- The press officer of the Israeli embassy in Dublin has
been sacked after she took the extraordinary step of writing letters to
newspapers condemning the air strike on Gaza last week, which killed 15
people.
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- Noreen O'Carroll, an Irish citizen, wrote to the Irish
Times in her official capacity, saying she was "ashamed" of the
Israeli government for launching the attack, which killed the leader of
the military wing of Hamas.
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- In a separate letter to the Irish Examiner she quoted
the writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi's remark:"silence is
complicity."
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- She told the Irish Times in an interview on Friday, the
day the letter was published, that while she was revolted by suicide bombings
she did not think state force should be used against civilians.
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- "Error is too benign a word to use in a context
like this," she said.
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- Asked why she had signed the letter with her job title,
she said: "I am not a diplomat, I am an Irish citizen, doing an administrative
job. I don't think it would make the slightest bit of difference if I had
signed it with my home address."
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- In her letter to the Times she wrote: "I am sick
at heart at this, as I am at each and every attack on Israeli citizens.
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- "A missile attack on an apartment building, after
midnight, when children and adults are asleep in their beds, is no more
justifiable than a suicide bombing.
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- "I am also appalled and ashamed of prime minister
Ariel Sharon's cold-hearted response to it, stating that it was 'one of
our greatest successes.' Has he any heart, any moral sense at all?"
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- A diplomat at the embassy was quoted as saying: "Nobody
in their right minds expects an organisation to keep a press officer who
speaks against it."
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,764752,00.html
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