Irish and Irish-Americans more sympathetic to Palestinians?

Great Debates
21

Connolly himself had a practical explanation for his Quixotic rebellion:

“If you succeed, then the time was right. If you do not succeed, the time was not right.”

I think he was saying that you still have to try, no matter what.

Also, the Easter rebellion led to ferocious repression by the British, which horrified the Irish populace, setting the ball rolling towards Independence. In that respect, it was like the Boston Massacre.

I’ve also got a soft for the Big Fella. Or perhaps I was just swayed by Liam’s portrayal.

Sheesh, look at me, hijacking my own thread.

22

Going back to the OP - there are reasons why Irish people might be seen as supporting the Palestinians.

Outside America, most people see the Palestinians as the victims of the conflict in the area. Today we realise that they were dispossessed of their land by foreigners, and are still being beaten to keep them quiet. The Israelis are now seen as the cause of the conflict, not the Palestinians.

This is a sharp reversal of view point. Until recently, the majority in Ireland was heavily pro-Israeli. This was for similar reasons, seeing them as victims of the Holocaust. I remember people cheering them on during the 1967 and Yom Kippur wars.

However, the images of the past few years and Israeli intransigent behaviour have largely destroyed the deep-seated sympathy for Israel. Even the horrific suicide bombings are often seen as the response of victims who can not fight back in any other way.

This is not an Irish viewpoint - it is commonly held around the world.

About 1916 - most historians now believe that the Easter Rebellion in Dublin postponed Home Rule/independence. It was a pointless act of violence, which was later glorified by the IRA/IRB for their own propaganda reasons. (The stupidity of the British authorities was also helpful.)

The victors write the history books. Most of us now realise that the Irish history taught to us was seriously distorted. I never knew until recently that there were a hundred times as many Irish men in the British Army in 1916 as in the the IRA/IRB. They were simply air-brushed out of our history. We have now begun to hear their stories, which are often horrific tales of atrocity by the IRA in later years. I never knew the IRA committed as many atrocities as their opponents such as the"Black and Tans".

When I sang the song “Kevin Barry” , no one told me why Kevin Barry was hung. His gang had killed some teenage kids in cold blood, “boy soldiers” who were unarmed and delivering bread. The child-killing atrocity was twisted by later propaganda, so that we believed Kevin Barry was the innocent child victim.

Twisted history like that created the modern IRA - many Irish Americans are out of touch with modern Ireland and still believe it. Most of the financial support for the IRA has always been from the USA, not from Ireland - over here we just put those child-killers in jail.

23

Come on, Balor. You were here when the state funerals were held for Barry and the others, weren’t you? How many thousands of Irish (=from Ireland) lined the streets to commemorate them? There were also several (though admittedly far fewer) thousand at the hunger strikers’ commemoration a month or so before that. I absolutely agree that Irish-Americans tend to be more likely than native Irish to hold overly romanticised views of the IRA, but it simply can’t be dismissed as a purely American phenomenom.

Come along to Frazer’s this Saturday afternoon if you still have doubts.

24

i’m irish (d’oh), northern irish actually, and nationalist as far as irish politics goes.

but i’m all in favour of there being a state of Israel, just not in favour of the actions that the Israeli government uses to ensure it’s existence…you folla?

i can tell you that my grandmother (a catholic white south african who married a german jew with zionist politics) supports the IRA and the PLO…but i think it’s probably safer not to ask why.

25

Ruadh -

The parading of Old IRA bodies through Dublin had to do with Fianna Fail winning votes by appealing to its ancient roots. People who believe the old “history” lined the streets - no one else bothered. Indeed, many on the streets were from Northern Ireland, not Dubliners.

I am not saying that IRA/Sinn Fein is an American construct. This fascist party has a small backing in Ireland, smaller than they tell supporters in America. In the Republic, they scored between 2 and 5% in elections over the past 20 years. They may reach as high as 6% this time, because of increased funding from the USA.

The official record of political parties’ income in Ireland was published recently. It showed that Sinn Fein received more foreign money than ANY other political party in Ireland. It gets more foreign money than Fianna Fail, which gets ten times as many votes!

This huge foreign funding lets Sinn Fein run a very expensive machine, huge publicity and many spin-doctors out of proportion to its membership on the ground. In effect, American expatriate money is distorting Irish elections by funding a fascist party heavily against all others.

Most Sinn Fein/IRA funding comes from the USA, from people who are totally divorced from modern Irish reality, who have never lived in Ireland, or left it decades ago. They have no conception of the real Ireland that exists today.

We have a new Ireland, which has taken its place among the nations, where our economy is growing faster than the rest of the EU and most of the world. We are proud to be Irish, patriotic, because of what we have achieved. We no longer have an inferiority complex about Britain or other countries. We have grown up as a people, and look forward to the future.

Few of us look back at the distorted history produced by fascists like IRA/Sinn Fein. It is ridiculous yet very sad that stupid outsiders still send money to factions of the IRA, to kill and maim more children in atrocities like Omagh. I think they learned what this really means from the horrific events of 9/11.

Going back to the OP, the parallel with Israel is clear. One of the major obstacles to peace is the existence of settlements, many of which have been funded with American money.

26

Balor, you know full well the Sinn Fein had nothing to do with Omagh. And please remember that Fascist is the name for far right wing politics (ala the Mussolini’s Fascist party) you can’t really claim that Sinn Fein have equal policies.

or is it a case of everything you disagree with is fascist?

27

Fascism looks like the right description to me. However, I can substitute National Socialist if you would pefer to have the Socialist tag.

  1. Sinn Fein has a private army of thugs. They don’t wear brown or black shirts like 1930’s fascist thugs - they wear anoraks and balaclavas. Same difference, same maimed bodies left behind them.

  2. Sinn Fein has strong nationalistic views, and uses heavily racist propaganda as regards persons of a particular race - Britain. Instead of shouting “Jew-lover” like the Nazis, they shout “west Brit” at any Irish patriot who disagrees with their racism. Public objectors are harrassed and beaten up.

  3. Its members believe that might is right. They have used violence on our streets against people they disagree with. In the last election, their supporters in central Dublin boasted of the violent means they had used to “clean up” the streets. In the past few months, they have operated vicious vigilante tactics in Kerry, for which several of their members are being charged.

  4. They believe in a strong centralised state power, which view they describe as “socialist”. However, it is plain from their other actions that they do not believe in the right of dissent. Anyone who dissents from them is shot or beaten up - does that sound familiar? Nationalist and Socialist?

  5. They subvert the state apparatus, by preventing the authorities from acting. They then use this lack of action to justify
    taking the law into their own hands. If they were in power, how soon would the constitution vanish? How soon would we have a Kristallnacht?

It looks fascist to me, but call it what you like. After you paint the pig, it’s still a pig, and the crap is just as smelly.

28

So you’re not going to be voting Sinn Fein then?

29

Deary me, Balor, what Dublin are you living in, coz it doesn’t sound like the one I live in.

AFAIK, Sinn Féin are fundamentally Marxist in their ideology. This makes them completely unelectable, and the Irish unity tends to ignore the Unionists a bit… But it doesn’t make them fascist.

I’m a Brit in Cabra, the heart of ‘enemy’ territory. SF politicians have knocked at my door and have been perfectly civil, as have those of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, et al. They don’t seem overtly threatening. I haven’t I seen much evidence of vigilantism round where I live.

Nor have I seen the body of Kevin Myers swinging from a lamppost recently…

30

What are you, clairvoyant or something?:slight_smile:

31

If only.

32

You obviously havent been to a beginners ceramics class. :wink:

I think you’re a little OTT on Sinn Fein. After all, how much of Fine Gael is made up of the Blueshirts?

33

Sorry, my last comment was answering Yojimbo, not JJim.

JJim - Sinn Fein’s new ploy is to say “forget the past, forget the thousands of murders, ignore our armed squads of thugs and vigilantes. We have washed the blood off our hands. That is all behind us. We are merely a simple socialist party looking for your vote.”

This is not a constitutional party. When they call to you again, ask them why their party stilll refuses to assist the police investigating the Omagh atrocity. Why they need an armed wing. Why their members in Kerry refuse to report crimes to the authorities. Their silence will answer your question.

34

Well, then there sure are an enormous number of people who believe the old history. And your attempt to portray them as mostly Northerners is laughable. If I started to try to count the number of Dubliners I know who support Sinn Féin I could be here all night; the number who consider the IRA men of Kevin Barry’s era heroes is of course far higher than that. (And of course, there’s a lot more to the South of this island than Dublin.) I don’t know what part of Dublin you live in, or what circles you move in, but you’re either telling porkies or you’re simply blind.

As for the amount of funding SF gets from America, er, so what? An increased share of the vote is prima facie evidence of an increased level support for their policies, unless of course you’re suggesting that SF are using this money to bribe the voters.

[hijack]jjimm, I’m just down by Arbour Hill. We really should meet up at Hanlon’s some time.[/hijack]

35

Balor,

You are Kevin Myers and I claim my €5.

:wink:

36

Can you reference those historians? And do you have a numerical basis for saying they represent the point of view of “most” historians?

Didn’t Home Rule come less than a decade later? If it were coming any sooner, it may well have come on Good Friday of 1916 and saved all that bloodshed.

:wink:

37

I believe Sinn Fein has always done a good job of spin doctoring, (perhaps a follow on from the rewriting of history by the IRA mentioned earlier) and suspect they have been allowed get away with the events in Kerry and Dublin as a result of their low percentage of the vote. With their share of the votes looking set to increase, I believe it is about time the other parties put more pressure on them about it.

As for the OP, personally, it’s only over the last couple of years that I’ve come to understand the origins of the Mid-East situation. Prior to that, it seemed to me like a horribly complicated situation that I would never understand. (I blame this on the desperately poor history teacher I was subjected to).
Given that I understand it a (little) better now, it seems natural to be sympathetic to the Palestinians situation, if not their methods.

38

I do happen to be Irish-American (2nd generation) and sympathetic to Palestnians but never tied the two together. I think my reasoning derives from the fact that I am a native Oklahoman.

See, the way it looks to me is this. The Native Americans were here in OK (well, actually, all over the US but we’re talking post-removal to Indian territory) and this was their land. The US govt. took it and gave it away to the whites. How would OK’ans feel if, suddenly, the US govt, in all it’s infinite wisdom (hey! an oxymoron!) decided to give our state back to the Indians out of guilt for “attempted ethnic cleansing?” We’d be pissed and calling for our own state. But where is that gonna come from? Kansas? Arkansas? Texas? We’d be screwed-over, second-class citizens in our own former state.

Now, take that whole situation and replace the word “Oklahoma” with “Israel,” “Native Americans” with “Israelis,” and “whites” with “Palestinians” and it’s pretty much the same situation.

I feel a real sympathy towards the Palestinians but, as someone else said above, I am not anti-Israel. I wish it were possible for the Palestinians to have their own country but where? I must admit though that the Palestinian terrorists are making it more and more difficult to have sympathy. Above all, I think it’s a big oogey mess with no real solution. Just a shame…

mmm…

39

I would say that the other parties are putting more pressure on them and that’s largely due to their increasing popularity. The other parties - and FF in particular - appear to be rather worried about the number of votes SF seem likely to win. Their dilemma is that the more pressure they put on SF, the more worried about SF’s electoral strength they appear to be. I’m sure they’d all love to be able to dismiss the SF vote as easily as Balor does.

Back to the OP, I was at the Scottish Cup Final this weekend (lucky me :rolleyes: ) between Celtic and Rangers. Celtic, for the Yanks reading this :wink: draw their support overwhelmingly from people of Irish birth or descent and there were large numbers of Palestinian flags and scarves on display in the Celtic half of the ground.

In Northern Ireland as well there are currently Palestinian flags flying in a lot of republican areas while loyalists are flying Israeli flags in theirs.