Words can't hide Gaza atrocities
Monday January 12 2009
THE anger of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre over Cardinal Renato Martino's claim that Gaza "increasingly resembles a big concentration camp" (Irish Independent, January 9) is misplaced.
For one thing, mention of the words "concentration camp" need not conjure up any memories of the Holocaust. The term was first used in English during the Boer War of 1899.
Cardinal Martino was presumably speaking in Italian, but the fact remains that both the word and the concept of "concentration camp" predate the Holocaust by many decades.
Furthermore, if Gaza is growing to resemble a huge concentration camp, it is not wrong to say so, simply because Jews were interred in concentration camps in the past.
Irish people were once victims of racism in England; but if an Irishman spits in an African woman's face (as I once saw one do outside the GPO), is it wrong to call him a racist, because he belongs to a people who once suffered from racism?
Obviously not -- and it is not wrong to criticise Israel's inhuman actions in Gaza.
BRIAN T HICKEY
DUNDRUM, DUBLIN 14
