T. Belman. I just received an email from a very informed American in which she pointed out that Pelosi is controlled by the Globalits headed by George Soris. The Democrats have no choice but to push the agenda of the NWO. The same goes for the left all over the world and explains Ireland.
That is why the left pushes the same agenda all over the world. That is why Trump is leading the charge againsts the globalists. Rest assured that there is a war going on between the Globalists lead by Soros and the Nationalists led by Trump.
The GOP supports the empowerment of local government and wants more decisions to be made at that level. The Democrats, the opposite. They want centralized government so they can foist things like transgenderism upon an unwilling electorate.
The streets of West Belfast and Derry offer a sharp, if unlikely, reminder of the Middle East, as republicans and unionists identify with the Palestinian and Israeli causes. In the middle of all this lies a small, somewhat bewildered Jewish community
An Irish-Palestinian solidarity mural on the International Wall, West Belfast. Jacob Judah
LONDONDERRY and BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The Bogside neighborhood is where Northern Ireland’s brutal sectarian war began in the late 1960s. Visitors photographing the murals that glorify hooded paramilitaries, though, might be excused for thinking another conflict is preoccupying the Catholic residents of this shabby gray estate.
Here, the Irish tricolor jostles for space with that of another one: the Palestinian flag. Placards decry the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. “Solidarity with Palestine!” screams a freshly painted mural outside a local pub. Maps nestled in the corners of pro-Palestinian murals inform the public that in Palestine, like in Ireland, there can be only one state.
Between 1969 and 1998, Northern Irish society was torn apart as rival paramilitaries — representing the Catholic Irish nationalists and Protestant British unionists — fought over wanting the territory to be united with the Republic of Ireland or remain as part of the United Kingdom, as it had been since the island was partitioned in 1921.
The Northern Ireland conflict (aka The Troubles) killed over 3,500 people, including some 1,800 civilians, and the country remains bitterly divided along sectarian lines. Londonderry, the country’s second largest city, is a place so divided it has two names: Catholics drop the “London” prefix that is the official British name for the city.
Symbolic displays of identity aggressively broadcast the divides between nationalist and unionist streets here. Positions adopted by hard-liners in one community are automatically opposed in a knee-jerk way by the other.
The Museum of Free Derry, which commemorates the period when paramilitaries carved out a semi-autonomous “statelet” in the Bogside, is dominated from the outside by a huge Palestinian flag. Museum manager Adrian Kerr explains that “people from a nationalist background in Ireland see a similarity with other struggles against oppression.”
Traveling around nationalist estates in Londonderry, Belfast and elsewhere, visitors can see a panoply of flags hanging from lampposts, windows or painted on walls: Basque, Catalan, Cuban, Aboriginal Australian. But the most common non-Irish flags and symbols, by far, are Palestinian ones.
Kerr says his museum decided to drape itself in Palestinian flags during last year’s Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip, when thousands of Palestinians staged weekly protests along the border. At its peak, in May 2018, when the Americans marked the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, over 60 Palestinians were killed in one day. “We saw the violence there,” says Kerr, and “it led to an emotional reaction.”
He believes the feelings of solidarity shared between Northern Ireland and the Palestinians runs deeper than other relations. “Just look at the history,” says Kerr. “Israel-Palestine was a British partition; Ireland was a British partition.”
Londonderry is 75 percent Catholic (according to the 2011 U.K. census), but there is one Protestant enclave on the west bank of the city’s River Foyle: the Fountain estate. Hidden behind reinforced steel barriers, a single street winds through this tightly packed housing that was once home to over 10,000 Protestants but now houses about 250. At its entrance, the mantra of unionist Londonderry is there for all to see: “Londonderry West Bank Loyalists Still Under Siege: No Surrender.”
Further down the street, a mural reminds passersby that there is a Protestant community around the world and that they are not alone. For generations, religious leaders told Ulster’s loyalists that this was their “promised land” and they its chosen people.
A bond is formed
Pro-Palestinian solidarity among Irish republicans dates back to the late ’70s when the main paramilitary groups — the Irish Republican Army and the communist Irish National Liberation Army — established ties with the Palestine Liberation Organization. They began to cultivate links and comparisons with other anti-imperialist struggles internationally, as younger recruits pushed republicanism further left and began seeking weapons, training and advice on how to wage a long-term war of attrition with British security forces.
Palestine was the subject of the first Northern Irish mural to express solidarity with a foreign struggle: Painted on West Belfast’s Beechmount Avenue in 1982, it showed masked IRA and PLO fighters jointly gripping a Soviet RPG. (At the time, the street was known locally as “RPG Ave.” due to the frequency of rocket-propelled grenades being launched at British soldiers from the republican stronghold.)
The murals, flags and symbols that mark many republican neighborhoods are the legacy of that period. In the eyes of some observers, these symbolic displays of identity have actually intensified since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998, which officially brought peace to Northern Ireland. “It is the struggle being continued in a different way,” says Kerr. “People use their flags to mark their territory.”
Prof. Adrian Guelke from Queen’s University Belfast concurs. Palestinian and Israeli flags are “being used to fight local battles,” he says. “They are a way of expressing antagonism toward the other community.”
The visible presence of Israeli flags in unionist communities is a more recent phenomenon, the Stars of David first appearing in Belfast in 2002. The 9/11 terror attack on the United States by Islamic extremists “led unionists to think that [then-Prime Minister] Tony Blair ought to be putting the boot in,” explains Guelke, 72. “They found a great example for their view with [Israel’s hawkish then-Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon. They were signaling that they preferred Sharon’s approach to Blair’s.” Since then, he says, “there is an idealization of Israel” among loyalists.
That sympathy was rooted in the unionist belief that loyalists were fighting a front in the War on Terror. Republicans, meanwhile, have expressed themselves in terms of fighting for human rights and against imperialism.
Israeli flags are still visible in Belfast’s unionist communities. Off the predominantly loyalist Shankill Road in the west of the city, a few tattered blue and white flags flutter — the remnants of the last wave of pro-Israel solidarity during 2014’s Gaza war.
Since then, Guelke explains, some of “those things have gone off the boil” because “there is no obvious point unionists would be trying to make to the British government at the moment that would involve Israel. It comes and goes.” He pauses before clarifying: “Israel is not involved in Brexit.” (Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union by 56 to 44 percent, with a heavily sectarian split, and is at the center of one of Brexit’s biggest problems: How to stop a hard Irish border returning once the United Kingdom eventually leaves the EU.)
“On the nationalist side, they will express the view that Israel is a settler-colonial project,” says Steven Jaffe, 54, the Belfast-born, London-based Jewish co-chair of Northern Ireland Friends of Israel — an organization that seeks to deepen understanding and ties with Israel in Northern Ireland. This reflects their belief “that their own community has been displaced by a settler-colonial project,” he explains. Conversely, within unionist politics, there is a perception of a shared interest with a state “besieged” by hostile forces and which is “misunderstood” internationally.
Northern Ireland’s main unionist party is the Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 lawmakers worked alongside the outgoing Conservative Party at Westminster. Over the years, the DUP has become Israel’s most prominent and vocal parliamentary support group. One explanation can be found in the party’s strong evangelical Christian base, says Jaffe. “This Christian element is stronger in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the United Kingdom,” he says, adding that it mirrors the support Israel receives from the overwhelming majority of evangelicals in the United States.
The withdrawal of the DUP’s support for the Conservatives — amid unionist recriminations that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s proposed Brexit deal “sells out” Northern Ireland’s place in the Union — could, just as in 2002, once again open up the space for more visible identification with Israel in unionist communities.
Writing on the wall
Anyone who visited Belfast during the Troubles could not fail to be impressed by the capital’s revival over the past decade or so, with billions of euros of European money being invested in the capital.
However, some things never change — like the republican heartland on the Falls Road. It is here you will find the International Wall, one of about 40 walls (aka the ironically titled peace lines) that to this day separate the city’s Catholic and Protestant communities.
This particular wall (actually found on Divis Street) is the “ground-zero” for republican international solidarity: Irish and Palestinian comrades grip hands from behind prison bars; PLO and IRA fighters squat with their AK-47s; and manifestos demand that Dublin boycott Israel. The overwhelming message here: Our struggle continues.
Walk up the republican Divis Street and onto loyalist Northumberland Street, though, and a very different fighter greets you: A saluting female Israel Defense Forces soldier, an Israeli flag next to her and a quote by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu beneath her, declaring that “in all of Jewish history we have never had a Christian friend as understanding and devoted.” Information panels tell the story of how the Israeli army was, through the Jewish Brigades, partially a Protestant creation. The overwhelming message here: We salute you.
These political murals dot Belfast’s streets, the fighter changing as the message is filtered through sectarian eyes. They are self-regarding displays of affection, sustaining a memory of struggle and radicalism that has been frozen on the streets of Northern Ireland.
Not every political message is painted on a wall, however. Since 2012, Gael Force Art — which describes itself as a West Belfast (i.e. republican) radical collective — has climbed the Black Mountains overlooking Belfast no fewer than four times to unveil huge messages and flags in solidarity with Palestine. The most recent came in August when the Israeli national soccer team played a friendly against Northern Ireland in the capital: A 200 x 65 foot (60 x 20 meter) display read “Free Palestine,” accompanied by a giant Palestinian flag and the hashtag #BDS.
One of its collective’s artists, Risteard Ó Murchú, 50, recalls that he first took a strong interest in the Palestinian cause in the late ’80s. “It looked very similar to what I was experiencing here,” he says.
After spending some time behind bars in the ’90s, he subsequently became involved in republican art. However, he worries now that “there are not many young people coming through with that [same] radical activism. Flags are reactive — and that’s as far as many will go.”
Another religious community
Northern Ireland may be synonymous with clashing Christians, but the country also has a tiny Jewish population and one working synagogue. (The country is also home to small Muslim and Hindu communities.)
Jews, predominantly from Germany, started moving to Belfast in the 1860s, attracted by the city’s thriving rag trade (it was often referred to as “Linenopolis” in the 19th century). Today, you will find the country’s sole surviving shul tucked away down a side street in a middle-class suburb of north Belfast.
From a peak of about 1,500 Jews in the last century, the number has now dwindled to an estimated 340. And because the community’s numbers are so small, Northern Ireland’s Jews are often an afterthought — if thought of at all — in discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Michael Black, 72, is chairman of the Belfast Jewish Community. For him, the ostentatious displays of Palestinian flags make him “uncomfortable” — but they are not his primary concern.
“Belfast was good to the Jews,” he tells Haaretz. “Today, there are so few of us left.” The Belfast congregation has shrunk to fewer than 70 members. “It’s only a matter of time,” he says wistfully.
Michael’s younger brother, Tony, who until now has been cracking jokes by his side, believes the Palestinian issue is more serious. “We do have a wee bit of protection — but the police keep an eye out for us,” the 70-year-old says. He notes about the pro-Palestinian activists: “I’m sure none of them have ever been to Israel.” Sloganeering on Israel-Palestine has caused the Jewish community problems, they both agree.
Belfast’s Jews have suffered their share of anti-Semitic attacks in recent years, often when tensions flare in the Gaza Strip. In 2016, the Jewish section of a disused cemetery off the Falls Road was horrifically desecrated. The synagogue and its former rabbi, David Singer, have been on the receiving end of anti-Semitic abuse online, and the shul’s windows have been repeatedly smashed. There have been no arrests in any of the cases.
This spring, Israeli writer Tuvia Tenenbom released a video online in which two men were heard making virulently anti-Semitic comments at a bar in Londonderry. Politicians from all sides of the spectrum were quick to condemn the incident, with DUP leader Arlene Foster tweeting: “The small Jewish community in Northern Ireland will always have my support and that of all right thinking people.”
Still, there are a few rays of hope to be found here concerning the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Nonprofits such as the Jerusalem-based Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (set up in 1988 to promote dialogue between the two sides) and London-based Forward Thinking (which works to promote a more inclusive peace process in the Middle East) have funded trips for Israeli researchers to visit Northern Ireland and learn from its peace process. Forward Thinking even set up unlikely meetings in June 2016 between the right-wing Israeli Likud party and left-wing, republican Sinn Féin, despite an outcry from pro-Palestinian activists and Sinn Féin supporters.
Many in Northern Ireland would prefer to move on from discussions of sectarianism, wherever it is happening in the world. Having discussed the “mess” of local politics, for example, the Black brothers are much more excited to describe their love of golf (a sport at which Northern Ireland excels). “Our golf club was once very Waspy — but we’ve had four Jewish captains now,” says Tony, laughing.
@ Felix Quigley:
I think the Henry 8th and Elizabethan Plantations were over, being from the early 16th cent. on. As she died in 1603, it had to be James 1, and “The Ulster Plantation after the “Flight of the Earls”. No matter, it’s long time ago.. I was reading about him -and Judge Jeffries- last week in a book by Sabatini… about the transporting of slaves condemned by the failed Monmouth Rebellion, to Barbados…. Captain Blood was the name of the novel. Errol Flynn in the movie. Great swashbuckling rubbish, but the book was better than the movie by far…It always is.
H.V. Morton, in his book “In Search of Ireland” , wrote of an incident in Co. Cork, where in the early 1920s the owner of a mansion was sitting to dinner with his family, and the doors burst open, in rushed mob of bearded, ragged ruffians; their chief shouted to the owner, whose originally English family had been living on that demesne for 300 or so, years,” Do you know who I am ?? I OWN this land and all on it,… I’m the McCarthy himself…. (can’t recall the actual name given) and this is my hertitage….Then they disappeared back to whereever they’d been hiding for hundreds of years….
Very dramatic -and VERY Irish….Isn’t it…??
@ Felix Quigley:
Hello Felix…. I used to read about the sad departure of O’Donnell and O’Neill…if I recall correctly, paraphrasing..the “sad, slow ships sailing along the lough, bearing away.”……….etc.
the “flight of the earls” took place in 1609 and began the Elizabethan Plantation.
very cruel situation for Celtic ireland. it deserved better.
but the other side to that is that this is a very long time. The old provisionals led by OConnel and Obradaigh did accept this, and talked about “four green fields” in their Eire nua, but the hard strain from Belfast 69 on would not accept that, and overthrew OConnell. The rest is history.
it was all an issue of leadership…there was no alterantive to the provos and the “Stickies”. the latter Stalinist.
@ Rick Martin:
I was growing up in Dublin during that time, and remember well Dev’s visit to the German Embassy On the day that Hitler committed suicide I was in Dame Street, just coming out of Hely’s, and at the end of the street was Trinity College… Somehow, a few students had got up on the roof, behind the clock, and has a white sheet with a huge black (ink?) Swastika scrawed on it They were soon brought down, but a huge crowd assembled, watching them.
It’s a bit odd for me to see the picture of the Belfast Jewish Community leader …..after all these years out of the public gaze, Belfast is at it again……
It just happens that my Dear mother’s first cousin, was married to Barney Hurowitz, who was the Community leader then, for about 30 years. He was also a JP ..
*****Here’s a little story. My dear mother and I were going up to Belfast to the wedding of a daughter, who actually picked up up the station and drove like a champion. The very first time I’d ever seen a female driver… Anyway, on the way up, My Dear mother had our Wedding present of a set of silver cutlery tied around her corset, and of course sat unnaturally stiff-backed all the way up. I didn’t know until I asked why she was sitting like that…in those days there were Customs & Excise. As we drew near to the border where they would come on the train to search etc. the most amazing thing happened. It was customary for petty smuggling to go on between Southern Ireland and the North, and my attention was drawn by a passenger who said “look out at all this”. I looked out..and flying from the train windows all along every coach, were eggs, butter, cheese and goodness knows what else. They were scared to be caught…They used to trade for tea etc. We Dubliners got a ration of 1/2 oz a week, and in Britain, including the North, the ration was 2 oz, so that is what used to go on. .In the fields beside the track, there were lots of country people gathering up all the discarded food and etc. It seems that it was a daily habit, to come to the tracks to get what you could find…******
{{My bank was on the Shankill Rd. right in the centre of the Catholic barricaded areas, the staff were all ferbrente Protestants, Wesleyans (their language……Oy veh) ….but that’s another story, I may tell some day….We had a factory 12 miles outside Belfast which had used that Branch for about 75 years before we took it over. so it was handy for me.}}.
The Catholics of Northern Ireland, unlike the Arabs of Israel-Palestine, do have legitimate grievances against the British government and the Ulster Protestants of Scots and English ancestry. The Irish Catholics were subjected to a genocidal war by Queen Elizabeth I and her generals, Essex and Montjoy. More than half were killed, and most of the rest driven out of the province. The native Irish chiefs, who had own most of the land before the war, fled to Spain, and their properties were confiscated by Elizabeth’s successor, James I. Protestant settlers from Scotland and England, now both ruled by James, were “awarded” the abandoned land. Subsequently the Catholic religion was banned in Ireland, the Church’s church buildings and land, including their cathedrals, were given to the Episcopal Church, all monasteries and nunneries were foced to close, and Catholics had to celebrate mass in open fields. Only Protestants could vote or hold public office. If a man and his wife had one son who converted to Protestantism, he received all of the property of his father when his father passed away, while the deceased Catholic’s other heir received nothing.
Discrimination against Catholics in employment and housing continued until very recently. Catholics who bought homes in Protestant neighborhoods sometimes saw their houses burned down by their Protestant “neighbors.” Property qualifications kept many Catholics from voting in local elections, even when they were the majority in some towns and villages. All this makes the Catholic’s rebellion of 1967-2005 (the “troubles”) understandable. Although in general governments should never yield to terrorists, it took the IRAs terrorist campaign to persuade the British government and the Northern Ireland Protestants to put an end to this discrimination.
However, the Palestinians have none of these legitimate grievances against Israel, or even against the British. Both Jewish settlement and even the British Mandate resulted in dramatic improvements in the Palestinians economic well-being, health, life-expectancy and education. They werte offered an independant state in 1936, 1947 , 1949, 2001 and 2009, but rejected all of these offers. Arab citizens of Israel have full voting rights and receive substantial allocations of housing and education, and civil service positions. They are represented in parliament and have the right to elect their own local governments. They have complete freedom of religion. They don’t have to meet property qualifications for anything, and they receive generous child allowances and other welfare benefits.
As a result, they have no legitimate grievances against Israel. And the Irish Catholics have no legitimate grounds for supporting th Arab terror organizations and hating Israel.
The streets of West Belfast and Derry offer a sharp, if unlikely, reminder of the Middle East, as Republicans and Unionists identify with the Palestinian and Israeli causes. In the middle of all this lies a small, somewhat bewildered Jewish community LONDONDERRY and BELFAST, Northern Ireland The Bogside neighborhood is where Northern Ireland s brutal sectarian war began in the late 19. Visitors photographing the murals that glorify hooded paramilitaries, though, might be excused for thinking another conflict is preoccupying the Catholic residents of this shabby gray estate.
I can’t help seeing a parallel between the IRA’s alliance with the PLO and the alliance of American black radicals, such as the Black Panther Party, with the PLO. These alliances with the PLO generated considerable hostility toward Israel in Ireland and, eventually, the US. Members of the New Left (mostly white and Jewish radicals) foolishly followed the lead of groups like the Black Panther Party, gradually turning against Israel. We’re living with the terrible consequences of that now.
The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. I remember that in 1971, the provisional wing of the IRA expressed solidarity with the anti-Jewish “Palestinians”. I believe they also expressed support for Socialism, while keeping a distance from the Moscow-directed Communists. They were enthusiastically supported by left-wing extremist Irish-Americans I knew.
I was brought up in NYC and can testify that devout Irish Catholics were the most virulently anti-Semitic group in that city as I understand they also were in Boston, Chicago and everywhere else that they were a substantial group. I was informed in kIndergarten, no less, by two of my Irish classmates, that “Jews killed Christ,” as they assured me that their priest had informed them in probably their first lesson in church. For all the analogies between the struggles in Northern Ireland and that in Palestine that the author posits, the Irish Catholics’ support for the Palestinian Arabs is based primarily on their antisemitism. Their feeling towards the Arabs was probably based on what they felt about Hitler during the Holocaust, whom most supported, i.e., if he (or they) wants to kill all these Jews, how bad can he (or they) be?
Irish and Nazis. by Mervyn O’Driscoll
‘Ireland and the Nazis: a troubled history
As a neutral leader, de Valera trod a fine line between Nazi Germany and Britain, not helped by a pro-Nazi envoy in Berlin and his controversial condolences on Hitler’s death
Tue, May 9, 2017, 10:55 Updated: Mon, May 15, 2017, 10:56
Mervyn O’Driscoll
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Taoiseach Eamon de Valera’s condolences on Hitler’s death spawned immediate international condemnation
A phantom hangs over Ireland’s relations with Hitler’s Germany. Since Eamon de Valera’s visit to the Third Reich’s minister to Ireland on 2 May 1945, the spectre of pro-Nazism has dogged Ireland’s reputation. De Valera’s condolences on the suicide of the German head of state, Adolf Hitler, spawned immediate international condemnation. He gifted his critics all the ammunition that they desired to stigmatise Ireland.
Irish enovoy to Berlin Charles Bewley: anti-Semitic and Anglophobic. Photograph: Getty Images
Irish enovoy to Berlin Charles Bewley: anti-Semitic and Anglophobic. Photograph: Getty Images
The notorious character and conduct of Charles Bewley, the Irish minister to Germany in the 1930s, would appear to substantiate this unkind depiction. Arriving in Berlin in July 1933 after Hitler’s seizure of power, he betrayed a lack of professionalism time after time. Disturbing signs of his anti-Semitism, dogmatic Anglophobia and insolence are clear throughout his career from the early 1920s. After 1933 he engaged in an unashamed charm offensive to curry favour with the Nazi regime. ‘
http://www.markhumphrys.com/sfira.nazis.html
‘The IRA supported the Nazis in WW2 (the real ones, not just rhetorical ones). They ran safe houses for Nazi spies, aided Nazi intelligence, and even helped Nazi bombers. They planned to bring about a Nazi German invasion of Ireland, and would no doubt have been installed as a quisling government had Germany occupied Ireland.”
Pro-terrroist irish are as depraved as the Hamas and PLO they support but why stop there?
The English, who the Irish Republicans hate, were entrusted by the League of Nations to provide a Jewish Homeland following the 1918 defeat of the Ottoman’s in WW I and yet the Brits did everything possible to prevent one from becoming a reality.
The Palestine Mandate authority which of course was entirely British did nothing to stop thousands of Syrians, Trans-Jordanians and others from walking into the area that was to be Jewish but checked every Jew who entered to make sure his documents were correct, as well as having funds to support him/herself and required the offer of a job in the Mandate to deter “vagrancy”.
In 1938, after Kristalnaacht, an international conference at San Remo was held to see which, if any, names would offer European Jews visas . Guess which place was excluded ? That’s right, the Mandate of Palestine.
After the end of WW II and the survivors of the concentration camps sailed to the Mandate of Palestine, British Man 0′ Wars turned them back to where they came from- that’s right back to the concentration camps in Germany and Europe, the only “home” Jews had in Europe.
The British Government authored the “White Paper” of 1939, which stated that the numbers of Jews who could legally enter the Mandate was shrunk to 20,000 in total and named the Arab League to be the decider of any future Jewish emigration. The reason Jews were not allowed in was because the Brits said the Mandate was “full” and could not accept any more people. This same Arab League was of course the main military force that invaded Israel in 1948 to destroy it. The White Paper’s rules continued throughout WW II and after. Jews were forbidden sanctuary in the very land the Brits were supposed to create a Homeland for Jews.
The Irish appear to be amateur anti-Semitics compared to the Anthony Eden and the Brits in the 1930’s. The Republican Army and the British Army could join hands and their mottos should be “We hate each other but at least we both hate Jews just as much”.
Catholic Ireland was antisemitic long before creation of Israel. Not much difference between support for Nazis in WW2 or PLO,
Fascinating. There is a lot to say about Northern Ireland and its connections with both Israel and the Palestinian terrorist movement. Also, both parallels and significant differences between the Islamist-Israel struggle and the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland.
James Patterson was a Northern Ireland Protestant whose mother was a Catholic. He was responsible as a British officer, for maintaining law and order in Northern Ireland between 1909 and 1914, which were crucial years for this region. He was also famous as a lion-hunter in Africa, and had a distinguished record of heroism in the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War. During World War I, he wrote a book advocating for Zionism, and was the commander of a Jewish-Military military unit in the British army known as the Zion Mule Corps. Later, he persuaded the British government to create a small “Jewish Regiment” (three battalions) of dedicated Zionists, who fought for the liberation of Eretz Israel from the Turks.Patterson served as commander of this force, which included Vladimir Jabotinsky among its officers.
Throughout his life, Patterson remained a strong advocate for Zionism and Israel. He was also involved in organizing relief and rescue missions for Jewish survivors in Europe during and after the Holocaust. He was an evangelical Christian. As such he played a major role in creating support for Israel among both Northern Ireland Protestants and evangelical Protestants in the United States, to which Patterson retired after World War I. As a result, conncetions between Israelis and Northern Ireland Protestants have a long history.
The pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic attitudes in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland mainly have their roots in the longstanding “preaching of contempt” for Jews by th Cathploc Church in Ireland, as elsewhere in Europe. It was also fueled by th IRA’s receiving military training and weapons from the PLO, beginning in the 1970s. Libya under Qaddafi also supplied the IRA with weapons and military training at a time when Qaddafi was also deeply involved in providing Arms and training to nearly all of the Palestine terrorist organizations. He may have been a sort of go-between between the two terrorist movements and have helped to bring them together.