Sin feinn/IRA apologists should take a step back before wailing wall

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Tuesday July 27, 2004 14:03 by Rooster

I suppose the only surprise was that those two nice middle-class ladies from Dublin (aka the IRA's spokespersons in Strasbourg) didn't wait until they took their seats before they started Israel-baiting.

Mary Lou McDonald was only behaving according to type but you might have hoped the (Occupied?) Six Counties rep would have had just a flicker of conscience before releasing a statement attacking Israel's "apartheid wall".

Is there not something just a teeny-weeny bit ironic about an Assembly member for West Belfast, carved up as it is by great steel "peace lines" to protect Catholics from Protestants and vice versa, decrying a very similar structure between Israel proper and the West Bank?

Actually, "wall" is the only word to describe Belfast's ugly (but sadly necessary) monstrosities. Of the very effective barrier so far erected to protect Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers precisely 3.8% is wall and 96.2% is fence - though you would never guess that from the BBC coverage.

Can we now take it that Sinn Fein wants some kind of EU sanctions against Northern Ireland until our own "apartheid walls" are removed? Has Bairbre told those of her nationalist constituents who cower behind these structures of her plans? And if that is her position, why has she not got some of her colleagues in "the Movement", who presumably have the wherewithal to bring these walls down at the flick of detonator, on to the job?