Palestine: IDF Shoots Irish Peace Prize Winner With Rubber Bullets

by Fred Johnston Mon Apr 23, 2007 19:29 sylfredcar at iolfree dot ie

Will the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland be as publicly 'furious' at this as some of our media reported him to be when Margaretta D'Arcy's motion was passed recently in Aosdána? Will he denounce the actions of the Israeli military? Of course not. If Irish writers and artists ever had reasons to boycott Israeli-sponsored cultural events, then this is even one more reason to add to the list. If Irish writers and artists cannot protest when an Irish woman is injured by Israeli forces, then surely there isn't a book worth reading nor a piece of art worth purchasing in this country that can be said to have any moral value.

by C. Mon Apr 23, 2007 20:03

Bertie Ahern should be made walk the plank on this. He is funded by CRH.
There are photos of him on the newswire in the Presence of members of CRH.

Irish Citizens involved in peaceful protest have right to safety.
Just as Caoimhe Butterly who protested outside the HQ of CRH to
draw attention to its funding of the apartheid wall in Palestine.

The Taoiseach should make known his disapproval of the shooting of an Irish Citizen and the
injury of the peaceful protestors whom she was walking with. It is unacceptable that
there has been no formal contact on the issue between the Irish authorities and the
authorities in Palestine on the issue.

There is a naievety in the comments about the role of the Palestinian authorities
in the Issue- everything is not about Israel and some Palestinians have co-operated
in the murder of Journalists and the genocide of their own people.
They are pro Us/K de-stabilisation of the middle-east and refusing also to take
part in peaceful solutions, as was very evident in the events of last week.

by Fred Johnston Tue Apr 24, 2007 03:23

Perhaps 'C' could outline for us the events through which Palestinians have cooperated in acts of genocide against their own people!!

by Ciaran C Tue Apr 24, 2007 11:09

I dont for a second want to lessen the seriousness of this incident but how can we make a rounded commentry on its significance without remembering that this same woman made her name by calling for an end to resistance to the British state in the north at a time when they used precisely the same tactics as the current Isreali state ie: containment walls, plastic bullets, tear gas, internment, collective community punishment, murder etc.
Remember how the "peace people" responded when asked about british state brutality ..."were not political, we just want the IRA to go away". Corrigan then used her peace prize money to buy a fur coat.
I genuinely feel sorry for her and despise the state forces responsible for this yet I cant help but wonder if she would advocate a large march into the heart of the gaza strip calling for an end to the resistance, precisely what she did in the Falls park during the 1970s.

by impish Tue Apr 24, 2007 11:26

How many Irish women activists have to get shot in Palestine for you to be aware
that:
1. Irish corporate media are not covering.
2Some Palestinians are co-operating with the genocide against their people
cos they are pro-US/K funding and violence is always funded by that type of destabilisation practice?
3.That the very stupid and very simple ssek to read the issue in black and white
and blame the uS satellite Israel for everything therby perpetuating violence through being
a supporter of Palestinian crimes, as much as Israeli?
5. The opporunists in ireland have deliberatley supported a simplistic good guys/bad guys
scenario in Palestine cos they want violent young men to get more violent.
6. The web designers/journalists/aid agencies are in danger in Palestine because their
political neutrality does not pay dividends to the de-stabilisation process which
is a Bush/Blair perogative and involves cultural destruction.

Maireid can buy a fur coat if she wants, Peace is about informing yourself that
many israeli activists disappear or end up in gulags.
the same with many palestinians.
Because they refuse to allow our western interests destroy their culture.
those that interpret the issue simplistically have blood on their hands.

Who supports Israel?
What religon are the people who will get bombed out of it by Iran?
Why are pacifists and journalists targetted by the Palestinian authority?

Educate the people in all aspects of the geo-political issues with neutrality and
maturity, because it is the ones who are trying to do that that are dying.

I am tired of the stupidity of the political arguments that seek only to capitalise
on war and death without information. not one of the anti-israeli orgs
in Ireland has the courage of Caoimhe Butterly. not one.

by MichaelY - iawm/ipsc Tue Apr 24, 2007 12:41

Won't argue with the posters above who continue to support and sing hymns to Israel. It's pointless.

Here is a letter I sent to the Irish Times re: an article by the newspaper's Northern Editor about :Mairead Corrigan's return to Belfast that appeared in Monday's edition..

Madam,
I refer to the article by your Northern Editor Mr.Moriarty in today's Irish Times re:Mairead Corrigan. His reference to the colonial wall being built by the Israeli State reinforcing its illegal expropriation of Palestinian land as a 'security barrier' is laughable if it wasn't so tragic. This apartheid wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice, is no 'barrier'...it's a 12ft high concrete wall stretching for tens of miles, fragmenting the landscape, and built, may I add, with the help of our own Cement Roadstone. PM Olmert has clarified a number of times, that this is a wall to protect "the Israeli State against the demographic threat facing us"! His words are straight forward enough. For 'demographic threat' pls read the unthinkable eventuality of non-Jews becoming citizens. The horror of it!!

But Mr Moriarty goes one further retrograde step and refers to the land being expropriated by the Israelis as being "occupied by Palestinians"!! Following the violent expulsion of nearly 1 million Palestinians from their land and properties in 1948, following the illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967....the few parcels of land that Palestinians have been left with to eke a living have now become 'occupied lands'!! Words fail me. Mr.Moriarty's knowledge of Palestinian realities and use of language are very pitiful indeed.

by newsish update Tue Apr 24, 2007 14:12

or rather the armed wing of the political party Hamas have ordered their units to return to war with Israel. & accordingly lots of missiles have been fired into Israel earlier today.
Some sources say 40 rockets and 70 mortars were fired from the Gaza strip into the Israeli state to help celebrate its independence day.

by Sly dog - Long memory Tue Apr 24, 2007 14:32

Fair play to Mairead Corrigan. This action has been typical of her and her whole life; she has always been committed to peaceful protest. Now for the below the belt bit, but I'm afraid I can't resist it. When Corrigan marched for peace in Belfast during 1976, at one stage heading a movement that brought together thusands of working class Catholic and Protestant women, although all too briefly, she was roundly denounced as a pro-Brit traitor, spat on and stoned by supporters of the IRA. It was rumoured that she was getting big money off the British government to undermine the struggle, then going through one of its most unpopular phases, hence the appearence of the peace movement. No doubt some of the Palestine solidarity activists are only familiar with the post 1994 nice, cuddly SF. Well Mairead had guts in Belfast in 1976 and she still has them now. I just hope some of the hypocrites who abused her then don't start praising her now.

by Cop yourself on Mairead! Tue Apr 24, 2007 15:02

Mairead's peace campaign in Northern Ireland was always doomed because the extremist republican terrorist organisations had to be broken militarily before republicans gave up the armed cause and decided to follow a political path.

Mairead was unable to separate emotion ( after all her three nieces were run down and killed by an IRA man who was later shot by British troops and her sister Anne committed suicide as a result) from cold cruel political reality.

It was M15 penetration of the Provos, supergrasses, the SAS shoot to kill policy and the use of loyalist gangs by British intelligence against republican and catholics that brought the long war to an end and forced Sinn Fein to choose the democratic path and negotiation with unionists.

Yet again Mairead is being led up the garden path yet again.

Israel are not going to make peace with the Palestinians as long as Hamas are not prepared to make peace and stop attacking the Jewish civilian population.

The Israeli policy is causing Palestinian civilians hardship but for Israelis that is a small price to pay for security.

Mairead and other peace activists like her are sadly misled.

by Just go away Tue Apr 24, 2007 15:53

Having made clear your admiration for racist mass murderers like Billy Wright and Johnny Adair, you've made it easy for us to ignore the rest of your intolerant, anti-democratic tirade. Thanks for that!

by Ciaran C Tue Apr 24, 2007 18:40

You clearly know nothing of my politics and for some reason presume that i havnt a clue about what is going on in palestine and the wests compliance in it. In fact I know quite a bit and agree with what you say - apart from believing that she can buy a fur coat - most progressive thinkers believe that to be immoral.
I also believe in palestinian resistance, Maread Corrigan cannot or else she is guilty of hypocracy, bearing in mind that Palestinian resistance is no more justified and no less brutal as was Irish republican resistance to Brit rule here.
Furthermore the points that you make, had they been made about Britain and its imperial cohorts here in the 1970s (for example had you spoke of Irish collaborators), Corrigan would have dismissed them as IRA propaganda.
Once again i say this is a wake up call for Corrigan, peaceful protest is admirable but not always adequate. I wish her a speedy recovery.

by Ali la Pointe - Dispatches flying column / Jack White Northern Command Wed Apr 25, 2007 18:09

We have to give people credit for their ability to evolve their politics. Mairead Corrigan clearly has. She's come a long way from being a de facto apologist for the British state in Ireland. Her "pacificism" ("pacify all at all costs") has evolved into "pacifism" (nonviolent resistance to injustice) when confronted with the stark reality of effects of the Israeli occupation on Palestinians. This is a good thing. Her using her celebrity to highlight this injustice is a good thing. She got it badly wrong here 25 years ago, granted, but didn't lots of people?

So what if she wears a fur coat? I think she'd look kinda foxy in one

I think Palestinians are a lot more important than furry animals, but that's just me, I'm a humanist. I think Mairead Corrigan is one too.

I don't care if not thinking furry animals are that important means I won't make it onto someone's "progressive" check list. I prefer to be able to think for myself.

by Mark C Thu Apr 26, 2007 15:19

Indeed, Irish artists of all hues should speak out against the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. Here's a little piece I wrote about a year ago, and had occasion to read as a reply to a, let's say, very pro-Israel poet at a poetry event recently.

Oh Israel, I Know Not
- In imitation of William Wordsworth’s ‘O Friend, I Know Not’

Oh Israel, I know not which way to turn,
For, since 1948, you have oppressed me.
Many people would have thought
The Nazi experience would have taught you compassion;
But instead all you have to show is the mean handy work of craftsmen –
Palestinians, we must organise forcefully and
March in the desert sun, all as one.
We must march inches to regain miles;
We must march miles to retain inches.
Edward Said said: Freedom is not in books.
Oh Israel, no more plundering or greed or punishments – no more of your idols.
We are growing pale in this land, and
It seems a resolution is not enough.

- Mark Conroy.

by Justin Morahan Thu Apr 26, 2007 23:38

Here is a link to video capturing the moment that Mairead was shot. After the shooting she speaks passionately to camera. Worth seeing.

by Justin Morahan Fri Apr 27, 2007 01:44

(Agroup of about 5 or 6 protestors are facing 3 or 4 soldiers at a distance. There is a frightening sound of gunfire. Smoke. Protestors duck, rising with hands outstretched in protest and entreating . A man shouts " Why you shoot? Why do you shoot." Another man's voice is heard saying "We're not doing anything" Gunfire Then)

MAIREAD: Oh God I got hit in the leg
(Further shouting and shots Two women help Mairead to her feet)

MAIREAD: The back of the leg
(Another woman shouts angrily at the soldiers but the shooting continues. Mairead is seen near ambulance being interviewed, gunfire in the background)

MAIREAD: ...my thigh and my left leg and then the gas just overcame me.
It's terrible what's happening out here to the Palestinian people. They're suffering so much. They can't have a voice here to protest non-violently , and really this is a disgrace what's happening to the Palestinian people.
This was a totally non-violent protest by the Palestinians, the Israelis and the internationals today. And we've been greeted with gas and plastic bullets and not allowed near the Fence.
This has got to stop. The international community must take steps here to see that justice is brought here, that the occupation ends and that they sit down around the negotiations table. Because people should not be asked to live like this..
Come to Palestine and see how these people are suffering. They're like inside a prison here.
There's not one day that their lives are not totally controlled by Israeli Government.
It's like a prison here with Israel holding the key to it.
Palestine deserves better than this. The children deserve better than this.
The world ignores it and says nothing because nobody wants to offend Israel.
Well, it's time Israel was made to understand it's part of the international community. It signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's part of the international community and, if it wants to remain so, it must start to uphold human rights and justice for the Palestinian people.

REPORTER: What do you think the International community can do to put pressure on Israel?

MAIREAD:The international community and the European Parliament - they can recognize the Palestinian authority . The Palestinian authority was voted in democratically by 90% of the Palestinian people. They should be recognized as a legitimate Government.
They should restore the funding, the political and economic rights to the Palestinian people. They should see to it that the Palestinian people have enough money - people have no money!
And they are just being absolutely ground into the earth in the last forty years of occupation.
How long must they suffer while the international community do nothing to help them?
And I'm very proud to be here with the Palestinians this morning. I consider it an honour to stand with the Palestinians and Israelis and internationals here.
This is where the Peace movement has to be when there's injustice in any part of the world.
Without guns, this is where we have to be.

(Mairead is lifted into an ambulance)

ANN PATTERSON: Give me your bag, I'll hold that - give me your bag please.
(The bag is handed to Ann. A group converses briefly and then APPLAUD as the ambulance door is closed)

by MichaelY - iawm/ipsc Fri Apr 27, 2007 15:33

Well done Justin - timely video on how and why Mairead was shot. Isn't it typical that her shooting and subsequent hospitalisation warranted a tiny little space in p.6 of last Monday's Irish Times .

Last night, Thursday 26th, there was a very interesting lecture by Joel Kovel, the author of a new book entitled 'Overcoming Zionism' published by Pluto Press and available, at the moment, through the IPSC.
Kovel, the author of about 10 books, and a member of US Green Party, argues that the inner contradictions of Zionism have led Israel to a "state sponsored racism" as incorrigible as that of the apartheid regime in South Africa....and deserving of the same resolution. Kovel's view, argued forcefully last night, is that only a single-state secular democracy can provide the justice essential to healing the wounds of the Middle East.
I spent a good part of last night reading this excellent book. There are three little passages though that are stuck in my mind that I want to finish with here:
(1) from Vladimir Dubnow in 1882: " The ultimate goal is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years....The Jews will yet arise, and arms in hand(if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland".
(2) from Ben-Yehuda in 1881 "The thing we must do now is to become as strong as we can, to conquer the country covertly, bit by bit.....we can only do this covertly, quietly....we will not set up committees so that the Arabs will know what we're after, we shall act like silent spies, we shall buy, buy, buy...."
(3)from Herzl in 1895 "We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the neighbouring countries, while denying it employment in our country....Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. Let the owners of the property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more that they're worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back."

Dubnow, Ben Yehuda and Herzel were prominent members of the political Zionist lobby at the turn of the century. That's how they planned to destroy the Palestinian economy while the 'poor' and the 'penniless' were ethnically cleansed.

by Ali H. Fri Apr 27, 2007 18:33

There is no excuse for this behaviour by the Zionazis.

However it seems that their brutal and inhuman behaviour is only noted when white female Irish peace protestors like Caoimhe Butterly and Mairead Corrigan are shot.

http://www.counterpunch.org/butterfly1123.html

Shame on Israel!

by something of a dreamer - plo Thu May 03, 2007 00:14

i can't stand this......we have to something now or it shall get much worse

by Silence is golden Thu May 03, 2007 12:49

No doubt the Irish Times will permit the Israeli Ambassador quickly and sincerely to respond to all of this with a heartfelt apology to Mairéad for the actions of his army, and this will be followed up, also in the Irish Times (especially nearing an election) by Bertie Ahern's stern rebuke to the Israelis for their having attacked an Irish citizen. And if not, why not? Perhaps Bertie's Boys should be asked about this when they come canvassing with U-turn policies.

by Felix Quigley Thu May 03, 2007 13:12

The whole purpose of your post above is to denigrate Israel. And you are ignorant of the writings and philosophy of Herzl. You pluck one quote out of context. The Jews pàid very dearly for the land that they bought and it was sold to them willingly. They did not dispossess anybody.

Also you are both stupid and ignorant on the term Palestine. The Arabs were not using this term in 1900 or any time until 1967.

by MichaelY - iawm/ipsc Thu May 03, 2007 15:39

Mr Quigley

Your decision to call me names simply shows that you're feeling under pressure - your position in support of the colonial state of Israel, your defence of the racist politics of Zionism, are not working very well. Name calling though, as well know well, cannot hide the truth. It usually rebounds on the sender.

Let me elaborate somewhat on Theodor Herzl :
In his Diary (Vol II:71) he writes that the land he has in mind "extends from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates" - there he is simply paraphrasing Moses in Deuteronomy - do you see there the germ of "the Greater Israel" concept Mr Quigley?
On the same theme, he writes in his Diary "After Basle I founded the Jewish State!" This was after the first Zionist Congress. Herzl was the first to create the official or "political" if you prefer Zionism by promoting the colonisation of Palestine through acquiring internationally recognised legal rights.....he also forged the criminal link between Zionism and Great Power imperialism.....as an old leftie Mr Quigley I am sure those terms are not foreign to you.
In his book 'The Jewish State', he takes up an idea first promoted by Joseph Salvador, who in 1860 had put forward a benignly messianic version of Zionism where he said "The basic idea of Judaism is the unity of the human race....and its desire to establish a new Order replacing Ceasars and Popes". 36 years later Herzl quotes Salvador and completes the thought: "We shall not revert to a lower stage but rise to a higher one. We shall not dwell in mud huts, we shall build new, more beautiful and more modern houses and possess them in safety"!!
Then comes his entry in his Dairies, written in 1895 that I quoted verbatim above in my previous message. No need to repeat it here. Read it carefully Mr Quigley and tell me why it is "out of context"!!
To summarize, Theodor Herzl was a visionary Zionist whose views have influenced deeply the current body-politic of Israel. His Jewish Colonial Trust founded in 1899, for example, developed a subsidiary, the Anglo-Palestine Company in 1902, for the purpose of "land redemption"!! This eventually became the Bank Leumi, branches of which can now be found even in Manhattan and many other parts of the world.
I am not an expert on Zionism Mr Quigley but I try, along with my comrades, to study and understand its process of development, its ideological roots, its nation-building and its impact on the Palestinians. And as I said above, facts are facts and calling me names, won't change an iota of that historical reality.

by Felix Quigley Fri May 04, 2007 12:41

I am not a supporter of the Israeli elite, like Olmert and Livni, but I defend them and I defend Israel from reactionary Islam which aims to rid the Middle east of Jews period.

Also I am wary of going too far in a discussion on Indymedia because I have found my comments scrubbed by somebody at critical points in the past, which surprised me given the history of anarchism along with Trotskyism in Spain 1933 to 39.

I have been reading the Windward report on the Lebanon war.

Unlike Windward what is needed is a total break with the politics of the Israeli elite and state which has existed right from 1948 and even before.

The state of Israel was set up first and foremost by the undying love for Zion which was expressed by Jewish people for 2000 years and more, a people in exile, and bordered by the two massive genocides against their existence as a people, the Roman and Nazi Holocausts.

Herzl was a national revolutionary and he wanted to end this exile, and the existence of a people driven from pillar to post, not knowing from one year to the next what country antisemitism would flare up and they would be expelled once more.

Furthermore in their memorable meeting at the Fourth Congress of the Zionist Movement Herzl was ahead of Trotsky in that Herzl had already clearly seen the writing on the wall for millions of Jews in Eastern Europe, as a result of the signs which he was clever enough to read of the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (Trotsky later was to state that the Bolshevik assimilation programme was completely false and reactionary)

Herzl did two things. He turned to those millions of impoverished Jews in Eastern Europe and in Russia also, but he also turned to the bourgeois powers to get help. I am not criticising him for that, he had a right to seek help from anywhere, he was a national revolutionary no different to Collins, Griffith or DeValera. But this strategy had a price to pay when first Britain, then America, began to betray the Jews big-time.

(This is a major point for the ISM but it is a false point indeed otherwise you have to criticise also DeValera and the young Sinn Fein movement for travelling to the USA in 1921)

So that outlook was brought into the leadership of the Jewish state but absent Herzl’s sterling qualities.

But not only that!

A very big influence was Stalinism and Social Democracy, the very people who had betrayed the Revolutions in Germany and in Spain leading to the taking of power by the Hitler Nazis and the Franco fascists.

Leon Trotsky speaking in an interview with the press on his way to his exile in Mexico referred to the forces of Islam in the Arab world which were opposing the Jewish Homeland as the “reactionary Mohammedans”. The danger from Islam was not as today, but still given the times, there was absolutely no ambiguity in this term which Trotsky used. Trotsky, like Herzl had been, by the 30s was obsessed with the danger to the Jews from the Nazis, and to him there was no doubt, they had to have a state of their own, and quickly, as a refuge against the Nazis and also against world antisemitism. I have pointed out to my friends in the Jewish national movement that some people today calling themselves, even “Trotskyists” no less, have carefully hidden this history. The ISM antisemites are at the centre of this and they are the worst of our enemies.

So I am submitting that in fact Leon Trotsky was an advocate of the Jewish state in Palestine. Furthermore he was also an advocate of socialist removal of Arabs if that were necessary. he started from the absolute need for the Jews to have a Homeland, a state of their own, he recognized the Jews as a nation, and moreover he came round to the earlier view of Herzl that the Jews were in enormous physical danger and they had to get out of Europe.

How right he was proven to be.

The idea of moving peoples is not so strange. About a million, many more than the Arabs in Palestine at the time, were forced to move from Arab countries due to persecution where they were always treated as dhimmis. This persecution became unbearable after the 67 war.

People can scour the Herzl diaries etc. But in the Diaries one thing becomes clear. Herzl was not influenced so much by the dreadful Dreyfus case in France, but more from the plight of the millions of poor jews in Eastern Europe who were vulnerable to antsemitism.

That was his great contribution.

by PaddyK Fri May 04, 2007 13:40

"I have been reading the Windward report on the Lebanon war"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYT0ni_PkC0

When you are finished boring the tits off the world please do us all a favour and read the cover of your report again. If it actually does say Windward Report , would you be a good kid and go away and get a copy of the Winograd Commission Report.

http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques...print

When you have finished reading the cover of that CORRECTLY then please come back and make a brand new show of yourself.

by MichaelY - iawm/ipsc Fri May 04, 2007 14:36

Hi Paddy, Good work.

This Quigley fella is hilarious if not a bit tragic!! Reading him carefully, you could see some decent bits, mostly from his past, you know the anti-Stalinist bits, trying desperately to survive amongst the heap of nonsense and gibberish he has accumulated as a result of his ideological defence of Zionist racism and criminality.
He calls me names, he has the gall to complain about censorship, he defends Herzl equating him to deValera and Collins, he mixes up the titles of reports (doubt very much if he read the Israeli Winograd report), he argues that the IDF (one supposes through a Coup) should get rid of "Olmert and his ilk" in this country which is, apparently, "the only democracy in the region" etc etc.
Along with his colleague that incredible man from the Freedom Institute, they're the best weapon we have in the solidarity campaign with the Palestinian people. Every time they open their mouths, or take to their keyboards, they add another weight onto the argument why the Zionist state should be opposed.
The IPSC, along with a host of organisations including Amnesty, the CPI, Sinn Fein, Labour Youth, the ISN, the SWP, the iawm and [possibly] the WSM met yesterday and put the bones together of a whole series of events during the week of June 4-9th culminating in a demonstration. The events will be to commemorate 40 years of occupation and 40 years of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In the evening of Thursday 7th we are planning to have a public debate on the Naqba.....Was it a good thing, a necessary thing, a progressive thing, an inevitable thing. Had doubts about it but we may juist invite Felix to argue his points publicly.

by Felix Quigley Fri May 04, 2007 15:46

Well done there whoever YOU are, that solves you from the problem of answering anything I said above. I do make mistakes, many of them, and especially with names, though I should have written down the name before typing. So forgive the mistake.

What I do not forgive is the method of the above who do not answer a single point I made about Theodor Herzl, who was a Jewish national leader.

I do not understand the problem here and have never understood it. The Jews were and are a nation. It was very wrong of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks to insist that they seek their future inside an assimilation strategy, and as events proved that assimilation strategy was to eventually lead to the gas ovens. The Jews were hemmed inside central Europe, with Britain refusing them immigration into Palestine, and with the US Government refusing them entry in America, and with all other governments that I know of, including and especially our own Irish Government allowing Jewish immigration into Ireland. Then that means they were trapped by the Nazis.

And even when according to the famous film Shoah members of the Polish Underground who had escaped from the death camps and had eventually made their way to London, and informed both the British and the Americans in London exactly what was happening in the Death Camps (I think the year was 1942 but the exact date is easily checked up on with Google and Shoah) and they specifically asked at that late stage for the Allies to bomb the railway lines taking the Jewish prisoners of the Nazis to the camps, the Allies refused to do so. And that would have been easy because they had control of the skies and they actually passed by very close to the camps and certainly over the railway lines as they flew sorties into Warsaw. The reason...the film claims that they did not see it as important, not an important part of winning the war.

Herzl may have said some things which people can disagree with, but I will reiterate my point.

At the Fourth Congress (1902 I think) of the Zionist Movement Trotsky clashed with Herzl on the assimilation issue.

Herzl died soon afterwards, I think 1905, but by the early Thirties Trotsky was so disturbed by the trap which had been created for the Jews that he swung completely away from the Bolshevik assimilation ideas (and I am sure Lenin if he had lived would have done the same) that he came to agree with Herzl of the need for the Jews to have their own state and urgently. As I described above.

I will also emphasise that the big contribution of Herzl was to spot the big dangers to the Jews in Eastern and central Europe from the breakup of the Austro Hungarian Empire, the signs of which he saw at a very early stage.

On that basis he saw the absolute need for the Jews to have a national Homeland.

Past posts of mine were removed and I do hope this is not, because we are dealing with the most serious of issues possible.

As a footnote this history of Trotsky's position has been obscured and indeed by many on the NeoLeft, including what I knew of the Workers Revolutionary Party from my position in Ireland.So my point is that the so-called Trotskyists have obscured the history of Trotsky himself on the issue of the Jews and of Palestine.

by Felix Quigley Fri May 04, 2007 16:54

The Führer’s Mufti: After World War I, the Great Powers of Europe jockeyed for influence in the Middle East’s oil fields and trade routes, with France and Britain holding mandates throughout most of the region. In the 1930s, the fascist regimes that arose in Italy and Germany sought greater stakes in the area, and began courting Arab leaders to revolt against their British and French custodians.

Among their many willing accomplices was Jerusalem Islamic Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, who fled Palestine after agitating against the British during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39. He found refuge in Iraq – another of Her Majesty’s mandates – where he again topped the British most wanted list after helping pull the strings behind the Iraqi coup of 1941.

The revolt in Baghdad was orchestrated by Hitler as part of a strategy to squeeze the region between the pincers of Rommel’s troops in North Africa, German forces in the Caucuses and pro-Nazi forces in Iraq. However, in June 1941 British troops put down the rebellion and the Mufti escaped via Tehran to Italy and eventually to Berlin.

Once in Berlin, the Mufti received an enthusiastic reception by the "Islamische Zentralinstitut" and the whole Islamic community of Germany, which welcomed him as the "Führer of the Arabic world."

In an introductory speech, he called the Jews the "most fierce enemies of the Muslims" and an "ever corruptive element" in the world.

Husseini soon became an honored guest of the Nazi leadership and met on several occasions with Hitler. He personally lobbied the Führer against the plan to let Jews leave Hungary, fearing they would immigrate to Palestine. He also strongly intervened when Adolf Eichman tried to cut a deal with the British government to exchange German POWs for 5000 Jewish children who also could have fled to Palestine. The Mufti’s protests with the SS were successful, as the children were sent to death camps in Poland instead. One German officer noted in his journals that the Mufti would liked to have seen the Jews "preferably all killed."

This is all part of a history which has been carefully hidden in Ireland, mainly as a result of the terrible antisemitism which came out of the Soviet Union Stalinist Gulag in the 60s and 70s and which had such a big influence on all of the Left wing movements.

But why should this history be hidden since el Husseini was perhaps the most important and influential member of the Palestinian Arabs ever.

Whenever you get people hiding history you have to be very suspicious.

by MichaelY - iawm/ipsc Fri May 04, 2007 17:03

Mr Quigley,

"I do not understand the problem here and have never understood it." you say. For a change you're absolutely right. "... because we are dealing with the most serious of issues possible" you say, ditto you're right on the button.
The problem here Felix is that we're talking of the oppression, marginalisation, de-humanisation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people by the Zionist State of Israel. This is what you DON'T understand. Reading carefully what you have written today, yesterday, the days before, you seem to wander and oscillate between either denying that reality, or worse, half-accepting it but rationalising it in terms of the revenge mechanism of the Jewish people triggered by the horrors they suffered in the hands of the Nazis and before.
You have a past from within the Left. Try to comprehend what I am going to say within that context. Tribalism is the curse of Judaism, especially in its imperial form, as practiced by the State of Israel and the Zionist ideology and movement that nourishes it. It is an endless return, bound to the wheels of revenge.
Think momentarily of the great Jewish geniuses from Spinoza, to Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka, Witgenstein, Rosa Luxemburg. Such Jews didnot forget they were Jewish, knew themselves to be Jewish, but experienced their identity in varying ways as non-Jewishness. They were non-tribalised Jews, or in the phrase first coined by Isaac Deutscher, who was one of them, NON-JEWISH JEWS.
These geniuses negated their negation. They decided to choose that wonderful way of being human - and can be so again for the Jewish people if Zionism is let go.
No ethnic homeland, no Jewish State, no demographic threat because their neighbours are not Jewish or "savages" as Olmert calls them.....no Zionism that recycles the negation into endless destruction, leaves tens of thousands of cluster bombs in neighbouring Lebanon, and threatens the region with its nuclear arsenal.

Do you understand what I am saying to you Felix? You think that the militarised State at the eastern end of the Mediterranean is part of the world revolution against Islamic reaction. You're so deluded - you're so off the point. You write you're no good with names....try to apply that understanding into a political situation as well. Think again.
Do you know Psalm 137 of the Bible? You know the one that refers to the rivers of Babylon? That virtual anthem of Zionism? Just consider the last three lines of the Psalm:
Remember O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem's fall, how they said "Tear it down! Down to its foundations!"
O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones and smash them against the rock!

The only problem, Felix, is that it wasn't the Palestinians that were the Edomites. Do you understand what I am saying?

A face to remember

by PaddyK Fri May 04, 2007 17:11

In my opinion you didnt read the report otherwise you would know the name of it. You trotted out its name, incorreclty, then trotted off on a rant about Trotsky or something.

IMO you dont read anything that might inpinge on your pseudo-zionist outlook in a manner that would cloud the issue of murdering Lebanese and Palestinian civilians.

You are an apologist for Israeli war crimes, but not a very good one.
You dont dare to imagine that making peace with the Palestinians is possible because you have hardwired your brain to equate Palestinian with Terrorist. Never Israeli with terrorist, no matter how many Lebanese or Palestinian victims are claimed by Israel's incessant need to be the bully on the block.

You dont care about Israel, only Israeli superiority, condoned against a historical collage of purpose fitted soundbytes and images. You live in a pseudo-Zionist Disneyland where Donald Duck slaps Huey, Duey and Luey until their arses are red raw and you laugh it up and then explain that child abuse is OK in Disneyland.

If you had read the Winograd report or anything except your "Zionism for Idiots" manual you would know that the War was not caused by the Military clash on the Lebanese border but rather that the clash was used as an excuse to kick off the war that had been long planned in advance.

I bet you still trot out the "Hizbollah started it by kidnapping the soldiers" claptrap. Dont you?

Why dont you come forward into 2007 and join MichaelY in a debate on the Nakba as outlined above? Then at least your historical Kybosh could get a proper outing and inevitably, a proper clouting. I will not waste any time reading any of your historical/mythological guff here.

But explain to me how a contrived war that killed a thousand civilians ruined Israel's deterrant , made heroes out of Hizbollah and made international criminals out of Israel will further Israel's chances of eventually getting a good peace arrangement with its Arab Neighbours, and I might be interested in reading it.

by Felix Quigley Sat May 05, 2007 16:02

Paddy K
For all the nasty names you call me you may at least drop the anonymity. At least Youlton and myself are on level terms in that regard.

Paddy K you make me burst my guts laughing at your amateusish method to politics and life in general summed up in your disgusting but unforgettable (it will be) comment

"I will not waste any time reading any of your historical/mythological guff here".

Hah, Paddy K History in your book now is mythology.

All the same, sane people may just understand this. At the end of the 1800s as that momentous century turned into what would be a tragic one indeed for Jews and about a huindred million lost souls as well, (in both Imperialist Wars) it was Herzl, a bourgeois nationalist leader from a middle class and professional background, and not Trotsky, Luxemburg, Lenin or a single one of the Bolsheviks, who was able to read the beginnings of antisemitism with the first signs of the break-up of the Austro Hungarian Empire.

It was these millions of Jews who were a few decades later found themselves trapped in the killing fields of Old and "Honourable Cultured !!!) Europe in the way I described above but which yourself and hackman Youlton is not prepared to consider never mind see or understand.

As I described above but which I will have to reiterate for your feeble minds the Jews were trapped essentially after the pivotal year of 1933 when because of no fault of the Jews the German working class movement was betrayed comprehensively to the greedy clutches of the Nazi enemy by social democracy and Stalinism. Any Trotskyist worth his salt will know exactly what I am talking about here.

By 1933 as Trotsky wrote so eloquently the decisive battle was over and Hitler had taken power without gaining a majority in either the 1932 or 1933 General Elections.

And as I reiterate once more, for unfortunately all of the good it will do, because you and Youlton will avoid the issue, Trotsky by the 1930s had come decisively to see the need for Ukraine to be independent and above all for the Jewish people to have a state of their own in Palestine, and he was fully aware that the British Government was preventing this happening because it had huge and growing oil interests with the Arabs, not unlike Bush and the present neocons of America. Trotsky was saying and writing that the Jews were trapped by the Nazis and Imperialist states and at all costs had to get out some how or other and that Palestine as decided by the League of Nations in 1922 had to be the place. There was no other. Also Trotsky was writing against the Bolsheviks previous assimilation ideas that the Jews represented a very old nation indeed.

On the issue of nations I just wonder how Youlton deals with Irish nationalism, and how he deals with Irish patriots like Sinn Fein, especially previous to 1921.

And if the Irish have a right to a nation state why not the Jewish people as well.

As I say so often there were no "Palestinians" until 1967 or thereabouts, and by that stage the Arabs already were in possession of 22 independent states.

But the Jews, essentially because of Jew hatred inherent in Islam and worldwide especially in Europe, not discounting Ireland, are not entitled to one.

I repeat what I said Corrigan's jaunt to Palestine was connected to the present campaign by the Catholic Bishops to denigrate Israel.

The ISM and the Catholic Heirarchy and Corrigan are one on this.

As for debate Paddy, I would not share a platform in any shape or form with Youlton, because he has clearly got associations with the ISM (Irish Palestine Solidarity Group) and that is in fact a bitterly antisemitic movement in Ireland.

You will wait a long time before I step on a platform with Youlton, or you.

But fight you by word I certainly will.

by Felix Quigley Sun May 06, 2007 16:37

When I am able to I will provide readers with some of the truth of what actually goes on as terrorists continue to attack Israel, especially from Gaza. This is some of the newspoints I garnered:

Terrorists have continued to unleash Kassam rocket, rock and firebombing attacks from Gaza and throughout Judea and Samaria Saturday, most of which have been ignored by Israeli media.

Islamic Jihad terrorists attacked the Negev town of Sderot with three rockets, and one of them scored a direct hit on a home, causing extensive damage but no injuries. Five more rockets fell in open areas across the western Negev Saturday. At least four more were fired Sunday.

The rock and firebomb attacks Saturday included stonings of a bus and cars near Bethlehem, on the road between Kfar Sava and communities in Samaria and on a highway south of Hevron. Several vehicles sustained damage, and one man suffered injuries in his eye.

American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice initially brought the two together in a meeting marked by angry shouts and mutual charges of failure to act. They last met in mid-April in what appears to be a quick end to the bi-weekly face-to-face conferences resulting from an American effort to force renewed negotiations

Hamas, which shares the reins of power with Fatah, challenged the Bush administration Saturday, saying it does not accept an American plan calling for more “good will” measures by Israel in return for another attempt to stop terrorist attacks.

The American government has been pressuring Israel to eliminate more army checkpoints, although their removal usually is followed by an increasing number of attacks

Government officials have expressed strong opposition to the latest American plan for more “good will” measures in return for PA plans, without action, to curtail terrorism. The Hamas rejection of the American proposal may bury it.

Abbas has renewed threats that he will call new elections in an effort to reverse the Hamas domination in the legislature. He claimed that the government will collapse because of the continued American-led sanctions against transferring money to a PA government that is shared by Hamas.

“Tensions between Fatah and Hamas are very high,” said a senior PA official. “The situation could deteriorate into violence at any moment.”

Prime Minister Olmert is facing one crisis after the other, including charges of corruption and blame from the Winograd Committee for failures in the war against Hizbullah. He has resisted calls to resign.

Despite repeated vows not to tolerate continued attacks from Gaza, the Olmert administration has confined its counter-terrorist actions to Judea and Samaria, where it killed three terrorists in Jenin Friday afternon.

Attempts by terrorists to infiltrate from Egypt also continued Saturday, and army soldiers killed one armed man who tried to sneak across the border.

Egypt has taken responsibility for patrolling the border since Israel withdrew from the area following the demolition of Jewish communities in the Gaza region two summers ago.

Hamas militias said Saturday they have taken control of the sites of most of the demolished Jewish communities, which were supposed to have become the foundation for growth in Arab agriculture.

In a separate incident within the PA Saturday, Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades terrorists aligned with Abbas executed a man suspected of cooperating with Israel.

by Felix Quigley Sun May 06, 2007 16:58

In response to the kidnapping of Alan Johnston, who I presume is a member of the NUJ, the NUJ then voted a week or so ago to boycott Israel !!!

But from what I hear the Palestinian journalists are much less concerned about Israel than with surviving themselves in this hell hole which the Fascist and Islamic Hamas, which Youlton and the ISM in Ireland so obviously are allied with, have created.

But the British and the BBC has always been the great friend of the oil rich Arabs and how to find ways to put Israel down.

It will be interesting to see how they the British journalists of the NUJ manage to carry out their boycott and work as reporters at the same time. Since Israeli engineers, as Caroline Glick recently commented, developed their cell phones, their Pentium chip computers, their voicemail and their instant messenger software, boycotting Israel will involve giving up their ability to quickly amass their anti-Israel propaganda, vomit it out on their computers and send it off to their Israel-bashing editors.

But then, even if they figure out a way to work without technology, the decision of the NUJ to boycott Israel, with their own member kidnapped is still quite amazing

by Felix Quigley Mon May 07, 2007 15:17

Hamas terrorists celebrated the bonfires of Lag b’Omer by firing rockets at Sderot, destroying a home and attacking Israel citizens near Bethlehem

All this rocket fire on the citizens of Israel, ordinary people living in their homes, is an absolute scandal but the biggest scandal of all is that it is not being reported by the Media in Ireland and Britain and is being hidden by the Israel haters here on Indymedia

by Felix Quigley Mon May 07, 2007 15:28

I think there may be a major change on the way in France towards Israel. Perhaps they have learned the lesson the the Islamic thugs who attack the French police are also the same who attack viciously Jews on the streets of Paris.

Both the candidates represented a change for the better so perhaps the tide is beginning to turn against Corrigan, the Irish ISM and the Irish AWM led by Youlton.

Royal had throughout the campaign adopted a tough stance regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program, similar to the U.S. position. She declared that Iran should be denied control of nuclear power, as it could be a cover for weapons-making. According to her, “The prospect of Iran equipped with nuclear power is not acceptable,” since it would give “a government whose president threatens the existence of the State of Israel*access to such power.”

On the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Royal has dissociated herself from the French pro-Palestinian stance. She has expressed concerns about Israel’s security and has stated her support for the construction of the security fence so disparaged by French officials.

Regarding Israel, Sarkozy has promised a more balanced French policy. Last March, he asserted that French decision-makers should be able “to say a certain number of truths to our Arab friends, for example*the right for Israel to exist and to live safely is not negotiable, and that terrorism is their true enemy.”

He also declared himself ready to defend “the integrity of Lebanon,” including the disarmament of Hizballah.

I really do wonder what Corrigan who in her statement here clearly was a supporter of Hamas thinks of that!

by Flatulent Quack Wed May 09, 2007 18:29

"Both the candidates represented a change for the better so perhaps the tide is beginning to turn against Corrigan, the Irish ISM and the Irish AWM led by Youlton"

In case you are unaware out there in the Zionazi Lebensraum, Royale and Sarkozy were running in the French presidential elections.

You will also find that there has been no movement in the position of most Irish people to the plight of the Palestinians and it is coming up as an issue along with rendition flights on the doorsteps of Ireland.

by redjade Fri May 18, 2007 23:28

50 years of the EU: A celebration with European Nobel Prize winners at the European Parliament
The co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Peace Price, Mairead CORRIGAN MAGUIRE, expressed "tremendous solidarity with the people of Northern Ireland" and remarked that today was "surely a day for celebration and to give thanks because we are on the way to peace." Para-militarism, militarism and terrorism, "do not solve deep ethnic problems", Mrs Corrigan Maguire continued, challenging the role of armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are "struggling with the same problems [.]" Ms Corrigan Maguire concluded: "There are double standards going on here. What the Israelis are doing in Palestine is building an apartheid system. The European Parliament has a responsibility to do more than just pay lip service and rhetoric."

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_pag...n.htm

i was hoping to find a mention of this at http://ipsc.ie/ but after a quick glance i found nothing

Interestingly, Ireland.com does not mention Corrigan-Maguire's speaking about Palestine....

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0509/bre...6.htm