Ire at the Irish

“Ireland’s obsessional hatred” (February 1) is a poorly researched attempt to further disrupt Irish/Israeli relations. Unbalanced, with no attempt at fair play, the article is full of inaccuracies.

Melanie Phillips trots out the simplistic notion that Northern Irish Protestants are pro-Israel and Catholic Nationalists are anti-Israel. She supports this by the 1904 boycott of Jewish business in Limerick, but never mentions that this was condemned by Irish leaders lay and clerical. The priest who organized the boycott was banished to an island in the Pacific Ocean.

Her next attack is on the late taoiseach/ prime minister Eamon de Valera, but she never mentions that he was one of the first leaders to visit his friend president Chaim Herzog in Israel in 1951 and that a de Valera forest was planted near Nazareth in recognition of his support for Ireland’s Jews in the 1937 Irish Constitution.

Phillips lets her arrogant Brexit mask slip with her reference to Ireland’s relations with the EU and even questions Ireland’s understanding of an independent nation.

Zionism and Irish nationalism have a long connection. Many Jews played a key role in the fight for Irish Independence, such as Bob Briscoe and Michael Noyek; also, Zionists took inspiration from Irish Republicans when up against the British Empire.

Phillips would be better employed in trying to find a way forward to resolve our present difficulties. LEONARD HURLEY

Cahersiveen, Ireland

Alan Shatter (Ireland’s misguided ‘settlers bill,’ January 29) rightly excoriated the despicable Economic Activity (occupied territories) Bill recently passed by Ireland’s Lower House.

Though intended, in practice, to focus laser-like solely on Israel, the expansive language of that legislation raises an intriguing, ironic, question. Doesn’t the Republic of Ireland consider Northern Ireland to be UK “occupied territory” one day to be united with Dublin? Certainly, many of the biggest backers of that law, as Shatter instructively points out, have a long history of believing just that.

If so, importation of “goods” or “services” originating in the six northern counties of Ulster, ought be proscribed and, as per that law, severely punished. Of course, that won’t happen, but those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. RICHARD D. WILKINS

New York