Dublin: Hundreds Attend Rally Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine
national |
rights, freedoms and repression |
news report 
Saturday November 14, 2009 19:47
by Freda H - IPSC
info at ipsc dot ie
01 6770253
Part of the International Week of Solidarity Against the Apartheid Walls in Palestine and Siege of Gaza
Today Saturday 14th November 2009 hundreds of Palestinians and solidarity activists rallied in Dublin to protest against Israel’s apartheid practices in Palestine. The rally - part of an international week of global mobilisation against the walls of apartheid in Palestine from November 9th to 16th 2009, called by the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign – was compčred by Freda Hughes (IPSC PRO), Caoimhe Butterly (renowned Irish human rights activist), Ger Cassidy (Viva Palestina), Sameh Habeeb (Gazan Journalist and human rights activist), John Hurson (Where Do the Children Play?), Pete St. John-Jones (International Solidarity Activist in Bil’in).
Speakers highlighted the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, with particular reference to the Siege of Gaza and the Israel’s Apartheid Walls in Palestine. They spoke of their efforts, both in Ireland and in Palestine, to raise awareness among civil and political society, as well as their various efforts to help people on the ground in Palestine. Freda Hughes, the IPSC PRO, stressed the need to build a broad based social mass-movement to convey the reality of the situation in Palestine to mainstream society.
Following the speeches protestors marched around the central reservation on O’Connell Street chanting slogans in support of the Palestinian people, carrying colourful flags, placards and banners in a loud and spirited demonstration.
After the rally, an IPSC press conference was held in the Teachers’ Club. The reason for the conference was to raise awareness of the ongoing media difficulties surrounding the occupation of Palestine, to highlight the impressive role the Irish trade union movement has played in pushing for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and to launch the IPSC’s campaign aimed at building public support to convince Irish multinational CRH to divest from Israel [1].
Peter McLoone, General Secretary of IMPACT, who was a member of the ICTU delegation that visited Palestine in November 2007, spoke of his experiences in Palestine during the trip. Mr. McLoone said: “There is no doubt that the people of Palestine are suffering. There is no doubt that people are dying and there is no doubt that people are living in fear. No amount of Israeli propaganda can counteract what I have seen on the ground.”
Mr. McLoone continued: “The trade union movement in Ireland is determined to take Palestinian solidarity activism to a new level. We are determined to engage with other trade unions to encourage them to adopt a policy of boycott, divestment and sanctions.”
Sameh Habeeb, Gazan journalist and human rights worker who reported prolifically and bravely during the Israeli onslaught in Dec 2008 /Jan 2009, gave an emotive account of the current situation in Gaza. He spoke of the dire medical conditions and the fact that the economy has completely collapsed. He also talked about the difficulties faced by those in education and the cripplingly high unemployment rate in the beleaguered coastal strip which is home to 1.5 million Palestinans.
Mr. Habeeb stated: “The war on Gaza was not a retaliation against Hamas rockets, the ceasefire was breached by Israel on November 4th 2008 – a fact that has been openly admitted by Israeli military sources. This was a pre-planned war. Israel’s denials regarding its targeting of civilians is propaganda and fabrication and is abhorrent in a time of such unequal conflict.”
Harry Browne, journalist and lecturer in DIT, spoke of the mainstream media bias in favour of Israel and its official sources which he said were often accepted at face value without the application of critical analysis on behalf of reporters. He stressed that some of the best and most honest reporting from Gaza came from Gazans themselves, like Sameh Habeeb, because very few Western media outlets had a presence there when the war was launched. He referred to this as “real reporting”. He also made reference to the importance of New Media such as blogs, social networking sites and independent media outlets in delivering genuine and unfiltered news coverage on an international scale.
John Dorman, the IPSC’s Divestment Officer, officially launched the IPSC’s campaign aimed at building public support to convince Irish multinational CRH to divest from Israel (For background see Note 1).
Mr. Dorman outlined the steps the IPSC are taking in this multifaceted and long-term campaign which include research, education, legal and civil aspects. He urged those concerned with CRH’s role in Israel to get involved in the campaign by contacting the IPSC, and at the very least to sign the IPSC’s petition - http://www.ipsc.ie/crhdivest
Mr. Dorman concluded: “CRH boast on their website that they adhere “to the highest standards of corporate and social responsibility” and that they state that the support the UN Declaration of Human Rights and consider human rights implications where applicable in all contracts. In light of this, we the undersigned call for CRH to immediately divest from the Mashav Group and to end its collusion with Israel’s Apartheid Regime.”
Concluding the meeting David Landy, Chair of the IPSC, encouraged people to get involved, either at home by getting involved in the IPSC and the BDS campaign, or by visiting Palestine to see the suffering of the people first hand and getting involved with grassroots and NGO campaigns there.
Notes:
1. CRH’s Israeli subsidiary the Mashav Group is to acquire Hanson Israel, Israel's 2nd largest building materials company, which operates illegal quarries, asphalt, aggregate and cement factories in the Occupied West Bank.
Added to this CRH (through Mashav) owns a 25% stake in the Nesher Cement company that provides 85% of all cement in Israel. Therefore, the Irish company CRH is currently complicit in the violation of international law through illegal mining activities in Palestine, as well as the construction of Israel's Apartheid Wall in the West Bank, checkpoints and settlement-colonies.
Comments (25 of 25)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25A few more photos
Ger Cassidy
Sameh Habeeb
John Hurson
Pete St. John-Jones
a few more pics
Peter McLoone
Sameh Habeeb, Peter McLoone, David Landy,
IPSC Week of Solidarity crew
Audience at the public meeting
This wall saves lives -when was the last suicide bomb set off ?
making a fair and just peace would also save lives, but the Israeli bigots are only interested in dispossesing Palestinians from as much of Palestine as possible. If the Wall was built just for security reasons it would have been built on Israeli territory not deep inside the West Bank . Well done to the IPSC.
Anyone here interested in FACTS as opposed to propaganda?
1. There was a Jewish sect in Jerusalem over 5000 years ago. FACT
2 There has been a majority, indigenous Arab presence in Palestine for over one thousand years. FACT.
3. Prior to the establishment of Israel by the UN, in 1948, against the express opposition votes of all the Arab states, there was only a minority Jewish settlement in Palestine. FACT
4. There is no legitimate reason for there to be an Israeli state that covers the majority of the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. FACT
5. If you give Palestine to the Israelis because of a Jewish presence there 5000 years ago, then you must give Florida back to the original Indian people of Florida, which include the Timucua, Calusa, Apalachee, Seminole and Miccosukee tribes. CONCLUSION
"5. If you give Palestine to the Israelis because of a Jewish presence there 5000 years ago, then you must give Florida back to the original Indian people of Florida, which include the Timucua, Calusa, Apalachee, Seminole and Miccosukee tribes. CONCLUSION..."
AH, but have you asked a Timucua, Calusa, Apalachee, Seminole, or a Miccosukee? You are in the position of being the one who has first stolen and then occupied for a long time and are now saying "we've been here long enough to have extinguished your claims". Not an unnatural position for you to take BUT that isn't a reason for you to say that the dispossesed are wrong to think otherwise.
If someday, by some miracle, the Timucua, Calusa, Apalachee, Seminole and Miccosukee returning from where scattered became strong enough to throw you invaders out, you going to bitch and moan about how they are "colonialists" displacing you native peoples?
PS: You are way off on your timeline. NOT 5000 years ago. More like 3500-3000 years ago when they entered the area in numbers and about 1800 years ago when reduced in numbers (in common with many Mediteranean basin peoples, also always lived scattered around the litoral). I guess can be excused because modern Celts not yet in Ireland as of those dates.
The part of Western Palestine assigned to Israel by UN 181 had a Jewish majority and if the Arab parties had accepted UN 181 they could have had their Arab state in Palestine since 1947 FACT.
If the Arab parties had accepted the Peel Report in 1937 they could have had an Arab state over 80% of the country FACT. Arab suffering in Palestine is a direct result of Arab leadership misjudgements in 1947 - doing the bull in the china shop of violating with force of arms UN181 - well... everybody makes a mistake from time to time or they have not tried to do anything, but Arab misjudgement and incompetence in 1947-49 and since is FACT.
Israel is free of blame that the Arabs FAILED to erect their state between 1949 and 1967 when Arabs held the Jordanian West Bank and Egyptian occupied Gaza Strip under military government.
Israel is free of blame that the Arab states threatened to chuck Israel into the sea in 1967 FACT,and then Arab states FAILED to even answer Israel's 1967 post- war offer to return to the Green Line for a peace treaty turning it into a legal international frontier FACT. As the French have it, "Say damn but say something," and I remember Arabs on campus before 1967 ie when Israel was behind the Green Line refusing to say, "Israel." If you can not give recognition - and Abbas this year refused again to recognise Israeli self-determination - then you are not in the best position to claim it - or complain of a thrashing for firing 8 000 gratuitous rockets at civilians.
When Egypt offered Israel peace recognition and respect for the original [British-Turkish] frontier, Egypt got Sinai back FACT. When Jordan also offered Israel peace and a frontier, the state of war was replaced by peace and trade. When Lebanon's President Bashir Gemayel offered peace and recognition to Israel on the 1923 Franco-British frontier he was assassinated by a Syrian kamikaze, ditto President Rafiq Hariri FACT.
It is a FACT that the Arab - Israel war is not primarily Israel's fault . It needs two to tango and the Arabs kicked off so cut the cardboard cut-out attitude. It is FACT that Palestine's Arab neighbours have always wanted to carve it for themselves and get rid of all the Jews they can. Israelis bought all the land they held in 1947 - a lot more than the British [Irish included] ever did in the Americas or Australasia, FACT.
When IPSC have demolished Israel are they proposing migration to Ireland for the Jewish population? Half of whom are in families that came from Arab countries encouraged by pogroms /farhuds in 1948 - '51.
If six million Jewish Israelis became refugees tomorrow, PSC's would no more want them in Europe or America now, than they want Arab refugees or their redneck predecessors before World War II - which is why Hitler got away with his massacres; in his words, "Who remembers the Armenians?" [or the potato famine beyond Ireland].
"Israelis bought all the land they held in 1947 -.................... FACT."
Let me try to explain. You will sometimes see other figures indicating that on the contrary the Jews owned only a much smaller percentage. Decpetive, a matter of how you define "who owns what".
The point is that the British under the Mandate had been preventing the Jews from buying up the land. All that did was prevent them from directly and openly buying up the land. It didn't prevent the Jews from setting up some XYZ Land Trading Company, duly registered in the City, whose shares just happened to be owned by some UVW Holding Company, ditto, and guess who controlled that.
In othe words, this dispute about who is telling the truth is just all about "shell" ownership vs "direct" ownership.
"Israelis bought all the land they held in 1947 -.................... FACT."
Let me try to explain. You will sometimes see other figures indicating that on the contrary the Jews owned only a much smaller percentage. Decpetive, a matter of how you define "who owns what".
The point is that the British under the Mandate had been preventing the Jews from buying up the land. All that did was prevent them from directly and openly buying up the land. It didn't prevent the Jews from setting up some XYZ Land Trading Company, duly registered in the City, whose shares just happened to be owned by some UVW Holding Company, ditto, and guess who controlled that.
In othe words, this dispute about who is telling the truth is just all about "shell" ownership vs "direct" ownership.
hundreds??? i counted maybe 80 and if anything all of their own crowd. Did not see to many people on the street joining in. FACT
Always beware someone who feels the need to put their FACTS in capital letters in case people CAN'T HEAR THEM SHOUTING. Methinks such a person might not be an OBJECTIVE AND IMPARTIAL OBSERVER somehow.
I see Netanyahu is 'warning' the Palestinians against even thinking about declaring independence. What a gross bully.
What all the impartial and opbjective contributors to Indymedia have consistently missed these dozen years is that the Arab parties were given half a dozen opportunities to erect an Arab state in Palestine either by the powers, their Jewish Zionist opponents, or pure luck of the situation. It is not Israel's fault that the Arabs can not and will not take a catch for toffee.
However the Arabs in contempt for Jews as people, religion and as equal citizens whether personally or as a state and fellow UN member, preferred the vanity of posing in blood and fire and spoiling the picnic of the World in general and of Israel in particular to the hard work of creating their own economy state and society. So much easier to benefit scrounge on UNWRA rather than bulk the money and use it wholesale to build an economy. So much more posy to go down in defeat than to make a peace that infers a wrong Arab choice of policy in the first place. It is not Israel's fault that the Arabs did not win the wars of aggression the Arabs started.
Do remember that the whole Arab World was created by an imperialist adventure for which traditional mindset the Arabs sought their ends by war first and were forced to diplomacy and propaganda by defeat; while the Zionists sought their end by purchase and the ways of peace but had to fight for survival.
The Arabs failed to create an Arab state in Palestine by rejecting the Peel Report, by rejecting the UN181 plan and by not creating a state in the Jordanian West Bank or Gaza Strip, neither between 1949 and '67, nor since. The Americans, Israelis and Irish did not wait for the British to go, to declare and create their states. Palestine Arabs rejected the Sadat offer of autonomy to be built into the Egyptian - Israel peace wasting fifteen years. Palestine Arabs failed on Oslo which merely required them to amend their constitutional paperwork to treat Jews and Israel as equals, then come weeping to cadge sympathy when their kamikaze campaign was defeated.
The Arabs started the 1936 -38 war. The Arabs ran the 1929 riot. The Arabs refused to make peace in 1949 - '67 when they had the territories - without Jewish settlements - they now pretend to want for a state. What runs through the whole conflict and its Arab sympathisers is the error that guerillla war will work every time and that the rebels are justified every time. Unfortunately as in all manner of wars you have to chose your target for overall balance as there are valid methods of defeating guerillas, assassins, bombers and kamikazes.
The Algerians defeated the GIA and the British stonewalled the Northern IRA and wore out the Malayan Communists. Similarly Israel defeated the Nasser's Fedayeen by 1956 and have fenced out Arafat's kamikazes since 2003. Does IPSC really believe in returning all European settler states' populations to Europe? That includes 35 million Irish Americans so start planning.
The punch line quite literally is that the Palestine Arabs can have an Arab state if they really want that, but there is a price - recognising the right of the Jewish majority of Israel to a Jewish majority self-determined state; because neither Europe, America nor the Arab World wants any of its Jewish refugees of the forties back, do you? To my surprise, I found enough Irish on my trip across the water who do not want The North, its men of violence and other loyalists either.
This raises the real questions about Arab deliberate practice of dropping political easy catches - and their supporters' blind eye chorus of inability to question Arab intentions to wipe the Zionist project off the map:
Why must this Palestine State be the Green Line and nothing but, when from 1949 to '67 no Arab state or non-state actor accepted it as the basis of a peace & frontier and Hamas & Hizbollah besides their paymaster in Iran still intend as much? Is there not a price for being repeatedly late?
Why must this proposed Arab state in Palestine be entirely free of Jewish villages and towns rather than accept a Jewish minority as Israel accepts an Arab minority? So why the stream of allegations about Israeli prosperous minorities when the Palestine project openly includes ethnic cleansing?
Why does the Palestine Arab Moslem supremacy lobby push for a one state solution with Jewish, Hebrew speaking Israel; but not with Moslem Arab Jordan? Is this not perverse in terms of creating an Arab State in Palestine?
"Peak oil" arrives by 2015 or at latest by 2020, so what happens to the Palestine obsession when the rest of the world has to find alternatives to oil and is no longer so beholden to Arab contracts?
It would have been a lot better if you just posted a short comment with a few words in CAPITAL letters than a long-winded comment that was made up entirely of lies. Why do you bother - you're not dealing with idiots who know nothing about the subject you choose to lie about, the information that can show you up as a liar is readily to hand.
Who is trying to have a calm debate with facts and who is not ?
WHO can NOT see this ? readers decide
It's rather typical of the pro-Israel fanatics that they can't tell the difference between "facts" and "lies" - a fact is something that really happened, a lie is something that you make up. Frank Adam's rant is entirely made up of lies, from beginning to end. As I said, the people who read this site are not idiots and they can tell a liar when they see one. For anyone who doesn't know enough about the ME to see immediately that he is a liar, check out one of the many sites that provide factual information about Palestine - try www.ipsc.ie for starters.
When looking up the truth about the Arab-Israeli conflict, it would be more useful to look at more objective websites.
history is an agreed-upon set of lies
Napolean Bonaparte
Rather than argue over some very disputable historical 'facts':Here some very much less-disputable actual FACTS for the pro-Zionists Sean Og, Frank Adam, and Mike Novak to chew on;
definitly NOT permitted under UN Resolutions, boys.
Proof that it was Israel which broke the ceasefire
more Proof that it was Israel which broke the ceasefire
The first graphic above did not post correctly; plase click on it to see it in it's correct form.
Here is a repost of that same graphic in a les visually-dramatic form
Definitely NOT permitted under any U.N. resolutions, boys
Click this link to view the complete Channel 4 Dispatches program aired on 16th Nov 2009 titled Inside Britians Israel Lobby
http://vodpod.com/watch/2522746-inside-britains-israel-...lobby
If only RTE had the guts to produce something like that.
Perhaps "Darkstar" could admit whether (s)he has gone to the reference files/microfilms and read the 1947 newspapers? which did report Arab refusals to accept a partition ie two state solution - both then and since.
Is "Darkstar" denying that Washington and the Founding Fathers, Padraig Pearse and friends; and Ben Gurion read their declarations of independence and created their states BEFORE the British left? Further the USA; India, Ireland and Israel have never indulged a quixotic - and spiteful - campaign against the very right of the British to exist and run their own UK state - in the British Isles.
Does "Darkstar insist on denying that Hamas and the PLO Covenant - a strikingly Biblical word! actually call for the destruction of Jewish self-determination in Israel and the return of the Jewish population to Europe while ignoring that over half the Israeli Jewish population came from Arab countries which did not treat them as equal citizens because for starters no Arab country treats its people as equal citizens with free speech and free worship?
Can "Darkstar" deny that all the Arabs concerned did not create an Arab state in Palestine when they held the [Jordanian] West Bank & Gaza Strip under Egyptian military rule in 1949 - 1867?
Being born in 1941 I remember as a witness that in June 67 after the war's result surprised everybody - particularly the Israelis - Israel through US good offices, offered to return to the Green Line in return for a peace treaty to turn it into a frontier and end the conflict. No Arab state or whatever took up that offer, so I challenge "Darkstar" to unearth why the Arab parties ignored Israel's offer of peace and land and more pertinently why is he touchy to grasp that nettle from the press files? There is a lot to learn from wise after the event interpretations and archive releases but if we can not manage the contemporary opinions and witnesses then we are wasting time - and blood and treasure with it.
Maybe our resident expert in lying could explain why in August 1967 the Arabs at their Khartoum Conference declared a policy of No peace! No recognition! and No talks! with Israel; and then explain how that statement is not a policy of war and aggression? as much in '67 as in '37 or now?
Finally having enjoyed the hospitality and verbal dexterity of the Emerald Isle, so different from English grunts about the price of "fish" - or rather the price of oil in this context - I am disappointed that "Darkstar" lets the side down by such a curt defamation instead of picking apart my narrative.
I have known the maps since 1956 if not before, and just showing the progressive crumbling - through political mismanagement - of the Arab authority over their part of the land does nothing to explain the process. Just because Israel has been relatively successful in this struggle for mastery of the Land of Israel does not mean it is guilty and Palestine guiltless. One could just as simply say that because the State of Ireland has picked up most of the Island of Ireland, it is guilty of gross aggression etc and the poor little Protestant North has been hard done by [clerical] fascists - a word frequently resorted to by the elder Dr Paisley and associates.
Well put Hubris.
Images like those are hard to dispute.
The world waking up to the daily injustice suffered by the Palestinians.
Poor Frank Adam is reduced to posting a less than frank and rather lenghty rant wherein he still tries to steer the conversation over to what are, at the end of the day, very disputable historical so-called 'FACTS'.
History, being an agreed-upon set of lies, is very much open to interpretation and, more relevantly in Frank Adam's case, deliberate mis-intrepretation.
He seems to believe that his efforts to ignore the indisputable very graphic modern actual FACTS, in favor of useless squabbling over very-disputable historical so-called 'Facts' helps him in his risible attempts cover-up the absolute brankruptcy of the Pro-Zionist propaganda talking points.
His constant reference to U.N. resolutions while ignoring Isreal's total disregard for approx 60 U.N. resolutions is hypocritical in the extreme.
His subsequent disregard of the illegality of the Israeli attempts at securing a long-desired, but rarely publically stated, 'Lebensraum' is just typical of your average Zionist-propagandist's attempts at distorting and cherry-picking the historical record in the service of promoting their twisted view of reality.
Tom:Images like those are hard to dispute.
Which is of course why, with the exception of a brief rant about 'struggle for mastery of the Land of Israel', the ever disputatious Frank Adam made no attempt to address the issues raised by those images. In fact his very use of the term 'struggle for mastery of the Land of Israel', betrays the total reliance on violent expansionist militarism which lies at the core of modern political Zionism
Frank Adam's insistance that Palestinians be seen merely as a sub-set of a group he constantly refer to as 'ARABS!', (inferring that precious Zionist security-blanket, racial-homogenity) and not a group of people in their own right deserving of fair and equitable treatment, is merely indicative of the 'race-based' view of human inter-relatios to which all Zionists simply must adhere if they are to accept the essentially racist doctrine of Zionism.
In this they are in fact internalising much the same set of thought-processes propagated by all other race-based creeds, especially those of their apparent arch-enemies, the Anti-semites.
Zionism and Anti-Semitism are merely 2 sides of the same coin.
FA:just showing the progressive crumbling - through political mismanagement - of the Arab authority over their part of the land does nothing to explain the process.
Blaming the victim is just one usual method of defence of aggressive action employed by all sorts of aggressors the world over.
Next you'll be telling us that the Palestinians were 'asking for it, going out dressed like THAT!!
Twice now "Darkstar" & "Hubris" who will be living down to his nom-de-guerre come the great oil shortage, have replied with mere insults to witnessed fact. After the fall of the Dritten Reich and Soviet style heavy handed pretensions to Communism, both replete with fiddled history books, banned books & films, and often fatal violence towards those who have objected and pointed to the waterfall before the canoers; one would have thought that the penny - sorry the red cent - had dropped by now that events arguments and processes have to be double blind checked if we are not to starve on a failed Lysenko harvest - especially when the faces in your pictures are all too young to have witnessed many of the events that those taking the decisions do remember and take caution from.
There is also some very blind silliness about what people call themselves. The states in question are members of The Arab League and of The Organisation of Islamic States. There is a certain commonality in the policies of: Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon besides the Palestinians because they all speak & think in Arabic and speak of themselves as Arabs and speak of their problem with Palestine as an Arab problem. Of course they are not homogenous which is one reason they have not got their way in Palestine - and much else - because they are at each other for petty advantages to scoop the loot for themselves in particular - but some including various Arab authorities writing in Arabic would agree that is part of the Arab cultural and political tradition.
I defy 'Hubris' and 'Darkstar' to refute with quotes or explanations of misinterpretation the points I have made about the Arab parties together and the Palestine Arabs in particular deliberately failing to use several political opportunities in the last near ninety years as advantageously as they could have.
Two small points about hypocrisy and homogenising racism rhymes with Fascism:
(a) the hypocrisy about UN resolutions is firmly in the Palestine lobby's refusal to admit the precedent was set by the Arab states in 1948, and in 1947 by the Palestine Arab leaders - who refused to call themselves Palestinian till late1968 - when they all refused to accept UN 181 but broke it with force of arms which the then Secretary General condemned as the first act of aggression since 1945. Hubris and Darkstar know perfectly well... " that the Arabs can get a flat Earth resolution if they wish to," in Abba Eban's fancy phrase, and the behaviour in the UN and elsewhere of states with an Arab and or Islamic majority population is nothing to do with peacemaking and everything to do with harrassment and mudslinging qv the murdered Christian schoolgirls of Indonesia and harrassed Coptic peasantry of Egypt.
(b) the premise of most Arab Palestinian publicity, and certainly of their actions, is to create a single unitary Palestine State over the entire territory of (ex-British Western, as after the 1921 Cairo Conference partition) Palestine from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean in which there will be no concessions to the ethnic, linguistic, religious, nor self-determination rights and differences of any other group besides the dominant Sunni Moslem Arabs. Deny as much if you can. This is analagous to the ambitions of all Irish nationalists from Wolfe Tone - hanged for promoting an American political programme - to Gerry Adams of the Saxon patronymic; but both Michael Collins and Gerry Adams had to finally recognise that the northern Protestants were not joining a Catholic dominated outfit that severely censored arts and legislation at least in its opening decades, and self determined themselves separately. In the same way the Israeli Jews have self-determined themselves separately because the rest of the World threw the Jewish People to the wolves in the 30's and 40's, and it wishes to now for a mess of oil fields; but then history is agreed lies in the Liberation Front, and the People's Front for the Liberation, let alone the Democratic Front for Liberation of Brian B....
Finally, the British and the English especially, have always found a certain Irish verbal agility tiresome, so thanks for the laurels "disputatious" which will go into my CV & quals envelope as the capstone certification.
Well: Tom, Hubris and Darkstar,
Where is your factual refutation of historic facts? Or are you hoist on your principals' petard of half the truth?
Why does Abbas and Hamas still refuse to recognise Israeli self determination even as UK recognised Ireland's?
There are limits to politcs by slanderous Soviet style dismissals. It does not work. The biggest problem in Palestine is that while there are more than enough Israeli critics of Israel to move their public & opinion; there are no Arab conversations about Arab apologies for policy - or at least Arab heavy handed execution of policy in Palestine compared to the Ayatollahs totally professional diplomatic dancing.
The logjam will loosen when all Arab parties, inclusive the "men of violence," and their thelogians, recognise publicly in Arabic on Palestine Arab media that the Arab parties dropped an almighty clanger by rejecting UN 181 in 1947, the Peel Report in 1937 and failing to create Palestine (insofar as Arab Palestine was not a mock up and muck up) between 1947 and 1967 - never mind the political idiocy of not taking up - at least to test - Israel's post war offer in June 67 to return to the Green Line in exchange for a peace treaty!
Sadat did it slightly differently: he gave peace, recognition and talks - the three "Khartoum noes" - smiled, collected Sinai and dodged inquiry into 1948 Egyptian policy and practical errors; but after an extra thirty years of violence and rejection the price in compromises of "Palestine" has gone up - and will continue to rise - especially after "peak oil."
Does IPSC have any imagination - or as with those who get religion - finding God and losing their manners - does finding Palestine mean losing your research & critical faculties?
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