If you dare to criticise Israel, you must be "anti-Semitic"

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.

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.

Palestinian loss of land since 1946

The on-line abuse got me to thinking …

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 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.

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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Captivated by La Gomera

There could hardly have been a better place on the planet to contemplate an uncertain future than the beautiful island of La Gomera in the Canaries, which has a population of about 24,000.

Full of fear after taking a voluntary redundancy, it just seemed like the perfect place to relax and appreciate the simple things in life after a few months of anxiety and uncertainty.

As soon as I took the ferry away from the high rise buildings and package tourists in the south of Tenerife, I knew I was in the right place last week.

At my pension, owned by an old school-friend, the only other residents were a Norwegian-Canadian couple and their two young sons. 

They welcomed me instantly with a cold beer and tales of their travels, including how they met in Guatamala many moons ago.

For Canadian Mike, trips to La Gomera seem to keep him sane through the long winter months in Norway.

Afterwards I ventured into town, where a rock or metal band was blasting out the tunes as part of a fiesta. They gave me a rather unusual introduction to night life in the capital, San Sebastian.

There might have been 300 people rocking in a huge marquee when I arrived that Sunday night, but for the rest of my eight day visit the place was a haven of tranquillity – too tranquil at times.

But, on my first full day on the island, I got a great introduction to La Gomera’s unconventional lifestyles. Mike and Eva had hired a car and welcomed me to join them on a one hour trip down the coast to Santiago.

There, Mike was keen to show me and his young sons the caves where he had spent many a winter’s night.

Deserted, gorgeous, peaceful, it was easy to see why people down here on Playa Del Medio were so keen to leave conventional lives, and the rat-race, behind.

Some of them have spent months, or even years, living in the caves.

Calle Real, the main street in the capital, San Sebastian

We met a 79-year old Swedish man, who has wintered for years in the caves and spends an hour on his head, doing yoga, at dusk every evening. He was the picture of good health. The adjoining beach was gorgeous and virtually deserted on a Monday afternoon.

There I met my old Galway pal, Ully, who may not be rich in the material sense but is bringing up his six year old daughter in an island paradise.

Weekends are spent exploring natural pools and picking wild fruit, rather than in the aqua parks and fast food joints on offer on the bigger island.

A week later, he brought me on a trek to a deserted village – abandoned in the early 1950s – where it felt almost subversive to have such wondrous scenery to ourselves.

My anxiety over leaving work may not have evaporated, but it was refreshing to meet artists, farmers, and roamers who had found paradise in this corner of a small, volcanic island.

I spent eight nights in Ully’s fantastic place in the sleepy capital, San Sebastian, and explored the island by day – either via hired cars or the island’s infrequent, if reliable, buses.

In Valle Gran Rey, I was captivated by a German girl who spent hours absorbed in a ‘hula hoop’ at Playa Del Ingles. Around her, relaxed tourists plunged into a savage sea. Just 15 minutes down the coast, I enjoyed a one hour snorkel under a cliff-face next to the port.

“Anything is possible, if you work and have hope,” said the sign (in Spanish) outside a local restaurant, as an old man sitting in the square marvelled at my ability to speak both Spanish and English.

I ate some gorgeous local dishes, including goat’s cheese smothered in an orange sauce, and got used to the gentle pace of life.

If there was little point in sampling the deserted bars in the capital at night, it was lovely to meditate on the flat roof at the house under the stars.

On the day I climbed to the top of the island, the views were spectacular. We could see Teide, the volcano towering over Tenerife, as though it was just metres away. A day later the same rocks were covered in a thick, misty cloud.

My redundancy has brought up some doubt and uncertainty, but in La Gomera I met happy people who did not seem to take life too seriously from day to day.

How many of us worry too much about things like careers, when there are far more important things in life?

We enjoyed an outdoor barbecue in the valley, where people from a variety of countries told me how they had come to live on La Gomera.

As a person who has spent many winter weeks in South East Asia and Central America, it was mind-blowing that this peaceful oasis was just a three hour flight and one hour ferry ride away.

I read, I swam in the warm sea, and I enjoyed chats with friends, both old and new. I visited deserted villages and drove through spectacular scenery.

On Sunday, we met up in the deserted village of Benchigijua, abandoned when the entire population moved to Venezuela in the 1950s.

It was both eerie and refreshing, plus a little sad that there was nobody around to share the spectacular scenery with us.

The time eventually came to return to Tenerife, with its English breakfasts and dive centres that actually open for business; but as the boat pulled out of the harbour at San Sebastian, I knew I’d be back on La Gomera someday.

It’s that kind of place. It just seems to attract people back, year after year, for the sheer peace and tranquillity of leaving it all behind – even if only for a short period of time.

It may be just 45 minutes from the mayhem of Los Cristianos, but it felt like another world.