Blarney, BDS & Blood Libels (includes video)

At the weekend, Martin O'Quigley, head of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, explains why he's out on the streets of Dublin demonstrating against the proposed foundation of an Irish branch of the anti-islamisation organisation PEGIDA, dubbed by most of the press a "far right" organisation  (a label rejected by worried English feminist Anne-Marie Waters of UK Mothers against Sharia and the other founders of the British branch).

For O'Quigley the demo's something about being anti-Zionist and opposing all forms of racism, apparently, as well as dutifully opposing fascism.

The fact that fascism, which Europe defeated during the Second World War (a conflict in which the Irish Republic stood neutral, incidentally, even spitefully denying British ships port facilities during that life or death conflict with evil), is busily importing a new kind of fascism, is of course not part of the mindset of the Irish anti-"Islamophobia" crowd and more than it is of their British and Continental counterparts.

I hold no brief for PEGIDA.   But how strange it is that the fears of Ms Waters and other true feminists for the future of girls and women in a Europe of rapidly changing demographics are apparently not shared by the guys and gals of the "far left".

As reported here, among those joining in the Irish anti-PEGIDA protests are such far leftists as Sinn Féin, People Before Profit, the Workers Solidarity Movement.

Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan said “we are standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity to show that there is no place in Ireland today for racism and Islamophobia. There is no place for hate.” 
Ms Boylan is a veteran of the anti-Israel movement: see, for instance, here  and here and here

"There is no place for hate" on the Irish Left, it seems, except where Israel is concerned.

President Higgins and friends

I have blogged several times about the anti-Israel cause in Ireland and how vicious seem its sentiments.

Here's another example,  these disgraceful assertions by Anna O'Leary, an Irish Israel-hater, telling Iran's Press TV that Israel is "a place that does not observe human rights".

Listen to her vile blood libels against Israel and her laughable remarks about "our values" (the "our" encompasses Iran, too, presumably!)

 That O'Leary thinks it appropriate to give an interview to the satellite propaganda channel of one of the world's most notorious actual violators of the human rights of women and children, and indeed of males when they are gays or dissidents, while accusing Israel of the heinous things she does in the way she does speaks volumes about the nature and purpose of O'Leary in particular and the Irish BDS movement in general.

Oh, and as for Anne-Marie Waters, here she is in Copenhagen last month, castigating the pro-Islam lefty sisterhood heckling her there:

An Irish Journalist On Selective Condemnation Of Israel

Remarks Irish journalist Kevin Myers sensibly of the anti-Israel rant of Irish broadcaster Vincent Browne, who obscenely called Israel "a cancer in the Middle East" (see more about that rant here; hat tip reader Jean):

'Browne's diatribe -- if his incoherent drivel merits such a lofty term -- included the allegation that Israel "stole the land from the Arabs". Only partly true. Vast tracts of land were bought from Arabs by early Zionist settlers, and funded by the Eretz Yisrael Office.

Much the same is true of settlements in the West Bank. To be sure, some atrocious things happened in 1948, and many Arabs were intimidated into flight. But that is nearly 65 years ago: as much time as elapsed between the Battle of Little Big Horn and Pearl Harbour. Who would have proposed in 1941 that Montana and the Dakotas should be given back to the Cheyenne and Lacota Indians?

The Arabs who fled Israel were not then assimilated into the populations of neighbouring Arab states, but were confined in refugee camps, which remain to this day.

Compare roughly contemporaneous events in Pakistan and India, where 14 million people fled in waves of terror and mass-murder that dwarfed events in Israel.

Refugees were then incorporated into the lives of both new states. And in 1945, millions of ethnic Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe and were duly assimilated into the Federal Republic of Germany.

In other words, bad things happened: so get on with it. But the one ethnic group that cherishes a grievance, and picks at the scab until it is an open and weeping abscess and finally, yes, cancerous, are Israel's Arab neighbours, who have ruthlessly used the Palestinian refugees as a propaganda tool in their existential war against the Jewish state.'

Read Myers' entire article here

Israel-Haters Rant Against The Queen's Steinmetz Diamond (videos)

Here are some of our familiar friends from the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, demonstrating in Dublin this month against "Israeli Blood Diamonds"  – more specifically against the Steinmetz diamond De Beers presented to Queen Elizabeth II during this, her Diamond Jubilee Year.

 In the course of the demo a pro-Israel foursome passes by, and – as in this memorable incident involving Jewish tourists –  take issue with the demonisers, who are challenged regarding the selectivity/hypocrisy of BDSers in continuing to use Israeli computer chips.

We catch part of the action as the elderly pro-Israel man tells the demonisers "You don't know what you're talking about," before he and his wife continue their stroll.  Their departure prompts a short discussion between a trio of demonisers ...

And tourists visiting the Tower of London on Sunday had their tranquility rudely interrupted by a  band of Israel-haters screeching about "Israeli genocide"and screaming demands that the Queen return the "Steinmetz blood diamond" on display at the Tower.

Most of the tourists amble past the demonisers, with scarcely a bemused glance in their direction.

The uploader of this video onto YouTube is a veteran of the anti-Ahava demos in London's Covent Garden.

"Do They Know What They're Fighting For? The Star Of David & Its Lies" (video)

Here's a grubby little Israel-delegitimising video from Ireland featuring a so-called "Song For Palestine".

A sentiment closely resembling antisemitism permeates the chorus:

"But Do they know who they're fighting for?
The Star of David and its lies.
They fell for the Devil's lies
When the crosshairs hit their eyes
And put up walls to divide
While claiming God is on their side."

As for this coming Sunday's flytilla, get the lowdown, the true facts, here and here
Early indications suggest a Floptilla (hat tip for link: reader Shirlee)

Irish Anti-Israel Fanatics Protest Portuguese Singer's Upcoming Visit To Tel Aviv (video)

Portuguese singer Ana Moura is due to perform in Israel on 27th January, and to date hasn't responded to a letter from Raymond Deane, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign's Cultural Boycott Officer, who told her:

"Your Irish fans and the many Irish lovers of Fado music will be eager to give you a warm Irish welcome when you perform in our National Concert Hall on 19th January next.

However, if you persist with your plan to perform in Israel on 27th January, in violation of the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of the Israeli state, that welcome will be balanced by a demonstration against your indifference to the fate ... of the Palestinian people....

Please ensure that your welcome to Ireland will be unconditional by cancelling your planned performance in Tel Aviv."

The ISPC fanatics (you may recognise two of them from the video in which outraged Jewish visitors gave them a well-deserved tongue-lashing not long ago) were therefore outside the National Concert Hall in Dublin on Thursday, 19th January, to make their feelings known.

Hear these anti-Israel fanatics spewing their venom against the "racist" Jewish State, which they want consigned to "the dustbin of history".  It "clearly is not" a "liberal democratic state on the Western model" but "an ethnocracy for Jews first and foremost" in which Ana Moura will be performing for a "segregated audience" and which is setting up "concentration camps" for illegal immigrants. Of course, these Irish fanatics very conveniently don't mention what the illegal immigrants are escaping from, and why they are willing to risk everything by trekking across desert to enter the - ahem! - Apartheid State. Oh, and they invoke Martin Luther King, apparently forgetting that Dr King wrote "When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews" and a whole lot more on that theme in similiar vein

Diamonds In The Emerald Isle: Jewish Passers-By Confront Israel-Vilifying Demonstrators (videos)

The hoary-headed Israel-haters campaigning in Dublin against Israeli "blood" diamonds the other day didn't have a very good time.  First, they were rudely interrupted by a long line of demonstrators for another cause marching through their patch, and then, to their utter surprise and obvious chagrin, an articulate young Jewish man with whom they'd previously skirmished stopped by to tell them some real home truths about themselves.  Then another man, presumably the young man's father, joined in.  Watch the antisemites cackle at the obviously enraged and distressed young man's remarks about Jewish claims to Israel, and then bait him with full-decibel shouts of "Free Palestine, Free Palestine".

Here's more footage of the demo by President Higgins's repugnant Israel-hating compatriots, one fanatic accusing Israel of crimes against the Syrian people...
(But here's something more pleasant out of Dublin, Israeli performer Izhar Ashdot singing "Whiskey in a jar" on stage there. Hat tip: Tom C.)

Hate With An Irish Brogue: Anti-Israel Fanatics Protesting Upcoming Riverdance Tour of Israel (videos)

There's an intensified campaign afoot (no pun intended) to cajole Irish troupe Riverdance into cancelling its scheduled tour of Israel next month.  See http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/05/out-of-step-with-anti-israel-bigots.html

The videos shows screaming Israel-haters (many of them seemingly not long out of nappies) in June and last month outside Dublin's Gaiety Theatre, where the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign's cultural boycott officer Dr Raymond Deane helped to maintain the rage.

See also: http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2011/08/hamas-starts-own-riverdance-troup.html

Out Of Step With Anti-Israel Bigots: Irish Troupe Riverdance

A recent article in the Hollywood Reporter quoted Israeli impresario Shuki Weiss as saying that despite the last-minute cancellations over the past couple of years of appearances by such high-profile performers as Elvis Costello, bookings in his country are improving:

“Israel is a small market in terms of selling records, but a huge market in terms of fans.

Israelis are very curious and open minded to new music. It's not by coincidence that the electronic and trance scenes developed [in Israel] years before they hit the United States and Europe.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bookings-rise-israels-concert-industry-182293

Defying calls from Boycott Derangement Syndromers, the famed Irish step dancing troupe Riverdance has confirmed that it will visit Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem in September.

In response, BDS advocates have stepped up (no pun intended) their demands that Riverdance do no such thing.

In an "open letter" to the troupe, their set designer Robert Ballagh says he's "personally disappointed" by their decision.

"Many years ago," Ballagh continues,

"I was honoured to meet Nelson Mandela when he was in Ireland. I took the opportunity to ask his opinion on the cultural and sporting boycott of South Africa. He replied by saying that the boycott was an essential weapon in the struggle against apartheid. His forceful words came back to me last year when I, along with many other Irish creative and performing artists, signed a cultural boycott pledge not to visit Israel (www.ipsc.ie/pledge). This was a positive response to the call by Palestinian film-makers, artists and cultural organisations for a cultural boycott of Israel. I believe that this non-violent cultural boycott will contribute to the struggle for justice for the Palestinian people.

Because I have signed up to support the cultural boycott I will not be travelling to Israel with Riverdance, and also I have decided to donate any royalties due to me for performances in Israel to the fund for the Irish boat which will be taking part in the international flotilla which is hoping to break the illegal and inhuman blockade of the citizens of Gaza."

And in a long and inevitable "open letter" similarly drawing that preposterous libellous analogy between Israel and apartheid era South Africa, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, through Raymond Deane, its so-called cultural boycott officer, says:

"Would Riverdance have toured South Africa during the dark years of Apartheid there? If not, then how can its creators and performers justify touring the rogue Israeli state that has devised its own form of Apartheid that in many respects is worse than that once practised in South Africa?....

Just as BDS - including the cultural boycott - played a part in isolating South Africa and helping to bring an end to Apartheid, similar tactics can help isolate the Apartheid Israeli state and compel it to end its illegal occupation and colonial settlement of Palestinian lands, and its refusal to negotiate a just peace without preconditions ...

Some say that, unlike Apartheid South Africa, Israel is a democracy and must be treated differently...Even if this were true, do the crimes of a democracy weigh less than those of a dictatorship? But it is not true: Israel calls itself  "the state of the Jewish people", not that of its citizens, and discriminates against non-Jews; intent on continued expansion, it has never negotiated internationally recognised borders; it is in permanent violation of international law and international humanitarian law by virtue of its occupation and colonisation of Palestinian and Syrian territory and its cruel siege of the Gaza strip; and it holds thousands of Palestinian political prisoners (including over 200 children) subject, according to Amnesty International, “to torture and other ill- treatment.“ Does such a rogue state truly deserve the noble epithet "democracy"?

You may protest that culture is above politics and builds bridges between peoples, even opponents. But culture is not above being exploited for political ends by states that serially abuse human rights....'

The crusading anti-Israel British cleric Stephen Sizer, vicar of an Anglican church in Surrey, reproduces both letters, dated 26 April, in full on his blog: http://stephensizer.blogspot.com/2011/05/riverdance-must-boycott-israel.html

In a short statement posted on 29 April, the troupe notes:

"The upcoming inaugural visit by Riverdance to Israel follows an invitation by an independent concert promoter to perform in three cities next September and this tour will allow all Israeli citizens experience a show that has been seen live by over 22 million people across 35 countries for the past 16 years.

Riverdance supports the policy of the Irish Government and indeed the policy of every other EU state that cultural interaction is preferable to isolation."

No doubt there will be a sustained campaign ahead, of the kind described in that same Hollywood Reporter article, to cajole Riverdance to cancel their plans.  Let's hope they, so to speak, dig their heels in and resist the pressure!

Meanwhile, here's more from the Emerald Isle ... 

On the morning of 4 May, around 50 so-called human rights activists associated with the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (reputedly one of the most fanatically hardline of all PSC groups) formed a "human wall" outside the Annual General Meeting at the Royal Marine Hotel, Dublin, of Irish multinational building supplies company CRH (Cement Roadstone Holdings, which has a 25% stake in Israel's Mashav group,  a holding company for the Israeli cement firm Nesher), while inside the meeting Israel-bashing shareholders were vocal.

Read more: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/99687?search_text=crh

A Corker of a Philosemite

Ireland is not a country very often associated with matters Jewish, despite some interesting Jewish characters who have dotted the pages of its modern history. There was, for instance, Polish-born Rabbi Aaron the Scribe, who resided in Dublin during the late seventeenth century before serving, for a time, as Rabbi of London. There was Ellen, Countess of Desart, born to wealthy German-Jewish immigrant parents in England; although remaining loyal to Judaism, she married an Irish peer and became one of the first two female members of the Senate of the Irish Free State following that country’s creation in 1921. There was Cork journalist Sophie O'Brien, née Raffalovich, the Odessa-born daughter of a Jewish banker; she converted to Catholicism, married an Irish nationalist politician, and embraced the Irish cause. There was Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Ireland from 1919-36 and later Chief Rabbi of Israel, of which country his son Chaim became President. And there was Russian-born shochet’s son Robert Briscoe, an Irish nationalist who served as Lord Mayor of his native Dublin for two terms during the 1950s and 1960s; a strong supporter of Vladimir Jabotinsky, he assisted the Irgun, and in 1948 visited the newly created State of Israel with Irish President Eamon de Valera.

And then there’s that famous fictional Irish Jew Leopold Bloom, protagonist of Dublin writer James Joyce’s Ulysses. Many literary-minded visitors to the city follow the route taken on ‘Bloomsday’ (16 June 1904) by Leopold.

I was reminded of all this because, over the past week, a talented philosemitic Irish girl has been the talk and the toast of the pro-Israel blogosphere. She’s 19-year-old Cliona Campbell, a non-Jewish student from Cork who’s been fascinated by Jews and Israel for half her life.  Under the auspices of the volunteering project group Sar-El, she recently completed a two-month stint working at military bases in Israel. She felt impelled to volunteer after seeing the unfair way in which the media portrayed Operation Cast Lead – she was indignant at the lack of compassion with Israel’s civilians, who had endured rocket attacks from Gaza for years before the military operation was launched. On her return to the Emerald Isle Cliona wrote an enthusiastic account of her experiences in her local paper, the Evening Echo (16 July 2010), which includes the following:

“Being in Israel during the ‘Flotilla Incident’ was one of the most sobering experiences I have ever encountered. I was stationed in the north of Israel at the time, far away from the events on the high seas, yet the aftershock reverberated throughout the country. Our ‘madricha’, the soldier responsible for us volunteers, greeted us after the flag-raising ceremony that morning in an uncharacteristically depressed mood. Her voice quivered as she told us what happened.... As the ‘madricha’ spoke, tears welled in her eyes — not of anger, but of despair. It was a hopeless situation — either weapons would be smuggled into Gaza, thus supplying ammunition to Hamas’ terror campaign, or else when the Israeli Defence Forces intervened to stop them it would be a propaganda victory for the ‘innocent peace political — the Gazans are far from needy. During the last 18 months, more than one million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza from Israel, equalling nearly one ton of aid for every man, woman and child. We volunteers were dumb-founded as we scrolled through our phones and read western media reports, each one damning Israel for ‘impeding humanitarian aid’. Shortly after the flotilla incident, I attended a peaceful demonstration outside the Turkish embassy in Israel, and as Israeli flags whirled above our heads, we all chimed with heartfelt sincerity “kol hakavod Yisrael” — “Well done, Israel.”

See the entire article and photos of Cliona in Israel here http://dublin.mfa.gov.il/mfm/Data/184077.pdf

Troublingly, as a result of her support for Israel, Cliona has received insults and threats. "I came back after two months and wrote a piece [see above link] on my experiences. Now I am getting hate mail and being targeted. I went into a clothes shop where I live and the security guard came up to me abusing me. My Facebook page link was posted online in a forum and I started getting emails telling me to keep my head down from now on. My friends started getting abusive emails soon after that too."

In Ireland, there’s a great deal of animosity towards Israel in certain circles, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign there has the reputation of being particularly inflexible and embittered. The anti-Israel movement is fostered in Ireland, as in the UK, by a strange alliance of hardline left-wingers and radical Muslims. Not all Muslims are Islamists, of course. “We in the Irish Muslim community have on the whole felt part and parcel of the wider Irish society for decades; this is the country where many of us emigrated to in pursuit of a better life and opportunities; or fleeing persecution, and freedom from religious, ethnic or political discrimination”, wrote one concerned Muslim to an Irish newspaper. “The majority of us are grateful for the opportunities afforded to us by this nation and not only do we respect the ideals of the democracy that we live in but also cherish them....” The ultra-conservative Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland, situated at Clonskeagh, Dublin, is said to have links to the Muslim Brotherhood, and as elsewhere in Europe, radical Muslims in Eire advocate the adoption of sharia law. An anti-American, anti-British Muslim surgeon in Dublin has been quoted as saying that flags should not be burned at demonstrations “Unless someone wants to burn the Zionist flag since we do not recognise the Zionist state". http://www.markhumphrys.com/islam.ireland.html

The accompanying picture has an eloquence all of its own. No wonder one of the many blogs about the admirable Ms Campbell  is entitled “How Can We Clone Cliona?”