Madam, – David Fine writes (August 2nd) “as a Jew and an Irish citizen” in linking support for peaceful boycott with support for terrorism and in calling those who work to support Palestinian rights anti-Semitic. He claims to speak for his co-religionists when making this disgraceful conflation. He does not.
I am also a Jew and an Irish citizen and as the national organiser of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), I coordinated the petition calling on Dunnes Stores to stop stocking Israeli goods. The charge of anti-Semitism is nonsensical – not simply when applied to myself or to the growing numbers of Jews and Israelis who support the boycott of Israel. It is also deeply insulting to the 6,000 Irish citizens who signed the petition in towns and cities across the island from Bantry to Belfast.
The boycott campaign is about peaceful and effective resistance to Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. As such it offers Palestinians an alternative to violent resistance.
To equate this peaceful campaign with terrorism and anti-Semitism is nonsense, designed to stir up fears and hostility and to ignore the Palestinian perspective.
It is 25 years since Dunnes Stores fired its own workers because they supported the boycott of South African goods. In the ensuing strike Dunnes stood with apartheid and on the wrong side of history. This petition offers them the chance to make amends and stand with justice on the right side of history.
We all face this choice, and I urge everyone to take the moral path and support the boycott. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) demands a boycott of Israeli goods “until Israel respects Palestinian rights and international law”. Might I then suggest that the IPSC should also call for a boycott of any contact with Hamas, which continues to reject Israeli rights and international law. For, contrary to the demands of the United Nations, America, the European Union, and Russia, not only does Hamas adamantly refuse to accept previous peace agreements negotiated between Israel and the Palestine Authority, it even also has a charter which calls for the complete destruction of the Israeli state.
By demanding a boycott of one side (Israel) which has signed agreements with the Palestine Authority, and by not boycotting or challenging the other (Hamas) that refuses to accept such agreements, the IPSC is guilty of double standards. In my opinion, this sort of one-sided action can only lead to an entrenchment of attitudes and is thus not helpful to achieving a just two-state solution of Israel and a future Palestine that the Irish Government and most countries want to see happen.
In fact it is sadly yet again only serving to delay the realisation of a Palestinian state to a people who have needlessly suffered for far too long. – Yours, etc,