State the right to confiscate land, property, and other assets belonging to Palestinians that they were forced to leave behind in 1948.

This law, which applies only to Palestinians and brands them as “absentees”, has been used to justify evictions from — and demolitions of — Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem. Crucially, it stops Palestinians returning to live in what is now the state of Israel. 

There is no “right of return” for Palestinian refugees. The late Robert Fisk has suggested that as much as 70% of Israeli territory is made up of land confiscated under the Absentees’ Property Law, though the exact percentage remains disputed.

This is simply one example from a system of laws that privileges Jewish Israelis at the expense of Muslim and Christian Arabs.

Benjamin Netanyahu crudely underlined this apartheid reality in March 2019 in a message posted
online: “Israel is not a state of all its citizens…[but rather] the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them.”

Fintan Lane, Lucan, Co Dublin

Rural Ireland has no support

Ireland has too many under-developed rural towns that have no support; it’s no surprise it is the loneliest place to live.

Any young person living in backward rural areas of Ireland just emigrate as soon as they get to their 20s. These places will never change, it’s the Irish mindset.

Mal Harry, Newbridge Kildare

Time to switch off radios in Cork

Shock, horror, dismay, is how I would describe the feelings in many Cork households last Sunday morning.

Cork people, in general, like their routine.

Sunday morning routine is 8am-10am, The Arts House, Elmarie Maugh and Connor Tallon. This followed by Oldies and Irish with Derry O’Callaghan 10am-2pm.

There are three radios switched on in our house each Sunday morning — so nothing is missed from either show.

My “poor” wife was struggling to wake up at 10.05am when she heard some strange music, nothing like what she expected.

I understand from many others I have met since that they also are unhappy.

While I have sympathy for the presenter of the “new” programme — and feel he was very badly treated by his previous employer, I have NEVER listened to his show in the past and will not listen in the future.

So if 96FM persists, my radios will be switched off between 10am-midday on Sunday.

Michael A Moriarty, Rochestown, Cork

We are facilitating genocide

Raz Segal is an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide. Israel’s campaign to displace Gazans — and potentially expel them and West Bank Palestinians altogether into Egypt — is yet another chapter in the Nakba, in which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel.

But the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in Gaza. Raz Segal says this as a scholar of genocide, who has spent many years writing about Israeli mass violence against Palestinians.

The devastating reality unfolding before our eyes is that Palestinian people are enduring a horrific genocide every single day, as Israel, with full US support, slaughters Palestinians with impunity.

It is heartening to see South Africa taking Israel to court under the Genocide Convention. Our leaders should now stand up and support South Africa in this essential humanitarian need at the UN.

These are two issues which will have the enthusiastic support of the Irish and people of Europe.

The UN is blatantly not fit for purpose under the thumb of the US and certainly its headquarters should be based in neutral Switzerland, away from the control of the White House.

Daniel Teegan, Union Hall, Co Cork

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