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Source: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/as-if-israel-simply-woke-up-one-morning-and-chose-to-attack-gaza/
As If Israel Simply Woke Up One Morning and Chose to Attack Gaza
(Times of Israel) Alan Shatter - On Nov. 4, four weeks after Hamas' barbaric, murderous assault on Israel, the Irish Times published a grotesque, fact-free letter by 620 Irish academics accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence. Any uninformed person reading the letter would have assumed Israel had simply woken up one morning and chosen to attack Gaza. The 620 regarded the entirety of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza as occupied territory and called on "all universities in Ireland to immediately sever any existing partnerships or affiliations with Israeli institutions." Put simply, over 600 of Ireland's academics and scholars proposed that all engagements between Irish and Israeli universities end until Israel ceases to exist and then they can be revived, which is something of an oxymoron. Their call was fully aligned with the objectives of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iran. But in Ireland, outside of a few critical letters, no one cared. It seems the academics' perspective coincided with that of many Irish journalists and too many of Ireland's politicians and general public. Hamas' obsessive commitment to Israel's extermination and its consistent violent opposition to any permanent peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has brought nothing but disaster to both Israelis and Palestinians. A more intellectually rigorous approach by the 620 would have been a call on Hamas to stop the rockets, release the hostages, and surrender to prosecution for their egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity. The writer is a former Irish Minister for Justice, Equality & Defense.