Letters to the Editor: Don't discredit legitimate protests against Israel's actions in Gaza
Palestinians examine the destruction of buildings after an Israeli strike on residential building in Rafah, Gaza, yesterday, May 7. Picture: Ismael Abu Dayyah/AP
Cynthia Ní Mhurchú’s piece ('Call for a Eurovision boycott distracts from the wonderful achievements of Bambie Thug' — Irish Examiner, May 6) comparing calls for Bambie Thug to boycott Eurovision to Israel’s slaughter of more than 34,000 Palestinians was a simply disgraceful attempt to discredit entirely valid demands.
The above comparison needs no explanation as to how inappropriate and disrespectful it is. It alone should disqualify her from being an MEP, and this newspaper is highly irresponsible for allowing it to be published.
Israel’s presence in the competition allows them to “artwash”, to pretend that they are a country like any other while they commit atrocities in Gaza.
Russia’s rightful exclusion in 2022, made “in light of the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine” according to the European Broadcasting Union at the time, was unopposed in Ireland, and there is no reason why Israel should be permitted this time around. For Ní Mhurchú to say that “art is above politics” is to ignore almost every artist at the forefront of their field — including Israel’s Eurovision representative, whose song is about the October 7 attack.
Cynthia Ní Mhurchú distorts the truth a number of times. She conflates boycotting Israel, a state, with doing the same with individual Israelis.
This is a clear false equivalence.
Similarly, she declares calls for Israel to be expelled as racist, since they are targeting an individual Israeli Jew. But the individual is not the target. It is the state she represents.
She also calls the signatories of the petition an “angry mob”, a completely incorrect term — does she know what a mob actually is? By her definition, is anyone who signs a petition part of some angry mob? What a ridiculous notion.
Ní Mhurchú’s attempts to misrepresent and delegitimise calls to boycott are shameful. She just about manages to get in criticism of Israel’s war crimes, yet all she achieves with this piece is making it easier for Israel to brush over them. Bambie Thug’s participation is complicity with Israel’s actions, as is Ní Mhurchú’s defence of it. Anyone who cares for the Palestinian cause should refuse to vote for her in June.
We take election fever for granted. But, by and large, our political ferment is sensible, reasonable, differing, and accountable to facts and the truth.
It is not a popular thing to say. Bryan Dobson said it best. Irish politics has waffle detectors. It’s a small country and you can’t get away with much. It’s a small country and everyone knows everyone. There are strengths and weaknesses intrinsic to that.
But can we accept three uncontroversial facts?
- 1. No one in the South is ready or eager for Sinn Féin’s economic and political hecatomb.
- 2. Facts are under attack and the truth matters. Politicians who lie or spin need a kick in the ass out the door.
- 3. This is a great country, for all its flaws and deficiencies. Who built it? We did. Take inward migration as a compliment and deal with it humanely, competently, and with national pride.
In the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and most of the 1990s, most people wanted to get the hell out of Ireland.
Credit where credit is due. I, for one, am glad that my kids are growing up here.
University Hospital Limerick serves a population of 500,000 people.
By way of contrast, Dublin has a population of approximately 2.1m and has eight acute hospitals. That is approximately 262,000 people per hospital.
It was with a heavy heart that I heard our Government is going to spend even more taxpayers’ money to deploy a senior civil servant to combat misinformation and disinformation.
This from the same Government, some of whose members canvassed for a yes vote in the recent referendum, and then admitted that they’d actually voted no at the polling station. Physicians, heal thyselves.
My suggestion would be that a lie detector be positioned inside the door of Government Buildings and each politician can then find out for themselves if they’re telling the truth or merely parroting meaningless platitudes.
Lie detectors are so much cheaper than yet another layer of bureaucracy. The thousands saved can be used to fast-forward scoliosis operations for those citizens waiting patiently for lifesaving
surgery.
I believe she could solve a lot of their “misinformation” and “disinformation” problems quicker than hiring yet another clone from among the lesser order of movers and shakers who only offer a continuation of the status quo.
There has been much in the papers lately about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) and the real danger of natural stupidity — mainly in politics — especially with a well known example in the US.
What would happen if we combined them? Politicians could be replaced by robots using AI. They would probably make more sensible choices, more quickly, and without the need for expensive committee reviews.
They would help the environment as they would not be as full of hot air as politicians are.
They would probably speak English better than some politicians and could be programmed never to lie, something that is difficult to achieve with politicians. They won’t be caught out with inappropriate activities or paying to keep their sins hidden.
Make we should make the choice to switch before AI takes over anyway, if it hasn’t already.
The “Ireland is full” mantra lacks a few crucial things of substance, facts being one of them. The movement, if you can call in that, is clouded with fervour and ironically progressive language. Words like “indigenous” and “plantations” that should reference Ireland’s still unresolved colonial past, but instead refer to people fleeing war and poverty.
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All of this is designed to paint asylum seekers (what happened to IPA being a beverage?) as a menace responsible for this country’s suffering.
This is actually covering the Government’s back quite nicely, because if asylum seekers are responsible for the housing crisis, then years of policy of treating homes as investments is not.
This could explain why Justice Minister Helen McEntee spread fake news about the entry point of asylum seekers more effectively than a hundred paranoid WhatsApp groups, as they try to get the xenophobes on their side.
Oh sorry, does it hurt people’s feelings to be called xenophobic? I believe that, in that cohort’s Americanised and Trump-ified vocabulary, that is known as being a snowflake.
In fact, 160,000 homes are empty. Ireland is follamh, not full. Follamh meaning “empty”, in the language that a real plantation hundreds of years ago took from us.
Perhaps it is timely to recall how many Irish people have been welcomed in the UK over the decades. My parents, a Cashman from Cork and an O’Sullivan from Kerry, met in London in the 1930s and they, my siblings, and I have found health, happiness, and success here.
Rishi Sunak, a devout Hindu, is well aware of the meaning of a deterrent. If he were to say, what he probably hopes, that very few people will end up in Rwanda, it would no longer be a deterrent. The French have been paid millions to stop overcrowded, unsafe vessels crossing the channel. They have certainly not acted with integrity.
Whenever there is hostile activity over the Republic’s airspace, an RAF Typhoon jet is scrambled at great expense to the UK taxpayer. In addition, before Leo Varadkar left office he rather unwisely boasted that his Government had so much money in the coffers as a result of 12.5% corporation tax — tech industry, pharma, and data storage hubs — that he didn’t know what to do with it. May I suggest housing and defence?
