A chara, – No matter how loudly Jackie Goodall bangs that battered drum (Letters, February 9th), she will never silence those who speak against Israel's apartheid system. Amnesty's recent report is correct and it most certainly should not be dismissed outright, as she suggests.
Any state that treats one group differently from everybody else in every aspect of life – housing, education, health, employment, family life, residence, and freedom of movement – is an apartheid state.
Any state whose laws and policies institutionalise racial discrimination and domination against one group is an apartheid state.
Any state that demolishes homes and forcibly transfers the owners to make way for illegal settlements is an apartheid state.
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Any state that prevents people in exile from returning to their homes and lands is an apartheid state.
Any state that supports a systematic and severe deprivation of fundamental human rights of one group of people, based on their identity, is an apartheid state.
Any state that denies one group of people a right to freedom of movement and residence is an apartheid state.
And any state that ensures one group suffers murder, torture, unlawful imprisonment and other severe deprivation of physical liberty is an apartheid state.
Israel should now be the focus of constant protests and boycotts in a similar manner to South Africa during its apartheid years. Unfortunately, just as throughout those years, there will always be those who prefer to look the other way. – Is mise,
ENDA FANNING,
Dublin 14.
Sir, – Jackie Goodall is quick to note the dissenting opinion of Tal Gur-Arye, a respected member of Amnesty International’s Israel branch.
One wonders whether Ms Goodall also agrees with Mr Gur-Aye’s assessment that, notwithstanding his reservations about the conclusions of Amnesty’s apartheid report, he nevertheless believes that “that the situation in the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territory) amounts to a system of apartheid”, that “there is undoubtedly an institutional system of discrimination against Palestinians citizens” within Israel, and that there is an urgent “need to end this human rights crisis”? – Yours, etc,
BETTY
PURCELL,
Dublin 6W.