If Ireland were Palestine - Village Magazine

VILLAGEAugust/September 

knows, the attacks on hospitals and schools

may have been IRA mortars that mis-ﬁred,

he explains.

British army howitzers pound

Dublin’s Beaumont hospital, kill-

ing  and wounding , mostly

patients and medical staﬀ. “The

civilian deaths, if they were as a

result of our measured response,

are regrettable, but the IRA ter-

rorists bear the full responsibility

for operating near a hospital”, the

British army spokesman adds.

The above vignette may seem

fanciful, but it’s one way to try to

bring home the savagery of the

ongoing ethnic cleansing cam-

paign waged by the world’s ﬁfth

most powerful army against a

defenceless enclave.

Rather than cowering in shame

for his army’s criminal rampage into Gaza,

Israel’s prime minister instead took the

piles up and rots at the ports while oﬃcials

refuse to allow it to be shipped. Imports are

reduced to a trickle.

A police station in Manchester is blown

up. The British retaliate to this ‘vicious

act of terror’ by bombing Dublin’s main

water treatment facilities. Next, they tar-

get power stations, permanently disabling

Moneypoint in one air raid; the Aghada and

Tarbert stations are next to be destroyed.

The Whitegate oil reﬁnery in East Cork is

also bombed. Most of Ireland is in darkness,

with no clean running water and a grow-

ing health crisis as a result of untreated

sewage.

International observers are shocked when

British ground forces begin shelling UN-run

schools and hospitals, where thousands had

crowded for shelter as the attacks intensi-

ﬁed. A British army spokesman explained

how their military were the most moral

in the world, and went to extraordinary

lengths to avoid civilian casualties. Who

T’S almost  years since an IRA no-

warning bomb exploded in the Grand

Hotel, Brighton, killing ﬁve people.

Its primary target, British PM, Margaret

Thatcher and her cabinet, escaped serious

injur y.

Thatcher deﬁantly responded by saying

that “all attempts to destroy democracy by

terrorism will fail”. Her composure in the

immediate aftermath of the blast won admi-

ration even from among her critics. Just over

a year after the attack, Mrs Thatcher and

Dr Garret FitzGerald met in Hillsborough

Castle in November  to sign the Anglo-

Irish Agreement.

Imagine for a moment that the British

government had instead chosen to respond

to this brazen terrorist attack in the style

of the Israeli cabinet under prime minister

Benjamin Netanyahu. First oﬀ, air raids

batter Dublin city. Large areas are leaf-

leted, telling terriﬁed citizens to ﬂee. As

they abandon their homes, some are blown

to pieces in the streets. Others, unable or

unwilling to leave, die under the rubble of

their houses.

The brutality generates a reaction. More

bombs explode across British cities, killing

civilians. An army barracks is also targeted,

while an eﬀort to drive a lorry bomb to the

House of Commons is foiled. This time, a

massive wave of British armour sweeps over

the border. Dundalk, then Drogheda, are

pounded by mm mobile artillery pieces,

while jets scream across the skies. Tens of

thousands of refugees clog up the roads as

they ﬂee south.

The RAF cripples Ireland’s airports while

the Royal Navy imposes a blockade on our

ports. Goods can only enter or leave the

country with direct British oversight. Food

INTERNATIONAL GAZA

If Ireland

were

Palestine

Israel’s ethnic

cleansing in Gaza

is outrageously

disproportionate.

These attacks

result from

the deliberate

obstruction of a

promising move

towards peace,

wrote Carter

and Robinson

“

August/September VILLAGE

obliterated

power plant:

what if it

had been

Moneypoint?

region with international approval and

oversight was clearly a step too far for Israel,

which prefers its own ‘open prison’ policy,

where it keeps a semi-starved, humiliated

and terrorised population on the edge of

despair, presumably in the hope that they

will eventually just beg to be deported from

their own homeland.

“The new (Palestinian) government also

pledged to adopt the three basic principles

demanded by members of the International

Quartet (UN, US, Europe, Russia): non-vio-

lence, recognition of Israel, and adherence

to past agreements. Tragically, Israel

rejected this opportunity for peace and has

until now succeeded in preventing the new

government’s deployment in Gaza”, they

wrote.

While Israel’s latest attack on Gaza is

entirely illegal under international law, its

conduct went even further this time:

“There is no humane or legal justiﬁca-

tion for how the Israeli Defence (sic)

Force is conducting this war, pulveris-

ing with bombs, missiles and artillery

large parts of Gaza, including thousands

of homes, schools and hospitals, dis-

placing families and killing Palestinian

non-combatants.

Much of Gaza has lost its access to

water and electricity completely. This

is a humanitarian catastrophe. There is

never an excuse for deliberate attacks

on civilians in conﬂict. These are war

crimes”, wrote Carter and Robinson,

who also called for international judi-

cial proceedings “to investigate and end

these violations of international law”.

The appropriate channel for such an

investigation should be the International

Criminal Court (ICC) but neither Israel nor

its sponsor-in-chief, the United States,

accepts the jurisdiction of the ICC, conven-

iently keeping their personnel beyond the

reach of the law.

Within Israel, the mood is increasingly

hawkish, with some % of Jewish Israelis

fully supporting the attack on Gaza, and

just % feeling the slaughter indicated the

IDF used “excessive ﬁrepower”. A popular

view in Israel is that since the people of Gaza

voted Hamas into power, the entire popu-

lation is somehow culpable and therefore

subject to the war crime known as ‘collec-

tive punishment’.

In a terrifying escalation, some politi-

cians are now openly debating the ethnic

cleansing of the entire population of Gaza.

Martin Sherman of the Israel Institute of

Strategic Studies published the following in

the Jerusalem Post on July st: “To prevent

an even more brutal and extreme successor

from taking over, Gaza must be disman-

tled and the non-belligerent population

relocated”. The ICC regards “incitement to

genocide” as a crime against humanity.

The delusional Sherman continued: “As

counter-intuitive as

it might sound, the

policy of restraint

fuels orgies of del-

egitimisation and

demonisation of

Israel across the

world”. To his

mind, the slaugh-

ter of , people,

wounding of ,

more, the levelling

of entire neighbour-

hoods, the repeated

bombing of hospitals

and UN-run schools,

the destruction of vital civil infrastructure

such as water, power and sewage treatment

plants and the killing of  children all

result from a “policy of restraint”.

Knesset member Ayelet Shaked took

this ethnic hatred to its logical conclu-

sion when demanding the deliberate

slaughter of Palestinian mothers and their

“little snakes”. She explained: “They have

to die and their houses should be demol-

ished so that they cannot bear any more

terrorists”.

Meanwhile, back in Ireland, our Foreign

Minister is a proud member of a group

known as the ‘Oireachtas Friends of Israel’,

along with minister Leo Varadkar, former

minister Alan Shatter and Labour’s Joanna

Tuﬀy. Catholic columnist David Quinn,

reﬂecting on the deaths of some ,

Gazans (% civilians, including  dead

children) for the loss of around  Israeli

troops and three civilians, explains: “Israel

has the right to defend itself against brutal

foes that are hell-bent on destruction”.

Ireland has to date pledged only

1, to help rebuild Gaza ahead of

the next Israeli blitz.

A far more useful support anyway might

be to oﬀer the Palestinians some of the

US-made Javelin anti-tank missile sys-

tems that the Irish military, at enormous

expense, purchased. These compact weap-

ons can destroy Israeli Merkava main battle

tanks at a range of up to .km, and would

be ideal as a purely defensive weapon – and

deterrent – against any future armoured

assault on Gaza. When violence no longer

pays as state policy, Israel may be forced to

resort to politics. •

John Gibbons is online @think_or_swim

time to ridicule the “telegenically dead”

Palestinian babies and children being piled

up just to try to make his army look bad.

And it certainly does look bad, and not

just for the Israeli army. Former US pres-

ident Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson

jointly penned a devastating critique of

the latest Israeli incursion in early August.

What is not widely reported is that Israel’s

brutal assault was both tactical and entirely

premeditated.

“This tragedy results from the delib-

erate obstruction of a promising move

towards peace, when a reconciliation agree-

ment among the Palestinian factions was

announced in April”, wrote Carter and

Robinson. Hamas had in fact made a huge

concession, agreeing to open Gaza to joint

control under a consensus government with

no Hamas involvement.

The likelihood of reconciliation among

the Palestinian factions leading to a peace-

ful framework for resolving conﬂict in the

Ireland should

oﬀer the

Palestinians

some of our US-

made Javelin

anti-tank

missile systems

“