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76 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 77
W
hen I attended last October, as
part of the Dublin historical
festival, a fascinating lecture
on Ireland and the crusades
given by archaeologist Dr Paul
Duffy, I was not anticipating that come
Christmas, I would be witnessing butchery in
The Holy Land on a catastrophic scale, but
neither was I, perhaps naively, expecting to
see Western Christian leaders, view a war
through a morality prism similar to that of the
Crusaders. However, unlike in the middle
ages, our current Christian Western leaders
may yet rue their actions.
“They perforate their navels, and dragging
Ireland, bi plyer in
he Crusdes, gin
kes differen
snce from oher
bloodhirsy Wesern
ses on he wr in
Plesine
By Dónall Ó Maolfabhail
forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to
a stake; then with flogging they lead the
victim around until the viscera having gushed
forth the victim falls prostrate upon the
ground. …What shall I say of the abominable
rape of the women?“. This is not a quote taken
from recent media coverage of Hamas’s
atrocious attack on 7 October, but an extract
from the chronicler Robert the Monk on what
Pope Urban II had to say about Muslims in the
year 1095, as he tried to rally support for the
First Crusade.
For Jews their Bible, the Tanakh, states that
the Holy Land was given to the Israelites by
God, as their promised land. For Christians it
is considered holy because of its association
with the birth, ministry, crucifixion and
resurrection of Jesus. For Muslims, the Quran
states: “O my people, enter The Holy Land
which Allah has destined for you to enter”.
Therefore Jews, Muslims and Christians in the
region can all lay a legitimate claim to this
sacred piece of land, but one group who can’t,
though this has never stopped them, are
European Christian powers. In fact were it not
for Europe’s colonial ambitions and its
antisemitism, the Holy Land might not be the
centre of conflict, pain and anguish it is today.
While it was fashionable for a long time to
blame the Jews for the death of Jesus Christ,
Genesis of
Genocide
Taking of Jerusalem by the
Crusaders by Emile Signol
INTERNATIONAL
76 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 77
In 1947, despite opposition
from the Arab League, the
UN voted that Palestine
should be divided as two
independent states. War
followed, and 80% of the
Palestinian population fled
their homes in the Nakba
it was a Roman Governor who ordered his
actual crucifixion just outside Jerusalem. After
the Roman Empire collapsed and the region
fell to Muslim control under the Rashidun
Caliphate in 637, European powers weren’t
long in once again laying claim to the Holy
Land, this time mounting a Crusade to free it
from the Saracens (the term for Muslims
before the sixteenth century) in the name of
Christ himself. Over the centuries, Jerusalem
alone has been attacked 52 times, captured
and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times
and destroyed twice.
While the Crusades may have been waged
to rid the Holy Land of Muslims, many Jews
also fell victim to these European Christian
marauders. So much so, that in 1099 Muslims
and Jews allied together to defend the city of
Haifa. They held out for a month before the
walls of the citadel were breached and every
man woman and child killed. Finally on 17
October 1244, on a site just north of Gaza, the
Crusaders were finally defeated by an Egyptian
army at the Battle of La Forbie, precipitating
the seventh Crusade.
Just as recent military interventions by
Western powers in places like Iraq, Libya, and
Syria resulted in many people from these
regions fleeing to Europe, many of the Jews
who were not killed or sold into slavery during
the conquest of the Holy Land by both the
Romans (in 70 AD) and later the Crusaders,
also took refuge in Europe. Contrary to the
practice in the medieval Islamic world, where
Jews were allowed to practise their faith,
refugees to Christian Europe were subject to
persecutions, expulsions, forced conversions
and massacres.
Antisemitism to varying degrees remained
a feature of Christian Europe, so that by the
end of the nineteenth century 1.5 million Jews,
the vast majority from the Russian Empire,
had decided to relocate to America.
It was around the same time, that a new
movement called Zionism and the notion of
Palestine becoming the home of the Jews,
emerged. By the outbreak of World War One
around 75,000 Jews had resettled in Palestine.
But in what can only be described as an ironic
twist of fate; this Zionist dream would not
have been realised were it not for a European
Christian power.
The Ottoman Empire’s decision to side with
Germany at the outbreak of World War One,
meant that by 1915 European soldiers in the
shape of the British Army were again fighting
in the Holy Land.
In return for Arab support, Britain promised
that after the war Palestine — then part of the
Ottoman Empire — would become part of a
new independent united Arab state, only to
publish the Balfour declaration in parliament,
recognising Palestine as the future home of
the Jews, two years later. The Balfour
Declaration was agreed by allies and
incorporated into the British mandate in
Palestine.
When after the war, the European-
dominated League of Nations, chose to divvy
up various parts of the former Ottoman Empire
among themselves, pressure came on Britain
to honour its promises, after it was awarded
Palestine. As Britain facilitated increased
Jewish settlements in a country were nearly
90% of the population were made up of
78 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 PB
Muslims and Christians, the inevitable
happened.
In 1939 a three-year Arab revolt was brutally
put down by the British Army, resulting in 10%
of the Arab male population being killed,
wounded, imprisoned or exiled. But the
suering inflicted on Palestinian Arabs, was
nothing compared to what awaited the Jews in
Europe.
As one European Christian leader,
Mussolini, in 1940, ordered his Italian Airforce
to launch an aerial bombardment of British
occupied Tel Aviv and Haifa, another, Hitler,
was putting steps in place to send six million
Jews, two thirds of their total number in
Europe, to the gas chambers.
By the end of World War Two 250,000
European Jews were homeless. When Britain
tried to prevent these men and women from
entering Palestine, a Zionist military outfit,
the Irgun emerged.
After a number of assassinations and
bombings, the British finally agreed to place
the matter of Palestine before the United
Nations. On 29 November 1947, despite
opposition from the Arab League, the UN
voted that Palestine should be divided up as
two independent states. War followed, and
80% of the population, 750,000 or so
Palestinians fled their homes, an event forever
to be known as the Nakba.
On 14 May 1948 the State of Israel was
ocially recognised. A strong Israeli lobby in
the United States, largely born from the
hundreds of thousands of Jews who fled
European antisemitism, has meant that
systematic breaches of United Nations
resolutions by Israel remains unchecked,
ensuring that a peaceful Holy Land is further
than ever.
While the motivation of the Western leaders
who flocked to the Middle East straight after
the Hamas’ slaughter on 7 October, in support
of Israel, may have been to try and mitigate
Israel’s response, their pronouncements
showed an arrogant and naive unawareness
of how their endorsements would be perceived
in the rest of the world, sceptical of the
Western and US hegemony in geopolitics.
Groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS have
already been successful in portraying western
military interventions in the region as a
continuation of the crusades against Muslims.
The sight of Western Christian leaders one
after another, standing side by side with
Israeli politicians as they referred to
Palestinians as animals and spoke of the war
in Gaza as being a battle between darkness
and light, a battle for civilisation, has done
little to dispel this notion.
Watching various leaders condemn
unsubstantiated reports of Hamas having
beheaded 40 babies, while remaining silent
on the stream of images of dead children
emerging from Gaza, as if they were children
of a lesser God, was propaganda the likes of
ISIS could only dream of.
Whereas the Christian leaders who led the
Crusades in the middle ages could be fairly
confident that no matter what brutality they
inflicted on Muslims or Jews in the Middle
East, it would in all likelihood not endanger
their own families back in Europe, this is a
luxury no longer available to Europeans, as
recent attacks in Paris and London have
shown; and yet an Islamic terrorist attack may
not be the most significant consequence of
the Gaza conflict for Europe.
Unlike the United States of America, the
European Union is made up of dierent
sovereign nation states, all with individual
domestic and foreign policy priorities. Its
cohesion depends on both the stability of
individual member states and of the
relationship between these states with each
other.
Each member state having a veto on foreign
policy matters has bound the EU only to
positions that have the unanimous support of
all member states, but this is not what
transpired after the 7 October attack when
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen,
in particular ventilated incautious support for
Israel’s self-defence and then repeatedly
Israel’s agency in the unfolding
disproportionate criminality in Gaza.
Recent elections show that Europe is facing
a growing far-right threat. Pro-Palestinian
marches in European capitals may have
illustrated a disconnect between large
sections of the citizens of Europe, particularly
young people and immigrants, and their
leaders.
Dr Duy’s fascinating lecture presented
new evidence showing that contrary to
popular opinion Ireland did play a small role
in the Crusades. I like to fancy that an atavistic
scepticism drove a national reticence on
foreign military adventures even then.
Certainly, as then — 800 years ago — we are
powerless in a conflict driven by a bloodlust
which we do not share.
While the Crusades may have been waged
to rid the Holy Land of Muslims, many Jews
also fell victim to these European Christian
marauders. So much so, that in 1099
Muslims and Jews allied together to defend
the city of Haifa
King David hotel: an essay in Jewish terrorism
