By Ted Belman
From now on comments on every post must relate to the content of the post.
Comments that don’t relate to the post must go here.
Any person who contravenes this demand will be put on moderation. Also their offending comment will be trashed.
The reason for this demand is so that people who want to read comments which pertain to the post, don’t have to wade through the chatter.
Everyone will be happier.
Can anyone tell me why Israel is allowing China to have control over the Haifa port, where the US fleet docks, when that was bound to alienate the US and perhaps chase the US fleet away, and when China is SUCH a friend to Israel that it votes AGAINST Israel every time a UN vote is taken? Is it “just the Benjamins, baby”?
Thanks. I know I read somewhere that the Iranian refused to compete with the Israeli, but it must have been for a different sport.
@ Buzz of the Orient:
The Iranian got beat by the Belgium in the Semis. Sagi Muki beat the Belgium in the final and the Egyptian in the Semis (who as you said refused a handshake).
@ Bear Klein:
The Iranian refused to fight with him, and the Egyptian he beat to win the gold refused to shake hands with him. LOL
Israel’s Sagi Muki takes gold at judo world championships
Talking of something different. For some reason, today I’ve been musing about a book that I haven’t thought for many years.
This is an enquiry as to whether any of our members has ever come across GIDEON GORREQUER’S DIARY. I bought it many years ago as I always was interested in the Napoleonic period. For any one who is interested in that same period this book is invaluable. He was the Military Secretary to Hudson Lowe, the British General in total charge of the Island, who comes down in history as having harassed Bonaparte unmercifully. Gorrequer was there all though the imprisonment and death of Napoleon., and I believe gives the most accurate description of conditions and events which occurred there.
Gorrequer had a very LOW (no pun intended) opinion of Sir Hudson, and his private diary was never meant to ever be read or published. He gave assumed nicknames to all the characters to whom he referred. In a way its comical, but actually very sad, because he, although he despised Lowe, he took his duties very seriously, and worked himself ragged to please his unappreciative boss.- which he never succeeded in doing.
I recommend it. HIGHLY. Its very rare but may be in Project Gutenberg (or P.G. Australia) or Roy Glashan’s Library.
Abbarse says as the generations of the cannonites they are the true owners of Jerusalem and will enter in the millions. Could be true as moloch was their god.
Funny though he still calls itself a palestinian and an arab, and prays to allah. Non of which was thought of during the cannonites period.
Also I guess at age 80+ things are a little out of kilter.
Funny how he still has this wet dream re the T. M. Which moloch never a part of.
Jordan Option layed out by a Saudi
A new Saudi perspective for peace
Saudi Arabia seeks good relations with Israel and the Jewish people and a fair, just, lasting, and prosperous peace for the region. Some call it “normalization”; I call it common sense
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has taken a very open stance of seeking better ties to the Jewish people and to Israel. Some call this “normalization.” I call it plain common sense.
To begin, Saudi Arabia has always been a force for stability. We have always sought peace, not war. For example, when Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait in 1990, the late King Fahd bin Abdulaziz did everything to avoid a war. Our country is prosperous; our people enjoy the luxury and welfare secured to us by mineral resources and a young crown prince who thinks outside the box. People as fortunate as we have everything to gain from seeking peace, not war. Why die when life is so good?
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Saudi Arabia is strong – financially, politically and militarily. We have the second-largest air force in the Middle East. We operate tactical fighter aircraft like the F-15 that provide air superiority and we have advanced long-range missiles system. Iran knows this. Nonetheless, we see Israel as a logical future partner for us as we have mutual enemies: Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, and a handful of reckless rulers who remain in power in our region.
Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia’s quest for peace with Israel is not all smooth sailing. There is a major issue of contention: the future of the Palestinians and their right to self-determination. It is important and logical to us that Palestinians should have a state at the end of a peace process. Also, anti-peace forces litter our region. An example of that is, sadly, the Kingdom of Jordan. Jordan’s state media and state-controlled writers have been attacking Saudi Arabia ever since the latter began seeking improved relations with Israel.
Jordan’s sidekick, the Palestinian Authority, has been doing the same. Palestinian intelligence officers close to PA President Mahmoud Abbas have been insulting Saudi Arabia and its king. This by itself is an act of severe humiliation to Saudi society, which sees King Salman as a father figure.
The smear campaign against Saudi Arabia is systematic, well-financed and carefully orchestrated by the Jordanian government and the Palestinian Authority. They do this for a good reason: Both have benefited from the Arab-Israeli conflict. While Palestinian children die to become “martyrs,” Jordan’s king cruises the Mediterranean in his yacht and Abbas’ sons are likely to be found vacationing in Nova Scotia – the preferred destination, I am told.
But the bigger question remains: How can we achieve peace if the Palestinian people remain without a place to call home?
The answer is simple: Jordan is already 78% of historical Palestine. Jordanians of Palestinian origin are more than 80% of the population according to US intelligence cables leaked in 2010. Jordan is essentially already the Palestinian Arab state. The only problem is, the king of Jordan refuses to acknowledge this. Nonetheless, the world will eventually recognize Jordan as the place for Palestinian statehood. It could be sooner than we think. We don’t know if the royal family of Jordan will remain in power by the time Jordan officially becomes Palestine. But we do know that if the royal family leaves and the Palestinian majority takes over, Jordan will become officially their homeland and we Arabs won’t feel guilty normalizing relations with Israel as another regional state.
As for Al-Aqsa Mosque, we have been financing it for over 70 years now. Saudi Arabia has donated billions of dollars to Jordan’s king and his father and grandfather all in the name of “protecting” and “maintaining” Al-Aqsa. A quick look on the holy site is enough to show everyone that the king of Jordan has neither been maintaining or protecting the site. The mosque is in a miserable state and unrest is always stirred by the king’s appointed guards and loyalists.
We don’t need this, nor do the Israelis and Palestinians. Instead, Saudi Arabia could offer the proper custodianship for Al-Aqsa under a new arrangement that secures the freedom of worship. Our country has managed the Holy Shrines of Mecca and Medina for almost 100 years now, in the most efficient fashion. We welcome Iranian pilgrims and offer them generous services despite Iran’s hostility and the fact that they belong to the Shiite sect.
We have a history of tolerance and efficiency when it comes to running holy sites. And our intervention in Al-Aqsa could solve endless problems for the Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Our message, as Saudis, is clear to everyone: We want a fair, just, lasting, and prosperous peace for the region. We want prosperity instead of misery, stability to replace unrest, and love to eradicate radical ideology. This could never be done without extending a peaceful hand to the Israelis.
https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/a-new-saudi-perspective-for-peace/
Date harvest time in Israel . Buy cut a branch of green dates, stick them in your fridge for months let them go brown (that’s sugar ) eat and enjoy. For a special treat or 2 ,1fill a bottle of milk and let dates soak makes a great drink. 2 fill a large container with dates fill with vodka, keep topped up for about a year then eat the dates, will feel like purim.
If your not in Israel then dates from any place that is harvesting right now will do.
It WAS a pogrom and by the standards of the Antisemite a very efficient one at that.
The Jews were fleeing from the Czarist Christianity and here in Ireland they met up with the Roman Christianity.
It was a terrible event in Ireland. It must go down as the very worst because despite the heroism of 1916 it shows that the Irish were no different than anybody else.
That is the BIG lesson for today where Antisemitism taking the form of support for the Koran against the Jews (Israel) is rife and is UNCHALLENGED unless and until I can (or anybody else is more than welcome) succeed in building Trotskyism which alone in our contemporary world can succeed in really challenging it. It is this latter point that in the end is the most important and is also what Jews cannot get. There were Jews who did get this, foremost was Leon Trotsky, and Lenin was also arguably Jewish as well, brilliant and strong minded people.
As I have said so often on Israpundit the sub text of the Russian Civil War was the real and sincere struggle of Trotsky, and he was being backed to the hilt by Lenin stationed back in Moscow, was to destroy the Antisemites from all sides, but mainly the Whites. It was the Whites mentality which had driven the Jews out to places like Ireland, so history is somewhat circular.
Trotsky in reality, in content, became a Zionist. He was a Zionist in those years as Fascism gathered, in other words at the time it counted.
If there are “Jews” today who cannot see that, and do not put the effort in to see that, then that is also a signal for a disorientation of Zionism.
@ F. John Creach:
TED… Father John Creach (or Creagh) was the lunatic priest who led the drunken pogrom against the Jews of Limerick in Ireland. This resulted in much of their property being destroyed, with some injuries, businesses wiped out etc. and their immediate emigration to Cork and Dublin.
(except for about 3 families-the daughter of one family I had a close friendship with, later becoming an International TableTennis player)
The Church didn’t discipline Creagh…(just like the Catholic Church-as usual) but transferred him later, overseas to a very elevated position.
TED–this poster should be severely disbarred… It’s strange that “he” should arrive on the scene so immediately after my criticism of David Melech. His style and use of “Jew-Boy” is particularly English, most likely London, with some knowledge of well-known Jewish events in Ireland………….. Perhaps a Jew. The whole thing is “odd”….
I seem to be incurring odium from anonymous half-wits.
Just an errant thought.
@ Edgar G.:
This writer is a known racist ignorant jewboy, needs to say 100 hail marys
I suppose you’ve all read the Arutz 7 report about the 5 year old girl found tied hand and foot, covered with blood and faeces, in Lod. The parents have been declared as “normal”…That is ..Arab normal”, because they are Arabs. The husband is an illegal infiltrator from YESHA, and his wife the same. They have 12 children. His SECOND wife is from Kuwait, and has 4 children, (so far) of whom, the little girl unfortunately is one.
The ramifications of this particular case, the illegal, long established living in Lod, the illegal, unnoticed importation of a Kuwaiti girl,, the 16 children, the normal child cruelty and torture, and much more.
The man is 51, and unless he gets at least 15-20 years, which he well deserves., he’ll have another 16 children.
The point is, that I have…many, many times, pointed out, the Arab custom of outlawed polygamy, will eventually result in major parts of the country being overrun by half- illiterate Jew-Hating Arabs. I always quote the fact that in 1948 there were about 8-10,000 nomadic Bedouin trapped in the Negev when borders there were declared, and now number well over 400,000, particularly in the Negev and Galilee, and most other parts of the country. The more there are, the more trouble they cause, and are a huge source of overloading the Social Services amenities today.
{{I nearly forgot to mention the Arab on the road to Haifa from Karmiel whose home I would pass, and who had 26 children…..They lived very well on the Child Allowance}}.
There are a few Bedouin in the IDF used s scouts and trackers, but the vast (illegally) polygamous majority are too busy producing children, their main crop.
And they DON’T export them
This Gentile Scotswoman gave her own life to save the lives of Jews, mainly Jewish children.. The Nazis “rewarded” her for her efforts by murdering her in Auschwitz together with the million Jews whom the murdered there. I hope Yad VaShem has honored her as a Righteous Gentile. If not, they certainly should.
(From Today’d Ynet News):
Scottish Holocaust heroine who saved Jewish girls lauded in book
A Scottish “Holocaust heroine” and quiet champion of educating girls helped save many Jews in Hungary before dying herself in a Nazi concentration camp, according to a new book.
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Jane Haining, who cared for hundreds of Jewish girls at the Scottish Mission School in Budapest during World War Two, died at Auschwitz camp after the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944.
Jane Haining
Jane Haining
Author Mary Miller said Haining was “an ordinary person who became extraordinary” through her love and courage. “She was an independent woman and kept an independent spirit throughout all the awful things that were later to happen,” Miller told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Born into a humble farming family in Dumfries in 1897, Haining studied business and became “an early career girl”. In 1932, she moved to Hungary to work as a matron at the school, which educated Christian and Jewish children together to foster mutual respect. “They were part of that whole movement to give girls a good education,” Miller said. Pressure on the school grew rapidly as Jewish refugees poured into Budapest, fleeing persecution elsewhere in Europe.
Jews at the train station near Auschwitz (Photo: AFP)
Jews at the train station near Auschwitz (Photo: AFP)
As anti-semitism intensified, the Scottish Mission, which oversaw the school, organised courses in practical subjects to help Jews emigrate and get jobs abroad. Haining helped women secure work as domestic servants in Britain under the programme. Following the outbreak of war in 1939, Haining refused her employers’ orders to return to Britain. “She said that if these girls needed me in good times, they need me much more in bad times,” Miller said. By then, most of the school’s 400 pupils were Jewish, and many of the boarders Haining cared for were orphans.
Auschwitz (Photo: AP)
Auschwitz (Photo: AP)
In one letter, Haining wrote: “What a ghastly feeling it must be to know that no one wants you … We have been enabled … to provide an oasis in a troubled world.” She described how one Jewish mother of twins, who approached her for help, broke down in her office in desperation. “(She) was at the stage when she was thinking of adding some poison to their food and ending it all,” Haining wrote. The school attracted attention for speaking out repeatedly against anti-semitism, according to Miller’s book “Jane Haining – A Life of Love and Courage”.
Children in Auschwitz
Children in Auschwitz
From 1943, Miller said the Mission helped many people, including former pupils, to escape transportation to Nazi death camps, hiding them in cellars or getting them to safe houses. Haining was arrested by the Nazis in April 1944. A former pupil who saw her taken away said her last words to the sobbing children were: “Don’t worry, I’ll be back by lunch”. She died in Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland two months later, aged 47. Haining was awarded a Hero of the Holocaust medal by the British government in 2010.
“She did not compromise, and in our own difficult times there is a challenge there for all ordinary people tempted to look away from evil and find reasons to say ‘there is nothing we can do,'” Miller said.
“Jane Haining reminds us that there is always something we can do.”
Final Poll of Polls before Election
Remember Israeli pollsters do not poll for likely voters. Also about 15% are undecided. So the polls are not usually accurate but these averages of all the polls are about as good as it is going to get. It is really close between Likud & Blue/White.
Current update: Friday April 5 2019.
Place Party Leader Seats KnessetJeremy AVG Change Week 14 AVG Current
1st Blue & White Gantz 30 29.9 -0.6 30.5 11
2nd Likud Netanyahu 29 28.3 -0.4 28.7 29
3rd Labor Gabbai 10 9.6 0.5 9.1 18
4th Hadash-Taal Odeh 8 7.1 -0.1 7.2 6
5th United Torah Judaism Litzman 7 6.5 -0.1 6.6 6
6th United Right List Peretz 7 6.1 0 6.1 5
7th HaYamin HeHadash Bennett 6 5.7 -0.2 5.9 3
8th Meretz Zandberg 6 5.6 0.5 5.1 5
9th Shas Deri 6 5.3 -0.1 5.4 7
10th Zehut Feiglin 6 5.2 0.1 5.1 0
11th Kulanu Kahlon 5 4.6 0.5 4.1 10
12th Yisrael Beitenu Liberman 0 2.9 0.4 2.5 5
13th Raam-Balad Abbas 0 2.8 -0.1 2.9 7
14th Other 27 Others 0 0.4 -0.4 0.8 8
Right-Religious Bloc 66 64.7 0.3 64.4 66
Center-Left-Arab Bloc 54 55.3 -0.3 55.6 54
For more info see plus the schedule of Jeremy’s prediction upcoming see:
https://knessetjeremy.com/2019/04/05/final-2019-knesset-jeremy-poll-of-polls-knesset-jeremys-weekly-average-the-israeli-poll-of-polls-blue-white-29-9-likud-28-3-labor-9-6-hadash-taal-7-1-utj-6-5-right-reli/
@ ebyjeeby:
To which post does your enigmatic response refer…? Thanks.
@ Edgar G.:
More like twice as long…
The Israeli Poll of Polls: Blue & White 30.5, Likud 28.7, Labor 9.1, Hadash-Taal 7.2, UTJ 6.6; Right-Religious Bloc 64.4
March 30, 2019
Knesset Jeremy’s Weekly Polling Average – The Israeli Poll of Polls
Current update: Sunday March 30th 2019.
Place Party Leader Seats KnessetJeremy AVG Change Week 13 AVG Current
1st Blue & White Gantz 31 30.5 0.2 30.3 11
2nd Likud Netanyahu 29 28.7 -0.3 29 29
3rd Labor Gabbai 10 9.1 0.1 9 18
4th Hadash-Taal Odeh 8 7.2 -0.4 7.6 6
5th United Torah Judaism Litzman 7 6.6 0 6.6 6
6th United Right List Peretz 7 6.1 -0.2 6.3 5
7th HaYamin HeHadash Bennett 6 5.9 0.2 5.7 3
8th Shas Deri 6 5.4 0.5 4.9 7
9th Meretz Zandberg 6 5.1 -0.3 5.4 5
10th Zehut Feiglin 6 5.1 0.7 4.4 0
11th Kulanu Kahlon 4 4.1 0.4 3.7 10
12th Raam-Balad Abbas 0 2.9 0 2.9 7
13th Yisrael Beitenu Liberman 0 2.5 -1.2 3.7 5
14th Other 28 Others 0 0.8 0.3 0.5 8
Right-Religious Bloc 65 64.4 0.1 64.3 66
Center-Left-Arab Bloc 55 55.6 -0.1 55.7 54
https://knessetjeremy.com/2019/03/30/week-14-knesset-jeremys-weekly-average-the-israeli-poll-of-polls-blue-white-30-5-likud-28-7-labor-9-1-hadash-taal-7-2-utj-6-6-right-religious-bloc-64-4/
Feiglin if he does succeed to get into the Knesset, would likely be the first minister who is for paid Arab emigration.
Article in full at https://www.timesofisrael.com/feiglin-says-no-preference-between-gantz-and-netanyahu-for-next-pm/
continue article at https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/1553877485-hard-line-candidate-feiglin-neither-gantz-nor-netanyahu-interest-me
Ironic-BB did all he could to deny Feiglin a safe spot in the Likud and after some 13 wasted years of Feiglin trying to usurp the Likud from within BB managed to get him thrown out permanently. Now BB’s political fortunes may well rest on support by Feiglin. Much the Same with Bennett.
@ Ted Belman:Feiglin is getting support from various groups including the people that are Big on Legalizing Grass.
Bennett & Shaked votes are being split with the New Right (Bayit Yehudi Plus). Some Bayit Yehudi members are mad at them for leaving the party and starting a new party. Also their votes can also go to the Likud.
So basically right voters split now into 4+ parties. I personally still prefer “New Right”. Hopefully they get at least 6 seats because Caroline Glick is in the sixth spot.
@ Bear Klein:
Why is it that Bennett, Shaked and Glick can’t get more support than Feiglin? Can anyop\ne answer that for me?
Latest Polls in Israel are very tight. Likud & Blue/White switch places at top sometimes.
Maagar Mochot conducted a poll 610 people with a 4% margin of error that was published by Yisrael HaYom & broadcast by i24news on March 29 2019.
Current Knesset seats in [brackets]
32 [11] Blue & White (Gantz, Lapid, Yaalon & Ashkenazi)
28 [29] Likud (Netanyahu)
08 [18] Labor (Gabbai)
06 [07] Shas (Deri)
06 [06] United Torah Judaism (Litzman)
06 [05] United Right List (Peretz, Smotrich & Ben Gvir)
06 [05] Meretz (Zandberg)
06 [05] Hadash-Taal (Odeh & Tibi)
06 [03] Hayamin Hehadash (Bennett & Shaked)
06 [–-] Zehut (Feiglin)
05 [10] Kulanu (Kahlon)
05 [05] Yisrael Beitenu (Liberman)
68 [66] Current Right-Religious Coalition+Y.B.
More polling results are at:
https://knessetjeremy.com/2019/03/29/yisrael-hayom-i24-news-
poll-blue-white-32-likud-28-labor-8-7-tied-at-6-right-religious-bloc-68/
52 [54] Current Center-Left-Arab Opposition-Y.B
TED-I see one -the second one- has re-appeared, but the more detailed one has not. Good Luck.
TED- I’ve had 2 comments on Yamit’s “Megillah”, the subject of which was Esther.. which have disappeared. So please, in your daily search, reinstate them. Thank you.
I’m posting this in Chit chat for “safety”.
I see pictures of Benny Gantz and Lapid in Arutz 7. They remind me of “Mutt and Jeff” -if anyone remembers the comic paper sketches. I didn’t know that Lapid was so short and pudgy. Imagine THAT being a widely popular TV host…???? What kind of “taste” do Israelis have for their “celebrities”….POOR…!! If Gantz was shorter himself, they’d also be like Laurel and Hardy, but not nearly as entertaining…
Clasping hands and grinning away ecstatically, like a pair of chimpanzees who have been picking fleas out of each others’ back fur. Revolting. Not like grown men at all….You’d think they’d just won a $100 million lottery.
@ Buzz of the Orient:
You could, however, post the article itself as a functional alternative.
Chag Purim sameach!
@ NITZAKHON:
Unfortunately I’m unable to open the cartoon because I would have liked to have seen it. I have always regretted that we are unable to post photos/pictures on this site as I have photos of my visit to the descendants and museum of the Kaifeng (China) Jews, from the days when a fellow Jewish expatriate and I visited them, and took part in their Shabbat service and vegetarian dinner.
Would appreciate it if you could link to my piece:
Attention American Jews: Sit at the table or be on the menu (CARTOON)
http://redpilljew.blogspot.com/2019/03/attention-american-jews-sit-at-table-or.html
Is Avi gabbay twin of hashimite king of Eastern Israel? Or does the hashimite king now live in Israel?
Another great yid died today Andre Previn. Classic and jazz pianist, conductor of leading orchestras ,writer of music for stage and film. Played in great combos alongside other yiddisher boys.
Age 89 was a great innings Andre, farewell.
Sorry to slip in “under the radar” by commenting, but I was hoping you might check out this IsraelSeen piece – to help IDF soldiers get Purim baskets. I would have emailed directly but I didn’t see your email listed.
https://israelseen.com/2019/02/25/david-hunt-connections-israel-connecting-you-to-idf-soldiers-on-purim-and-more/
The IDF blog has republished it…
https://www.idfblog.com/en/david-hunt-connections-israel-connecting-you-to-idf-soldiers-on-purim-and-more
Please look, and if you approve, please share. This effort is especially important considering that Iran is ramping up the rhetoric… and we need to remember our victory then.
Toda!
NITZAKHON
P.S. You’re on my blogroll; would you consider adding me to yours?
so Israel has an erection coming up. we know which party is dancing with which, who is being seated on each list, all good stuff.
what do we know about income, business tax reductions? import duty reductions on food, cars?
universal health care?
no party seems to have a mandate other than who sleeps with whom!
True translation of Hatikvah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXw8CRapg7k
https://gatesofvienna.net/2019/02/henryk-broder-speaks-to-the-afd-in-the-bundestag/
The link feature isn’t working for me, but I hope others enjoy this article as much as I did.
This from Melanie Phillips in the Jerusalem Post:
Ireland’s obsessional hatred of Israel – As I See It
Strangely, the Israel issue has become emblematic in the battle over Irish identity.
ireland
Flag of Ireland. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
There’s a particularly sweet spot in the enormous technology deal Israel has just pulled off.
Over the next five years, the tech giant Intel will invest a whopping $11 billion in a new semiconductor fabrication plant in Israel. The investment will be worth around 0.7% of Israel’s gross domestic product and is expected to produce thousands of jobs.
The sweet spot is that in securing this deal, Israel beat off competition from Ireland. For Ireland has become the most extreme Israel-bashing country in the West.
Its Dáil, or parliament, recently gave a first reading to a bill which would make it a serious criminal offense to supply goods or services provided by Israelis in east Jerusalem or the disputed territories of Judea or Samaria.
Claims by the bill’s sponsor, the Irish senator Frances Black, that it doesn’t target any particular country are disingenuous. Its terms have been drawn up in such a way that they apply only to the disputed territories and east Jerusalem.
It is also uniquely vicious. For it wouldn’t just target Israeli “settlers.” It would also mean, for example, that an Irish tourist on a visit to the Western Wall for which he is paying an Israeli tour guide might be arrested when back in Ireland for an offense carrying a potential jail term.
The bill is promoted by a coalition of NGOs, including several Christian groups, and is seen as a Trojan horse for a wider onslaught against Israel, with many of its supporters actively campaigning to boycott this year’s Tel Aviv Eurovision Song Contest.
The Irish government may yet block the bill. It was promoted in the Dáil by Fianna Fáil, the largest opposition party and on which the ruling minority Fine Gael party depends.
Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney, has warned, however, that the bill contravenes EU trade laws and would therefore place Irish companies in jeopardy.
Moreover, Irish-American companies might be in violation of American laws forbidding US-based companies from co-operating with trade bans on Israel.
Whether or not the bill becomes law, it once again raises the question of why Ireland is so consumed by the obsessive hatred of Israel it so regularly displays.
One obvious answer is that, as a country which believes itself to have suffered under British colonialism, it identifies with other peoples acknowledged by anti-colonialists as similarly “oppressed” among whom the “Palestinians” enjoy iconic status.
With the island of Ireland divided between the Irish Republic and the UK province of Northern Ireland, Irish republican terrorists have waged war against the UK on and off over the past century with a fragile peace finally brokered in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Strangely, the Israel issue has become emblematic in this battle over Irish identity, with the Protestant Unionists identifying with Israel and the Catholic Republicans identifying with the Palestinians.
As a slavish EU member, Ireland has allowed Brussels negotiators to use the fraught issue of the post-Brexit border with Northern Ireland as a weapon to force the UK to surrender its independence even after it formally leaves the EU.
The essence of this Irish passion for the EU is that Ireland doesn’t understand what it means to be an independent nation. Like so many cultures with a shaky sense of what they are, with an outsize chip on their shoulder and infantilized by being almost entirely dependent on others to survive (their “Palestinian” friends fall into that category too) the Irish hate Israel, the paradigm nation state of a people with an unequivocal sense of itself.
Britain, EU running out of road on Brexit: Irish foreign minister
So, of course, Ireland bought wholesale into the whole farrago of lies and distortions that make up western left-wing globalist discourse about Israel, which is shared by the EU itself.
But there’s more to Ireland’s malevolence against Israel than this.
Over the years, Fianna Fáil governments have always been hostile to Israel. Currently, Fianna Fáil is jostling with its rival Sinn Féin – which heavily supported Frances Black’s election to the Irish Senate in 2016 – to maintain its political position.
Sinn Féin’s former military wing, the Provisional IRA, was responsible for the bloody campaigns against the UK in support of a united Ireland.
In the 1970s, Sinn Fein publicly supported the Palestinian cause. The IRA and the PLO became extremely close, training together and sharing terrorist strategies and tactics. The IRA received substantial funding and military aid from Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, and also collaborated with Hamas and Hezbollah.
In 1980, the minister for Foreign Affairs, Fianna Fáil’s Brian Lenihan, claimed the PLO was no longer a terrorist organization and described Yasser Arafat as a “moderate.” In 2006, Sinn Fein MP Aengus O’Snodaigh described Israel as “without doubt one of the most abhorrent and despicable regimes on the planet.”
During the Second World War, Ireland was neutral. Upon learning of Hitler’s death, its Taoiseach or prime minister, Eamon de Valera, visited the German Embassy in Dublin to express his condolences.
Some IRA members, such as the high ranking Sean Russell, collaborated with the Nazis. The Fianna Fáil government denied residential visas to many Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany and to Holocaust survivors after the war.
Historically, the Catholic church in Ireland bears a heavy responsibility for this anti-Jewish hatred. Over the years, the church has pumped out stereotypical hatred of Jews as parasitical moneylenders and exploiters of working people.
In 1904, a priest, Father John Creagh, organized a two-year boycott of Jewish businesses in Limerick. The town’s small Jewish community fled in what became known as the Limerick pogrom.
In 1970 the town’s Labour mayor, Steve Coughlan, made a speech defending the Limerick pogrom, referring to Jewish money-lenders whom he termed “warble fly bloodsuckers.”
That provoked an outcry. But all this is the context in which the hateful Frances Black bill must be placed.
Appallingly, some 15 Israeli luminaries, including the former speaker of the Knesset Avram Burg, former Knesset member Prof. Naomi Chazan, vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences Prof. David Harel, former ambassador Ilan Baruch and others wrote to the Irish Times in support of the bill on the grounds that “Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories is morally and strategically unsustainable, is detrimental to peace, and poses a threat to the security of Israel itself.”
Not for the first time Israelis who choose to blame Jewish “settlers” for the absence of peace, rather than the genocidal Arab and Muslim fanatics who want to wipe Israel off the map, are unwittingly sanitizing, facilitating and incentivizing Jew-hatred.
It’s not just a cause for dismay that so many Irish people refuse to acknowledge the right of the Jewish people to their own land. The deeper tragedy is that this venom has poisoned some Jews, too.
Melanie Phillips is a columnist for The Times (UK).
Odd to have to post this in Chit-Chat, but that seems to be the only place in Israpundit that “covers” Ireland. This from Israel Hayom:
@ Edgar G.:
Just a little correction of an error I made in the above post. My old recently deceased Dublin friend and Lee Laurence the singer, were not niece and nephew of Gershon Sirotai -they were grand-niece and grand-nephew Lawrence’s grandfather was the Chazan’s older brother Joseph also a chazan in England. .MY old friend was Laurence’s first cousin.
Apologies Melech….
@ david melech:
I thought his voice has a rather sharp tone. I prefer some of the older chazonim. I have recordings of Gershon Sirota, Yossele Rosenblatt, Jan Pierce, Joseph Schmidt………
Poor Chazan Sirota died in the Warsaw Ghetto… Some of his relatives came to both England and Ireland long before the War. His nephew became a well known pop singer in England, under the name of Lee Laurence. The dear old friend from Dublin who died of a sarcoma 10 days ago as I posted a few minutes ago, was his niece.
In Dublin we happened to have a cantor of the same quality. Cantor Wolf Garb(arz) He happened to be, when a boy, the 1st choir soloist, standing next to Moshe Kussevitsky, whilst on the Bima in the Great Warsaw Synagogue was Gershon Sirota.. Our Chazan’s children and I grew up together and were close friends.
Such coincidences…. Almost impossible to believe.
Cantor Azi Schwartz a beautiful voice enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e50J2VpW48
https://cantorazischwartz.bandcamp.com/track/kaddish-for-three-festivals-abraham-baer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iInuc_P4GhM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqfVb_gT83E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol4_KkI5NSw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1b5Q7M-Fpc&index=5&list=RDol4_KkI5NSw
@ Ted Belman: Thanks, Ted. Will do.
@ Michael S:
@ adamdalgliesh:
Your comments are ending up in spam or trash. Please don’t repeat your comment. Just email me to correct the problem. In this way we will train the computor to leave your comments alone.
@ Ted Belman: I have had exactly the same experience, Ted, with many comments that I attempted to post on Israpundit. Most recently, I posted a reply to General Gershon Hacohen of BESA’s article “Rethinking Israel’s Syria Campaign.” I made repeated attempts to post it, but it never appeared on the screen. Please investigate what happened, and why, and report back to us.
@ Ted Belman:
Thanks, Ted.
I just investigated the problems with the non posting of your comments. Much to my surprise they were not in the moderation file. They were either in Spam or Trash files. That shouldn’t be. so I will get it fixed.
@ Michael S:
If you look at the maker’s stamp, it might say .MADE IN.MOSCOW. They always secretly pre-programme their exported products…….. ….
@ Michael S:
Surely the “English Church” had already been separated from Rome already for about 175 years…..? Please correct me if I’m wrong..
@ adamdalgliesh:
I disagree with you on practically every individual item in your post, but I won’t go into them now. I was just checking to see what was happening with Michael’s posts.. I am in the middle of another project. I’ll answer you later, or likely tomorrow P.G.