I don’t look at the Irish Indymedia site very often but  I had time to have a glance at it  today and what did I come across but this little gem, an education in itself about the mindset of some pro-Palestinian activists and not only in Ireland.

The action takes place on  Saturday on Shop Street in Galway, Ireland and it shows Tommy Donnellan, an  Irish Friends of Palestine activist, filming an exchange of invective between himself  and a (French?) tourist who identifies himself as Jewish. A police officer (or “guard”, as they are colloquially referred to in Ireland) then appears on the scene and decides to arrest the apoplectic activist for refusing to comply with his instructions. Some comments on highlights from the video clip:

34 seconds.

Donnellan, after having previously responded to his interlocutor’s identification of himself as Jewish by saying that “It doesn’t matter what you are”, now says “If you are Jewish you should know better, you should know better than to engage in abuse.”

1 minute.

After having signaled that he expects different, higher standards of behavior from Jewish people, the activist now invites his interlocutor to lower his tone and engage in “quiet democratic debate.”

3 minutes 20 seconds.

Addressing  a police officer Donnellan now says, “You are accepting at face value Jewish people that are abusing me.”  And words to the same effect 20 seconds later.

Shortly after Donnellan is arrested and taken away by the police. His stay in the Zionist dungeons at Mill Street must have been brief because that same afternoon he was back at his stall, canvassing opinions from members of the public.

At 7 minutes 25 seconds he says,

“There was an American couple, well heeled and well spoken, and the Gardaí (police) ignored their advice contradicting what the Zionists said about me, that it was abuse.”

Translation for those not familiar with the city of Galway in the summer, “The cops accepted the word of a pair of Jews against that of a pair of  Irish Americans who  not only are Catholics, like the rest of the real Irish, they also looked as if they had money and had received a good education. Surely these three factors, and especially the first, should be decisive in the mind of any Irish police officer as he contemplates whether or not to make an arrest.”

And at 8 minutes we have a sympathizer of Donnellan’s saying,

“Arresting one of our own in Ireland, it’s totally ridiculous.”

I have no idea whether the young cop was within his rights in arresting Donnellan  - the Inymedia story says he was released without charge. However, I do think the Donellan’s words, and those of his first post-arrest interlocutor, serve to illuminate the deep vein of nativist, Catholic feeling that underlies much of pro-Palestinian sentiment in Ireland.