Sir, – In the week the outrageous comments of former taoiseach Bertie Ahern received necessary attention, a regular commentator on these pages, Oliver Sears, was again given considerable space to promote the falsehood that Ireland is racist toward the Jewish people. It is not. Mr Sears’s article (“Boycott is a pernicious strategy silencing Jews, Israelis and Palestinians,” Opinion, May 16th) displays his standard avoidance of the central truth that Ireland’s limp and unconvincing challenge to the state of Israel has nothing to do with the religious beliefs of its 2,500 Jewish citizens. There are plenty among our Jewish community who are just as appalled as those Irish of other faiths, and none, who see it as their duty to protest against the genocide Israel is conducting against the people of Palestine. The state of Israel has breached international law for decades. Most egregiously, its campaign in Gaza, now into its third year, involves the deliberate killing of the civilian population through bombing and starvation. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids targeting civilians and collective punishment. The respected Israeli lawyer, Michael Sfard, recently put it this way: “The permissiveness with which Israel is able to act – both domestically and internationally – is not just enabling what they’re doing, but unfolding horrific events that we thought we’d never see”. Mr Sears should understand that what concerns Irish people is the impunity with which Israel is allowed to behave as it does, with complete disregard for the rights of Palestinians. – Yours, etc,FINTAN DRURY,Strand Road,Dublin 4.Sir, – Oliver Sears characterises the reaction of the audience to Boy George’s appearance on The Late Late Show as “the classic behaviour of the bystander”, the people who may not have participated in the Holocaust, but did not speak out against it.But there is another possible interpretation of their silence.They may simply have had the courtesy and sensitivity not to throw oil on the flames being fanned by the singer’s naive confusion of anti-Semitism with disgust at the state of Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians. – Yours, etc,DAVID MCKENNA,Dublin 8.Sir, – I am puzzled. I understood that Ireland had decided to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest in protest as Israel was participating. Yet our “public service broadcaster”, RTÉ, which had stated it would not participate in or broadcast the event, had a reporter reporting on the event from Vienna all week. Why? – Yours, etc,JANE O’REILLY,Rathfarnham,Dublin 14.