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Ireland is not rich in natural resources. It has almost no coal or oil, little gas and few minerals. But what it does have, in almost bottomless quantities which it will still be able to draw on when Saudi Arabia is importing oil from Saturn, is sanctimony. There is almost no moral issue taxing the world on which Ireland’s leaders do not know best, drawing from the country’s deep wells of supernatural goodness.
The entire Brexit drama was enacted in Ireland as a morality play in which the British government was portrayed as nasty, xenophobic bigots, as by extension were the British people, with the Irish remaining the only good Europeans in this archipelago. Why the Irish simply adore this conceit is a rather difficult question to answer, since the EU and the European Central Bank made Ireland cover German banking losses on the Irish property market in the 2000s to the value of €34,500 for every man, woman and child in the country.
But probably the main attraction about being good little Europeans is that it means we’re not seen to be British. The problem is that Ireland spends so little on defence that by the terms of a secret treaty with the otherwise despicable British it regularly calls in the RAF to see off Russian reconnaissance aircraft intruding in its airspace. Meanwhile, Ireland pays its navy so badly that 450 of its personnel have recently jumped ship, obliging it to mothball two of its fishery-protection vessels. This leaves just seven vessels to mind some 220 million acres of sea, in utter violation of its maritime undertakings to the much-loved EU.
This essay appears in the most recent Quadrant.
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Furthermore, Ireland’s President is never happier than when condemning British imperialist sins of the past, an activity that is not remotely within his legal or constitutional remit, but it goes down well with the conjoined media and academic classes. His most recent public foray was with Noam Chomsky, the veteran critic of the US and Israel, which brings us inevitably to the issue where Irish sanctimony now threatens to drown the entire island in a sickly treacle of self-congratulation: the Middle East.
In May, Ireland’s parliament, the Dail, condemned with an almost Arabic extravagance Israel’s record towards Palestinians and Gaza, denouncing the “de facto” annexation of land in Judaea and Samaria, or the West Bank. The anti-Israel motion was introduced by Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, a relationship which in most sensible people’s eyes should naturally rob both the motion and its authors of any moral validity. But in Ireland of the Boundless Virtue the reverse is the case: the Irish coalition government accepted Sinn Fein’s unequivocal condemnation of Israel, merely adding a line that almost inaudibly criticised Hamas’s firing of over four thousand missiles into Israel.
The story of Ireland denouncing Israel then went round the world with (as intended) no one really noticing the sotto voce rebuke of Hamas, the terrorist organisation which had actually started the hostilities that cost some 270 lives. Also unnoticed and completely unreported in the Irish media were Sinn Fein’s deep anti-Semitic roots, which go back to the party’s origins at the end of the nineteenth century.
In 1899, the founder of Sinn Fein, Arthur Griffith, wrote of a Hyde Park rally in London in support of Alfred Dreyfus:
Some thirty thousand Jews and Jewesses, mostly of phenomenal ugliness, had come out of their East End dens at the summons of their rabbis. If they hated France, it was obvious that they hated soap and water even more acutely.
Five years later, Griffith strongly backed a rabble-rousing Catholic priest named Creagh who was leading a violent boycott of the small Jewish community of the city of Limerick. Though no Jews were killed, many were assaulted, and most of the Jewish community were driven out. Nor was anti-Semitism confined to the provinces. In September 1909, a Sinn Fein member named O’Meara petitioned in the courts in Dublin on behalf of the party against the presence of Jewish voters on the city’s electoral lists on the grounds that Jews were, by definition, “aliens”.
A long time ago? Of course. But it did not end there. In 1935, the Irish Parliament, Dail Eireann, responded to the rise of Hitler by passing the Aliens Act, which was primarily designed to keep any Jewish refugees out of Ireland, for nobody else but the desperate Jews of Central Europe would have had any reason to board the sinking ship that was isolationist Ireland of the 1930s. But some Jews did arrive, including a rabbi hoping to fill the vacancy left by the recent death of one local rabbi. His request to stay was refused, on the grounds that his appointment as a rabbi might prevent an Irish person getting the job, when of course no such Irish person existed. This prompted one Jewish politician to write: “our Instructor of Music in the [Irish] Army is a German who has not seen fit to become an Irish national … our Director of the Museum [Adolf Mahr] is an Austrian whose allegiance is to Mr Hitler who recently honoured him in his Birthday Honours.”
Matters soon grew worse, for Sinn Fein-IRA then signed a secret treaty with the Nazis which has never been renounced by either party, meaning that Sinn Fein-IRA remain (along with the Muslim Brotherhood and possibly a handful of barking geriatrics in a Paraguayan rainforest) the Nazi Party’s last remaining allies. A formal alliance between Sinn Fein-IRA (the two organisations are morally and functionally indivisible) and the Third Reich was agreed by IRA leaders and Nazi emissary Oskar Pfaus in a Dublin suburb in April 1939. The IRA undertook to declare war on Britain and in return would be armed and supplied by Nazi Germany.
The IRA-Sinn Fein delegation did not enter this deal in ignorance of Hitler’s anti-Semitic intentions. Just over two months earlier, on January 30, 1939, Hitler had announced to the world that in the event of a world war, the Jews of Europe would be exterminated. The Irish Times gave Hitler’s words headline coverage on its front page and inside pages as well. Five months after the IRA–Nazi pact was sealed, the IRA bombed Coventry, killing five people and injuring seventy, and the following week Germany invaded Poland.
Some months later, Sean Russell, a senior member of the IRA, travelled to wartime Berlin to intensify the German alliance. His primary contact in Berlin was an SS officer, Edmund Veesenmayer, who later had a major role in the extermination of the Jews of Yugoslavia and Hungary, totalling nearly a million people. Those glories were still to come when he and Russell discussed the IRA’s plans for Ireland. Russell’s intended role in the war 
was military; he was trained by the Special Forces of the Brandenburg Division in sabotage work, skills that he was expected to pass on to the IRA in its war against Britain.
In August 1940, Russell embarked on the German U-boat U-65, along with fellow IRA man Frank Ryan, bound for Ireland to wage a terrorist campaign in support of the Third Reich. Russell died aboard the vessel, apparently from a perforated ulcer, and his body was wrapped in the Nazi flag—not an honour lightly bestowed by the Kriegsmarin—and buried at sea. It is a measure of the importance of this mission to the Nazis that they were prepared to deploy a U-boat at the height of the Battle of Britain. The following November the Luftwaffe finished off what the IRA had begun in Coventry the year before.
Ambiguity—to put it mildly—towards the Third Reich was not confined to the IRA. In May 1945, the Irish prime minister Eamon de Valera—who genuinely was not an anti-Semite—nonetheless put on his top hat and tails to deliver to the German legate, Hempel, the formal condolences of the Irish people upon the death of Hitler. At this point de Valera knew about the Nazi death camps: Belsen, Buchenwald and Dachau had been liberated by allied troops, though Irish government censors had removed all references to these Nazi concentration camps from Irish newspapers. His motivation for this insane deed remains beyond analysis.
It does not end there. The following year, Gerald Boland, Minister for Justice, justified restrictions on Jewish refugees coming to Ireland as follows: “it was always policy … to restrict the admission of Jewish aliens [lest it] give rise to an anti-Semitic problem”.
Two sets of refugees were allowed into Ireland after the war: 500 Christian orphans and 100 Jewish orphans. If the Christians wanted, they could stay, and many did. But the Jewish orphans were obliged to return to the wasteland from which they had fled, regardless of their wishes or those of the families that might have wanted to adopt them.
Meanwhile, across Western Europe a new political order was emerging, one which unhesitatingly rejected Nazism and all its allies, but with one exception: Ireland. Here minor German war criminals and their allies were made heartily welcome. SS man Otto Skorzeny, one of Hitler’s most favoured warriors, was given a warm reception at a seafront golf club outside Dublin and liked Ireland so much that he bought a home here. Dublin city council gave a site in a park for the erection of a statue honouring the memory of the Nazi collaborator Russell, paradoxically not far from where German bombs had accidentally—or so the Luftwaffe maintained—killed twenty-eight people in 1941. (No memorial for them, mind you.) And in 2003, beside that very statue, the newly emerging star of the Sinn Fein-IRA movement, and today its political leader, Mary Lou McDonald, at the annual ceremony to commemorate Russell’s death, reaffirmed the political and moral validity of his alliance with the Third Reich; unchanged, unregretted, unashamed and unapologetic.
Despite this utterly squalid record, Sinn Fein has since gone from strength to strength, and is now the most popular political party in Ireland. It is almost as if the Irish electorate inhabits a different planet with utterly dissimilar ethics to almost anywhere else in Europe, with perhaps a couple of exceptions in the Bavarian Alps. Certainly, no other democratic society would have electorally rewarded a political party that annually honours a Nazi collaborator. But then, no other society would ever have allowed a statue to a Nazi collaborator to have been erected in the first place, with successive governments then allowing it to remain standing.
This is what makes the acceptance of Dail Eireann of a motion from such a deeply contaminated source as Sinn Fein on the issue of Israel so deeply objectionable. Whereas I would not agree with a single line in the recent Dail motion condemning Israel’s policies on the West Bank, I can recognise that genuine feelings are honestly being expressed in the vote. But that does not excuse Sinn Fein’s substantive motion being accepted by the government, instead of a substitute being inserted. For its original omission of any reference to the four thousand rockets Hamas had fired into Israel was not some unhappy oversight. Quite the reverse. It was a fair statement of where the IRA’s political wing stands on Israel and on Jews generally: roughly where it stood in 1899, in 1904, in 1909, in 1935, in April 1939, in September 1939, in August 1940, in 2003 and in May 2021: an unbroken and consistently restated continuum of anti-Semitism.
Moreover, no Irish prime minister has ever rejected, condemned or apologised for de Valera’s condolences over Hitler. Indeed, public sympathies—even the cultural ones—have sometimes pointed in the opposite direction. The Nazi-sympathising writer Francis Stuart, who in 1939 raced to Berlin after war broke out in order to support Hitler’s cause, was decades later appointed a Saoi, or “distinguished artist”, by Aosdana, the government-sponsored body of Irish artists. This rare honour has only been awarded seventeen times in its history.
So the recent vote is not without precedent as one-sided sanctimony, admixed with covert anti-Semitism, once again erupted in unanalytical emoting. Grown-up analysis of the problem is now virtually impossible in Ireland, even though Gaza is very visibly a proxy for Iran, which is determined to exterminate Israel. What would happen if Israel did as Ireland wanted, and removed all settlers from the West Bank? Gaza has already supplied the answer to that: yet more of the same, with every corner of Israel within reach of Iranian rockets fired from Lebanon, Jericho and Gaza.
And is this ambition to make yet another corner of the world entirely Jew-free not a vaguely familiar concept? Is that not a description of both the entire Arab world and Iran? Was it also not true for much of Europe in 1945? Yet it is Israel, whose population is 20 per cent Arab, which Irish politicians accuse of running an apartheid state. The evidence against that assertion is ludicrously obvious: it was an Arab judge in Israel who imprisoned the former Israeli President for rape, and last year an Arab lieutenant-colonel in Israel’s Special Forces was killed in action against Hamas fighters in Gaza. With tragic symbolism, two of the Israeli victims of Hamas rockets were also Arab: but naturally, Khalil Awad and his sixteen-year-old daughter Nadine have gone almost unmentioned in the Irish media.
Moreover, just like the UN, Irish politicians and media commentators who so regularly denounce Israeli settlements in Judaea and Samaria stay silent over Turkish eviction of all Greeks in Northern Cyprus and their replacement by Turks from Anatolia. A comparable silence is observed over the forcible incarceration and relocation of millions of the Uighur Muslim population by the Chinese.
Selective vision, selective history, selective anger. These are the tools that Sinn Fein-IRA have used to negotiate their way to “respectability”. By needlessly and foolishly accepting the Sinn Fein motion on the West Bank, the Irish government allowed the political wing of the IRA to appear to be the moral voice of the Irish people. And, as constitutional politicians lose the will to oppose the insidiously-creeping Sinn Fein agenda, historically the most anti-Semitic party in Western Europe—and the Nazis’ last surviving ally—might well be in government, north and south, within a couple of years. Soon after that, the island of Ireland will probably be Judenrein as Ireland’s few remaining Jews sadly pack their bags and head for London or Israel, and Griffith, Creagh, O’Meara, Russell, Stuart and all the others can at last sleep soundly in their graves. Their job is done.
This is the most relevant part of this article and it applies to the author:
Selective vision, selective history, selective anger.
To condemn the Irish for their stance is to ignore the wrongs committed by Israel for the past 70 plus years and its role as an apartheid colonial State, set up by European colonists in 1947, where today, 6 million Palestinians are held under brutal military occupation and denied human and civil rights purely because they are non-Jews.
Even Israeli human rights groups have dubbed it an apartheid State as did Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, both of whom could clearly recognise such an entity.
It does not serve Israel well to constantly deny what it is and why world opinion is increasingly turned against it and what it continues to do the indigenous people of the land it has colonised. Those who claim to care about Israel should work to make it the best it can be, not encourage it to be the worst.
Israel constantly compares itself to Middle Eastern tyrannies and theocracies instead of by the bar it has set itself as a Western democracy.
If the concept of setting up a State for followers of one religion, in someone else’s country, who would require and demand total power and majority in that State, which would, by its nature, disenfranchise and subjugate followers of all other religions, were mooted today it would be tossed out in a nanosecond. Why? Because not only would it be immoral, it would be illegal and it would be doomed.
But, it did happen in 1947 and yes, some people do know the history, but most do not. Younger generations know little history and do not care about what happened to some followers of Judaism in the Second World War. And even if they did, would not believe, including many Jews, that it could justify Israel’s treatment of the indigenous Palestinians.
Israel has lost support increasingly over the past few decades and every time it attacks the Gaza camp, the world’s largest open-air prison as many have said, including one former UK Prime Minister, it digs itself even deeper into a hole as world pariah. It cannot last. Every other nation founded through colonisation, at least those calling themselves Western democracies, as Israel does, have given full and equal rights to the indigenous people of the land they colonised. Some have said sorry, many have paid compensation, but all have created one State shared equally by indigenous and coloniser alike.
Israel must do the same. The desire to remain a quasi-democracy for Jews/theocracy, has no place in a modern world. It probably had no place in 1947 but it certainly does not today. Most Jews do not, never did and never will live in Zionist Palestine and support from Jews worldwide, including in the United States, is diminishing fast.
Times change, generations change, attitudes change and Israel must change if it is to survive as a nation. It cannot be a religious State akin to Saudi Arabia but it can be a modern democracy and all those who care about Israel and its survival should be working to that end; an end which can only come through truth and not through seeking to censor those who speak such truths.
Israel refuses compensation, justice and freedom to the people of the land it has taken, even as Jews still claim such rights for what they lost in the Second World War. Such hypocrisy cannot stand and Israelis deserve far better from their friends.
Kevin Myers is one of my favourite writers because of his fearless honesty.
Telling the truth about ‘Bandaid’ and the African Famine was an act of courage that saw the Irish Parliament call for a special law to be passed to imprison him for ten years!
Now Kevin, get serious and push the envelope of dangerous ideas by writing about Australian State and Federal government tyranny that has turned our once free nation into the NORK of the south. There are only 1M Uighers in concentration camps, but 25M Australians locked up. It used to be only criminals who wore masks, but now it is the maskless who are easily identified and persecuted!
We are at Day 540 of the promised two week imprisonment to ‘flatten the covid curve, but instead THEY flattened the economy and the spirit of the sheeple proles. The lockups are forever.
I note that a Facebook organiser has been sentenced to 8-months for ‘organising an anti-lockdown protest’. How does this crime and sentence differ from that proudly handed down in any other previous our current totalitarian state?
Finally, I also read that two well-known actors committed suicide as a result of their impoverishment and lack of hope. Acceptable collateral (or even intentional) damage as a small cost of establishing the New World Order?
Put “IRA PLO” into a web search. Public murals, and articles about their long association.
I hope that rosross above will put her money where her mouth is, and give her house , in Melbourne, Sydney, or wherever she lives, back to the Aboriginal tribe she stole it from. I challenge her to do this. Israel is the size of the American state of Massachusetts, about 1% of the Middle East. The Arabs have the other 99%. Rosross, in contrast, has benefited from the theft of an entire continent, to which I assume her ancestors had no historical claims whatever and in fact did not know it existed before around 1700- in contrast to the Jews and Israel. Before telling the Israelis to commit national suicide, let her put her own house in order- literally.
@wdr,
Let us remember that colonisation has been a part of human evolution for millennia. Everyone did it. When the Jews first appeared in Palestine, coming out of what is now Iraq, around 3,000 years ago, they were colonists along with many other tribes. The ancient Egyptians mentioned Palestine around 5,000 years ago and also noted when a tribe called Judea set up camp in Palestine a couple of thousand years later.
Since Aboriginal peoples were made first English subjects and then when we all became citizens, so did they, there is nothing to give back. Particularly since we have acknowledged the past, said sorry and provided high levels of compensation and support. The British made Aboriginal peoples English subjects with rights in law very quickly while Israel more than seventy years on claims and occupies all of Palestine and denies the indigenous people all rights.
Palestinian non-Jews get nothing. They have had their homes, land, possessions stolen from them with no apology, no reparation, no compensation. Israel was founded on genocide with 530 or more Palestinian villages wiped from the face of the earth by Zionist armies, although not British Mandate maps. They were the homes of the million Palestinians driven out, or killed in the tens of thousands by the invading Zionist armies. If Australia’s relatively benign colonisation is called to account then so must Israel’s bloody foundation be addressed.
This issue is not about Arabs, a culture, unless you want to call Israelis Europeans and make that comparison. This is a colonial war waged by European colonists in the name of a religion, Judaism.
And yes, I am aware of the Judaic religious teachings about Palestine but that does not give the religion any rights to the land. Religions do not get land rights, homelands or self-determination. If they did then all religions would have the same rights and as it happens, Jews could claim a bit of what is now Iraq, where their religion began and it would be Christians who had rights to Palestine.
If Israel faces any ‘suicide’ in becoming a modern democracy it is of its own making. If you set up a State which gives superior rights to one group but disenfranchises the larger indigenous group, as the South
Africans discovered, you are sealing your failure before you even begin.
Followers of Judaism had no right to a State and certainly not one set up in someone else’s country. But, like Australia they exist as a result of colonisation and they need to do what all other colonisers, the Western ones anyway, create one State shared equally. Sure, it won’t be a Jewish theocracy but surely Israelis deserve to live in a democracy and not a religious State, particularly since most of them are not religious, i.e. atheist secular, and so not really Jewish anyway.
Having worked with and for Israelis and spent time there I believe they deserve better. They have debased their culture as occupiers and colonisers and they, need to be free, perhaps even more than the Palestinian Christians and Muslims. It is not surprising that so many young Israelis have turned their back on the colonial State, returning to the countries their parents and grandparents left behind to colonise Palestine. One of the biggest communities is in Berlin which says, if that can happen then Israeli Jews can learn to share the land with Christians and Muslims, just as some did before 1947.
World opinion has changed and Israel must change.
Ros ross- You are talking nonsense, and are being extremely hypocrtical in what you say. The 2 million Palestinians in Israel pre-1967 are Israeli citizens and have the same rights as Jews. The West Bank is in Israeli hands because the Arabs attacked them in 1967- and got their heads handed to them. There was no independent Palestinian state 1948-67- the West bank was part of Jordan, Gaza administered by Egypt. There would have been no Palestinian state today if the 1967 War had not occurred- the West Bank would still be part of Jordan, and Gaza administered by Egypt. Abbas on the West Bank hasn’t held local elections in 15 years or so, as he fears a Hamas victory. On another matter entirely, relevant to the article posted here, it is ironical that the largest nation in Europe to remain neutral in WWII was Spain. Despite being a “fascist,” Franco steadfastly kept Spain neutral, thus ensuring that the Mediterranean did not become a German lake, and that France did not have Axis opponents on two sides. He also offered temporary sanctuary to any Jew who came to Spain, provided they then re-emigrated to Latin America or somewhere like that- they needed no second urging. Very few know of this, and all it got Franco was 30 years of ostracism after 1945- of course deserved in some measure because of his undemocratic regime, but he also got no credit.
The Grande Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestinian leader Haj Amin al- Husseini held genocidal talks with Hitler to rid the world of the Jews . Yes rosross , the selective anger and vision of history is definitely the hall and trademark of deceit – breathtaking.
It was the Australian writer Ion Idriess’ ( honest man) first hand experiences with Arabs, Egyptians and more specifically the Bedouin, that when push came to shove these people are not to be trusted.
This is were we get the old Australian slang of being GYPT ( ripped off, conned and lied to).
In the main non- Christian middle eastern and African immigration as well as the lefts hobby horse of multiculturalism has been a disaster for Australia and our relaxed way of life.
I guess that’s why Australians weren’t asked if they wanted this stuff forced on our good natures.
The real bug bear is the poor character of these people that peeves me. The Koran approves of lying to those of non Islamic lineage ( Tiqiyya being a component of Sharia that encourages lying to achieve your aims) which really confirms with unbridled loyalty every good Muslim’s anti Semitic and distorted view, contrived anger and historical parallax , whose long term aim is subjugation of the non Islamic world ( subjugation of stupid people).
Having said all that, the Banking Royal Commission held in Victoria did and does show that these type of people would make great corporate businessmen and would be comfortably at home in the banking sector.
Look at the dates in the article. In 1899 there was no Israel, And note the dates that cluster in the early Nazi period. It’s been a continuity of Jew hatred for over a century. It’s completely unrelated to anything about Israel. Palestinians are just an excuse for long standing antisemitism. That’s obvious.
“It was a fair statement of where the IRA’s political wing stands on Israel and on Jews generally: roughly where it stood in 1899, in 1904, in 1909, in 1935, in April 1939, in September 1939, in August 1940, in 2003 and in May 2021: an unbroken and consistently restated continuum of anti-Semitism.
Just had an idea for a ‘parallel history’ novel. Imagine Israel wasn’t established,, that the UN voted to totally discard the Mandate of the League of Nations for the Jewish state. What claims would be made today to support antisemitism? Don’t imagine Jew hatred would have just dissipated after 1945 when it diminished for a a couple of decades due to Europe’s embarrassment for taking it a little too far. Today there’s plenty of conspiracy theories that Jews organised Muslim migration to the west in revenge to dismantle western culture, and that Jews invented the virus to bring about their world government. There’s always new excuses.
rosross reckons that world opinion has changed and that Israel must change. Unfortunately, all she has done is to prove yet again that the more anti-semitism changes, the more it remains the same.
Anti-semitism is a hatred of Judaism and Jews. Valid and substantiated criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism. All Zionists are not Jews and all Jews are not Zionists so valid criticism of the Zionist State is not anti-semitic either. In fact many of the most vocal groups set up to fight for rights for Palestine are run by Jews.
https://ifamericansknew.org/
When one condemns the US for its war in Afghanistan one is not anti-American, one is simply stating facts.
Many Jews and increasingly so in the US say exactly what I have said about the Israeli Zionist
State and its occupation of Palestine. Times have changed and rightly so.
@wdr,
I suggest you do some more research and start with Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem and Peace Now and then move on to international human rights groups, all of whom clearly describe that non-Jewish Israelis are second-class citizens. I take it you are unaware that non-Jewish Israelis get different, and inferior education and medical services and are not allowed to do things that Jewish citizens can, i.e. bring family – parents, children, spouses to live with them; work outside of Israel and return.
The discrimination is clearly listed by human rights groups. Perhaps put a bit more time into bringing yourself up to date with reality.
There is no West Bank, there is only Occupied Palestine and that is everything beyond the UN Mandate which remains the only potentially legal borders for Israel, albeit, not yet tested in a court of law.
What you ignore is that Israel’s borders are irrelevant while it continues to hold millions of Palestinians under brutal military colonial occupation, denying them human and civil rights. Name one other nation founded through colonisation and which calls itself a Western democracy which does that to its indigenous people? There are none and if there were there would be outrage.
Let us face realities, Israel cannot continue to hold 6 million Palestinians under military occupation and neither can it kill them all. The option of driving them out does not exist either because the illegal Jewish settlers would have to be removed first so they were not caught up in the slaughter and that would give the game away.
Israel has made two States impossible and that means, one State shared equally by the indigenous people and their colonisers. A democracy where religion is private, secondary and irrelevant to citizenship just like a real Western democracy.
@STD, I know the history of this region and I also know that the creation of a State for Jews in Palestine was a product of a different age and could never last.
It is irrelevant what the Grand Mufti might have done, or what Arabs doe because this is not about Arabs, a culture, or Muftis a religion, but about the colonial injustice still being inflicted on the Palestinians.
It is a simple case of a terrible wrong where millions of people in their own land are denied freedom and rights by their occupiers. That can never be justified. If people had a right to fight occupation in the Second and First World Wars then everyone has that right, including the Palestinians. It is a matter of principles. That may have been overlooked in 1947 but it can no longer be overlooked. Justice demands that the occupation of Palestine ends. If Israelis want a religious State, a Jewish State, then they have to divide Palestine in two equal parts where each has fully and total control over air, land and sea borders. But it really is too late for that which is why justice can only come through a one-State solution.
I understand the pain some feel. I have Jewish family and friends who grieve for the loss of the fantasy that they believed Israel could be and I have others who grieve even more deeply for what the Israeli State is, what it does, and now they know the history, of how it was created.
So it isn’t easy but justice must stand on its own feet. That is the point of having principles of justice, rule of law, democracy, human rights and common human decency, they must apply to everyone and can be denied to no-one for no reason.
The reasons you might cite I can assure you are irrelevant in a court of law and to most younger generations in the world, including most Americans and many Jews. Times have changed and Israel either participates in what must come as did the South Africans or it has it happen regardless.
In the Middle East facts on the ground count for far more than sanctimonious ideology. Israel is, despite its small size and population, the technological, economic and military powerhouse of the region. The country has in the last few years discovered huge gas reserves (and some oil) in its off shore territorial waters. It has extended the olive branch to the Palestinians on many occasions only to be rebuffed. Rebuffed sometimes with a fusilade of rockets!
The great Israeli Foreign Minister, Abba Eben once noted that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Now the Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia, understand that the real threat to them comes from Iran not Israel. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. As a result of this their support for the Palestinians has become inconvenient and a bit embarrassing.
The best thing the Palestinians could do would be to pick up one of those olive branches and and start a process of reconciliation and trust building with Israel. This will be hard for them because they will have to reject Hamas and they will violently resist such a rejection. This WILL happen but it may take a long time, maybe 100 or even 1,000 years. The Jews have shown over 5,000 years that they are a patient people, they’ll wait.
rosross ,your defending the indefensible ,your fingertips are wasted !
rosross , I will pray in earnest for, your WIFE or HUSBAND to order you into a cold shower or an ice bath. THE SEPARATION OF POWER, RELIGION AND STATE, UNDER ISLAMIC KORANIC THINKING THIS WILL HAPPEN OVER SOMEBODIES DEAD BODY.
I am with Stephen. Well said.
Criticism of Israel as a response to an article about antisemitism in Ireland before Israel existed is obiously antisemitic. It’s also anachronistic. And stupid.
Have you ever noticed (present company excepted, of course) that anti-Israel enthusiasts who push the “Apartheid State” line re Israel, never come out against the creeping Apartheid we are developing in Australia, vis-a-vis Aborigines, such as separate health clinics and so on, to say nothing of Constitutional recognition of Aborigines as a separate people?
@ Stephen,
Re: Israel’s territorial waters, since it does not have defined borders beyond the UN Mandate, the gas and oil of which you speak are in Palestinian territorial waters. A mere technicality I know.
As to being rebuffed by the Palestinians, I would be curious to know of which other colonised people in world history can you tell me who did not rebuff or try to anyway, their occupiers and colonisers? Just curious.
The olive branch which Israel has never offered and which the Palestinians could accept would be apologies for colonising their country; full reparation and compensation to all Palestinians and the descendants of those killed or driven out in 1947;/48 – you know the sort of compensation and reparation for Palestinian Christians and Muslims that Jews got following the Second World War; right of return to all those who wish to return to their country; either their own State with contiguous borders, East Jerusalem as its capital and full control over all air, land and sea for the Palestinians, i.e. exactly the same rights an Israeli State would have, or, one State shared equally by colonisers and the indigenous Palestinians alike.
Israel has offered bantustans with no power, sort of official places to keep Palestinians imprisoned which can be more easily controlled, and the demand Palestinians accept that their country should be turned over to followers of Judaism, i.e. recognising a Jewish State which immediately disenfranchises most of them as Christians and Muslims. Why would any sane person accept such offers? They would not and they did not.
So, let us not pretend that any other occupied and colonised people in history have said to their oppressors, sure, take it, it’s all yours and I will meekly submit to your will, or that Israel has ever offered anything the Palestinians can accept.
@STD,
Humanity has managed to drag itself from the horrors of many depths by aspiring to the application of principles. It is hard but it is what takes us beyond being mere beasts. Principles of law, justice, human rights, democracy and common human decency decry all that Israel is and does to the indigenous Palestinians.
The issue is not what Muslims might do, but what Israel is doing and particularly when it claims to be a Western democracy, thereby tarnishing the Western world as well as Judaism and its followers.
A one-state solution would be a democracy and there would be powerful forces at work to make it so. What is certain from a study of history is that Israel cannot keep doing what it is doing by its actions.
It cannot maintain permanent occupation and a denial of human and civil rights, justice and freedom to six million Palestinians because such a State and state has no place in a civilized world. Neither can Israel kill or drive out 6 million men, women and children from their own land. It cannot be done without a level of slaughter which would turn even the Americans against Israel.
I care about Israel and have Israeli friends which is why the constant support for its impossible and increasingly degraded behaviour betrays Israelis more than Palestinians. What is your solution? How do you see this being resolved?
Times have changed, the world has changed and even America has changed and loss of support for Israel amongst American Jews grows constantly. The money will stop. Nations do not have friends they have interests. The Americans toss countries when they become inconvenient and the US simply cannot afford to keep carrying the Israeli State and as older American Jews, who dreamed the dream of colonising Palestine, die out, younger Jews will want nothing to do with the colonial Zionist entity. What then?
I merely seek to make the point that those who care about Israel should act as if they care and not keep encouraging it to keep doing what it has been doing. Only a fool keeps doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Israel has been betrayed by its so-called friends and its only future is as a real democracy which is a part of the modern world.
Yes, Ros Ross, we are awaiting your commitment to humanity by giving your house back to the Aboriginal tribe you stole it from. How can such a champion of other people’s morality bear to live for even one more day in stolen property? You directly benefit from the theft of an entire Continent- according to your logic- not merely a sliver of land- and surely there is ample room in the remote Outback for you to live, if the Aborigines will allow it. Think what an example your gesture would set for the Jews and Arabs, among others.
How about recommending Rosross’ home as a half way house for Islamic refugees and asylum scam artists.
Rosross, Thanks for commenting on my comment. I don’t want to invade your privacy but are you a really young person. Perhaps an 18 year old Uni student doing a non STEM subject. I ask because you seem to write with the idealism of someone who has never actually been “mugged by reality”. Well more power to you then, I remember the comfortable certainties of my idealistic youth.
I started my initial comment by referring to actual reality on the ground. This is not about what anyone things “ought to be”. One thing that histories long narrative has proven is that no people has any right to anything that they can’t defend. As soon as the UN declared Israel a state the Arabs attacked and lost badly. In 1967 they lost badly. In 1973, after some initial hope of success they still lost badly. The frontline states, Jordan and Egypt have lost interest in the fight and are getting benefits through peaceful relations. I haven’t heard of Jordan wanting the West Bank (its former territory) back, it’s had enough trouble over the years Palestinians living in Jordan and doesn’t seem to want more.
The single thing that would benefit the Palestinians most is peace. Of course it would benefit Israel as well. There is really no good alternative.
Well said Stephen.
The problem for your idealism rosross ,is that Islam is not Democratic .
If you read the Koran or even abridged musing’s ,you will very quickly find that the contents of Koranic thinking are not up for Democratic thinking, negotiation or moderation, it’s a dictate.
That being the case how does one arrive at a Democratic peaceful outcome, when the most basic tenet of Islam is to subjugate others who are considered to be infidels or non believers, and essentially treat or discriminate against them on the basis of their beliefs- that certainly does not proffer or even give conception to the idea of peaceful co -existence between people’s . – that’s a wall in my view.
Basically it’s the Muslim way or the highway – it’s just another form of greed in this world.
How the hell are you supposed to live in peace with people firing rockets at you and digging tunnels under you – that want to kill you and your way of living.
The Palestinians want the Jews out of Israel.
The only solution to this as I see it , is if Australia was to offer the Jews refuge here. This, I think , would work or have the capacity on paper. Jewish people are intelligent compatible and friendly with Christian values and societies. Whereas a Muslim’s basic values and outlook is completely incompatible and different from the western way of thinking ,therefore incompatible.
My personal opinion of my dealings with these people is that they are not exactly engaging or friendly, so why on Gods good earth would I want live with them or like Israel ,alongside them.
Their as mad as hell – so stay away from them- that’s my gut feeling.
Rosross let the scales fall from your eyes – read the Koran, they don’t like US.
A piece of advice from Albert Einstein, don’t believe what your told, if you want the truth ,work for it – READ.
I RECOMMEND THE ACCOUNT OF ALBERT EINSTEIN’’S LETTERS , CORRESPONDENCE AND SPEECHES- “the world as I see it”- it’s a short common sense read, this man exudes candour and humility, and was left with the same conundrum as yourself, how to make sense with truth and endeavour to befriend peace.
I will say that what he said in these musings sat comfortably with me, and peaceably so.
His speech to Japanese school children after the Second World War, wasn’t littered with invective, bile or hatred, he simply states to these children ,”that I hope your generation puts ours to shame”- in other words through kids we have the chance of a new beginning. If you think about the words ‘puts ours to shame’ he is placing the blame for war at the feet of adults on both sides of the equation, be they Japanese,German, British or American.
Essentially the key to peace is proportional to our capacity for change, to forgive, and the element required is trust between people’s in a God who does not subjugate. And yes sometimes you have to fight to capitulate ( surrender to forgiveness in order to conceive peace).
The Muslim, Jew divide is akin to Cain and Abel, that’s the truth.
@ Stephen,
No, I am not a really young person and spent decades in the media as journalist, sub, and editor and have spent time in Israel and worked with and for Israelis. I probably know more than most and have followed the issue for decades, now perceiving how things are changing and how Israel as an occupying colonising State in the name of one religion cannot last. The irony of course is that the Zionists were and pretty much are atheists and are not Jews anyway in any rabbinical sense, but they claim to represent Jews and their religion and in the doing, betray both.
If I am idealistic it is because I defend basic principles and consider them critical to the survival of the civilized world. I have been mugged by realities many times and have lived for decades in India and four African countries, including a war zone. Perhaps that is why my defence of principles of justice, rule of law, democracy, human rights and common human decency are so entrenched. Israel by its nature and behaviour betrays all of those principles which is why it cannot last and has no place, in its current form, in a civilized, democratic world. I judge Israel by the bar it sets itself as a Western democracy.
I understood what you were attempting to say and merely sought to make the point that there are more critical issues at work as we rocket on to a century from Israel’s foundation in Palestine and decades of suffering and injustice for the Palestinians.
Do you seriously believe that ‘no people has any right to anything that they can’t defend?’ I doubt you will find that in any legal treatise or human rights regulation. The French could not defend themselves from the Germans but they called on their Allies. They were fortunate, their allies won. The Palestinians could not defend their country and they called on their Allies. They were unfortunate because their allies lost.
But, in all honesty, can you say to me that if the Germans had occupied Britain and were doing to the British what Israel does to the Palestinians, or, if the Japanese had occupied Australia and were doing what Israel does to the indigenous people of the land it conquered, that you would be on the side of ‘might is right’ and would deem British or Australians who resisted as terrorists and undeserving of any right to their country because they could not defend it? I would be prepared to guess you would not say that so why the double standards?
This you see is why principles are so critical and apply to everyone equally. As to what would benefit the Palestinians it is not peace, it is JUSTICE and with justice comes a chance of peace. As a powerless occupied and colonised people the Palestinians can do nothing to achieve justice for that lies in the hands of Israel and its supporters. However, the Palestinians, like the Afghans and others, have right on their side and they have time and numbers. They cannot lose because, as I said before, times change and they have changed and I very much doubt many young people, including young Jews, would accept an argument which said followers of one religion, even theirs, had a right to deny justice, freedom and human and civil rights to people, let alone colonise their country and kill them if they resist occupation.
Younger generations have finely honed, and an often overworked, sense of justice for animals so as humans, the Palestinians just have to wait until the injustice of their situation becomes more widely known. That is happening already in universities around the world, including the United States.
Which is why, if Israel were sensible it would participate, as the South Africans did, in ending its apartheid and providing justice to the Palestinians, along with reparation, compensation and apologies. Then peace becomes possible.
That may well be idealistic and I am not predicting a Utopian outcome from a one-State solution, but it has to be better than the horrors and carnage which exist today as Israel battles to keep 6 million men, women and children crushed under its military boot. I know Israelis who would grieve for the loss of their fantasy but who would embrace a shared State where they can hold up their heads in a civilized world.
If Islam has no right to crush people in the name of religion, and it does not, then neither does any religion, including Judaism. That is how principles work, you apply them equally to everyone.
@ Stephen,
No, I am not a really young person and spent decades in the media as journalist, sub, editor and have spent time in Israel and worked with and for Israelis. I probably know more than most and have followed the issue for decades, now perceiving how things are changing and how Israel as an occupying colonising State in the name of one religion cannot last. The irony of course is that the Zionists were and pretty much are atheists and are not Jews anyway in any rabbinical sense, but they claim to represent Jews and their religion and in the doing, betray both.
If I am idealistic it is because I defend basic principles and consider them critical to the survival of the civilized world. I have been mugged by realities many times and have lived for decades in India and four African countries, including a war zone. Perhaps that is why my defence of principles of justice, rule of law, democracy, human rights and common human decency are so entrenched. Israel by its nature and behaviour betrays all of those principles which is why it cannot last and has no place, in its current form, in a civilized, democratic world. I judge Israel by the bar it sets itself as a Western democracy.
I understood what you were attempting to say and merely sought to make the point that there are more critical issues at work as we rocket on to a century from Israel’s foundation in Palestine.
Do you seriously believe that ‘no people has any right to anything that they can’t defend?’ I doubt you will find that in any legal treatise or human rights regulation. The French could not defend themselves from the Germans but they called on their Allies. They were fortunate, their allies won. The Palestinians could not defend their country and they called on their Allies. They were unfortunate because their allies lost.
But, in all honesty, can you say to me that if the Germans had occupied Britain and were doing to the British what Israel does to the Palestinians, or, if the Japanese had occupied Australia and were doing what Israel does to the indigenous people, that you would be on the side of ‘might is right’ and would deem British or Australians who resisted as terrorists and undeserving of any right to their country because they could not defend it? I would be prepared to guess you would not say that so why the double standards?
This you see is why principles are so critical and apply to everyone equally. As to what would benefit the Palestinians it is not peace, it is JUSTICE and with justice comes a chance of peace. As a powerless occupied and colonised people the Palestinians can do nothing to achieve justice for that lies in the hands of Israel and its supporters. However, the Palestinians, like the Afghans and others, have right on their side and they have time and numbers. They cannot lose because, as I said before, times change and they have changed and I very much doubt many young people, including young Jews, would accept an argument which said followers of one religion, even theirs, had a right to deny justice, freedom and human and civil rights to people, let alone colonise their country.
Younger generations have finely honed, and often overworked, sense of justice for animals so as humans, the Palestinians just have to wait until the injustice of their situation becomes more widely known. That is happening already in universities around the world, including the United States.
Which is why, if Israel were sensible it would participate, as the South Africans did, in ending its apartheid and providing justice to the Palestinians, along with reparation, compensation and apologies. Then peace becomes possible.
That may well be idealistic and I am not predicting a Utopian outcome from a one-State solution, but it has to be better than the horrors and carnage which exist today as Israel battles to keep 6 million men, women and children crushed under its military boot. I know Israelis who would grieve for the loss of their fantasy but who would embrace a shared State where they can hold up their heads in a civilized world.
If Islam has no right to crush people in the name of religion, and it does not, then neither does any religion, including Judaism. @ Stephen,
No, I am not a really young person and spent decades in the media as journalist, sub, editor and have spent time in Israel and worked with and for Israelis. I probably know more than most and have followed the issue for decades, now perceiving how things are changing and how Israel as an occupying colonising State in the name of one religion cannot last. The irony of course is that the Zionists were and pretty much are atheists and are not Jews anyway in any rabbinical sense, but they claim to represent Jews and their religion and in the doing, betray both.
If I am idealistic it is because I defend basic principles and consider them critical to the survival of the civilized world. I have been mugged by realities many times and have lived for decades in India and four African countries, including a war zone. Perhaps that is why my defence of principles of justice, rule of law, democracy, human rights and common human decency are so entrenched. Israel by its nature and behaviour betrays all of those principles which is why it cannot last and has no place, in its current form, in a civilized, democratic world. I judge Israel by the bar it sets itself as a Western democracy.
I understood what you were attempting to say and merely sought to make the point that there are more critical issues at work as we rocket on to a century from Israel’s foundation in Palestine.
Do you seriously believe that ‘no people has any right to anything that they can’t defend?’ I doubt you will find that in any legal treatise or human rights regulation. The French could not defend themselves from the Germans but they called on their Allies. They were fortunate, their allies won. The Palestinians could not defend their country and they called on their Allies. They were unfortunate because their allies lost.
But, in all honesty, can you say to me that if the Germans had occupied Britain and were doing to the British what Israel does to the Palestinians, or, if the Japanese had occupied Australia and were doing what Israel does to the indigenous people, that you would be on the side of ‘might is right’ and would deem British or Australians who resisted as terrorists and undeserving of any right to their country because they could not defend it? I would be prepared to guess you would not say that so why the double standards?
This you see is why principles are so critical and apply to everyone equally. As to what would benefit the Palestinians it is not peace, it is JUSTICE and with justice comes a chance of peace. As a powerless occupied and colonised people the Palestinians can do nothing to achieve justice for that lies in the hands of Israel and its supporters. However, the Palestinians, like the Afghans and others, have right on their side and they have time and numbers. They cannot lose because, as I said before, times change and they have changed and I very much doubt many young people, including young Jews, would accept an argument which said followers of one religion, even theirs, had a right to deny justice, freedom and human and civil rights to people, let alone colonise their country.
Younger generations have finely honed, and often overworked, sense of justice for animals so as humans, the Palestinians just have to wait until the injustice of their situation becomes more widely known. That is happening already in universities around the world, including the United States.
Which is why, if Israel were sensible it would participate, as the South Africans did, in ending its apartheid and providing justice to the Palestinians, along with reparation, compensation and apologies. Then peace becomes possible.
That may well be idealistic and I am not predicting a Utopian outcome from a one-State solution, but it has to be better than the horrors and carnage which exist today as Israel battles to keep 6 million men, women and children crushed under its military boot. I know Israelis who would grieve for the loss of their fantasy but who would embrace a shared State where they can hold up their heads in a civilized world.
If Islam has no right to crush people in the name of religion, and it does not, then neither does any religion, including Judaism.
Apologies for the double up, Quadrant does not have an edit facility.
@wdr,
You need to compare apples with apples.
if like some Jewish Israelis I was living in the home where an Aboriginal family had lived for a thousand years before I arrived, and they had been driven out and I had moved in, then yes, certainly, I agree, I should hand back the keys and move out.
If Aborigines had not been given full and equal rights as citizens, then yes, all of us should work hard to make amends and right the wrongs inherent in the foundation of our nation. But they do have full rights and they have always been citizens, unlike the Palestinians.
You raise the same issues that I do for the Israelis to address. You just need to compare apples with apples and ask yourself if Australians were doing to Aboriginal peoples what Israel does to its indigenous people, would that be acceptable? I say No.
What do you say?
Rosross appears to have acquired all his information form ultra-left hate-Israel sites, much like the one he linked above.
Well, here are some things everyone, including rosross, should know.
Contrary to what rosross claims, Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, also called the Judean people or the Hebrew people (see Esther 3:8). The Jewish people and their religion are fundamentally connected and cannot be separated, making it an ethno-religious group (see Ruth 1:16).
Israel is the name of the Jewish nation, and Israeli, long before it was used to refer to citizens of the State of Israel, originally referred in Hebrew language to a Jewish person.
So it is not a “religion” with “European” culture that is trying irrationally and unjustly to get a homeland. That idea surely must rank as one of the most ridiculous propositions ever. The Land of Israel is the homeland of the People of Israel (a traditional Biblical name for the Jews).
Antisemitism is racism against Jews and Jewish things. The fact is that Israel can no more cease to be Jewish than Japan can stop being Japanese. Prejudice against Israel because of its Jewish essence is literally anti-Jewish.
The assertion that “All Zionists are not Jews and all Jews are not Zionists so valid criticism of the Zionist State is not anti-semitic either” is the favoured pseudo-logical strawman of the anti-Israel mob. It matters not one iota whether “all” Jews are Jewish nationalists or not.
Likewise, no-one ever said criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism, so the assertion that “valid and substantiated criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism” is redundant and simply invokes the spectre of a Jewish lobby that goes around deliberately calling legitimate criticism of Israel antisemitic in order to protect Israel from… legitimate criticism. But only insecure people need protection from legitimate criticism, and given how much Jews, Israeli citizens of all stripes, and many friends of Israel manage to criticise Israel without accusations of antisemitism, it makes you wonder what exactly the self-appointed critics of Israel are saying that earns them this response.
Oh, yeah: Israel is: apartheid; based on racism and genocide; acting like a Nazi state; treating non-Jews the way that Jews have been treated throughout history; occupying their own homeland; not really wanting peace; a militaristic, colonial endeavour; and guilty of promoting the fraud of Jewish nationhood; not to mention holding “6 million [Holocaust inversion?] Palestinians under a brutal military colonial occupation, denying them human and civil rights.”
All of which is manifestly rubbish, and if you can’t see how hateful and unfair these accusations are then you need to get off the hate-Israel sites you are on and read a few history books. As well as reading Israeli literature, and engaging with some mainstream Israeli culture to counteract the dehumanising propaganda you have absorbed. You can’t claim to offer legitimate criticism of Israel while trying to delegitimise it.
I recommend “Israel: An Introduction” by Professor Barry Rubin, as well as his books “The Arab War for Freedom” and “The Tragedy of the Middle-East”. But that assumes “critics” of Israel are interested in actually learning. The evidence suggests they aren’t: why else would they stupidly assert that the Arabs of Palestine are indigenous when they are not, except perhaps certain tribes in the south.
On a side note, I loved the way that the suffering of the Aborigines was waved away. Entire language families, peoples, and cultures have disappeared from the Australian continent because of colonisation. To think that the Arabs of Palestine suffered anything remotely comparable is preposterous.
Rosross claims that he worked in Israel yet he displays no knowledge or comprehension of Israeli society beyond what he reads on ultra-left websites.
The suggestion that modern-day Jews are not really Jewish because they might not personally believe in their god is a modern-day anti-Jew trope. According to this idea, the Jews can’t complain to be victims of antisemitism because they aren’t really Jewish. Get that folks? The 6+ million Jews in Israel aren’t really Jewish.
~75% of Jews in the world identify as Zionist. ~95% support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. On Israel, Jews are effectively homogeneous in their general support for it. There’s no reason to even consider the ultra-left fringe Jews that make up rosross’ friendship group.
There’s no “carnage” in Israel or Palestine. The Arabs of Palestine have self-government and Israel is their largest trading partner. Videos uploaded to youtube show people walking around safely and calmly, even engaging in peaceful discussion around this issue (“ask a Palestinian/Israeli”). Violence is not commonplace, and to the extent that it is, it is usually relatively minor and sadly more of a routine as the great majority simply try to get on with their lives. Everything else is a caricature presented by the media and swallowed by gullible people.
Last but not least is the repeated suggestion that the Arabs of Palestine are indigenous. This is a hallmark of radical Arab propaganda. Even ignoring the fact that the concept of indigeneity is not useful or even applicable to the Middle-East, which is the cradle of civilisation, there is no serious historian that would claim that the Arabs are indigenous outside of Arabia, except perhaps, as I said in my previous post, certain tribes in the south.
The Arabs conquered the Land of Israel in the 7th Century. The Jews did not conquer it, it’s their homeland. Out of all the empires and kingdoms that have been there, only the Jewish states emerged indigenously inside the Land, rather than coming from outside. The Romans, the Arabs, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, etc, all conquered the Land from without: but the Jews come from within. That means the Jews are indigenous, if anyone is. And contrary to what some might say, there always remained Jewish communities in the Land and Jews outside of it, as a group, never disavowed their connection to it. Their rights need to be recognised just as we recognise pre-existing Aboriginal rights, and if the Arabs of Palestine can’t recognise that and accept Jewish rights, including national ones, then there’s nothing to talk about it.
I refer everyone to my previous post if they are interested in serious learning about this matter: I recommend “Israel: An Introduction” by Professor Barry Rubin, as well as his books “The Arab War for Freedom” and “The Tragedy of the Middle-East”.
Guy’s , rosross’ postings are getting longer and longer- his not having it your way. I think we may all have to invest pray matts to read his posts!
@rosross. 100,000 children are aborted in this country each year…. Where is the fairness in that- where are all the journalists when Justice is needed here at home. What about Australians and Australia .
To a Christian, the matter is simple: Israel belongs to the Israelites (Jews, Israelis) because God, Who made the whole world, gave it to them. The Bible makes that clear in hundreds of places. That is not to say that the Jews always do right, as is evidenced by the rejection of Jesus as their Messiah by the vast majority of them. But they are still God’s people, and Israel is theirs–the only country specifically recorded in the Bible as belonging to any particular people for all time. “And the LORD said unto Abram. . . For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.” (Genesis 13:14, 15).
Thanks RM well said- case closed.
Rosros’ comments about Israel are unrelated to the article about more than the century long antisemitism in Ireland and of the IRA. Like a cute little teddy bear, press the “Jew” belly button and these same rants always spew forth on a few forums. She can’t bear seeing the word “Jew” without displaying a few standard examples of antisemitism.
1 – Any mention of Jews in history anywhere in the world in any period must be tagged with “but remember the Palestinians”, followed by the usual false slanderous garbage.
2 – Anything Jews say in their defence is automatically discounted, like medieval courts that never accepted the evidence of a Jew, so it’s useless posting anything that addresses anything of her content. She isn’t interested.
3 – Jews are their own worst enemies – they should thank non-Jews (like rosros) who advise them how they should behave, what their religion, ethnicity, nationality, is, because Jews don’t know. She’s just being a good friend in correcting the views Jews mistakenly hold about being Jewish.
@gmmckenzie,
I will keep it brief but to reply to some of your statements.
Judaism is a religion and its followers are called Jews. In the same way that Christianity is a religion and its followers are called Christians. The first Jew and the first Christian were converts. Drop either religion and you are no longer a Jew or a Christian. My family dropped both, in various manifestations so I am neither a Christian or a Jew. One may be a lapsed Jew or Christian, or non-practising, but to use the name means one is a follower of the religion. That is simple logic. It is impossible to be an atheist Christian or atheist Jew. Ask any priest or rabbi.
I fully understand the theory of Jews as a people but it is only a theory and one invented by the atheist Zionists as any study of Zionism reveals.
There is no Jewish nation but there is a nation called Israel who has a large Jewish majority. However, most Jews do not live in Israel, never did and never will and many orthodox Jews from the beginning and still, reject the claim that Israel represents them.
I did not say it was a religion with European culture although since most of those who went to colonise Palestine were of European origin, it is logical to assume that the culture has strong European links.
Religions do not get homelands. If Jews were entitled to a homeland or self-determination then this would apply to all religions. Perhaps explain to me why Judaism should or could be singled out in this way and have rights which no other religion can claim.
Remember, most people in the world are not Christian and only a tiny minority are Jewish, so while Jewish teaching is important to Jews and to some Christians, it is singularly irrelevant to the world at large. In essence, most do not actually care what the God of one religion supposedly said or did. That is why we have international and civil law and human rights regulations and the separation of ‘church’ and State in our democratic systems.
Anti-semitism is discrimination against Judaism and its followers. Japan is a country, Jewish is a religion. You need to compare apples with apples. Jews comprise all races and hundreds of nationalities, just like other religions.
Re: Zionism I was merely making the point that not all Zionists are Jewish and not all Jews are Zionists. It is an important distinction in terms of the political movement and its control of Israel.
Actually a lot of people often say criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic and when Jews do it, they are self-hating Jews. But good on you for not doing it.
Israel is an apartheid State because it gives special rights to followers of Judaism and discriminates against other religions. Race or religion, the UN definition is that is racism and therefore, such a State is an apartheid State. And no, they are not occupying their own homeland because religions do not get homelands. Indeed, if they did then Jews would have rights to a bit of Iraq where their religion began and it would be Christians who had rights to a bit of Palestine.
You make the mistake of citing many things I did not say but I shall not address them all. By all means quote me but do not invent.
Having spent time in Israel, worked with and for Israelis, studied Judaism I would say I know more than many.
As to Israel being delegitamised, its very nature does that. A State which denies human and civil rights to millions because of their religion cannot be legitimate. A State which refuses justice and freedom and continues to occupy someone else’s country cannot be legitimate. Israel delegitamises itself by what it is and what it does. Well, it does by Western democratic standards if not by the standards of Third World tyrannies.
Thank you for the book suggestions. I have read a lot of the history of Palestine, Israel and the Middle East in general.
You ignore the key points, that the history, the reasons, the claims, the excuses are irrelevant. Until Israel ends the occupation and provides freedom and justice to the indigenous Palestinians it will have no legitimacy. Either it does that itself or, like South Africa, it will be forced to do so.
No history, no culture, no religion, no reasons can justify what Israel does to the Palestinians. And no society can survive when it threatens those citizens, and I know some, who say that.
I did not say I worked in Israel, I said I have spent time in Israel and worked with and for Israelis. I know some really great people and also know the depth of their bigotry toward the indigenous Palestinians.
As to someone being Jewish when they reject the religion and do not believe in its God, that is a simple reality. Ditto for any religion. It is oxymoronic and impossible to be an atheist believer. And yes, I know that the Israeli fantasy is that there are atheist Jews but the Zionists invented this because they needed to up the numbers and finding someone with some Jewish ancestry would do because it was better than letting the ‘less than human’ Palestinians be a majority.
I find it particularly horrifying that I could be accepted as an Israeli migrant because of my Jewish ancestors when a Christian or Muslim Palestinian, holding keys to their home in what is now called Israel, where their family lived for a thousand years cannot. That is just appalling and a total betrayal of any concept of civilized behaviour. If you think that is okay then you have a very twisted sense of justice.
Israel is betrayed by those who speak as you do and the Israelis deserve better. They cannot continue their occupation indefinitely and they certainly cannot kill 6 million people in Occupied Palestine, let alone the 8 million in the Diaspora or the 2 million who live in what is called Israel. So, the problem of colonising someone else’s country when they are a majority and always will be, does not go away: it just grows and grows.
Poor Israel, constantly betrayed by those who claim to be friends.
@Rebekah,
You overlook the key fact that most people on the planet do not care about Jewish or Christian teachings and indeed, in the Western world, civil law has supplanted religious law. It doesn’t matter what the Jewish realtor God might have been sad to have done and nothing in Jewish or Christian teaching has relevance in regard to this issue to the vast majority of humanity. Christians rank as 31% in the world but at least half, if not most of those would not subscribe to your religious defence and no-one of conscience can support how Israel treats the indigenous Palestinians, whatever their religious beliefs.
I do find it strange how on this issue so many Quadrant readers are locked into a mindset which denies basic principles of a civilized world. I know my views are not exceptional in the world at large, nor even among many Jews and even some Israelis, and increasingly on all counts. But, best of luck to you all and mostly Israel who has been ill-served by those who claim to be friends.
In 1940, when Germany had already invaded and forcibly occupied five countries the IRA leadership announced that Hitler’s Germany was “the energising force” of European politics and the “guardian” of national freedom.
If “German forces should land in Ireland, they will land … as friends and liberators of the Irish people”.
Their “chief of staff”, Sean Russell, went to Berlin where he was fêted as a representative of the Irish Republic, met leading Nazis and advised on their military plans for the invasion of Britain.
The IRA’s main publication, War News, was not just pro-Nazi, but celebrated the “cleansing fire” of the German armies that was then driving the Jews from Europe.
Little wonder that SINN FEIN, the IRA’s sock-puppet “spokespersons”, are enthusiastic supporters of any gang of fellow-terrorists planning the destruction of Israel and the extermination of Jews.
Rebekah Meredith you are completely wrong about that. The Christian belief is that the followers of Christ are the descendants of Abraham and the keepers of the covenant. Christ’s blood-covenant both fulfills and supersedes all other covenants. Paul’s letter to the Romans was primarily a lesson in how Gentile believers are of equivalent descent from Abraham as are Jewish believers – all are one in Christ.
The old temple is replaced with the new temple – Christ’s body.
So Christians do not believe that a cultural race has any claim to a spiritual holy land in Israel under the new covenant. The old temple was destroyed soon after the ascension.
The existence of modern Israel for the Jews is a humanitarian and political construct only. There is no doubt that Jewish people are the subject of much oppression, but their protection has nothing to do with Christian theology.
The problem that all anti-Israel zealots avoid in their febrile ravings is what can be done to solve the problem to their satisfaction that will not be orders of magnitude worse than the status quo. Rightly or wrongly, Israel exists with the United Nations’ consent. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that such violence as has occurred since its creation has been started by or on behalf of the Palestinians who, among other unlawful things, deliberately fight from behind the cover of their women and families using the inevitable civilian casualties from Israel’s counter attacks as anti-Israel propaganda. The anti-semites in the media lap this rubbish up.
@Doubting Thomas,
Can we have your solution to the problem. How would you solve the problem of 6 million non-Jews in Occupied Palestine, now littered with illegal Jewish settlements; around 2 million citizens of Israel and 8 million in the Palestinian diaspora, who have never received compensation or redress for the theft of their country. I am simply applying basic principles of justice, rule of law, human rights, democracy and common human decency which leads to my conclusions. But what do you think would bring a final solution for Israel?
Why cannot Israel do what all other nations, the Western democracies anyway, have done and create one State with equal rights for the indigenous Palestinians and their European colonisers? Share the land as a democracy with religion an irrelevance to citizenship?
No doubt your answer would be: that would mean Israel was not a country with a Jewish majority?
So, the next question is, why does Israel need a Jewish majority when most Jews do not, never did and never will live in Israel, and are instead living happily in many countries around the world? In essence, the raison d’etre for a Jewish State does not exist and never did. Although one is reminded that the plan to colonise Palestine was devised in the mid to late 19th century by the Zionists, long before Hitler and his lot appeared and so that cannot be claimed to be a valid reason for the colonisation of Palestine. The plan had long been in hand as history records.
If Israel wishes to be a democracy, and a real one, not a theocracy masquerading as a democracy, then it must give up the concept of itself as a religious State where followers of Judaism must remain dominant. Just how well do you think it could be argued that any nation today has a right to elect followers of one religion as the dominant group in a society, as Israel seeks to do? Not well at all. We decry the fundamentalist Muslim States for their inequality and that means, as a matter of principle, we must decry Israel as a Jewish State. It is one thing to have a dominant or even official religion in a country and quite another to set in place inferior rights for those who do not belong to that religion. How do you think Jews would react, or any other religion, if the US decided it was a Christian country, as it believes it is, and that non-Christians should be relegated to inferior ranks as citizens? Not well, so, as a matter of principle for Israel to do that is untenable particularly since it claims to be a democracy.
Even if you wish to introduce the Zionist fantasy that magically, followers of Judaism, in a way which happens with no other religion, equate as a people, that would still not give them the right to subjugate others, the non-Jews, and to dominate and control them as inferiors. Such backward tribalism has no place in a modern world would you not agree?
The only other argument one could make would be at a level of racism unacceptable in the modern world, that Christian and Muslim Palestinians are inferior to Jewish Israelis in particular and Jews in general and so Jews must remain a majority and in control. And such a view would decree that Jews should dominate every society/country in which they live? Why would that be and how is that democratic or even reasonable?
It is, is it not, a little curious and curiouser that Jews manage to live very successfully as a minority religion in dozens of countries around the world and yet somehow that cannot happen in Palestine or what is called Israel?
It’s futile trying to deal with your verbosity, rosross. You’ve got irrelevant obfuscation down to a fine art.
The simple and utterly compelling reason that Israel insists on maintaining a Jewish majority population is to preserve their lives. They know that the moment the Palestinians gain control of the government the genocide will begin. Wholesale slaughter has been attempted unsuccessfully several times and has been explicitly and repeatedly foreshadowed by Islamic governments since Israel was created.
That you appear not to understand this inconvenient reality is amazing for someone who claims expertise on the subject.
I asked you to provide a solution to the problems you perceive that would not be orders of magnitude worse than the status quo. In another million or so words, you dodged that question by asking me to provide a solution.
The only solution that can possibly arise is likely to be found when Muslims everywhere learn that medieval barbarism is no longer an acceptable way to behave.
The Arab nations created this refugee disaster when they encouraged Palestinians to flee Israel before they attacked in one of the major wars. More fools them and their supporters.
pgang–It is true that many Christians believe as you say. Many others, however, do no. The New Testament does indeed make it clear that “we are all one in Christ.” Jewish Christians are not more God’s children than Gentile Christians are. However, God’s promises to the Jewish nation still stand. They are forever. Many Christians have tried to spiritualise them so that they do not REALLY mean the Jews; they mean “the church.” I believe that God meant what He said.
The book of Romans, in fact, explains in chapters 9-11 that the Jews have been temporarily set aside because of their unbelief, but that they will eventually be restored. “I say then, “Hath God cast away His people? God forbid.” (Rom. 11:1).
The sacrifices have ended because Jesus fulfilled them; but the Jews are still God’s people.
Bloody brilliant DT.
Doesn’t matter what people believe Meredith, what matters is what is written in Scripture. (Besides, I don’t know any Christians who believe in your position). I don’t think that yours is even the Catholic position.
You misread Paul by removing one sentence from its context. His argument was that the inheritance of Abraham belongs to the faithful in Christ and that it was never a racial inheritance, but was won by faith alone. Salvation, or ‘belonging’, never came through circumcision, but through faith. As Paul points out, the promise was made to Abraham before he was circumcised. This completely negates any racial claims by his offspring.
The letter to the Romans teaches the exact opposite of what you are claiming.
Ros Ross: Islam is the established religion in 27 countries, including every country in the Middle East except Lebanon. Despite the fact that Egypt has a substantial Christian minority, the Egyptian Constitution says that “Islam is the religion of the state.” Palestine- i.e, the West Bank- has a Basic Law, i.e., a Constitution. Article 4 states that “Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Respect and sanctity of all other heavenly religions shall be maintained.” Presumably this is a reference to the other Monotheistic religions, but explicitly excludes Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. The Basic Law of Palestine, adopted on 29 May 2002, begins by stating “In the Name of God, the Merciful and the Compassionate,” the was all Islamic prayers begin. Israel has no established religion- therefore it must be an “apartheid state.” Pure anti-semitism.
@wdr,
Egypt may well have Islam as its State religion but are you seriously saying that Israel should be compared with Egypt? My understanding was Israel claims to be a Western democracy and Egypt most certainly does not.
Where Islam is a dominant religion is irrelevant. Please name any country which claims to be a Western democracy which elevates followers of one religion to superior status as Israel does with Jews? I can think of none. Please name any other country which claims to be a Western democracy which gives people an automatic right to become citizens because of their religion, or because they have ancestors who practised the religion? I can think of none.
Then explain to me how Israel can be a Jewish State as it claims and still be a democracy when in a democracy religion is secondary for citizens and while there may be a State religion, in a true democracy that does not mean followers of that one religion get superior rights. If you know of any I would be fascinated to hear of them.
As to Occupied Palestine, it is powerless. All power rests with the occupier. Please name any other occupied country in history which was free from the power of its occupier to make any sort of decision?
Palestine is a country, an ancient country, long occupied by others and still, it does not have any independence and Israel as the occupier has full responsibility and accountability for all Palestinians held under its military colonial rule.
There is no West Bank, there is only Occupied Palestine which is everything beyond the UN Mandate since Israel’s borders are claimed, not proven and none have been tested in a court of law. One would presume the UN Mandated borders could stand.
26 Church of England Archbishops and Bishops still are ex officio members of the House of Lords in the UK, as the Church of England is the Established religion of the UK. A senior Anglican clergyman normally presides over all Royal and official ceremonials there. The UK is certainly a democracy. No rabbis sit ex officio in the Israeli Knesst- if there are any there, they were elected.
I think it’s time our esteemed editor lowers the boom on this increasingly futile debate.
We’re repeating ourselves.
@rosross is right, multiculturalism does not work, the Jewish people’s have no hope of living in peace next to muslims.
@std,
There is no Jewish people beyond religious metaphor. If there were a Jewish people with the same rights as that which we understand as ‘a people’ then all religions would have exactly the same rights and they do not. Ergo, followers of Judaism do not have such rights either.
As to Jews living in peace with Muslims that is their choice. They do so in many countries around the world, including Australia so there is no reason why they cannot do so in an independent Palestine, or whatever the new democracy is called. Unless you are saying followers of Judaism are too bigoted to share space with followers of other religions? They seem to do okay in the US, Australia, Canada, UK and many European countries so why you think they could not live in peace with Christians and Muslims in Palestine is the real question.
But yes, it really has all been said, let us agree to disagree.
@wdr,
Yes, Christianity/ Anglican is the official religion of the UK, however, the UK does not automatically give citizenship to Anglicans/Christians as Israel does to Jews, and neither are Anglicans/Christians given more rights and benefits as Israel does with followers of Judaism. That is the difference between a democracy with a State religion and a theocracy where one religion gets to dominate and rule. The British embrace all religions while Israel seeks to have one religion in control and discriminates against followers of others.
Do you now understand why the UK is a democracy and Israel is not? When the one-state solution is established then the nation can be like the UK where all religions are embraced equally and all citizens are equal regardless of religion.
rosross, name one Muslim majority country where non-Muslims have equal rights. It’s not very long ago that several Muslim countries, eg Malaysia, would not admit people, Jewish or not, even just transiting through their country if their passports showed that they had visited Israel. Australian military personnel who needed to travel extensively routinely had two different passports to avoid that problem.
Muslims and Jews coexist quite peacefully under the laws of Israel just as they do under similar laws in the UK and other western democracies, and despite your blinkered view, Israel is just such a democracy where its many Muslim citizens have the right to vote, and there are Muslim members of the Knesset.
The trouble comes from Muslims who want to destroy Israel and all the Jews living there. If a single state is created, all the “refugees” who fled Israel when warned to do so by the Arab nations to get out of the way of imminent attacks on Israel by those nations, and their hundreds of thousands of descendants, would immediately demand and be granted permission to return.
If you think that this will not immediately result in an ocean of Jewish bloodshed, you have not been listening to the repeated threats and promises from the governments of nearly every Muslim nation on earth.
@DT
Read more carefully and think about the comments of rosross. She defines Jews to suit her prejudices. There is no basis in the real world of Jews for any reasonable discussion with her about it. Real Jews don’t comply with her hysterical fevered imagination. For rosross, Jews don’t determine the nature or essence of Jewishness – rosross has supreme rights to determine that. For rosross, Jews don’t know what they are, so as a friend, she tells them who they are, what they should believe, and what rights they have. Her rants about Israel are just a transparent obvious veil for the ruts she plows in her own mind to make sense of her antisemitism,
@rosross. There was no Islamic terrorism in Australia, the US, Canada and the UK prior to Islamic immigration.
People want to live in peace ,we don’t want to open the boom gate to Islam- the idiot politicians have not asked their constituents if they want or need your Islamic immigration, that’s my first Democratic point.
You don’t see people in the west clamouring to live in Islamic countries,
;Why do you think that is ? You could even broaden your horizon and look at it from the view point of evolutionary Darwinism.
Secondly there are no human rights in the evolutionary Darwinism’s DNA. The human rights garbage that you espouse is a hijacking of properly understood common sense and courtesy developed by the Judeo Christian West. Furthermore it is now being used as a vehicle for progressive Marxism , it’s a leftoid construct , especially that of multiculturalism in order to destroy the prevailing culture in Western countries ,in order to divest the prevailing orthodoxy of its power base in order bring into existence ,as your well aware of, the communist manifesto( world government) which is predicated on the premise of socialist utopia in order to subjugate free thinking people’s and divest (steal)(theft) them of the the wealth they produce in order to funnel the proceeds of their productivity in to the expansionist plans of Fabian (Taqyiyya) socialism (jizyah)in order to bring about Communism (Dhimmitude) and thereby curtail people’s access to freedom and happiness ,thereby the deletion of hope from the existence of life and living.
That Sir is the capitalist ( a person who uses their/ other’s wealth) paradigm in its rawest form- all Marxist’s therefore are liars and conmen and to conclude Hypocrites. Marxists ,like yourself ,want all the control in order to tell others how they have to exist , the power paradigm here is centralised, and is nothing but pure unadulterated greed, capitalising greed at that- we have now arrived at George Orwell’s animal farm pig sty.
When communism finally arrives we will be paid in cabbages, at least with capitalism you are free to think and purchase your thoughts.
No rosross , not even a useful idiot , the answer to your summations is NO.
You may well ,as is your right ,dream of living in a man made hell, of which any sensible person that possess a scintilla of rational capacity and reason does not want a ( bar) bah of .
WE MIGHT BE SILLY rosross BUT DEFINITELY NOT STUPID ,BECAUSE WE ARE NOT BUYING IT.
Jewish people in my opinion are the most intelligent and gifted people in the human race, that’s just the way it is. The Hatred shown to these people , by the Nazi’s and Muslim world is built on a wealth of Jealousy that takes bigoted to a whole other ( another) world – the hissing and gnashing of teeth no less.
@Doubting Thomas,
Like so many you continue to compare Israel to Muslim countries and in essence I can understand why that seems correct since they are both religiously defined countries.
However, the bar you need for comparison is that which Israel claims to be, a Western democracy when things look very different.
As to non-Jews having the same rights as citizens in Israel, they do not as any reading of international and Israeli human rights groups will reveal. So, Israel is nothing like the UK where all citizens, regardless of religion, do have the same rights.
@STD,
I appreciate the time you took to reply but most of your post is about Muslims and Islam which is not relevant to the problems in Palestine/Israel.
You said: Jewish people in my opinion are the most intelligent and gifted people in the human race….
That my friend is racist and erroneous because Jews are not a people beyond religious metaphor, just like any other religion, and as to a religion conferring intelligence and gifts to people, I doubt you would find a geneticist in the world who would agree with you.
Genetics are not conferred, influenced or changed by religions except in those groups which consistently intermarry and that happens in many religions. However, such inbreeding does not create intelligence even if it establishes DNA connections. In fact it has a negative impact on physical and mental health.
And Jews, like most religions, comprise all races (although race theory now says with less than 1% difference there are no races) and hundreds of nationalities. There are plenty of, not particularly intelligent and definitely not gifted Jews, just as you will find in any religion.
But your concept is racist and serves no-one any good purpose, least of all followers of Judaism.
It’s extraordinary that so few comments have bothered to address the content of Kevin Myers’ article.
jbbrick – The same thought occurred to me when I saw “58 comments” and I was as guilty as the others with my two and sixpence worth. It’s sad to see that even in present day Ireland anti-semitic views are still in vogue just as they are here in places like some municipal councils in our major cities.
@rosross. Your reasoning lacks the charm of sincerity.