Letters: Some of the most profound aspects of Irishness are found far away from home

I’ve lived and worked in many places, and nowhere has that belief been more strongly confirmed than among the diaspora.

In California, I met Irish-Americans with a better command of the Irish language than I ever had, who could dance reels and jigs as if born to it and were much better at Gaelic football than me.

In Hawaii it was the same – people fiercely proud of their roots, even if their connection was two or three generations removed.

While teaching in a Catholic school in London, I was struck by how much more connected to this heritage my pupils were than I felt myself. They knew their family townlands, said grace instinctively and sang rebel songs their parents had passed down.

My London-Irish wife, whom I met in San Francisco, once shocked me by berating a woman on the Tube who had muttered something about “drunken Irish on the train”. She showed more courage in that moment than I had ever displayed.

And I’ll never forget sitting on a boulevard in Buenos Aires wearing an Irish jersey, waiting for my wife to return from a salsa class. A woman walked past, saw the shirt, smiled and blew me a kiss.

Mary Kenny is right: Irishness isn’t a passport stamp. It’s a cultural imprint, sometimes stronger abroad than at home. We may be a small nation, but wherever we go, we leave a presence – proud, persistent and unmistakably our own.

Enda Cullen, Tullysaran Road, Armagh

Explain all the arrests if Trump, Vance and Rubio are free-speech absolutists

Ian O’Doherty (‘Mam and Dad are arguing again, and we are the fearful child torn between the two’, June 18) explores the different interpretations of “free speech” in the EU and US and the possible economic implications for Ireland.

He portrays Ireland and the EU as stuffy nanny states, duty-bound and hell-bent on protecting citizens from harmful or hateful speech.

Meanwhile, the US is depicted as some divine, freedom-loving cowboy who doesn’t mince his words and loves to shoot from the hip.

Indeed, O’Doherty brands Trump loyalists Marco Rubio and JD Vance as “free-speech absolutists”.

Lest we forget, Rubio once dubbed Trump a “con-artist” while Vance compared Trump with Hitler.

Both men recently supported the arrest and detention of Columbia University students protesting against the indiscriminate Israeli campaign carried out across Gaza in response to the horrific Hamas attack of October 7.

These guys are free-speech absolutists all right – especially when they are talking out of both sides of their mouths.

Paddy Sharkey, Hollywood, Co Wicklow

Israel-US food aid centres are death traps for the civilians of Palestine

The Israel-US Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was first registered last February, and its few food aid centres set up on May 26 in Gaza are described as death traps overseen by Israel’s military and armed contractors.

Last week, Jens Laerke, the UN spokesperson for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the GHF “is not delivering supplies safely to those in need” and the GHF was a “failure” from a humanitarian point of view.

Exhausted Palestinians who walk off the correct route to the GHF aid centres or linger too long in despair after aid runs out are shot at and killed daily. Tanks are also used to fire at civilians. These are supposed to be warning shots.

The banning of international media from Gaza by Israel since the war began in October 2023 is a key factor as to why the war is so extreme.

If, for example, the UK’s Channel 4 News or US CBS News were in Gaza reporting on the war, it would have had a quicker impact on governments calling on Israel to end the targeting of civilians in the most miserable war of the 21st century.

Experienced aid agencies run by the UN, UK and others have been more restricted in Gaza since last March. There are requests for the UN to be allowed fully back in to deliver aid safely.

Israel has as much a right as any country to ensure its security, but daily, casual killings by the IDF of civ­ilians in Gaza is truly reprehensible.

I hope Hamas will release the remaining hostages they took into Gaza in October 2023. They, too, endure terrible conditions.

Mary Sullivan, College Road, Co Cork

If Kneecap member can be charged, why not those flying the UVF’s flag?

Hezbollah is a proscribed organisation, and Mo Chara of Kneecap was recently before Westminster Magistrates’ Court charged with displaying a Hezbollah flag.

The UVF is also an illegal organisation, but for years I have witnessed UVF flags in Armagh, fluttering on poles.

UK law extends to the North of Ireland, and surely there is a ­contradiction in the application of the rules.

Sheila Ward, Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan

Vandalism unacceptable, but Micheál Martin’s point simply does not hold water

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has referred to the smearing of his constituency office with red paint as “undemocratic”.

Wilful damage to any property is unacceptable. Those who carry out such acts of vandalism should remember repair costs will eventually be borne by the taxpayer.

However, many might say the ­Taoiseach is not following the wishes of the people by until now failing/refusing to enact the Occupied Territories Bill as approved by the Oireachtas.

Michael Moriarty, Rochestown, Co Cork

A strike on Iran’s nuclear facility would be a disaster for everyone in the region

US president Donald Trump may or may not join the Israeli military action in Iran by sending a 30,000- pound bomb to destroy Iran’s nuclear facility under a mountain.

Have any of the ‘leaders’ of the US or Israel considered the deadly eff­ects of a strike on the uranium stocks in Iran, including the US assets, and the millions of innocent people in the Middle East?

James J Ryan, Co Limerick