Madam, - While I feel no real need to add anything further to Alan Dukes's comprehensive rebuttal of Caitlín Ní Chonaill's EU scaremongering (June 27th), I would like to take her up on one or two issues regarding EU-Israeli relations.
President Sarkozy may have declared France to be "ever Israel's friend" in the course of a diplomatic engagement but the reality is far different. Since 1967 France has proved one of the most consistently pro-Palestinian states in the European family and was the prime mover behind the Venice Declaration of 1980 which recognised the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the need to include the PLO in peace negotiations.
Greece, supposedly another participant in the "joint training exercises", has had extensive contacts with the PLO since the 1970s. Athens was, in fact, Arafat's first port of call after being expelled from Beirut and the Greek government has always been inclined towards the view of the Arab states, in part because of their mutual unease over Turkey (now a major military ally of Israel).
While I have no doubt most members of the Ireland Palestine Solidary Campaign are motivated by the honourable desire to relieve the suffering of the Palestinian people, unfortunately much of their correspondence in this newspaper appears to have been gleaned from third-rate anti-globalisation literature. So blinded are they by anti-Israeli hysteria they sadly fail to appreciate many of the nuances of the situation, particularly the role the EU has played and can play in the quest for an independent Palestinian state. Is this not yet more argument for strengthening the role of the EU? - Yours, etc,
COLM DOWDS, Castle Park, Dublin 22.
Madam, - Commenting on criticism of two EU countries' role in facilitating joint training exercises with the Israeli air force, Alan Dukes absolves the EU because it "does not control military air space anywhere in Europe" (July 3rd). Nonetheless, the participation of Greece and Italy in these exercises is entirely in harmony with the EU's ever more loving embrace of the Israeli rogue state, as typified by the recent decision to "upgrade" relations with Israel despite pleas to the contrary from such human rights groups as European Jews for a Just Peace.
It should be remembered that the Israeli air force is consistently implicated in war crimes against Palestinian civilians, and that the exercises within EU air space were a rehearsal for an assault on Iran that, as well as being illegal, would bring a cataclysm upon the world. Mr Dukes denies that the EU has a mandate "to 'punish' any other regime" because "the EU member-states give the EU no power or function in any of these areas". However, article 2 of the Euro-Mediterranean Agreement that concedes Israel wide-ranging trade privileges allows for suspension of the agreement in the event of human rights violations.
Given that the European Parliament has twice called in vain for such a suspension in view of particularly flagrant Israeli crimes, it would appear that the EU does indeed have such a mandate - and has chosen cynically and perhaps criminally to ignore it. - Yours, etc,
RAYMOND DEANE, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.