Israel and Ireland

As Israel gears up for more hell and damnation in Palestinian terrorities, this time in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, it is interesting to ponder what the world's response might have been to Britain had she decided to behave towards Ireland's militant element in the same way as the Israelis deal with the Palestinians. The circumstances are different of course: N. Ireland exists by virtue of an international treaty, so British armed forces there cannot be deemed an army of occupation. On the other hand, Israel occupies large slices of Palestinian land and restricts economic activity and so on elsewhere. We can, using Bush's terms, refer to the Irish militants, loyalist and republican, as terrorists, but Palestinians fighting an occupying power in their own land might rather be referred to as freedom fighters, the resistance, and other terms that had such resonance in the Second World War. When their activities enter Israeli land it is harder to be so clear, for their methods are plainly those of terrorists, but would we have thought so badly of members of the French Resistance entering Germany and blowing up a train or two?

My point, however, is that if Britain, instead of relying on intelligence, aggressive policing, military checkpoints, and finally political compromise, had invaded parts of the Republic of Ireland, there would have been uproar. And yet the conditions are similar. People in the Republic supported the IRA. Indeed, people in America, S. Africa, Libya, and other countries were most generous to the terrorists. The British could have bombed Dublin. They could have interned, tortured, and massacred hundreds of Irish people they thought were concealing terrorists. They could have 'taken out' Charles Haughey's limo and killed the man known to have helped the IRA. They could have bulldozed houses and even entire villages. They could have engaged in ethnic cleansing. They could have made life unbearable for the Republic by restricting the flow of people in and out of the country and closing sea lanes. We could go on.

There would have been international outrage and condemnation if Britain had behaved in this way.

Heaven knows, Britain did some terrible things during the Troubles, awful crimes were committed, but the fact is, Britain maintained more or less friendly relations with the Republic, and in the end it was a combination of high quality intelligence, political compromise, a willingness to make sacrifices, and maintenance of diplomatic ties that eventually ended terrorist violence in Ireland.

If we consider the brutality of Israel and its chronic inability to think its way out of a spiral of violence, we have to feel very sorry for the Palestinians who want their country back and to get on with their lives. Why isn't there greater outrage in America and elsewhere about what Israel does? In this David and Goliath situation, can people not see that Israel's actions are outrageous? They should try, just for a moment, to imagine a comparable situation in Ireland with British tanks rolling, not into Gaza, but into Dundalk in response to the kidnapping of a British soldier (which happened during the Troubles).