Protect Israel, yes, but stop endorsing its criminal actions

Ambassador’s article about Irish attitudes complete nonsense

AS someone who votes in British elections and hopes for a Labour government to replace the odious and incompetent Tories, I would feel happier with a Labour leadership that was not so equivocal about the atrocities committed by Israel.

We get the repeated line that Israel has a right to defend itself, which it has, of course. Indeed, we would not be in this position if it had defended itself last October when that shower of barbarians swept through the fences to slay and rape and kidnap every Jew they could find.

Even some in the Israeli media hold the current Israeli leader to blame for that. It’s a thought I would hesitate to share if they didn’t.

But monitors of activity inside Gaza witnessed the preparations, reported them to their seniors, and were disregarded.

On Israel, I feel better represented by the Irish government than the British. Worse, I feel that the Labour Party, which I put my hopes in for repairing some of the damage the current government has inflicted, has been too meek to speak plainly about Israeli actions which should be regarded simply as intolerable and criminal.

Ireland refused to join in the denial of support to UNRWA. Others took the word of the Israelis that the main relief organisation in Gaza was in collusion with Hamas and that some of the thousands of workers had actually participated in the savage rampage of October 7.

This may be true. How can I know? But you don’t just take the word of a rampaging army for the character of the people who are trying to evade its bombs and working to feed the hundreds of thousands who have been driven from their homes by that army.

And Ireland is now moving towards recognising a Palestinian state and garnering support for that among other European countries.

Israel, of course, is annoyed about this.

The Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich, in an article in The Irish Times last week, accused the Irish media of being one-sided and said Irish politicians often engaged in “vitriolic rhetoric”.

In Ireland, after October 7, she saw “no such high profile or official public displays in Dublin” of support for Israel as were seen in other European capitals. She said: “In fact, there was an automatic expression of solidarity with Palestinians, and even Hamas.”

A lazy reader would interpret this as an accusation that the Irish people in general, or their political leadership, endorsed Hamas. This is scurrilous.

“Furthermore, it appears that any show of empathy or humanity expressed towards Israel has been bullied out of public spaces due to an environment of hostility that has been allowed to prevail,” she claimed.

Bullied by whom? Undoubtedly there are anti-semitic Irish people, and always have been, but there are no grounds for implying that it is in the character of the country or is officially indulged.

And, of course, many people have concluded that the route to peace in the Middle East involves a peace deal with the Palestinians. Ms Erlich puts the term “Palestinian cause” in inverted commas, as if the very phrase is someone else’s nonsense. She interprets such support as support for “Hamas and other jihadist movements”.

So, you can’t, in her mind, sympathise with the victims of Israeli bombing without being accused of favouring Islamist lunatics?

She said: “War is terrible, but drawing comparisons between the horrible suffering of each side oversimplifies the situation and ignores many important and complex factors.”

Which seems to mean that we should prioritise concern for dead Israelis over dead Palestinians.

Both Hamas and the IDF have been enormously and savagely disproportionate in the violence they have deployed against each other and against innocent civilians.

Ms Erlich seems to want us to see Hamas as the prime offender in a war that started on October 7 and to disregard the past history of conflict in which both sides have shown greater fondness for war than for agreement.

She takes up the definition of anti-semitism to include anti-zionism. “Zionism is the national identity of the Jewish people,” she said.

But she doesn’t address at all the anxiety and revulsion many feel for Israeli expansionism, the kind of Zionism, currently represented in the Israeli government, which aspires to a greater Israel that includes the West Bank and Gaza.

She said: “In Ireland’s view of the war, there is almost no context at all.”

That is nonsense. The context of the war is an historic, unresolved friction between Israel and the Palestinians over sovereignty of disputed territory.

It is possible to hold in mind the two ideas that Israel has driven Palestinians to the wall and that Hamas has capitalised on that as a wedge into which it can drive its jihadism.

The Palestinian Authority has already accepted the state of Israel within its internationally recognised legitimate borders. Ireland recognising a Palestinian state is not a “reward for terrorism”.

Ms Erlich has a job to do, making excuses for the rash vengefulness of her country.

The Irish government has a job to do too, to represent the deep conviction of many in this country that Palestine is a state being progressively eroded and which deserves to have more secure states speak up for it.

The war now threatens to escalate across the whole region. Israel must be protected. That will be a prime strategic interest. It doesn’t mean we have to endorse its criminal actions.