Good Friday prayer was out of step with public

It is understandable that members of Louth County Council wanted to pass a motion at a recent meeting demanding that no public money, raised through direct and indirect taxation, should not be spent on goods or services supplied by Israel.

Of course in many ways it is a futile gesture for it is highly unlikely that the Council itself purchases any goods or services from Israel, but in any case the Israeli government doesn’t give a toss about what the rest of the world thinks or says.

However, the councillors who spoke at their meeting calling for the ban were, like the rest of us, echoing our deep frustration and anger at the pictures screened nightly into our living rooms showing the emaciated bodies of sick and starving children, and the suffering inflicted on the people of Gaza by a trigger happy army that has lost the respect of the free world.

It is that deep sense of vexation that we all feel that there is nothing that we, or indeed almost the entire world, can say or do that will end the suffering of the Palestinian people.

We, in this part of the world, know what it is like to be blamed for something we didn’t do, for at the height of the Northern Troubles, voices in the UK, the loudest of which was Maggie Thatcher blamed the people of Dundalk for harbouring terrorists, but thankfully unlike the Israeli government the British government did not take their retribution on innocent people

IN ANY CASE THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT DOESN’T GIVE A TOSS ABOUT WHAT THE REST OF THE WORLD THINKS

or bomb people in their homes.

That sense of hopelessness that we all feel at the present time led one parishioner in Dundalk to ask from this newspaper why, during the Good Friday ceremonies, when prayers of invocation were recited for a variety of people such as the church, even those in public office, that one of the prayers was offered for the people of Israel.

No doubt there is an historic reason for this dating back to the origins of Good Friday and the invocations have been part of the ceremony for centuries, but at this time its relevance was lost on many.

Or, if the prayers for the people of Israel needed to be included, why not simply alter the innovation to read “for the peoples of Israel and Palestian”.

To many that would be more in keeping with our beliefs.