(Ben Cohen writes: With this post, we welcome Eamonn McDonagh to the Z Word blog. Eamonn also maintains the excellent El Nuevo Pantano and we’re delighted to have him join us.)
A delegation from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions visited Israel, the West Bank and Gaza last November. The delegation’s report came out in June and I commented briefly on the accompanying press release - which endorsed the call for a boycott of Israel - here. I have now had a chance to read the full report.
In some ways I’m tempted to end the post here. Anyone who reads the report will immediately be struck by its plodding self-righteousness and soon realize that those who wrote it had made up their minds about the issues involved long before leaving Dublin. Nevertheless, for the benefit of readers who have neither the time nor the inclination to wade through fifty four pages of badly-written self adoration, I offer the following comments on a few representative points in the text. They won’t deal with the boycott issue itself; it’s been extensively debated elsewhere.
In the document’s preface, the ICTU’s president, Patricia McKeown, describes what she sees as the “pervasive” discrimination suffered by “Arabs and Palestinians, in particular” with regard to their “right to national and cultural identity” in Israel. She then says,
In Israel we met only “Israeli Arabs”.
Note carefully those quotation marks. After a brief visit McKeown is now so well versed in the subtleties of cultural and national identity in Israel that she is able to pronounce one such form of identity as illegitimate.
When the text of the report reaches the narrative of the delegation’s visit, a briefing by an IDF officer about the purposes of the separation wall is described as “highly subjective”. In the first place, the IDF Spokesman sends people to talk to foreign visitors with the idea of convincing them of the justice of Israel’s case and not to be paragons of objectivity; in the second place, while the accuracy of the statements made to the delegation by Israelis are always subject to criticism and analysis - however primitive in nature - the statements made to it by Palestinians are received as revealed truth. Indeed, encomiums are frequently offered to the heroic character of those making them. The only exception to this pattern is an Israeli involved in the Breaking The Silence organization.
The delegation had a meeting with Yitzhak Herzog, Israel’s Minister of Welfare and Social Services, and its report places special emphasis on a claim that the minister said that the present Israeli state was the realization of biblical prophecies.
The comment is illustrative of a belief system that is strong in sectors of Israeli society, including those in leadership.
I have no idea where Herzog stands on biblical prophecy but let’s suppose that this is what he actually believes and the visiting trade unionists from Ireland have some justification for their sniffy comments about the continuing influence of religious mysticism on the minds of some Israelis.
You’ll be wasting your time, though, if you expect to find any mention of the baneful influence of religious fanaticism on the Palestinian national movement. The report does mention in passing that Hamas has been guilty of human rights violations, but doesn’t give the slightest hint of its explicitly racist and exterminationist ideology, which is drenched in references to Islam.
To finish, I want to quote the first sentence of the report’s conclusions.
It is obvious that all the land of historic Palestine is under Israeli Occupation, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
As examples of awkward phrasing abound in the report, I suppose it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that this is just another. However, it would appear that the official representatives of Irish trade unionism, for all their prattling about human rights and UN resolutions, are not so much against the Israeli occupation of land that ought to form part of a Palestinian state as they are against the very existence of Israel itself.
Welcome to Z Word.
Great analysis and great dialectic.
Joyce encapsulated Irish anti-Semitism in Ulysses:
I just wanted to say, [Mr Deasey] said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why?
…
Because she never let them in
There is a long tradition of antisemitism in Ireland even there were few Jews around. It is a case of “antisemitism without Jews.”
Let’s not forget that during WW2 the Irish president while officially “neutral” supported the Axis powers, and upon Hitler’s death he went to the German Embassy to sign a condolence book.
Also and crucially, during WW2 the Irish didn’t let many Jews into the country and hence left them to their fate at the hands of the Nazis.
ICTU’s acts should be seen as an extension of these policies. They are in essence antisemitic and they will backfire if ever they are endorsed by the Irish government or implemented in any way.
Finally, the actions of ICTU shows once again that anti-Zionist views and policies have more to do with local political realities then with the rights or wrongs of the conflict: in this case the Irish nationalist take the side of the Arabs because they their enemies the Protestants in the North siding with Israel.
“There is a long tradition of antisemitism in Ireland even there were few Jews around. It is a case of “antisemitism without Jews.”
Antisemitism in Ireland has always been a fairly marginal interest. There was the Limerick pogrom and not much else.
“Let’s not forget that during WW2 the Irish president while officially “neutral” supported the Axis powers, and upon Hitler’s death he went to the German Embassy to sign a condolence book.”
Ireland, under Taoiseach (the equivalent of prime minister, not president)Eamon De Valera strictly adhered to the outer forms of neutrality while actively cooperating with the allies on questions like overflights from Northern Ireland and the return of downed pilots. Dozens of German agents were also arrested and interned. Much more could and should have been done but to suggest Ireland supported the Axis during WWII is a grotesque exaggeration.
“Also and crucially, during WW2 the Irish didn’t let many Jews into the country and hence left them to their fate at the hands of the Nazis.”
Ireland could and should have done more to open its doors to Jewish refugees before and in the early stages of the war, when it would have been possible to do so. The same can be said of a great number of other countries, including the leading Allied powers.
And no Irish government is ever going to support any kind of boycott of Israel
I am no fan of De Valera, but Eammon has rightly answered those silly comments about Ireland and neutrality during WW2.
It should be remembered that 10,000s of Irish men and women went over to Britain enlisted in the Armed Forces, and valiantly fought against the Nazis.
There is no reason to attack all of the Irish simply because of ICTU’s stupid decisions.