Last week, a blog post I wrote following a talk by a
Holocaust survivor was described as “hate-mongering”.
In the piece, I dared to suggest that it was deeply
saddening that the descendants of the people who suffered so much in 1930s and
1940s Europe had become oppressors themselves.
I wrote that some Israelis and Palestinians had “dehumanised” the
other side in ways which were eerily similar to what went on in Germany back in
the 1940s.
There is no doubt that the whole of Europe should have
collective shame over the extermination of six million Jewish people by the
Nazis during World War Two.
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| Jewish children in a Nazi concentration camp. The world should never forget the horror of the Holocaust. |
That shame extends to Ireland, where our Government – just a
few years after independence – did next to nothing to help those who were
trying to escape from persecution.
It was natural and understandable that revulsion over the
Holocaust led to widespread public support across the globe for the foundation
of the state of Israel in 1948.
The only problem was that nobody seemed to take the needs or
rights of the native Palestinians on board when Israel came into being.
And so began a myth that here was a “land without a people
for a people without a land”, as those who had earlier been colonised by
Britain either did not exist or had no right to their own self-determination.
The relatively minor abuse last week got me to ponder how
far Israel has shifted to the right since the days when enthusiastic young
Europeans used to travel there to volunteer and live in cooperatives known as
kibbutzim. Not any more.
My Twitter feed soon filled up with abusive attacks.
I am no expert on the Middle East, but I have been to that
part of the world on about 15 occasions and love the hospitality and culture of
the people.
I am no expert on Israel and Palestine, but I do recognise a
gross injustice when people are colonised, forcibly ejected from their homes,
or forced to live as second class citizens.
As an Irish person, whose land has a long history of
oppression and colonisation; it’s natural to feel a tendency to side with the
oppressed.
The abuse I received came just a month after the British
Labour Party was torn apart by accusations of “anti-Semitism”.
Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, of all people, was given this
label after he made some ill-advised comments about Hitler and Zionism.
Nowadays, it seems, it is impossible to criticise Israel in
any way without being smeared.
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| Palestinian loss of land since 1946 |
If you think that villagers have a right to return to the
land and homes they were forced to flee by colonising settlers in 1948 or 1967,
you must be anti-Semitic.
If you find it appalling that more than 550 children were
murdered in one of the most crowded places on earth in just a few weeks in
2014, you must be anti-Semitic. (After all, their parents voted for murderous
Hamas terrorists).
If you cannot, in your wildest imagination, see any
justification in the bomb which killed four young boys on a Gaza beach, you
must be anti-Semitic.
If you think it’s a war crime to bomb a hospital, you must
be anti-Semitic. (Don’t you know that the patients inside were being used as
human shields by dangerous terrorists?)
If you oppose a wall which cuts through farms and villages
on occupied land, you must be anti-Semitic.
If you think it’s racist or even a form of Apartheid when
roads are reserved for one particular race or religious group, at the expense
of another, you must be anti-Semitic.
If you think ‘peace’ is impossible now that 800,000 settlers
have built houses on occupied land in the West Bank, you must be anti-Semitic.
(Even the UN, hardly great supporters of Palestinian rights over the years,
recognise the 1967 border as ‘legal’).
If you think it’s hypocritical to talk ‘peace’ while
stealing land which is outside your country’s borders, in contravention of the
Geneva conventions, you must be anti-Semitic.
If you oppose institutional discrimination because you think
it’s just as bad as the South African regime in the 1980s was, you must be
anti-Semitic.
If you question why the US gives $3 billion a year in
military aid to one of the richest armies on earth, who then try out new arms
in heavily populated areas, you must be anti-Semitic. (Israeli arms dealers
actually boast that new weapons are “tried and tested” in Occupied Palestine).
If you understand why people who have been cut off by land,
air, and sea by colonisers might want to smuggle essential goods through
tunnels, you must be anti-Semitic.
If you think it’s not ok to murder 2,200 people, because
some of them may have voted for appalling terrorists, you must be anti-Semitic.
If you feel the people of Gaza should be allowed lift the
siege in order to rebuild their homes, you must be anti-Semitic. (They cannot
even get concrete in, for God’s sake).
If you call for a boycott of companies who locate their
factories on stolen land in the West Bank, you must be anti-Semitic. (They do
employ Palestinians, but at a fraction of the cost of hiring Israelis inside
the recognised 1967 borders).
If you see no hope for children who are tear gassed on their
way to school in Hebron, you must be anti-Semitic.
If you think the villagers of Bili’in have a right to
protest after the huge wall cut them off from their own olive fields, you must
be anti-Semitic. (Almost every Friday for years now, they have been fired upon
by occupying soldiers).
If you don’t think it’s right to appoint a racist (with
widely-reported anti-Arab views) as Minister for Defence, you must be
anti-Semitic.
If you think it’s hateful for a Prime Minister to spread
fear about a minority’s voting habits on the eve of an election, in any
country, you must be anti-Semitic.
If you think groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace are
heroes for exposing and denouncing atrocities committed in their name, you must
be anti-Semitic.
If you laud the bravery of the ex-soldiers in Breaking the
Silence who fear the toll this cruel occupation is taking on both sides, you
must be anti-Semitic.
If you pay attention to the human rights abuses exposed by
Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, you must be anti-Semitic.
(Even though all three of these organisations are
predominantly made up of Jewish members.)
It doesn't matter if you agree that Holocaust-denial is a crime. It is simply ludicrous to deny that six million Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis, in what was the darkest period in the entire history of humanity.
It doesn't matter if you agree that Holocaust-denial is a crime. It is simply ludicrous to deny that six million Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis, in what was the darkest period in the entire history of humanity.
It doesn’t matter if you think Hamas are murderous thugs or that the Palestinian Authority are guilty of corruption.
It doesn’t matter if you think public executions, which are
sometimes authorised by Hamas and seen on the streets of Gaza, are crimes
against humanity.
It doesn’t matter if you recognise that “radical Islam” is a
scourge which threatens the entire world.
It doesn’t matter if you think ‘Sharia Law’ is an
abomination and that women deserve equal rights in every country on earth.
It doesn’t matter if you completely oppose the firing of
rockets from Gaza into Israel, rockets which have killed innocent civilians.
It doesn’t matter if you think that ‘suicide bombers’ are
deplorable and that attacks on Israeli civilians are terrible.
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| A graphic which examines the similarities between South Africa under Apartheid and modern-day Israel. |
It doesn’t matter if you think all human life is sacred,
that the shooting of four innocent people sitting at a cafe in Tel Aviv last
week is as much of a tragedy as the killing of the young boys playing on the
beach in Gaza in 2014.
Yes, all human life, without distinguishing between Muslims,
Christians, Jews, and non-believers.
It doesn’t matter if you think Egypt, by closing the Rafah
border, is just as complicit as Israel in the terrible siege of Gaza.
It also doesn’t matter if you recognise that the Governments
of Egypt, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, etc, are controlled by tyrants and
that Israel does have a right to defend itself.
Because, if you dare to criticise Israel in any way, you run
the risk of being labelled as “anti-Semitic” or a “hate-mongerer”. Even if you
know, deep in your heart, that there will never be peace in the Middle East, not
while one side chokes the life out of the other and brutalises a whole new
generation of hopeless children.
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