Russian and Israeli athletes should face an Olympic ban
UNTIL such time as the top brass in the Russian military are declared war criminals, the war in Ukraine will continue.
Vladimir Putin has already been declared a war criminal and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is failing in its duty if they do not do this immediately.
The ICJ is also disgracefully negligent in not declaring Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top military men war criminals. These individuals need to be named publicly.
The evidence has been on our TV screens nearly every night since October 7. Israeli bombers destroy multi-storey residential buildings which are filled with innocent civilians who have nowhere to go. The Israelis have made most of Gaza uninhabitable with their bombings. They have bombed cities, hospitals, and refugee camps – a war crime in itself.
Along with being a war criminal, Netanyahu is also a qualified idiot. He has stated that he wants to wipe out the remaining battalions of Hamas.
Even if he was successful in this, and I don’t think he will be, there are many divisions of fighters in the region who are more than willing to die for the Palestinian cause. It will be the innocent Israeli civilians who will suffer in the long term.
The International Olympic Committee, the IOC, has stated that Russia and Belarus will not be allowed take part in the opening ceremony at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Their athletes will compete under a neutral flag.
These countries should be banned from the games completely. Putin has total control of the media in Russia and the only way the Russian people will know how the rest of the world feels about the invasion of Ukraine is if their athletes are banned from participating.
The IOC must also ban Israeli athletes from competing, because of the genocidal war being perpetrated on defenceless Palestinian people. It will be hard for all the athletes involved but nobody can support the slaughter of innocent defenceless people in Gaza and Ukraine.
The ICJ needs to wake up and do its job quickly and efficiently. You do not need a degree in law to tell the difference between right and wrong.
JOHN FAIR, Castlebar, Co. Mayo
Strengthen neutrality
OUR Government seems determined to bring Ireland ever closer to participating in unjustified wars and ending our neutrality by removing the Triple Lock which specifies that UN approval is necessary to send more than 12 Irish soldiers on overseas missions.
Such a decision goes against the wishes of the vast majority of the Irish people, who value active Irish neutrality.
A total of 226 Irish soldiers served in Afghanistan in Nato-led missions between 2001 and 2016. These soldiers included several members of the Army Ranger Wing, but it is not clear in what specific roles they served. The Afghan war has been a disaster for the people of Afghanistan.
In 2022, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled that the court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, can proceed with a formal investigation into atrocities allegedly committed during the armed conflict in Afghanistan by US armed forces and CIA personnel.
In 2020, the Australian Defence Force released findings from a four-year inquiry which found credible evidence that Australian special forces soldiers unlawfully killed 39 people during the war in Afghanistan.
In December 2022, the British government announced an inquiry into allegations that SAS soldiers murdered scores of unarmed people during night raids in Afghanistan. This follows BBC Panorama revelations, in July 2022, that one SAS unit killed 54 people in suspicious circumstances.
Conor Gallagher’s book, Is Ireland Neutral?, reveals that an Irish soldier serving in Afghanistan helped ‘to track down and kill Taliban bombers. This included assisting US forces in directing air strikes against targets responsible for IED attacks’.
Irish soldiers should not be involved in such missions. With our history of centuries of colonial abuse, including starvation, we must strengthen our neutrality, not abandon it. EDWARD HORGAN, Castletroy, Limerick
Bananarama modesty
I AGREE with Keren Woodward of Bananarama in her concerns about the way female pop stars dress on stage.
‘I’m proud of the fact that we became pin-ups without being overtly sexy. It wouldn’t happen now,’ Ms Woodward said.
I have thought for a while that semi-naked pop stars and celebrities can’t be very confident about their looks, figures or talent if they feel they have to be pictured half-naked. CHRISTINE HEYDINRYCH, by email