The Irish Government’s Unjust Criticism of Israel: An Open Letter to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar

November 21, 2023

by Robert Harris

From: Robert Harris
Sent: Monday 23 October 2023 17:38
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: A complaint—The Irish government’s unjust criticism of Israel
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Dear Taoiseach Varadkhar,
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I wish to object to your criticism of Israel in recent weeks which has long been normative in Irish political circles even among those that seemingly support Israel—I recall some benign comments you made about the nation going back at least a decade. On Newstalk, October 18th, you claimed that the Arab-Palestinians were “horribly treated now for 75 years” and have been denied self-determination with the benefit of their own nation. This is factually untrue. You would of course be aware that numerous peace accords ended in failure due to pan-Arab and Arab-Palestinian rejectionism—President Bill Clinton famously blamed Yasser Arafat. This rejectionism is of an annihilationist nature. We could say the conflict started in the 1920s where genocidal anti-Semitism emerged as a cornerstone of this conflict when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, incited massacres of the Jewish populace over libels concerning the supposed desire of Jewish people to take over the Temple Mount—a libel recounted today even by supposed moderates in the Palestinian Authority. This led to genocidal brutality, of particular note in Hebron, 1929 which was every bit as bad as the excesses of Hamas on October 7th. During this era, the rest of the Islamic Middle East intensified its persecution of the ancient Jewish demographic largely in parallel with NAZI Germany. The Arab world rejected a proposed rump state of circa 5% of what was then Palestine in the 1938 Peel Report. They rejected the UN partition plan in 1947, and Azzam Pasha, head of the Arab League issued a warning that echoed strongly on October 7th—he spoke of “a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.” True to form, much of the Arab world invaded within hours of the declaration of Israel’s creation in 1948, issued the Three No’s of Khartoum soon after the 1967 Six Day War, and almost destroyed Israel in 1973 which led to the OPEC crisis to which Ireland and the EEC capitulated by moving ever more to an anti-Israel foreign policy. Bear in mind we are speaking of Cis-Jordan, where 78% of Palestine had already been designated for an exclusively Arab State by the British Mandate. Arafat walked away from Camp David in 2000 because he would not accept shared sovereignty over the Haram al Sharif (Temple Mount), and walked away from even more generous concessions at Taba in 2001. Mahmoud Abbas walked away in 2007-08 despite later admitting he had received all the territorial demands he had demanded, and similarly in 2011-12 where peacemaker par excellence George Mitchell stated that the PA again walked away despite getting their initial terms met. It is a history of rejectionism that neatly sits in with the demand for “the rivers to the sea” narrative on the increasingly dangerous European anti-Israel protests.
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Our President, Michael D. Higgins has been more vociferous than usual since the October 7th assault but his initial statement on the matter drew a disgraceful parallel between the intentional barbarity visited upon civilians in Israel and the Israeli reprisals in Gaza which killed civilians because Hamas and its terrorist allies are widely known to embed themselves within the civilian population as many national governments now acknowledge in their statements. The images are very disturbing and the world has every right to be concerned, as it should with any war, but every country has an elemental right to defend itself and to ensure the safety of its borders as well as its people. War by its very nature is a most profound tragedy but Hamas ensured this was the route the people it represents would travel ever since they took power in 2006-7. Their death tolls are peddled by the mainstream media from supposedly neutral sounding sources like the Gazan “health ministry” that any enquiring mind would surely know is run by Hamas. They were rather caught out over the Al-Ahil debacle that in fact was a strike on a car park that killed a fraction of the claimed 500 but us Irish will continue to enable and encourage their appalling propagandistic machinations! I must say that people who enable this horror cannot be true supporters of the Arab-Palestinian people for how could any of their supporters wish a seemingly eternal bloody struggle upon them?
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The president acted disgracefully, although thankfully before he took his seat at the Aras, toward an opposing view of American conservative commentator, Michael Graham, for the cardinal sin of stating that Hamas are terrorists but then what could you expect from a man who thinks the Stones are better than the Beatles?* Perhaps you could ask him if he still denies that Hamas are terrorists after October 7th? Was Hamas’ bloodthirsty nature in any doubt in 2012 when he referred to a sexual act by his opponent, given Hamas’ bus bombings derailed the Oslo process in the 90s or in view of their the prolific use of the suicide bombs during the Second Intifada? https://web.archive.org/web/20130127151257/http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/benmelech/files/JEP_0807.pdf —instead our president accuses the Jewish State of asserting that it will “break international law in Gaza” and thereby is “reducing the Geneva Convention to tatters”. Even UNRWA acknowledged that Hamas looted a week’s supply of fuel and medical aid so does Israel not have a right to deny its enemies the means of waging war against it? He even attacked European Commission President Von der Leyen, claiming that she does not speak for Ireland. All I can say is that he does not speak for all people in Ireland—those that do not scream genocidal chants out of bullhorns, and wonder why do the Irish have some sort of deranged obsession with Israel, where the more benign will arrogantly prognosticate on how Israel ought to handle their affairs since we, the ennobled peacemakers know so much better while, in truth, scarcely having a gombeen man’s clue about the complex history of the region and no real idea of the despicable level of mediaeval dehumanisation that continues to cast a dark shadow on the Jewish people, not just in Israel—it is increasingly visible, afflicting our neighbours next door.
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Iran has been slowly encircling Israel for decades while we in the EU have been appeasing what is probably the most savage theocratic dictatorship in existence, which sent human waves of children to meet Iraqi soldiers. Proxies of the Shia State have also infiltrated the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, in an effort to undermine the Palestinian Authority by removing the somewhat more moderate Fatah regime. Such forces have also been smuggling guns into Israel’s Arab communities—the upsurge in violence has led to significant episodes of civil strife blamed unduly and in a rather singular manner on Jewish settlers as well as terrorism. Meanwhile, the West continues to trade with Iran, while it is on the verge of a nuclear breakout which is causing Sunni States to follow the same path toward nuclear armament since the unspoken truth is that so much conflict in the Middle East follows a Sunni-Shia sectarian divide which accounted for much of the killing of civilians after the defeat of Saddam Hussein (based on figures by the Iraq Body Count/Lancet study). For the sake of these people, not just Israelis but for all these people, please consider that Ireland’s old status quo political posturing simply will not suffice. It is time to speak truth at a time when the world is on a precipice.
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Yours sincerely,
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Robert Harris
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