JEWS AND THE “PALESTINIANS” (PART 1)

By Felix Quigley

3 December, 2009

Wikipedia is in part a useful giver of information and in other part a mechanism or forum where actual lies are told. But the correction of these lies entails the creation of a revolutionary Trotskyist leadership able to theoretically take up the issues.

We on 4internaional have found that Wikipedia misinformation is prevalent in Serb and Jewish stories.

A good example of the later is on the Wikipedia coverage of the British notorious White Paper of 1939 which was responsible along with the Nazis for the Holocaust of millions of Jews in the camps.

It is necessary to take parts of their article, place it on print and see what the Wikipedia writers are doing

[Start Wikipedia extract on White Paper of 1939]

At the same time, British leaders had an interest in Zionism arising from widespread influence of Evangelism and belief in Jewish economic influence (e.g. Alfred, Lord Milner was employed as Chairman of the Rothschild owned Rio Tinto Zinc some time after 1906). David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister during World War I had worked closely with the Zionist movement and was an Evangelical preacher.[3] This, and a variety of strategic factors, such as securing Jewish support in Eastern Europe as the Russian front collapsed, culminated in the Balfour Declaration, 1917, with Britain promising to create and foster a Jewish national home in Palestine. These broad delineations of territory and goals for both the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and Arab self determination was approved in the San Remo conference.

[End Wikipedia extract here]

The use of the word “Evangelical” may seem a minor matter but it I critical. [I deliberately leave aside the reference to Milner working for a Rothschild company, the target of Protocols of Zion type conspiracy theorists]

Is the writer attempting to bring to the mind of the reader people like Billy Graham or Pat Robertson?

As we have described before there was an authentic movement inside British religious especially on the Protestant side to draw close to the plight of the Jews because of their common ownership of the Bible, the Old Testament.

The writer here is not doing other than bashing religion, which is a feature not of Lenin or Trotsky, but of Stalin and Zinoviev.

Since the Christians like Lord Alfred Balfour were moved to compassion for the persecuted Jews who had been persecuted for 2 years, how could that be other than extremely progressive, in a bourgeois democratic sense, in a truly socialist sense, if you do not want to use the simple word “human sense”

We know that other factors were present but that is a very strong factor indeed.

The proof of that is contained in a fuller knowledge of the facts which the Wikipedia writer obscures. Lord Balfour was part of a Christian trend which was supportive of the Jews, and he was fighting against another anti-Semitic trend inside British politics, and in fact that anti-Semitic trend was to come out on top in a very short time.

That shows that Lord Balfour was quite sincere in his support for the Jews. In fact, he suffered career wise for this support.

The Wikipedia writer can have none of this. People cannot have sincere feelings of support for the Jews. It is a kind of moral relativism. It is affected by the writer probably being a supporter of the “Palestinian” myth and full of hatred for Israel in the present such as the war in Gaza.

When one looks further at the extract above and if one focuses on these words

[Begin extract from words above here]

…culminated in the Balfour Declaration, 1917, with Britain promising to create and foster a Jewish national home in Palestine. These broad delineations of territory and goals for both the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and Arab self determination was approved in the San Remo conference

[End extract here]

The first question that arises from the above is whether it was a Jewish national home IN Palestine or whether Palestine was to be set aside as THE Jewish National Home.

The partisan intent of the Wikipedia writer is shown in that this question is not faced up to, but is cunningly glossed over.

But if that is cunning the other salient point from above is downright evil. This is the reverence of the Wikipedia writer to “Arab self determination”.

A clear reading of the Balfour Declaration is thus necessary for truth. Where in the Balfour Declaration is there any reference whatsoever to that term?

This issue is of such gigantic importance in the present, where Israel is coming under sustained attack from the Obama regime, previously also the Bush outfit, to give up its homeland area of JUDEA to accommodate a “Palestine” state that it is necessary to return to it again and again.

We on 4international from our reading of history say that Palestine was to be the Homeland of the Jews and that the action of the British Government in splitting off the huge area of Transjordan, fully 78 per cent, was illegal. Carried out actually by Churchill! That was later to form the independent Arab state of Jordan, sitting on as far as we can see the original homeland area for the Jews.

So was Palestine to be for the Jews of the world to settle on and to make their state where they could be secure from anti-Semitism?

In this series of articles on 4international we will show

1. That in 1917 there were no Arab people who called themselves “Palestinians”. The term then did not exist as applied to Arabs.
2. That out of the downfall of the Islamist ottoman Empire a series of Arab states were set up with the help of US and British/French Imperialism, totally believ e it or not 21 states, and the state striven for by Obama and Bush along with Blair and Cameron is NUMBER TWENTY TWO

 

Not bad going eh!

We on 4international realize that the above statement (inside the 2 bullet points) are really just assertions.

So since this is the internet and anybody can say anything (and they do!) it is necessary to back this up with some precision. We will of course do that.

4INTERNATIONAL PROPOSE UNITY IN ACTION AGAINST THE GOLDMAN REPORT

The Goldstone Report

 

By Felix Quigley

October 17, 2009

The Goldstone Report should be read alongside the Hamas and Fatah Constitutions, the statements by the Iranian Mullahs as well as by Ahmadinejad.

But also alongside the speech made by Obama when a few months ago he travelled to Cairo to address “the Muslim world”. In his speech Obama made a direct comparision and drew equality between the Palestine Refugees of 1948 and the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis.

Thus it should also be read alongside the numerous statements made by George Bush Jnr in which he defined the answer as being the creation of an Arab “Palestinian”, that is in all truth Jihadist, state on the flank of Israel.

And it should also be read alongside the position of Reagan towards the Holocaust.

In reading the Goldstone Report people should also be aware of the role of Britain and the US Governments towards the Holocaust of the Jews, where they forced the Jews to remain in bloodbath Europe, note here the British White Paper of 1939 which basically set up the Nazi Holocaust and also the position of Roosevelt (clearly an antisemite) towards the Jews.

At another level Goldstone is a continuation of the Big Lie technique used over 2000 years against the Jews.

Major parts of this lie in recent years, that is in our living memory are

* Hiding the role of leading Arabs in the Holocaust

* Especially hiding the relations of Haj Amin el Husseini with Hitler, Himmler and Eichman

* And hiding that Arafat, Abbas and Hamas are direct continuation of the policies of Hajj Amin el Husseini

* Hiding the central hate-filled content of the Koran, not at all a religious document but the basis for modern Fascism

* Finally Goldstone must be understood against the background of other major lies, lies against the Jews

 

They are

 

Dir Yassin

The Qana “Massacre”

The Muhammed El Durra hoax affair

 

 

Perhaps of all of these the Goldstone Report is the worst of all. This relates to the modern drive for world dictatorship, to the rule of the US and EU extremists in Government who seek to control the world.

The essence of the Goldman Report on the Israeli fight against Hamas is this:

 

How can any country defend itself against attack from without? Does any country have the right to defend itself from attack from without?

 

Poised against Israel are the countries of the Arab League, the countries of the Islamic world, who have a controlling power over the United Nations.

 

Poised also against Israel is the power of the US Government and the whole of the EU Bureaucracy who wish to break down all national resistance to their overall world dictatorship.

 

If Israel as an example of a nation state is not able to defend itself against attack on its very existence (see above where we refer to Iranian, Hamas and Fatah aims) then Israel can no longer exist as a sovereign nation state.

And although they do not see it no nation, such as Russia, China or India, can exist either as a sovereign nation state.

The issues behind the Goldstone Report are these

 

1. Israel was bombarded with Hamas and other rockets for 8 years

2. Hamas fought from inside civilians and fought without wearing military clothing

 

Yet despite those two items Israel was asked by Goldstone to fight “humanely” against hamas.

 

To fight “humanely” against such an enemy, against enemy in war, is to ask the impossible and to not fight at all.

So the Goldstone Report is a continuation of the Dir Yassin Lie, Qana and El Durra. It is to create a lying scenario in order to stop Israelñ from defending itself.

The issue touches the future of every country and its right to sovereigny.

It is in a different form but is the same issue…The Irish reject the EU…The rules are rewritten and the Irish are made to vote until they accept the EU.

We on 4international say that there must be unity in action against these moves towards world dictatorship, and especially in defence of the rights of Israel to defend its sovereign right to use ANY means to defend itself.

Such unity in action does not mean that we will drop our revolutionary socialist programme. Far from it, in action we will show that only Trotskyism can lead the Israeli and other peoples, and working class, to victory.

Even as I write this the hopeless opportunist Ted Belman of Israpundit is continuing to cultivate his friendship with Sarah Palin and with reactionary republican circles, thus showing that Belman is now and always will be a crass American Imperialist stooge.

 

Belman hates socialism, hates Trotskyism.

 

Even so we on 4international propose unity in action against the Goldstone Report with even Belman. Will Belman offer the same to 4international. I doubt it personally and if he does not he will again be showing his true Imperialist and Reactionary colours.

THE FATAH CONSTITUTION…AIM DESTROY ISRAEL

by Felix Quigley

17 October, 2009

 

Written in 1964 before there was any “Occupation” of any “Arab Lands” it is doubly clear that the aim is to wipe Israel off the map, that is destroy Israel.

As we read these aims etc we will look very closely at 12 and 19

 

[begin extract from Fatah Constitution here]

 

CHAPTER ONE

Principles… Goals…. Methods

The Movement’s Essential Principles

Article (1) Palestine is part of the Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation, and their struggle is part of its struggle.
 

Article (2) The Palestinian people have an independent identity. They are the sole authority that decides their own destiny, and they have complete sovereignty on all their lands.
 

Article (3) The Palestinian Revolution plays a leading role in liberating Palestine.
 

Article (4) The Palestinian struggle is part and parcel of the world-wide struggle against Zionism, colonialism and international imperialism.
 

Article (5) Liberating Palestine is a national obligation which necessities the materialistic and human support of the Arab Nation.
 

Article (6) UN projects, accords and reso, or those of any individual cowhich undermine the Palestinian people’s right in their homeland are illegal and rejected.
 

Article (7) The Zionist Movement is racial, colonial and aggressive in ideology, goals, organisation and method.
 

Article (8) The Israeli existence in Palestine is a Zionist invasion with a colonial expansive base, and it is a natural ally to colonialism and international imperialism.
 

Article (9) Liberating Palestine and protecting its holy places is an Arab, religious and human obligation.
 

Article (10) Palestinian National Liberation Movement, “FATEH“, is an independent national revolutionary movement representing the revolutionary vanguard of the Palestinian people.
 

Article (11) The crowds which participate in the revolution and liberation are the proprietors of the Palestinian land.

 

Goals

Article (12) Complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.
 

Article (13) Establishing an independent democratic state with complete sovereignty on all Palestinian lands, and Jerusalem is its capital city, and protecting the citizens’ legal and equal rights without any racial or religious discrimination.
 

Article (14) Setting up a progressive society that warrants people’s rights and their public freedom.
 

Article (15) Active participation in achieving the Arab Nation’s goals in liberation and building an independent, progressive and united Arab society.
 

Article (16) Backing up all oppressed people in their struggle for liberation and self-determination in order to build a just, international peace.

 

Method

Article (17) Armed public revolution is the inevitable method to liberating Palestine.
 

Article (18) Entire dependence on the Palestinian people which is the pedestal forefront and on the Arab Nation as a partner in the fight, and realising actual interaction between the Arab Nation and the Palestinian people by involving the Arab people in the fight through a united Arab front.
 

Article (19) Armed struggle is a strategy and not a tactic, and the Palestinian Arab People’s armed revolution is a decisive factor in the liberation fight and in uprooting the Zionist existence, and this struggle will not cease unless the Zionist state is demolished and Palestine is completely liberated.
 

Article (20) Achieving mutual understanding with all the national forces participating in the armed struggle to attain the national unity.
 

Article (21) Revealing the revolutionary nature of the Palestinian identity at the international level, and this does not contradict the everlasting unity between the Arab Nation and the Palestinian people.
 

Article (22) Opposing any political solution offered as an alternative to demolishing the Zionist occupation in Palestine, as well as any project intended to liquidate the Palestinian case or impose any international mandate on its people.
 

Article (23) Maintaining relations with Arab countries with the objective of developing the positive aspects in their attitudes with the proviso that the armed struggle is not negatively affected.
 

Article (24) Maintaining relations with all liberal forces supporting our just struggle in order to resist together Zionism and imperialism.
 

Article (25) Convincing concerned countries in the world to prevent Jewish immigration to Palestine as a method of solving the problem.
 

Article (26) Avoiding attempts to exploit the Palestinian case in any Arab or international problems and considering the case above all contentions.
 

Article (27) “FATEH” does not interfere with local Arab affairs and hence, does not tolerate such interference or obstructing its struggle by any party.

THE HAMAS CONSTITUTION…A CHARTER FOR FASCISM

by Felix Quigley

17 October, 2009

 

The Hamas Constitution can be found on

http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/documents/charter.html

 

If you do not read it all at least read these sections

 

Article Seventeen: The Role of Muslim Women
The Muslim women have a no lesser role than that of men in the war of liberation; they manufacture men and play a great role in guiding and educating the [new] generation. The enemies have understood that role, therefore they realize that if they can guide and educate [the Muslim women] in a way that would distance them from Islam, they would have won that war. Therefore, you can see them making consistent efforts [in that direction] by way of publicity and movies, curricula of education and culture, using as their intermediaries their craftsmen who are part of the various Zionist Organizations which take on all sorts of names and shapes such as: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, gangs of spies and the like. All of them are nests of saboteurs and sabotage. Those Zionist organizations control vast material resources, which enable them to fulfill their mission amidst societies, with a view of implementing Zionist goals and sowing the concepts that can be of use to the enemy. Those organizations operate [in a situation] where Islam is absent from the arena and alienated from its people. Thus, the Muslims must fulfill their duty in confronting the schemes of those saboteurs. When Islam will retake possession of [the means to] guide the life [of the Muslims], it will wipe out those organizations which are the enemy of humanity and Islam.

Article Eighteen
The women in the house and the family of Jihad fighters, whether they are mothers or sisters, carry out the most important duty of caring for the home and raising the children upon the moral concepts and values which derive from Islam; and of educating their sons to observe the religious injunctions in preparation for the duty of Jihad awaiting them. Therefore, we must pay attention to the schools and curricula upon which Muslim girls are educated, so as to make them righteous mothers, who are conscious of their duties in the war of liberation. They must be fully capable of being aware and of grasping the ways to manage their households. Economy and avoiding waste in household expenditures are prerequisites to our ability to pursue our cause in the difficult circumstances surrounding us. Therefore let them remember at all times that money saved is equivalent to blood, which must be made to run in the veins in order to ensure the continuity of life of our young and old. “Lo, men who surrender unto Allah, and women who surrender and men who believe and women who believe, and men who obey and women who obey, and men who speak the truth and women who speak the truth and men who persevere (in righteousness) and women who persevere and men who are humble and women who are humble, and men who give alms and women who give alms, and men who fast and women who fast, and men who guard their modesty and women who guard [their modesty], and men who remember Allah much and women who remember Allah has prepared for them forgiveness and a vast reward.” Sura 33 (Al-Ahzab, the Clans), verse 35.

Article Nineteen: The Role of Islamic Art in the War of Liberation
Art has rules and criteria by which one can know whether it is Islamic or Jahiliyya art. The problems of Islamic liberation underlie the need for Islamic art which could lift the spirit, and instead of making one party triumph over the other, would lift up all parties in harmony and balance. Man is a strange and miraculous being, made out of a handful of clay and a breath of soul; Islamic art is to address man on this basis, while Jahili art addresses the body and makes the element of clay paramount. So, books, articles, publications, religious exhortations, epistles, songs, poems, hymns, plays, and the like, if they possess the characteristics of Islamic art, have the requisites of ideological mobilization, of a continuous nurturing in the pursuance of the journey, and of relaxing the soul. The road is long and the suffering is great and the spirits are weary; it is Islamic art which renews the activity, revives the movement and arouses lofty concepts and sound planning. The soul cannot thrive, unless it knows how to contrive, unless it can transit from one situation to another. All this is a serious matter, no jesting. For the umma fighting its Jihad knows no jesting

and 28

Article Twenty-Eight
The Zionist invasion is a mischievous one. It does not hesitate to take any road, or to pursue all despicable and repulsive means to fulfill its desires. It relies to a great extent, for its meddling and spying activities, on the clandestine organizations which it has established, such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions, and other spying associations. All those secret organizations, some which are overt, act for the interests of Zionism and under its directions, strive to demolish societies, to destroy values, to wreck answerableness, to totter virtues and to wipe out Islam. It stands behind the diffusion of drugs and toxics of all kinds in order to facilitate its control and expansion. The Arab states surrounding Israel are required to open their borders to the Jihad fighters, the sons of the Arab and Islamic peoples, to enable them to play their role and to join their efforts to those of their brothers among the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The other Arab and Islamic states are required, at the very least, to facilitate the movement of the Jihad fighters from and to them. We cannot fail to remind every Muslim that when the Jews occupied Holy Jerusalem in 1967 and stood at the doorstep of the Blessed Aqsa Mosque, they shouted with joy: “Muhammad is dead, he left daughters behind.” Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. “Let the eyes of the cowards not fall asleep.”

KEEP TUNED INTO HERE

By felix Quigley

October 15, 2009

This post is just a filler, and I may remove it later.

 

On 4international and on this site we have made certain gains of a theoretical as opposed to large organizational nature.

 

The post on Butterly does not really provide any answers but I will keep it to remind us as to what Irish hatred of the Jewish Homeland is all about. People like Butterly are active, all the time, they never seem to relent or relax such is their hatred for Israel. It is a common phenomenon.

 

The next post dealing witht he work of Miller is no thanks to us but to Miller who is just an outstanding man and historian. It must remain.The truths contained in this Miller study are universal.

 

We are heading out in a new direction, dealing with root issues, such as Marx v Moses Hess.

 

Just keep tuned

THE PURE EVIL OF CAOIMHE BUTTERLY

by Felix Quigley

May 11, 2009

This is a story about a woman called Caoimhe Butterly.

Butterly leaves the fair land of Ireland and journeys out to the Gaza WHERE SHE SENDS A LYING REPORT TO THE OPENLY ANTISEMITIC COUNTERPUNCH.

Butterly is billed in this way by Counterpunch.

(A short note on “Counterpunch. It is in no way left wing. It is not socialist. It does not stand in any of the traditions of the great socialist revolutionaries, namely Marx, Engels, Lenin or Trotsky. It is certainly anti Israel, anti Jew in the clear sense of being opposed to Jewish nationalism, in other words opposed to the Jews having a national state or Homeland etc. Of course it suits the bourgeoisie, aka Israpundit et al, to pass Counterpunch of as being socialist. In a word that is bullshit)

Caoimhe Butterly is an Irish human rights activist working in Jabaliya and Gaza City as a volunteer with ambulance services and as co-coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement they tell us!

We do know however…Butterly is from the pacifist section of Irish society and she demonstrates in the following everything that is neurotic in Irish society concerning the Palestinians. But from a pacifist base she has no difficulty supporting and working alongside Hamas. And she is a woman!!! Think of that also!!!

You know…woman…liberation of woman…Hamas!!!

Some years ago Butterly and Eamon McCann dragged a collection of boneheads down from Derry to visit Qana, never mind that a very ordinary little English website called EU Referendum with no stake in the affair except a principled desire to get at the truth showed convincingly that the whole Qana Massacre was a gigantic hoax.

Butterly and McCann never bothered to answer the EU Referendum because quite simply that is not what they do, not how they operate. To McCann and especially to Butterly facts have got nothing whatsoever to do with it, Butterly makes up her facts as she goes along. I guess you could say that McCann and Butterly are cultists, they have their little or biggish cult followings, and that keeps their egos ticking over. I can name a thousand others of this type in antisemitic Ireland of the so called “left”.

The following report of Butterly published in the right fascist organ of Cockburn bears no relation whatsoever to the Gaza war.. it is a tissue of lies and is blatantly so.

Butterly does not once mention the context, that the Jews left Gaza en toto, that the Jews hoped for peace, that they got war instead, that Jewish areas of Israel were pummelled for 8 years by Hamas Jihadist rockets, that the Jews delayed and delayed (very foolishly) for years doing anything, that the Hamas terrorists wish to destroy Israel not live in peace, that all the time Hamas was being supplied with weapons by Iran and Hizbullah, that Shalit is still held without Red Cross visits, that Hamas fought from within civilians, that they loosed rockets from the midst of civilians onto civilians, that the Israeli army made phone calls to civilians telling them to get out as a strike was on the cards, that a person who is fighting aged 17 going on 18 is not really a child but a dangerous terrorist Jew hating killer, and so on

Not one of those items is mentioned by Butterly once. Count in the following how often Butterly mentions the Hamas rockets on Israeli civilians of Sderot.

We on 4international will now publish this notorious rant by Butterly in Counterpunch to show people that in Irish Israel hatred we are dealing with something very evil indeed.

At no point does Butterly step back and give the reader any relief from her Hamas propaganda.

But the truth is that the Jews of Israel left the Gaza, decided to remove every last Jew from there, did this in fact as an act of great betrayal of the Jews as a way of accomodating the Arabs.

The Jews even left some industrial hot houses and other buildings as a way of offering the Gazan now totally Arab and Muslim a bit of a leg up as it were.

The Arabs responded to the offer with non stop bombardment of Israel for 8 years.

For 8 long years the Israelis delayed and delayed and in fact the Israeli elite were asking the ordinary Israeli families of places like Sderot in Israel to absorb these rockets.

And eventually when Israel decided to do something and went to war against these Hamas cowards, killers and war criminals,  the Israelis went to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualities, to the extent of telephoning hundreds of thousands of times.

Meanwhile the Gaza Hamas terrorists fought from within their own people, using civilians as shields.

There is not one word about this, the other side, in the Butterly report and thus there is no truth. In essence Butterly is a liar.

Reading this is a perfect addition to our series on the research into Irish antisemitism done by Rory Miller because it shows what a foul smelling thing Irish antisemitism has become.

 

[Start notorious rant by Butterly here]

 

Weekend Edition
January 16-18, 2009

(Calling it ” a report from Gaza, terribly bloodied, still breathing”) 

By CAOIMHE BUTTERLY

Gaza

The morgues of Gaza’s hospitals are over-flowing. The bodies in their blood-soaked white shrouds cover the entire floor space of the Shifa hospital morgue. Some are intact, most horribly deformed, limbs twisted into unnatural positions, chest cavities exposed, heads blown off, skulls crushed in. Family members wait outside to identify and claim a brother, husband, father, mother, wife, child. Many of those who wait their turn have lost numerous family members and loved ones.

Blood is everywhere. Hospital orderlies hose down the floors of operating rooms, bloodied bandages lie discarded in corners, and the injured continue to pour in: bodies lacerated by shrapnel, burns, bullet wounds. Medical workers, exhausted and under siege, work day and night and each life saved is seen as a victory over the predominance of death.

The streets of Gaza are eerily silent- the pulsing life and rhythm of markets, children, fishermen walking down to the sea at dawn brutally stilled and replaced by an atmosphere of uncertainty, isolation and fear. The ever-present sounds of surveillance drones, F16s, tanks and Apaches are listened to acutely as residents try to guess where the next deadly strike will be- which house, school, clinic, mosque, governmental building or community centre will be hit next and how to move before it does. That there are no safe places- no refuge for vulnerable human bodies- is felt acutely. It is a devastating awareness for parents- that there is no way to keep their children safe.

In this paragraph Butterly gets carried away in her total Israel hatred. Here she creates a totally nasty concept that Israel was acting like the IRA did in Bloody Friday, where second bombs were set off to blow up those fleeing from the first.

As we continue to accompany the ambulances, joining Palestinian paramedics as they risk their lives, daily, to respond to calls from those with no other life-line, our existence becomes temporarily narrowed down and focused on the few precious minutes that make the difference between life and death. With each new call received as we ride in ambulances that careen down broken, silent roads, sirens and lights blaring, there exists a battle of life over death. We have learned the language of the war that the Israelis are waging on the collective captive population of Gaza- to distinguish between the sounds of the weaponry used, the timing between the first missile strikes and the inevitable second- targeting those that rush to tend to and evacuate the wounded, to recognize the signs of the different chemical weapons being used in this onslaught, to overcome the initial vulnerability of recognizing our own mortality.

 

Note in the following paragraph how Butterly throws out unsubstantiated “facts” without bothering to source anything. It is more than possible that Butterly picks up these facts from the sink hole of antisemitism in Indymedia where no lie against Israel is too big to use.

Though many of the calls received are to pick up bodies, not the wounded, the necessity of affording the dead a dignified burial drives the paramedics to face the deliberate targeting of their colleagues and comrades- thirteen killed while evacuating the wounded, fourteen ambulances destroyed- and to continue to search for the shattered bodies of the dead to bring home to their families.

Last night, while sitting with paramedics in Jabaliya refugee camp, drinking tea and listening to their stories, we received a call to respond to the aftermath of a missile strike. When we arrived at the outskirts of the camp where the attack had taken place the area was filled with clouds of dust, torn electricity lines, slabs of concrete and open water pipes gushing water into the street. Amongst the carnage of severed limbs and blood we pulled out the body of a young man, his chest and face lacerated by shrapnel wounds, but alive- conscious and moaning.

As the ambulance sped him through the cold night we applied pressure to his wounds, the warmth of his blood seeping through the bandages reminder of the life still in him. He opened his eyes in answer to my questions and closed them again as Muhammud, a volunteer paramedic, murmured “ayeesh, nufuss”- live, breathe- over and over to him. He lost consciousness as we arrived at the hospital, received into the arms of friends who carried him into the emergency room. He, Majid, lived and is recovering.

This could be a totally made up story by Butterly, I mean how many “Muhammuds” are there in Gaza! And how likely is it that somebody would return to ruins to pick up “clothes” if things were as bad as painted by Butterly. And if the age she gives is correct, 17, that means he is terrorist age.

A few minutes later there was another missile strike, this time on a residential house. As we arrived a crowd had rushed to the ruins of the four story home in an attempt to drag survivors out from under the rubble. The family the house belonged to had evacuated the area the day before and the only person in it at the time of the strike was 17 year old Muhammud who had gone back to collect clothes for his family. He was dragged out from under the rubble still breathing- his legs twisted in unnatural directions and with a head wound, but alive. There was no choice but to move him, with the imminence of a possible second strike, and he lay in the ambulance moaning with pain and calling for his mother. We thought he would live, he was conscious though in intense pain and with the rest of the night consumed with call after call to pick up the wounded and the dead, I forgot to check on him. This morning we were called to pick up a body from Shifa hospital to take back to Jabaliya. We carried a body wrapped in a blood-soaked white shroud into the ambulance, and it wasn’t until we were on the road that we realized that it was Muhammud’s body. His brother rode with us, opening the shroud to tenderly kiss Muhammud’s forehead.

This morning we received news that Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City was under siege. We tried unsuccessfully for hours to gain access to the hospital, trying to organize co-ordination to get the ambulances past Israeli tanks and snipers to evacuate the wounded and dead. Hours of unsuccessful attempts later we received a call from the Shujahiya neighborhood, describing a house where there were both dead and wounded patients to pick up. The area was deserted, many families having fled as Israeli tanks and snipers took up position amongst their homes, other silent in the dark, cold confines of their homes, crawling from room to room to avoid sniper fire through their windows.

As we drove slowly around the area, we heard women’s cries for help. We approached their house on foot, followed by the ambulances and as we came to the threshold of their home, they rushed towards us with their children, shaking and crying with shock. At the door of the house the ambulance lights exposed the bodies of four men, lacerated by shrapnel wounds- the skull and brains of one exposed, others whose limbs had been severed off. The four were the husbands and brothers of the women, who had ventured out to search for bread and food for their families. Their bodies were still warm as we struggled to carry them on stretchers over the uneven ground, their blood staining the earth and our clothes. As we prepared to leave the area our torches illuminated the slumped figure of another man, his abdomen and chest shredded by shrapnel. With no space in the other ambulances, and the imminent possibility of sniper fire, we were forced to take his body in the back of the ambulance carrying the women and children. One of the little girls stared at me before coming into my arms and telling me her name- Fidaa’, which means to sacrifice. She stared at the body bag, asking when he would wake up.

Once back at the hospital we received word that the Israeli army had shelled Al Quds hospital, that the ensuing fire risked spreading and that there had been a 20-minute time-frame negotiated to evacuate patients, doctors and residents in the surrounding houses. By the time we got up there in a convoy of ambulances, hundreds of people had gathered. With the shelling of the UNRWA compound and the hospital there was a deep awareness that nowhere in Gaza is safe, or sacred.

We helped evacuate those assembled to near-by hospitals and schools that have been opened to receive the displaced. The scenes were deeply saddening- families, desperate and carrying their children, blankets and bags of their possessions venturing out in the cold night to try to find a corner of a school or hospital to shelter in. The paramedic we were with referred to the displacement of the over 46,000 Gazan Palestinians now on the move as a continuation of the ongoing Nakba of dispossession and exile seen through generation after generation enduring massacre after massacre.

Today’s death toll was over 75, one of the bloodiest days since the start of this carnage. Over 1,110 Palestinians have been killed in the past 21 days. 367 of those have been children. The humanitarian infrastructure of Gaza is on its knees- already devastated by years of comprehensive siege. There has been a deliberate, systematic destruction of all places of refuge. There are no safe places here, for anyone.

And yet, in the face of so much desecration, this community has remained intact. The social solidarity and support between people is inspiring, and the steadfastness of Gaza continues to humble and inspire all those who witness it. Their level of sacrifice demands our collective response- and recognition that demonstrations are not enough. Gaza, Palestine and its people continue to live, breathe, resist and remain intact and this refusal to be broken is a call and challenge to us all.

Caoimhe Butterly is an Irish human rights activist working in Jabaliya and Gaza City as a volunteer with ambulance services and as co-coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement

[End the notorious rant by Butterly here]

 

There is no arguing with the likes of Butterly. She writes for a constituency, one in which Israel is the demon in the world, and the “Palestinians” are the angels. In that sense Butterly has made her life into a thing of fierce hatred against Israel, which happens to be the Homeland of the Jews, a Homeland that was very badly needed in the Nazi Holocaust. Butterly has NEVER once in her life allowed the name of Hajj Amin el Husseini pass through her mouth. But then it is the mouth of a liar consumed with hatred of Israel.

A WONDERFUL HISTORICAL REVIEW OF IRISH ANTISEMITISM

By Felix Quigley

May 11, 2009

Rory Miller is an outstanding gain for the Irish socialist revolutionary movement. Let me explain this rather carefully.

The Irish “Left” has become a really corrupt mess of a thing!

The Irish “Left” really has nothing whatsoever to do with the great traditions of the historical socialist movement. I can best explain this in showing that they are known liars, which is seen in their refusal to publish 2 things:

1. That the Arab leader from the Palestine area of the Middle East was the worst ever Nazi criminal. This was the Arab Hajj Amin el Husseini. In the Holocaust he was the equal of Hitler, certainly easily on a par with Himmler and arguably the superior in the killing of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust to even Eichmann.

2. They have also hidden that the great socialist revolutionary Leon Trotsky advocated the Jews create their own independent state and that they use that state as a refuge from antisemitism. Trotsky was an advocate of the Israel to be.

And these are the 2 great lies that have corrupted the Irish “Left” of today.

 

The following work by Miller is outstanding in every regard. It covers the whole expanse of Irish Free State history and shows how the Irish have drifted into sheer antisemitism.

This analysis which Rory Miller made is most revealing. He begins with 3 reasons why the Irish may be so anti-Semitic. It is number 3 in the following which is most damning of the Irish position and echoes the disappointment with the Irish felt by Ben Brisco towards the end of his life. Basically from a historical stand point the Jews in Ireland and elsewhere thought that they and the Irish had everything in common. In fact Jews played a big role in the Irish struggle for independence. Imagine then the disappointment of the Jews with the Irish when they the Irish betrayed the Jews and would not recognize Israel.

 

 

[Begin the rest of Miller’s analysis]

 

Even, prior to 1956, when Ireland was a powerless/peripheral state without a UN seat [entry vetoed in 1946 by USSR] and struggling to make a go of its new status as an independent republic the Palestine issue was a major preoccupation in Ireland.

 

Why?

Number of reasons–many of which are as true today as they were then

 

1. Irish struggle for independence from Britain lead to an innate Irish hostility towards partition as a solution to territorial conflict

 

[1920-Government of Ireland Act 1920-partition island]

 

Irish reject 1937 Royal commission on Palestine partition proposal

At league of Nations in 1937 Eamon De Valera attack partition as
”the cruelest wrong”

 

Capt. John Lucy writing in the Irish dept of foreign affairs monthly bulletin in 1938 noted

“England seems to be under the permanent delustion, as she is here in Ireland, that she can sell the same article to two people”

 

2. Importance attached to the Holy Land, and in particular, Christian Holy Places in Jerusalem

What Conor Cruise O’Brien has termed “The Vatican Factor” among

Public                                      clerical establishment                political elite.

 

June 1949 Foreign minister Sean MacBride told the Dail

“strongly supports the general demand that the holy places in Palestine should be suitably protected…the whole area of Jerusalem should be brought under international control”

 

Closely follow Vatican position on internationalization

Pope Pius XII—October 1948 encyclical on Jerusalem In Multiplicibus and April 1949 encyclical In redemptoris. 

 

In 1961 the Israeli ambassador to London was warned by senior diplomat:

“in such matters it is a mistake to write off the Vatican position by reference to what might to a normal person seem to be realism”

 

 

3. Identification with Jews in History

The Irish have undoubtedly seen parallels between their own history of large-scale migration and suffering in response to the Famine and the Penal Laws and that of the Jews under the Russian Tzars and later under the Nazis. 

 

Moreover, in 1936 the spiritual leader of the Irish Republic’s Jewish Community, the renowned Rabbi Isaac Herzog, left Dublin to take up the post of Chief Rabbi of Palestine, later becoming Israel’s first Chief Rabbi. 

 

While the Jewish underground fighting the British during the pre-1948 era was modeled on the old IRA—Yitzak Shamir’s nom de guerre was, after all, “Michael”, after Michael Collins.

-Yitzhak Shamir, future Prime Minister in Brussels in 1960s–courted Irish officials–but they not interested in stories of Civil War and the battle against the British.

 

In the decades after Israel’s birth Irish Jews, like Rabbi Herzog’s sons Chaim (a future president of Israel) and Yaacov (a great scholar and diplomat), as well as others like Max Nurock Israel’s ambassador to Australia contributed greatly to Israeli political and diplomatic life. 

Among this group

Frustration seen re: Irish attitude to developing Diplomatic Relations with Israel

 

February 1949 Cabinet agree to grant Israel de facto recognition [minimum level of recognition]

One of 32 states to recognize Israel between 1 January 1949 & 11 May 1949

20 others recognize Israel prior to 31 December 1948

 

Main Irish objective: Avoid any action that construed as

Legal recognition

Acceptance of Israeli control of Jerusalem

 

Death of Weizmann 1952-DEA advise president [O’Ceallaigh] against writing

In case it viewed as recognition of Weizmann as head of state

 

De Valera refuse invite to memorial service in Dublin synagogue

 

Policy of not sending note of congratulations on Israeli independence day

 

This refusal of Ireland to commit to legal recognition of Israel frustrated senior Israeli officials who not understand Irish position

 

In 1958 Walter Eytan, the first Director general of Israel’s foreign ministry noted that “irealnd, for some Irish reason, to this day does not recognize Israel de jure’

 

Shlomo Argov Israel’s ambassador to Ireland in the late 1970s and early 1980s expressed similary puzzlement

 

Israel constantly propose: 3 options to rise diplomatic ties

 

1-exchange of diplomatic missions

2-establish Israeli mission in Dublin (directly or by dual accreditation)

3-simple public statement of de jure recognition by Ireland

 

May 1963: grant Israel de jure recognition

 

Not a significant departure from ireland’s cautious stance up to this point

 

Exclude explicit or implicit acceptance of Israeli sovereignty over Jersualem from statement

[this decision was made at the time]

 

Signficiant public goodwill in Ireland towards Israel at this time

 

Rising Israel-Vatican ties

-in January 1964 Pope Paul VI visited Israel as part of tour of Holy Places

-Vatican “raised no objection” to upgrading ties [DEA]

-Italy, home of Vatican upgraded diplomatic relations with Israel from legation to embassy level in October 1955

 

Prior to this grant de jure recognition to

Egypt                           Syria                            Lebanon

 

On same day grant de jure recognition to 40 states including

Morocco                     Jordan                         Libya               Kuwait             Algeria

 

FOLLOWING DE JURE RECOGNTION

No rise in practical ties with Israel

–spring 1963 no message of sympathy sent on death of president Ben-Zvi

 

-Summer 1966 Taoiseach decline invite to dedication of forest in Israel to de valera

 

-refuse to appoint honorary consul or trade rep in Tel Aviv despite numerous applications

 

-Careful not allow Israel to use rising trade ties as back door to gaining further recognition

 

-Not mistake cautious rise in bilateral ties with anti-Israel attitude in intenraitonal norms

 

-rise in ties Israel demand similar effort vis a vis Arabs: not a priority region

 

1975-following EEC entry—and on eve of EU presidency – formalise diplomatic relations with Israel on a non-residential ambassadorial basis in December 1974—last to do so in EEC

In the eleven months prior to the decision on Israel, Ireland had commenced, or upgraded, diplomatic relations with

Lebanon (January)

Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia (September)

Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (October)

 and Egypt (December). 

In January 1975 Ireland entered into non-residential diplomatic relations with Algeria and Tunisia

more significantly,

In February 1976 an Irish resident mission was opened in Iran.  In June 1980 Ireland entered into non-residential diplomatic relations with the Republic of Iraq.

 

December 1993 following Oslo—exchange residential missions—last to do so in EEC

[PLO not fair much better: offered a residential mission same day as Israel in 1993]

 

 

Identification with the Palestinian cause

However, the Irish struggle for independence also infused them

with a deep identification with the Arab nationalist struggle. 

terms of Irish identification with the Palestinian Arabs who were (at least in the Irish perception) forcibly partitioned.

 As O’Brien explains:

A little over three hundred and fifty years ago, the Catholic natives of large regions of Ulster were displaced from their homelands, by forfeiture or purchase, and replaced by a population differing from them both in religion and education and social organisation.  The natives remained in the area, mainly as tenants on the poorer land, and in unskilled industry.  Today, although the material position of the Catholics has greatly improved, the relationship between Catholic and Protestant, native and settler, has lost almost nothing of its animosity.

 

 

This was reciprocated by the Arabs. 

The scholar and statesman Richard Crossman has written that he realized the importance of the “Irish revolution model in modern history” during his first meeting with Egypt’s Gamal Abd-al Nasser in the early 1950s.

 During this meeting Nasser told Crossman that a book he had read on how the British were expelled from Ireland “will be a textbook of our Egyptian revolution”. 

 

As mentioned above the Irish anti-colonial experience also left the Irish with a deep hostility towards partition as a solution to territorial conflict, which in turn led to consistent support for the Palestinian cause. 

 

The factors set out above influenced both

the Irish attitude to the Israel-Palestine conflict

and the Israeli and Palestinian attitude to the Irish role in that conflict

 

Take Conor Cruise O’Brien’s book on Zionism and Israel—The Siege

 

David Vital—distinguished Israeli historian say

“it is surely an Irishman’s intuitive understanding of the Jewish-israeli predicament that makes it much the best book on the subject to be written by one fortunate enough (in this case) to be an outsider”.

 

Review of the same book in Journal of Palestine Studies

“one might expect Dr O’Brien to take a sympathetic position vis a vis the Arabs.  He does not”

 

The Same is true from the Irish perspective:

An Editorial in Leader 1957

“From our standpoint, the interesting thing is that both side sare prepared to listen to us.  The Jews…feel that we attempted what they are trying to do, to estabihs a political entity, which will be part independent state and part nostalgic homeland for the Diaspora.  They read our history in their schools, and it is said tha the Haganah was modeled on the IRA.  They think we are “with them”.  There is no need, on the other side, to stress the similiraity of the Arab nationalist plight to that of the Irish.  They would listen to us if they listen to anyone in the role of mediator”. 

 

 

 

This seen clearly both following Irish entry into the UN in 1956 and following Irish entry into the EEC in 1973:

Indeed, these two events have been the key dates in the evolving Irish attitude to the Palestine question

 

1956-1973

Palestine question at the UN

ENTER UN 1955-56

Suez Crisis

UK/France/Israeli invasion of Egypt late 1956

-FM Liam Cosgrave “deplored and condemned” invasion

 

November Sepcial Session support UNGA resolutions condemning action

 

But Cosgrave also note his “regret” at Egypt’s attempt to

 

“encompass the destruction of Israel….[Israel’s neighbours] must be ready to accept as a fact the existence of Israel and must renounce their projects for the destruction of that country”

 

January 1957: Irish Un delegation abstain on section of UNGA draft resolution attacking Israeli action in Suez as “a little too one sided to be of real service”

 

UNSC JANUARY 1962

 

One term temporary member of UNSC for first time

 

March –Israeli-syrian border clashes

Support draft resolution calling on both sides to honour 1949 Armistice agreement

 

But

Freddy Boland [Irish UN ambassador] refused to speak in debate as

“I felt it would carry us into the sphere of Arab-Israeli differences to an extent which we have so far managed to avoid in the UN”

 

Hesitancy to become directly embroiled in the ME at the UNSC

 

Adds credibility to Aiekn’s words to Israeli foreign ministry member in 1962 that

Irish position on ME was Discreet and limited to private suggestions to parties involved.

 

Not confuse hesitancy with

-lack of interest or a

-belief that it had no right to be involved

 

Belief: especially under Aiken: FM 1957-1969 that Ireland occupy a unique place in international system

 

RIGHT and DUTY to contribute to search for peace and harmony in world

 

As Aiken told Dail 1961:

“owing to the accident of history or whatever way you like to put it [Ireland has] been independent, united, neutral, in the accepted sense of the term, in the military sense of the term.  It was our duty…take full advantage of that position, in order to try to promote the peace, to try to make propositions which countries tied to blocs could not make without committing their bloc”

 

Constant argument for irish international involvement

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern at Foreign Policy Association in New York, Sept. 2000

“the first and foremost” argument in favour of Irish involvement in the international arena was the “moral dimension”.

 

This particularly so re: Arab-Israeli conflict

 

 

Most notable—

Aiken’s central—and much underestimated role in UN mediations during and following June 1967 Arab Israeli War

 

Key speech in 5^th emergency special session, 27 June 1967

Arnold Toynbee—“historic document”

Arthurl Lass, former Indian ambassador to the UN “by far the most far reaching of all those made in the Assembly debate”.

 

Key Role in deliberations of Western and Latin American States over diplomatic wording of UNGA resolutions:

Aiken suggested the wording for operative paragraph 1 (a) “all the territories of Jordan, Syria and the UAR occupied as a result of recent conflict”. 

This was ultimately adopted as the basis for operative paragraph 1 (a) of the final draft (which called for Israel to withdraw its forces from “all the territories occupied by it as a result of the recent conflict”. 

 

 

Lord Caradon, Dean Rusk, Abba Eban, U Thant: All look to Aiken

 

May 22: Day Nasser close Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships: Lunch with Thant

 

Caradon suggest that if negotiations with Latin American states broke down, then Ireland “should go it alone” and be the sole sponsor of a Western Draft resolution

 

Abba Eban: before the UNSC on 13 November 1967 urge UNSC to adhere to “my friend” Aiken’s call for a “speedy negotiation and [the] signing of a permanent treaty of peace”.

Irish stance between 1967-1973 was not expressed in anti-Israeli political position yet

 

Institute of Palestine studies characterize Irish position in UN in Summer 1967 as “strongly pro-Israeli”

 

December 1969: Ireland vote against UNGA resolution 2535 (XXIV) that viewed as a “call for the destruction of Israel”.

 

December 1970 vote against similar draft resolution “political and biased resolution”.

 

But some notable chanes in the yeas 1967-73:

First: Rising Irish preoccupation with the Palestinian refugee crisis

 

Irish policy on refugees increasingly at odds with Israel

Israel—peace settlement followed by solution to refugee crisis

Ireland—solution to refugee crisis prerequisite to rpeace settlement

 

 

Prior to EEC entry in 1973: 1 major involvement in the Israel Palestine conflict

Aid to Palestinian Arab Refugees

 

By April 1948

Month prior to Arab invasion of Israel

Over 100,000 Paelstinian Arabs

Urban centres Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa

Villages of Coastal plane

Flee to surrounting Arab states

 

By end of War: Early 1949: Refugee no.s

Israeli sources—538,000

Palestinian sources—850,000

UN estimates—720,000

 

1949 UNGA establish UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency

 

Aid to refugees of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza strip

 

Aiken in UN speeches 1957 & 1958

Described P refugee issue as “greatest single obstacle” to a lasting peace in the Mid-East

Most ambitious humanitarian plan for refugees

 

--called on UN to “guarantee full compensation” for the refugees for both property lost and damages suffered as a “result of their exile”

 

--accept Israel not exclusively responsbiel for the tragedy but call on it to state how many refugees it was prepared to accept

 

---call on UN to “arrange for repatriation for the maximum possible number of those who would rather return than receive full compensation”

 

--US $1000 per family to resettle outside Palestine

 

October 1958: Ireland makes first “purely token” donation to UNRWA £1000

One of 31 nations to fund UNRWA

 

Donations grow notably until 1966

[see table 1]

 

1966

One of 43 out of 121 UN members [around one third] to donate funds

 

Contribution as a percentage of GNP—ranked sixth overall in Europe

 

Following June 1967 War—200,000 more refugees

December 1967 Aiken SPC speech on refugees

Repeat proposal of 1958

 

Instruct DEA to draw up plan for UN refugee fund to be submitted to UN Sec-Gen

 

Plight of P. Refugees:

Dominate Irish Mid East Policy and Aid Policy

 

June 1967—Refugee problem not on list of DEA Mid East priorities.

[free access to Suez; limit nuclear weapons; freedom of oil; solution to Arab-Israeli conflict]

By 1969 it was one of top 3 priorities

 

As a member of the DEA noted in summer of 1967

“tanaiste regards the present situation in the Middle East, and especially the plight of the refugees, as a major crisis with the gravest implications for world peace and he feels that Ireland should make a generous contribution as possible, not only for humanitarian reasons but also in the interest of peace in the Middle East and the world in general”

 

See this in rise in UNRWA funds 1967-1973: Table 2

 

UNRWA aid: out of proportion to other funding

Especially UNHCR

 

Responsibility for 3.5 million refugees[ Asia & Africa need practical assistance]

DEA figures: 1967-68: UNHCR 200,000 more refugees

See TABLES 3 & 4

 

1959-1966 inclusive:
FUNDS to UNRWA=US$ 133,800

FUNDS to UNHCR=UA$40,000

 

1967-1971 inclusive:

FUNDS to UNRWA=US$275,000

FUNDS to UNHCR=US$40,000

 

By 1970 DEA admit privately

UNRWA funding “reasonably adequate”.

 

UNHCR “ very poor”

 

Justified by FM Hillery on “political grounds [as way of] demonstrating practical support for P. tragedy”

Following EEC entry in 1973

 

Frustration over ongoing failure to resolve refugee crisis

Combined with

Anger at Israeli occupation of W. Bank and Gaza

 

Rising western sympathy for 3^rd world causes and anti-colonial ideology

 

Success of PLO twin policy of terror and international diplomacy

 

French attempt to move the EEC towards its pro-Arab position

 

Focus on Palestine issue by existing Six member state try to increase co-operation in foreign policy

 

 

Ireland committed to this approach.

Take 6 Irish EU presidencies

 

1975: Garret Fitzgerald

-allay fears that 1975 Israel-EEC trade agreement

-gain compromise “Dublin Formual” re: Palestinians in single Arab delegation for EAD

 

1979: Michael O’Kennedy

-at UN, first EU rep to call for “representatives” of the Palestinains (diplomatic speak for the PLO) to “play a full part in the negotiations of a comprehensive settlement”

-Arab view of this statement

“first time that the EEC mentioned the need for the PLO to have a role in the peace process”.

 

1996 Dick Spring:

-intensive shuttle diplomacy Oslo peace process

-EU envoy to Mid East-post established in Dublin

Aim:

Report back on opportunities for Eu politicial role

-assist Israel and PA in negotiations

-monitor violations by both sides

At start of presidency Ireland also propose EU monitoring system of settlement building in Jerusalem –later extended to W. Bank

 

Outside of the Presidency:

October 1974

Vote with France and Italy [all rest of EC abstain or vote against]

Resolution in favour of PLO participation in plenary UNGA meetings on P. question.

 

Israeli respond “greatly disappointed…Ireland lend support for organization of murderers”

 

February 1980:

Bahrain communiqué

-Independent state in Palestine

-PLO ‘full role’ in negotiations

-withdrawal from all territoty captured in 1967

 

Begin: RTE radio: this tantamount to irish acceptance of PLO right “to destroy state of Israel”

Bahrain go further than March 1980 Giscard D’estaing [French president] call for P self determination

Or

June 1980 Venice Declaration

PLO “association”                   self determination

 

From 1980s Ireland viewed as part of the EEC’s pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian bloc

Intensified by

UNIFIL experience

Between 1978-2001—40,000 Irish troops serve on Israel-Lebanese border in Southern Lebanon [47 lose lives]

increase support for Palestinian cause in Irealnd at a public and official level:—casualties/clashes with SLA

Senator McDonald evoked the general Irish view on the issue at this time, when he admitted in 1990 that he had lost much of his previous sympathy for the Jewish state once Israel ‘commenced to use our UNIFIL volunteer soldiers as target practice’.

This tension end 2000, following Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and end of Irish UNIFIL role

 

But coincide

Breakdown of Oslo—outbreak of violence September 2000

 

As Brian Cowen, Ireland’s then Minister for Foreign Affairs, put it in October 2000, the renewed fighting was ‘truly tragic’ because it occurred ‘just at the moment when the parties were closer to an agreement than they have ever been’.

 

Like its EU partners, Irish government has continuously expressed regret at the escalation of violence and has repeatedly condemned the ‘horrific’ killing of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings, arguing that such ‘atrocities …do nothing to advance any legitimate political agenda and must be unreservedly condemned’. 

 

The government, again like EU partners, have linked condemnations of Palestinian violence s with criticisms of Israeli policies and actions that were viewed to have either provoked, fuelled or prolonged the Palestinian resort to terror as ‘excessive and disproportionate’. 

In particular the government has condemned ‘extra-judicial killings’—what Israel terms “targeted assassination”

It has also drawn attention to settlement building—as a “cause of massive Palestinian resentment’ as well as ‘a major focus of violent incidents”.

Most notably between 2000 and his death in November 2004

Ireland was committed to supporting the role of President Arafat as “ the indispensable partner for dialogue”

While Ireland’s UN Ambassador Richard Ryan

We reject outright any intention to oblige the elected leader of the Palestinian people to re-enter exile.

 

Ireland opposition to any policy of excluding Arafat from the political process clearly highlighted by Cowen’s decision to meet Arafat during his visit to the region in late June 2003 even though Israel refuses to meet foreign representatives who visit Arafat on the same visit.  Both the DFA and the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv downplayed the implications of the incident by calling Cowen’s visit to Arafat a ‘courtesy call’.  The Israeli foreign ministry, at least privately, took a less sympathetic view of Cowen’s decision while the Israeli press described Cowen as the ‘most blunt of all’ EU leaders on the matter.  Indeed, Cowen was the first high-ranking international diplomat to choose to meet with Arafat over Israeli officials since Mazen became Palestinian prime minister.  Prior to his trip the Spanish foreign minister made two official visits to the region in a five-day period to avoid the Israeli boycott, while Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi refused to meet Arafat at all. 

This whole affair clearly underlines the ongoing Irish commitment to the Palestinian cause (it coincided with the founding of a new cross party lobby group ‘Friends of Palestine in the Oireachtas’ that can claim fifty Dáil deputies and senators as members).  But it also highlights the extent that Irish policy makers continue to view Arafat as “Mr Palestine”–the embodiment of the Palestinian struggle and the father of Palestinian hopes.  In 1993, during his celebratory trip to Dublin following the signing of the Oslo peace accords, Brian Lenihan reminded Arafat of the ‘genuine warmth in Ireland for you and your cause’.  A decade later, with the optimism of 1993 long-gone, the Oslo process is in ruins, terror at an all-time high, and a majority of Israelis, the American administration and significant sectors of the Palestinian population having lost faith in Arafat’s capacity, or desire, to lead the Palestinians to their inevitable state, Cowen was describing Arafat as ‘the symbol of the hope of self-determination of the Palestinian people’ and praising him for his ‘outstanding work…tenacity and persistence’. 

 

Arafat always appreciated Irish support.

On his first visit to Dublin in 1993 he: thanked his hosts for the fact that

‘during our long march we have had real friends in Ireland who have given us unlimited support in difficult days when many others would not even listen to us…they have supported us on many occasions and on many levels’.

On a visit to Dublin in October 2001 Arafat noted that Ireland had always been a ‘good friend’ of the Palestinians told a press conference that the Palestinians and the Irish have a ‘historical and very important relationship together, more than friends, and we are proud of it and we are in need of it’. 

He repeated this again in a March 2002 interview with the Irish Times in which he noted that ‘we are proud that the relations of our two peoples are very strong and very old and we are proud of it’. 

 

 

Arafat not only praised Irish support but looked for it to help in a number of ways

–To use its membership of the UNSC-2001-2002

–TO use its close ties with the US administration—

As early as his visit to Dublin in 1993 Arafat had called on Ireland to use its special relationship with the United States to promote the Palestinian cause and throughout the 1990’s the Palestinian leadership continually urged Ireland to use its influence in Washington, strengthened by the role of the President Clinton in the Northern Ireland peace process, to promote the Palestinian case.

With the onset of Oslo deadlock, Arafat repeated this call in a message to Taoiseach Ahern prior to Clinton’s visit to Ireland in May 1998.  While during their October 2001 meeting the Palestinian leader again urged the Irish premier to raise the matter of Palestinian rights in his upcoming meeting with with President George W. Bush in Washington the following month. 

This belief in close ties between Dublin and Washington fostered, in part by cooperation on the Northern Ireland peace process)

 

Indeed—following breakdown in Oslo—Ireland took advantage of its role in Norhtern Ireland to involve itself in Mid East

For example, in his meeting with Shimon Peres in early September 2001 Cowen drew on the Irish case, as part of his attempt to convince the Israeli foreign minister to meet Arafat. 

Or as the Irish Times put it Cowen’s message to Peres that ‘political dialogue is an indispensable ingredient of peacemaking carries greater conviction by virtue of his own experience in the Northern Ireland peace process’. 

 

This point was reiterated by Taoiseach Ahern at the height of the second intifada in April 2002 when he told an audience at the annual Easter Rising commemorations in Dublin that ‘the protagonists in the Middle East should study more closely the Irish experience’; and by Cowen the following month when he emphasised that: ‘Ireland’s own experience of conflict resolution has shown clearly that progress can be achieved only when those parties committed to peace refuse to allow the peace process to be made hostage to the latest atrocity carried out by men of violence’. 

The Irish government’s experience of facilitating peace in Northern Ireland was acknowledged by various Middle Eastern figures from Netanyahu and Barak to Arafat and Egypt’s former foreign minister Ahmed Maher who explained that though ‘a small country…as a country that has itself been engaged in a peace process, I think they have a deep knowledge of how to handle these difficult moments’.

 

In January 2004 Irleand took over the EU presidency for 6 months:

The gov expressed Ireland’s ‘deep and sympathetic interest’ in contributing to a solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict

 

Diplomatic niceties apart, there was little optimism in Jerusalem that Ireland would use the platform provided by its Presidency to help rebuild the EU’s deteriorating relationship with Israel. 

Ireland’s December 2003 decision to abandon its efforts to put forward a UN draft resolution condemning anti-Semitism after it failed to gain unanimous support for the proposal, was an immediate cause of this Israeli anxiety. 

 

As Yoav Biran, Director General of the Israeli foreign ministry explained during a visit to Dublin in the same month, the real concerns related to the fact that over an extended period Israel believed that ‘some positions’ adopted by Ireland on the Israel-Palestine conflict could be construed as ‘lacking the kind of balance and understanding of the terrible human difficulties of Israel that one would expect’.

In February 2004 Israel dismissed as ‘tepid’ the contents of a statement issued by the Irish presidency, on behalf of the EU, condemning a suicide bombing that killed eight Israeli civilians.  In particular, Israel took offence at the statement’s demand that the PA should take action ‘to the extent possible’ to halt terror, and argued that the EU should demand more from the PA than that.

The following May the Israeli foreign ministry was even more outspoken in its repudiation of a statement by Cowen that Israeli forces had shown a ‘reckless disregard for human life’ in operations in Rafah in the Gaza strip that resulted in a number of Palestinian fatalities.  Israeli officials took special exception to what it viewed to be Cowen’s equation of the actions of the IDF with the cold-blooded murder of an Israeli woman and her four children earlier in the month.  One senior Israeli diplomat went as far as to tell the press that since acceding to the EU presidency Ireland had taken the most radical anti-Israel position in the EU.

 

It is true that Cowen’s statement could have been worded more carefully.  It is also true that the Rafah tragedy had caused considerable anger in Ireland.  In early May it was reported that 52 TDs, MEPs, senators and independent politicians signed a petition in favour of sanctions against Israel, which was submitted by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), to the Department of Foreign Affairs; while in the wake of events in Rafah a number of senators expressed their support for economic sanctions against Israel.

It is incorrect to label Ireland as the most radical anti-Israel state in the EU at that time, given the far more outspoken attacks on Israel emanating from countries like France, Belgium and Sweden.  .

But the Irish government was guilty of failing to use its presidency to admonish the PA leadership, in particular Arafat, for ignoring, and in many cases causing, the chronic corruption and instability that plagued the PA by this time. 

 

By mid-February reports from the PA were noting the rising anger over the ‘political bankruptcy’ of the Arafat regime and the growing discontent even within Arafat’s Fatah organisation

 

In late May 2004, over one hundred Palestinian policemen, in a desperate attempt to draw attention to the failings of the PA leadership that it served, briefly occupied a security base run by members of Force 17, Arafat’s personal bodyguard.  Before surrendering they warned that unless something was done about corruption thousands of fellow officers would be forced to mutiny. 

 

The following month, Egypt gave Arafat an ultimatum to implement reforms.  The Mubarak government was joined in calling for reforms and in holding Arafat personally responsible for the chaos inside the PA, by King Abdallah of Jordan and a number of Palestinian officials and personalities.  ,

In July 2004, Dr Khalil Shikaki, head of the Ramallah-based Centre for Policy and Survey Research blamed the crisis of governance on the refusal of the Arafat-controlled Palestinian National Security Council to take measures ‘to maintain public order’.

 

However, during both its presidency and since that time Ireland has been far more reticent.  there has been little serious domestic debate on, never mind criticism of, Arafat’s failure to facilitate democracy, tackle corruption or develop the PA into a viable entity.

 

This remained the case even following the publication of a report by the Palestinian Legislative Council—the Palestinian parliament—that concluded that Arafat and the PA’s failure to live up to the responsibilities of leadership was a significant contributing factor to the growing anarchy and disillusionment of the Palestinian people. 

 

Even when in August 2004 Arafat, bowing to growing external and domestic pressure, grudgingly admitted that he had made ‘unacceptable mistakes’, the Irish government refused to take a public stand on the matter. 

 

Indeed, by the autumn of 2004, even the UN, an institution that has championed Palestinian rights since the 1970s, had acknowledged that any security reforms that had been reluctantly implemented by the PA in response to pressure from the Quartet had been ‘slow and mostly cosmetic’. 

 

Though providing further evidence of the deep attachment in Ireland to Arafat, the Irish decision to remain silent, while so many other nations, international organizations and Palestinian officials publicly criticize Arafat and his lieutenants is ill-advised. 

 

This refusal to acknowledge that Arafat is directly responsible for the crisis or that, as Ahmad Dudin a former senior Fatah official in Hebron put it, the PA ‘has always been a one-man operation…that is the problem’, threatens to tarnish Ireland’s reputation among a younger generation of Palestinian leaders. 

 

Yet it is they, in the post Arafat era, who offer the best chance of leading the Palestinian people to a viable, sovereign state alongside Israel, a central objective of Ireland’s Middle East policy for over three decades.

FROM REPUBLICAN SEAN MCBRIDE TO THE PRESENT LEADER THE IRISH ELITE HATE ISRAEL

by Felix Quigley

May 11, 2009

Manfred Gerstenfeld reviewed Rory Miller’s book and it is very refreshing to see how he views the Irish, especially in their relation to the Jews of Israel

 

[start with introductory excerpt from Gerstenfeld’s review]

 

Ireland is a minor member of the European Union and draws little international attention. Few people know that it is probably the EU country most hostile to Israel. Israeli ambassador to the EU, Oded Eran, said in a 2006 interview: “Sweden and Ireland are probably the countries that most frequently raise their voices against Israel.”[1] Since then, in Sweden the notoriously anti-Israeli Social Democrats have lost the elections and been replaced by a Conservative government.

One example of Ireland’s attitude toward Israel and Arab terrorism is that it is one of the only three countries, the others being France and Spain, that have prevented the EU from declaring Hizballah a terrorist organization.[2]

We on 4international are drawing much knowledge from the outstanding research into this vital issue by a noted academic. Rory Miller, Irish-born, is a lecturer in Mediterranean studies at King’s College, University of London. He is also associate editor of Israel Affairs. Miller’s book covers Ireland’s policy toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since Israel’s establishment. It reviews developments fairly, which means exposing a little-known country’s discriminatory behavior against another democracy.

The Gerstenfeld study based on his interview with Miller continues here. 

Politicians against Israel

Over most of the past decades, Ireland’s political attitude toward Israel has been largely negative. Miller explains that many Irish view Israel as a colonial state. Yet, in his opinion, Ireland has much more in common with Israel than with the Palestinians. Nevertheless, for decades Ireland has only rarely come out in favor of Israel.

Many Irish politicians have also personally played a negative role in accusations against Israel. Former foreign minister Sean McBride was chairman of an international Commission of Inquiry into the murders of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians at Sabra and Shatila. Its report said this was the “culminating instance” of Israeli massacres of Palestinians (112). Another well-known case of misconduct concerns Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former UN high commissioner for human rights. She bears major responsibility for the events leading up to the greatest postwar explosion of anti-Semitic hatred at the 2001 UN World Conference against Racism in Durban.[3]   

In an interview Miller said: “If one were to throw a sack of flour over the Irish parliament, it is unlikely that anybody pro-Israeli would get white. Among the 120 members of the Dáil-the Irish parliament’s lower house-and the hundred members of the Senate, not one name springs to mind as a regular defender of Israel. There are either those who do not care or pro-Palestinians.”[4]

Miller mentions that Irish parliamentarians in session will regularly discuss Israel’s shortcomings while not one of them mentions Palestinian suicide bombings. Double standards so characteristic of the anti-Israeli mutation of anti-Semitism are typical for the Irish government. It will regularly condemn Israel but, for instance, in 1990, refused to denounce King Hussein’s and Yasser Arafat’s support for Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait (147).

The evidence of Anne Bayefsky on the present anti-Semitic role of the Irish is especially significant because we on 4international believe that she is the premier authority on the UN.

American Law professor Anne Bayefsky points out that Ireland has been the EU’s leading state on the subject of religious intolerance at the United Nations. Yet it was determined to exclude any mention of anti-Semitism from the 2003 UN resolution on religious intolerance. Ultimately, to avoid a separate motion by Israel, Ireland agreed to include such mention if Israel withdrew its motion, which it did. Yet, the Irish delegation reneged on its promise.[5] 

  

Nonpolitical Matters

Elsewhere, Miller has observed that the Irish government values economic and research relations with Israel. This explains the fact that the many Irish condemnations of Israel remain verbal only. Another reason is that, as a small country, Ireland feels that its policy should be in line with the EU mainstream.

Relatively strong forces on the Irish Left, however, favor boycotting Israel. Anti-Israeli organizations have rather more support in Ireland than in other European countries. Miller notes that:

the Irish branch of the International Solidarity Movement [an extreme anti-Israeli organization] . . . is among the most active in the world. In 2004 they handed a petition to the foreign minister with twelve thousand Irish signatures, 275 of elected officials across Europe, and fifty of elected officials or public figures in Ireland, calling for an economic boycott.

As Ireland has a population of three and a half million, this is far from insignificant. At that time the leader of the Irish Senate, Mary O’Rourke, said she would support an economic boycott of Israel unless the country improved its treatment of the Palestinians.[6]

After the summer 2006 war in Lebanon, it was a group of Irish academics who were the first in Europe to renew the call to boycott Israeli academics.[7]

A History of Anti-Semitism

Ireland has a substantial history of anti-Semitism. A main force has been the Catholic Church, which, however, has lost power in recent decades. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were pogroms in Ireland. Although much of the country’s current anti-Zionism is, according to the commonly accepted definitions, unabashedly anti-Semitic, it has not led to incidents against the local Jews. In this regard Ireland is an exception to the rule.

The Jewish community in Ireland has dwindled to about a thousand. The number of anti-Semitic incidents is very limited, and the government takes a strong stand against them. The Muslim community is relatively small at an estimated twenty thousand, only about half a percent of Ireland’s population.

A substantial area of friction between Israel and Ireland has been the tense relationship with Irish UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon. Since the summer 2006 war, a small Irish contingent is again participating in the new international force there. The failure of the latter to disarm the Hizballah terrorists may well lead to new frictions between the EU and Israel. Past experiences have already made Ireland sensitive on the subject, and this is another potential obstacle to improving relations with Israel. Miller’s book provides an excellent background for understanding future developments.

 

*     *     *

Notes

 

[1] Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Oded Eran, “Israel and the European Union,” European-Israeli Relations: Between Confusion and Change? (Jerusalem: JCPA, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2006), 91-101.

[2] Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Rijk van Dam, “Anti-Israeli Bias in the European Parliament and Other European Union Institutions,” ibid., 79-90.

[3] Tom Lantos, The Durban Debacle: An Insider’s View of the UN World Conference against Racism (Jerusalem: Institute of the World Jewish Congress, 2002)

[4] Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Rory Miller, “Irish Attitudes toward Israel,” European-Israeli Relations, 181-94.

[5] Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Anne Bayefsky, “The United Nations: Leading Global Purveyor of Anti-Semitism,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 31, 1 April 2005.

[6] Gerstenfeld, interview with Miller.

[7] “Academics Call for Ban on Israel,” Irish Times, 16 September 2006.

 

THE JEWS HELPED THE IRISH TO WIN INDEPENDENCE AND NOW THE IRISH HATE ISRAEL AS WAY OF THANKS

by Felix Quigley

May 11, 2009

Why are the Irish so anti-Semitic?

Rory Miller, Irish-born, is a lecturer in Mediterranean studies at King’s College, University of London. In 2005 he published a book titled Ireland and the Palestine Question, 1948-2004. He also gave a revealing interview with the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs in October 2006

Miller explains:

“In Irish politics sympathies are very much with the Palestinians. The negative attitude toward Israel is in line with that of the European Union and its belief that Israel was in the wrong when the Second Intifada broke out. Yet Irish politicians are pragmatic. Many believe that Israel has much to offer their country in the economic field and thus think Ireland should not burn its bridges with it. Moreover, Irish politicians would not be willing to break ranks with the EU and adopt a tougher position on Israel than its European partners.

“The trade volume between Ireland and Israel is $700 million a year. Exports and imports are about equal. Ireland is a good case study to prove that no matter how bad political relations are these do not necessarily impact negatively on bilateral economic relations. It is also a good case study to demonstrate that however good economic relations are, these do not improve the political relationship.

Irish ministers say it is important for Ireland to develop a relationship with Israel in the hi-tech field. The same people will stand up in parliament and say that Israel needs to make concessions, and that the problems in the Middle East are its fault.

Miller now comes to the key factor, and it is this which is driving the Jewish world into great crisis. The Jewish people of Israel want to be normal people and to be treated with fairness and with normality, but that is not possible because there exists int he world such a thing as antisemitism. As dialectical materialists we insist that antisemitism is a material factor and a material force.

“Israeli governments, for decades, have wanted to separate the economic from the political sphere, and have often been successful. Now that the two are separate, this also means that economic developments have no political influence. The EU’s multibillion-dollar trade surplus with Israel has not reduced its political animosity.”

What this adds up to is that the Irish, especially the Irish bourgeoisie, are the biggest hypocrites in the whole world. Here they are as a reflection of the EU prepared to milk the power and genius of Israel and the Israelis while at the very same time stabbing Israeli nationalism in the back. Could anything be more obvious.? The Irish trying to feather their own nationalist nest at the expense of Israel, using Israeli brains and expertise, yet at the same time denying that the Jews can actually have their own national state. And of course lining up with terrorists, the biggest and most consistent liars in the whole world, who have successfully hidden that they the Palestinians were founded by the very worst Nazi that there has ever been (Yes folks I did say Nazi), Hajj Amin el Husseini, friend of Himmler and Eichmann and definitely on a par with Hitler. Praised and loved by Arafat and Abbas, their common forte was the killing of Jews. And the Irish, gullible fools that they are, bought the whole thing hook line and sinker. What suckers! But the existence of antisemitism as a material force means that they the Irish and for that matter most Europeans wanted to be suckered.

Miller is dead right in his assessment that this foul smelling anti-Semitic position of the Irish is at root a result of their lack of independent being. Miller does not say it but I believe that this comes essentially from the weakness of republicanism in Ireland as an ideology. Griffith, as James Joyce well knew, was a conscious Jew hater and a worker hater. The Irish fought their decisive battle not in 1916 but in 1913 when Murphy leading the Dublin and Irish employers brought the union of Larkin and Connolly to its knees in the infamous “Dublin Lockout”, when the whole forces of the nascent republican state were mobilised against the workers. The other side to that determination of the employers was the abject failure of the syndicalism of Connolly and Larkin (in contrast to Lenin and the Russian Bolshevik political tendency) to build a leadership which could prevail. Connolly leading his Citizen Army into the GPO later in 1916 under the banner not of communism, but of the “republican” banner of De Valera, was thus not only an act of extreme courage but simultaneously an act of despair. Blood sacrifices are not the ideal for workers, blood happens when workers are vanquished, and James Connolly very, very unfortunately was operating in 1916 from a legacy of theoretical and political weakness ending in despair.

Frank Aiken of course was anything but socialist but as foreign minister over a long time was already making tracks for Ireland so that the tiny country with huge pretensions would play a reactionary role towards the Jews of Israel. This centred on his adoption of the Palestinian refugees and here it is a matter of Irish anti-Semitism meeting Irish plain buck stupid ignorance, especially ignorance of history, or should we say indifference to historical fact and detail. (As a little aside you can see the same crisis effected Zapatero of Spain, a man who is booed routinely at every gathering he attends, because economically he is hated for economic reasons, and “economic lies…Zapatero also makes hay on the Jewish Palestinian Arab issue, emerging essentially as an enemy of the Jewish Homeland and of its right to defend itself against terrorism, even as the Spanish television screens are always being filled with Spanish police in balaclavas bundling ETA terrorists into cars and planes on route to jail. The contradiction being Zapatero ses ETA as terrorists and sees Hamas et al as “freedom fighters”. Same contradiction with the Irish. The issue is universal because antisemitism has always been universal.

One can follow many leads in trying to explain this buck ignorance (creating antisemitism!) of the Irish. A nation oppressed by the British and kept in total poverty and blinding ignorance for centuries. The role of the Catholic Church which trampled all over intellectualism and indeed intellectuals is another reason. And a big factor is that on winning power in the 20s especially the Irish Catholics set about pretty well wiping out their own protestant minority in the south of Ireland so that today there is little more than 2 per cent left. All this is assiduously and quite blatantly cleverly hidden. So in adopting the Palestinian refugees there was no precedent for dealing with the issue historically. Especially the not peripheral issue, did the Arabs of the area (not then calling themselves Palestinian anything) leave of their own or own leaders accord or were they forced out by the Jews, is either ignored, or lied about.

Anyway there are many reasons for the anti intellectualism of the Irish, their ignorance of history, their preparedness to wallow in this ignorance rather than doing something about it. But it does no good to just state the reasons or excuses. The Jews in this instance are the ones who do suffer.

Miller does a great job in showing the slavish following of the reactionary EU and UN by the Irish. We need also to look however at just how reactionary these bodies are. There is much evidence for this but of course it is kept well hidden by the Israel haters and the anti-Semites on the Left (so called Left of course) As we move into decisive battles there will be no answers forthcoming from this “Left” who have become the hod carriers for Islamic Fascists, the same whom Trotsky referred to as “the reactionary Mohammedans”! (Judge therefore the hollowness of some of their claims even to the “Trotskyists”!) But there is a new generation of thinkers, researchers and writers who have done sterling work and have helped fill the vacuum caused by the betrayal of this left. This left is a fake and these new thinkers are not trammelled by the dogmatism of the thing wrongly called the left and have brought us nearer to the truth. I think Miller fits in there somewhere and we are glad of his presence.

THE BIZARRE AND OUTLANDISH JEW HATRED OF THE IRISH TOWARDS ISRAEL

by Felix Quigley

May 4, 2009

The key to understanding how the Irish elites and governments can claim they are against antisemitism yet are at the same time in support of the totally antisemitic “Palestinian” movement is found in a phenomenon of Arab history that the Irish academic Rory Miller leaves well out of his thinking.

That is the role of the Arab from Palestine who was the equal of Hitler, Himmler and Eichmann in the Holocaust. Arguably he was the superior of Eichmann. His name is Hajj Amin el Husseini and academics usually either ignore him or down play his role.

However leave aside this omission by Miller for a moment.

What Miller does do is give us the background as to how the Irish capitalist class made the “morph” from antisemitism to anti Israelism and pro Palestinianism, the same thing of course. Meaning anti Israelism is one and the same as antisemitism.

In the relationship between Israel and Ireland knuckle heads of the Irish pro Palestinian Terrorist movement like to call for a boycott of Israel. It appears according to Miller that Ireland would be the loser and not Israel.

This is because the Irish capitalist class is rather (very tremendously) weak and does not have all that much independence, either independent thought or independent “doing”

[Start quote from Miller here]

“Ireland has been very successful in attracting overseas investment over the past decade, mainly from the United States. There have been years that it exceeded the U.S. investment in China. Ireland, however, has been unable to create its own entrepreneurs. Neither does it invest significantly in research and development.

“Many Irish do not realize how artificial their national economy is. One can understand that, for instance, from its trade with Israel. Israel mainly imports and exports from subsidiaries of U.S. multinationals that happen to be located in Ireland. Very little derives from indigenous Irish companies.

“American multinationals in pharmaceuticals and other technological areas have invested heavily in Ireland. They employ many Irish workers. If these companies were to expand further in cheaper countries abroad, Irish-Israeli trade would shrink significantly.”

 

Research and Development

“It is common among Irish politicians, businesspeople, and scientists to say that their country has to learn from Israel. They view the latter as a country with a small population and few natural resources, facing economic challenges similar to those of Ireland. So they claim that their country should follow Israel as far as investment in education and technology is concerned.

“Irish ministers say openly that Israel is a model economy and that from their perspective it offers vast opportunities. From 1995 onward there has been a significant development of R&D cooperation between Ireland and Israel. When Israeli chief scientists or, for instance, biotechnology experts visit Ireland, they are treated professionally and warmly welcomed at the highest level. That continued after the breakdown of the Oslo agreements.

“In these conversations one could not detect any political animosity among senior economic advisers, civil servants, or politicians. I would imagine if one asked these people, once the Israelis had left, who was in the right in the Middle East, most would be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, but the political issue is just not a consideration in bilateral economic ties.”

[End quote from Miller here]

So it is the Irish capitalist class who are the parasites in this trade relationship between the Irish and the Israelis.

Or in other words the Irish are the knuckle heads, it is the Jews of Israel who are the whizz kids.

And the crafty Irish bourgeois are out to milk the Jews for all they are worth.

But that does not stop these Irish elites from lining up behind Hamas and Fatah who call for the destruction of Israel and who insist that Israel is just about the worst idea there has ever been, in fact such a bad idea that the world would collectively breath a huge sigh of relief if it could be obliterated.

But then what would the knuckle heads in the Irish do for lack of their “R&D.

Obviously far thinking is not part of their forte!

To me there seems to be massive doses of  prejudice here, the kind of prejudice that has deep historical roots, and that stops people from thinking logically and reasonably.

Miller has highlighted the hypocricy of the Irish. They sit round the table with the Israeli Jews and everything is hunky dorey and the Irish are milking it for all they are worth.

They even comment that they should be holding Israel up as a model for they the Irish to follow.

No sooner are the Israelis out the door than they are slagging Israel.

You really could not make this up!

This is a very peculiar prejudice indeed one that is all mixed up with hypocricy and an apparent lack of self awareness.

Next we will go on to discuss how this prejudice against Israel came into being. It has got clear historical roots. On this Miller is particularly strong because he locates this inside the historical weakness of the Irish capitalist class, and how they have followed like the little slaves they are, firstly the UN and then the EU.

 

There is much to consider in this analysis of Miller. The Irish bourgeois has always been weak. Even the so called Celtic Tiger which has come tumbling down with a crash was based on the Irish Governments making it very profitable for external companies to move in, use Irish labour, make their profits, keep their profits which is the really neat trick!

 

So then if weak (like Zapatero as I speak who is booed routinely by every Tom, Dick and Harry) the Irish bourgeois tended to latch on to whatever he could find, one day Mother Theresa, another the UN, another good old Jack Kennedy and lovely wife, then the EU and so on, until the whole international capitalist system starts unravelling as at present.

 

And to be “peacemakers” in the Middle East, now that is where they tend to go.

 

But why should an Irish bourgeois stick his nose into the affairs of the Homeland of the Jews.

 

Miller is just so brilliant on much of this, especially in relation to the way that the Irish blarney merchants have treated the native Jews.

 

Yes Miller has done us Trotskyists of 4international a big service!

 

(more to come)