IS ISLAM TAKING OVER THE WORLD?

IS ISLAM TAKING OVER THE WORLD?

                                                                      by Ron Walsh

There are currently 193 members of the United Nations, which includes 56 Muslim states, each having a seat in the General Assembly. The UN Security Council consists of 15 members of which five are permanent; China, France, Russia, the UK and the US.

The UN does not consider Taiwan to be a sovereign state, but as part of China, while the island itself is almost constantly under the threat of a Chinese invasion. For over sixty years every US government has promised to protect and maintain Taiwan’s independence. China continuously breaks international maritime laws by claiming jurisdiction over the entire South China Sea through which a vast amount of world-trade passes, thereby interfering not only with Taiwan but also with the Philippines and Vietnam. China’s unsupported claim might lead to trouble at some stage down the road, but the UN remains almost mute on the subject.

Muslim states do not openly condemn one another, because to do so would make that state an apostate, and therefore worthy of Jihad and death! There is no escape from Islam. This gives a slight advantage to the 56 Muslim countries whenever they attempt to pass a resolution against another country, mainly Israel, while at the same time seeking support from the required number of the 68 non-aligned countries to carry the day. Anti-Israeli resolutions vastly outnumber all others. It would appear that Israel is the only problem in the Middle East!

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As with all religions Islam is a misogynistic sexist one. In the Islamic marriage contract two parties are involved; the man, and the woman’s ‘’guardian’’, with the latter deciding whether she can or cannot wed. Later, if he so wishes, the man can divorce his wife by simply saying ‘’you’re divorced’’, and the court will recognise that as legitimate. The woman cannot divorce her husband unless he agrees, while her ex-husband does not have to pay children’s maintenance. The relationship is that of a ‘’master-submissive’’, one where the woman’s body is treated as being ‘’naturally’’ sexual, but the man’s body is not. She has to obey her husband on every matter, which includes when and how often he wishes to have sex.

A Muslim woman will receive only half of any inheritance that her brother receives, and during prayers she cannot pray in the same row as her sons, but must remain behind them. Before she can leave her house she must first get her husband’s permission. He is entitled to marry three other woman but she is restricted to one husband, and is entitled to only 1/8 of her husband’s estate if he has only one wife. If he has four wives she is entitled to 1/32. Her husband is entitled to half of whatever she owns upon her death if she has no children, and 1/4 if she has children.

Then there is the face-covering, or hijab, which ensures that the woman’s face cannot be seen in public unless she is in a place where only women are present. The hijab can also be removed when she is with close contact with male relations that she cannot marry, such as father, grandfather, uncle, son-in-law, and brother-in-law. In several Muslim countries a woman cannot speak to a man in public that is not her husband, while he is free to hit his wife whenever he feels the urge. She cannot marry a Jew or a Christian, but her husband is entitled to do so. Homosexuals are not tolerated as Islam rules that liwat (anal sex) is a punishable offence.

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Today many Muslim countries have been opened up to the West, after working out the vast financial benefit to be garnered by hosting the well-off international tourist. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates have taken the lead in those enterprises, and with great success. Saudi is led by heir apparent Mohammed bin Salman whose sleight of hand is a wonder to behold, giving freedom to everyone but not too much to anyone. He is also the man who arranged the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, while he also buys top professional golfers and footballers and relocates them to his extremely cash-rich country. The money on offer is eye-watering, enticing many talented Premier League players who had previously performed before Saturday afternoon crowds of up to 70,000 spectators to now strut their stuff in front of 2,000 onlookers, or even less. Public executions attract far bigger crowds, and are viewed by people who take pleasure in watching criminals being beheaded.

Their crimes? Some of them are criminal offences, such as murder, but there are also restrictive laws against religious expression, and also for holding political views. If you are opposed to the ruling family then you are in deep shit, while ‘’Terrorism’’ is a catch-all phrase that covers ‘’thought crimes’’. Yes, your very thoughts may be held against you, and if there is a lack of evidence that problem will be overcome by ‘’confessions’’ obtained under torture.

Then there is Qatar, said to be the richest country in the Middle East, where the stadiums for the 2022 football World Cup were constructed with the use of ‘’slave labour’’. There is no civil-rights in the country for women and homosexuals, however Beyonce bravely managed to perform a one-hour concert there shortly after the completion of the World Cup, for a reported fee of twenty million dollars. And what of the great sportsman David Beckham who, during the run-up to the football fest was well-rewarded for informing the world what a beautiful and bountiful paradise Qatar was. He will do that for anyone and everyone, as long as he is paid enough. Prior to the World Cup the Scottish singer Rod Stewart turned down a million dollars to perform a concert during the football extravaganza, not because he felt the fee offered was a tad on the light side, but because of the country’s appalling civil-rights record. In a world where the majority of golfers, footballers, tennis-players, jockeys, basketball players and business-people of every ilk (including many Irish) possess no moral compass whatsoever, people like Stewart and others gives ones heart a lift.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) hosts many well-known international criminals, including members of the Kinahan gang, and are financially well-rewarded for their lassitude. A few years ago former Irish president Mary Robinson made a fool of herself (or was made a fool of) following a meeting with one of the ruling family’s daughters, later telling the world’s media that the girl was quite happy and content with her lot. In fact said daughter was being forceable held there, and some months earlier had attempted unsuccessfully to flee the country. Prior to that event her older sister had been kidnapped in the city of London, while living there with her estranged mother, and returned home. Mary Robinson was back in the UAE last year (2023), where she participated in an international convention, but somehow managed not to mention either of the rulers daughters.

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While many Muslim countries are living in the modern world, some unfortunately are not. A high percentage of Iranian citizens would like their leader Ayatollah Khamenei to cut back on the strict enforcement of the country’s Sharia law. They would also like to see an improvement in the sluggish economy (brought about by sanctions imposed on the country by the EU and the US), and an elimination of the blatantly obvious corruption. In 2022 a 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini had been arrested by the Morality Police in Tehran for failing to cover her hair properly with the hijab. She was beaten while in custody and died almost immediately. Large-scale protests followed her death, and continued for a number of months, with protesters demanding the removal of the hijab law entirely. A major crackdown ensued, but eventually everything settled down and returned to normality. Or abnormality.

Fifteen Muslim countries are strict enforcers of the Sharia law (including Iran, Egypt and Afghanistan) which bans the use of alcohol, and where the punishment for stealing is the amputation of both hands. Committing adultery is punishable by stoning to death. In 2023 alone 833 official executions took place in Iran, the majority had been people involved in the hijab protests.

The United States imposed sanctions on Iran in 1979 after radical students seized the American Embassy in Tehran, taking hostages. Further sanctions were imposed a number of years later when the country attempted to go nuclear, because of worries about the regimes motives. By that time the state was supporting up to a dozen terrorist groups, financially and in other ways, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad. The state of Qatar also supports Hamas financially, while many of its leaders live there in luxury. The EU imposed sanctions on Iran in 2011 for serious human rights violations, together with China and Yemen.

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On the 7th of October 2023 thousands of Hamas fighters broke through the security-fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, and commenced a genocidal attack on many Jewish citizens. What took place that day was stomach-churning, but the basic facts were that 1,200 Jews were killed, more than 2,000 injured, while another 255 were taken hostage. Ten months later, in August 2024, six of the hostages were shot dead by Hamas fighters. It is estimated that only 97 of them are still alive.

Within days of the outrage an Hamas leader denied that any Jewish citizens had been killed, or even attacked, claiming only members of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) had been targeted. It was also stated that no women or girl had been raped, and in fact an Hamas official Basem Naim informed the media that the group considers ‘’any sexual relationship or activity outside of marriage to be completely haram (forbidden by Islam)’’. Some months later a young Hamas fighter spoke of how himself and his father had taken it in turns to rape a young Jewish woman, before killing her. Then there were the phone-calls from inside Israel to parents back in Gaza, with one man proclaiming that he had just killed a Jewess and her husband; ‘’Allah be praised’’.

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Even today the United Nations refuses to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist group and that what it carried out on October 7th had been a barbaric act of war. It was over a month before it even decided to condemn the attack. On the day in question the prime minister of Qatar praised Hamas’ actions, while not to be left out the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres claimed that it ‘’did not happen in a vacuum’’. It appears to be more than passing strange that a body born to deal with the horrors of Nazism is today a semi-racist organisation, while a number of recent UN appointments might well be considered something of a joke. Saudi Arabia heads its Woman’s Rights Commission, while Iran is Chair of the Human Rights Committee.

The UN and other international organisations have been pouring money into Palestine for a very long time, without actually knowing what most of it was being spent on. The US recently cut off Palestinian aid after discovering that their contributions were being siphoned off by Hamas and used for various nefarious projects, such as providing houses and SUV’s for many of its leaders, and also for the building of a labyrinth of tunnels in the Gaza Strip that terminated at the Israeli border. In Southern Lebanon similar tunnels run to the northern Israeli border, constructed by Hezbollah, while there are dozens of similar tunnels running into Gaza from Egypt through the Philadelphi corridor, and are mainly used to supply arms and rockets to Hamas.

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The Zionist movement was founded in 1882 following centuries of anti-Semitic persecution from a Christian (?) world that had no intention of forgiving them for having caused the death of Christ. Many large-scale anti-Semitic pogroms had also been taking place throughout the Russian Empire up to then, and following Russia’s Bolshevik revolution Jewish identity was suppressed by the atheist state. (After World War Two, and the creation of Israel, Joseph Stalin ordered all Jewish cultural institutions destroyed.) Jews began to realise that if they wished to survive they needed to find a place where they could do just that, and the idea of returning to their biblical homeland in Palestine eventually became uppermost in many minds. At the time it was part of the Ottoman Empire.

There were almost 700,000 Arabs living in Palestine then, together with 62,000 Jews and almost 60,000 Christians. Relations between the three groups were largely untroubled. Many of the Jews had arrived after 1840, from Russia and other Eastern European countries, while the ancestors of those already there had come from Spain and North Africa. In 1882 a small 300-strong group came from Romania, settling on a plot of land just south of Haifa, which they had purchased. Economic growth was good at the time, driven by the export of wheat and citrus fruits, which boosted the population in the coastal cities. Farmers in Gaza grew barley for the breweries of Europe.

A Hebrew writer and Zionist thinker Asher Ginzburg warned of possible trouble down the line; ‘’The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quite and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. But, if the time comes that our people’s life will develop to a point where we are taking their place, the natives are not going to step aside so easily’’. And so that would come to pass.

Until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 some five percent of Palestinian land had been purchased by Jews from Arab owners, and would later increase to almost nine percent. The country had been invaded and occupied by the Ottoman Turks in 1516, and remained part of the Ottoman Empire for over four hundred years until they were defeated by the Allies in the 1st World War. In 1917 the British government produced the ‘’Balfour Declaration’’, which supported ‘’a national home for the Jewish people’’.

It was not well known at the time that the United States and France both supported the idea, although many foresaw that the Palestinian Arabs would not be happy to accept many thousands of even more Jews onto their land. On the other hand, if a home for the eleven million European Jews could not be found they would eventually disappear from the face of the earth, simply because of the hatred which they continuously encountered. Back then, and even nowadays, many people would have been quite happy with that particular outcome, while decades later the Nazi’s made a determined effort to succeed.

In 1920 Britain was given the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations, with an Arab leader commenting; ‘’It was Great Britain that rescued us from Turkish tyranny, and we do not believe that it will deliver us into the claws of the Jews’’. A leading Jewish spokesman made this comment; ‘’we had only two alternatives before us. Surrender, or the sword’’. As more and more Jews continued to arrive, and with more land being purchased, relations between the two groups deteriorated, with killings on both sides commencing. Britain soon realised that the Mandate could only be enforced by repressing either the Jews or the Arabs, and finally proposed that partition be introduced. The idea was rejected by the Arab Higher Committee, but was accepted by the smaller Arab National Defence Party.

Just how many Palestinian Arabs would today accept partition and agree to live in peace with their Jewish neighbours in a two-state or single-state situation is simply not known. Its not very easy to shove your head above the parapet and call for peace if you are surrounded by Hamas extremists and their supporters. Prior to the Good Friday Agreement it would have been the same for any Catholic living in an IRA stronghold inside Northern Ireland, who did not support the bombings and shootings being carried out by that particular group. Not good for your health.

In 1939, prior to the outbreak of the 2nd World War, Britain issued a White Paper stating that partition was no longer on the table, and that there would be an independent Palestine state within ten years. Remarkably, the Palestinian response was negative, and later it was criticised by many Arab intellectuals. In 1947 the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition the country, a proposal that was backed by the US and the Soviet Union, but Palestine opposed the idea, supported by all Arab and Muslim countries. The proposed Jewish state was to have taken in 55% of the country, including the mainly unpopulated Negev desert.

At that time members of the Arab Liberation Army accused Palestinians of being ‘’traitors, cowards, spies and speculators in land’’. It was a fact that many Palestinians had no wish to fight the Jews, agreeing secret non-aggression pacts with their neighbours. By 1949 prolonged fighting between the two sides had been ongoing for some time, with Israel now controlling far more than the 55% granted by the UN. King Abdullah of Jordan, who had always wanted to control both banks of the Jordan river, now occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while the Gaza Strip was being administered by Egypt. That situation remained until 1967 when Egypt, backed by Syria and Jordan, attempted to over-run Israel, resulting in the ‘’Six-day war’’. Afterwards Israel controlled Gaza and the West Bank, plus the advantageous Golan Heights. And the strife continues today.

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Most Muslim and Arab countries are privately tired of the ongoing Palestinian problem, and are hoping for an agreement that will satisfy both sides, while Hamas and other terrorist groups are attempting to finalise the work commenced by the Nazi’s in the 1930’s. Without the Palestinian bolt-hole the remaining five million European Jews would not have survived after the 2nd World War, having found no welcome home in the towns and villages where they had previously lived. While part of Palestine will always be home to the Arabs, it is also the final home for the Jews of Europe. Israel is an entity, and the sooner Iran and others recognise that as a fact, the sooner there will be peace in the Middle East.

In 2006, one year after Israel abandoned the Gaza Strip, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections and assumed administrative control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. While in 2007 it scored a military victory over Fatah, the secular nationalist party which had dominated the Palestinian National Authority. Then October 7th happened. Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza was hardly unexpected, though a number of supposedly intelligent writers and commentators stated that they should have turned the other cheek and got on with life. Pure pie-in-the-sky, Israel had no other option but to deal with the ongoing threat posed by Hamas next door. If there had been a UN peacekeeping force operating along the Gaza-Israeli border, the slaughter would not have happened.

Many war-crimes were committed by Hamas on October 7th, including the taking of 255 hostages, while the use of any hospital or school for terrorist activity is also a war-crime. CCTV film from the al-Shifa hospital on October 7th show two Israeli hostages being escorted through some of its corridor’s by Hamas members. There have been thousands of civilian deaths inside Gaza, which means that Israel is simply not taking enough precautions to protect them. That too constitutes a war-crime. The published death figures are provided by Hamas itself, as they control everything inside the Strip, so its therefore likely that they are somewhat overblown for propaganda purposes. This is not to deny the fact that numerous civilians have perished, including many women and children. Hamas refers to each death as being that of a civilian. Have there been no terrorist deaths?

For obvious reasons Israel cannot provide an accurate figure of the number of Hamas fighters they have killed, but in their estimated update in August 2024 they claim sixteen thousand lives. (The estimated number of Hamas fighters inside Gaza was put as being around twenty-five thousand.) So, take the sixteen thousand off the latest death-count of ‘’civilians’’ given by Hamas, and then attempt to work out how much that particular figure may be overblown, if at all. Israel is not expected to release the number of IDF deaths, but it is known that over nine thousand soldiers have been admitted to state rehabilitation centres, with 21% of them suffering from PTSD. Over14,000 IDF have been injured.

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Not every Catholic living in Northern Ireland is an IRA supporter, so it may also be the case that not every Muslim living in Palestine supports Hamas. In 1947 a large minority supported the idea of a two-state solution, but in 1987 when the PLO called for Palestinian independence within the boundary established by the UN that same year, the proposal was rejected by the majority of Palestinian leaders. At the same time the Israeli left-wing movement ‘’Peace Now’’ called for an end to the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, but Israeli prime-minister Shamir stated that compromise with the Palestinians was not possible, as there ‘’was a form of warfare against Israel and against the Arabs who want to live in peace with us’’.

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The Palestinian religious, academic, and political elites teach an ideology of virulent hatred of the Jews, with their killing being presented both as a religious obligation and as a necessary self defence for all of mankind. Allah is said to have sent a message through the prophet Mohammed that killing Jews is a necessary step to bring resurrection. ‘’Kill a Jew, and go to heaven’’. The Palestinian Authority elites have built a three-stage case against Jewish existence; Stage 1; The collective labelling of Jews as the enemies of Allah. Stage 2 teaches that because of their immutable traits, Jews represent an existential danger to all humanity. Stage 3 presents the necessary solution; the annihilation of Jews as a service to god and mankind. This inculcation began many decades ago.

Reem Riyashi was a twenty-one-year-old Palestinian terrorist who penned these words in 2004; ‘’It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists, and to knock on heaven’s door with the skulls of Zionists’’. The next day she murdered four Israeli’s in a suicide attack. The hatred of Jews is taught by The Palestinian Authority, even to the very young through children’s entertainment programmes. A young girl once introduced herself on television thus; ‘’My name is Ala from Rafah. I am ten years old. Let the pigs and monkeys know, and their leaders Sharon and Bush’’.

Ahmad Abu Halabiyah, Rector of Advanced Studies at the Islamic University, had this to say in 2005 on PA television; ‘’We Muslims have ruled the world in the past (Certainly a large part of it during the time of the Ottoman Empire) and a day will come, by Allah, when we shall rule the world again. We shall rule America, Britain, we shall rule the entire world. The Jews will not live under our rule agreeably and permanently, since they have been treacherous in nature throughout history. We shall have relief from the Jews. Listen to your Beloved (Mohammed) who tells you about the most dire end awaiting the Jews’’.

There are striking parallels between many PA statements and the old Nazi ideology, as Hitler had used similar justifications for his hatred of the Jews. And while the PA does not hide its plans the entire world remains apathetic, which appears to be a repetition of the world’s indifference to Hitler’s open call for genocide. A man who took part in the Nuremberg trials, Justice Robert H. Jackson, remarked back then; ‘’When the Nazi plans were boldly proclaimed, they were so extravagant that the world refused to take them seriously’’. Or could it have been that much of the world simply didn’t care?

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The Muslim population is growing twice as fast as every other and its predicted that Islam will be the largest religion in the world by 2050. Hopefully many will have no interest in Ahmad Abu Halabiyah’s words of world domination and his genocidal warning to the Jews, but these are worrying times. Even well beyond the shores of Palestine Jews are the primary target for the worldwide far-right white supremacist movement. For some time now in the United States more than half the yearly hate-crimes have been anti-Jewish, including the deadly 2018 attack at Pittsburgh’s ‘’Tree Of Light’’ synagogue. Today Jews remain hated in Russia, although the party-line is that antisemitism is not tolerated.

Although the Labour party ousted the Conservatives in the 2024 British election, they did lose seats that they had expected to win, while only barely managing to hold on to others. This was because they had been abandoned by many Muslim voters who had no intention of supporting an MP who saw Israel as having any right to exist. Intimidation of Labour candidates had been rife in the run up to the election, with massive heckling from pro-Palestine thugs, meetings disrupted by masked men who terrified those attending, and even some volunteers having their car tyres slashed. An assault upon democracy, with sectarianism disfiguring politics.

Immigrants have been welcomed into Ireland, the UK, and almost every European country for decades, but if society’s capacity to absorb newcomers into its dominant culture becomes saturated then we could end up with the same problem as they have in the UK. It could happen in any country, certainly if the deluge of refugees is allowed to continue at its current rate. In the UK consecutive Conservative governments and Tony Blair’s Labour government have a lot to answer for. But as someone once said ‘’Immigrants are welcomed into our culture, but not against it’’.

The separation of church and state in Ireland gave us the freedom to pursue our lives as private individuals, and immigrants should be cautioned about adopting to our fundamental culture of freedom, tolerance, neighbourliness and respect for the law. If not all our freedoms will be lost and we will end up with parallel institutions, segregation, and internecine friction. Anyone wishing to take part in a protest-march against the war in Gaza (and everyone has the right to speak out against what they think is wrong) should find out which group is organizing the march, and that its not been run along sectarian ethnic lines.

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Ireland’s May 2024 decision to follow Spain in recognising Palestine as a sovereign state came as a surprise to some. Back in 1988 the PLO in exile declared the establishment of the ‘’State of Palestine’’, which was quickly recognised by many, including Egypt and Jordan. As of today 145 of the 193 member states of the UN do so. For the recently appointed Prime Minister of Ireland Simon Harris to be in any way associated with Spain in that particular enterprise was hardly a wise decision, but his handling of the refugee problem was something that had been needed for a very long time. Does the recognising of Palestine put Hamas in the driving seat, as their intended objective is the complete elimination of the state of Israel? Does it also make Simon a great world leader, or just a simple Simon? Eighty years after our non-support for the Jewish people in their time of need are we happy to be associated with Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others?

Spain, the popular destination for many sun-drenched holidays was, back in the day, no friend of the Jews either. Not even of the Muslims. During the Spanish civil-war the countries soon-to-be-dictator General Franco obtained land and air support from Hitler and Mussolini, in order to overcome a democratically-elected government. The country was officially neutral during the war but actually supported the Nazi’s. Franco attempted to align his country with Hitler following the surrender of France, but the Nazi leader refused to hand over any of the conquered territory to him as had been requested. Despite that setback in 1941 when Hitlers army invaded the Soviet Union, fifteen thousand members of the Spanish army also took part in the assault, with most of them getting as far as Stalingrad. But none returned. Spain also supplied and serviced German U-boats operating in the Atlantic during the war from one of its colonies in West Africa. Wonderful bedfellows.

The Irish Free State showed no empathy for the victims of Nazism following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, and that was made clear in a statement from the Department of Justice; ‘’It has always been the policy of the Minister of Justice to restrict the admission of Jewish aliens, for the reason that any substantial increase in our Jewish population might give rise to an anti-Semitic problem’’. That ‘’problem’’ was endemic worldwide, and was obviously doing just fine inside the Irish Department of Justice. At a time in the war when the extermination of the Jews was reaching its peak, T.D. Oliver J. Flanagan advocated ‘’routing the Jews out of the country (Ireland)’’. As politicians generally lead the people by following their actual wishes, there could have been no doubt that he was speaking for many. ‘’The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars. But in ourselves’’.

Shortly after Israel invaded the Gaza Strip it was reported that a member of the Dail decided to attend dressed as a Hamas fighter, in order to show his support for the people of Palestine. That same man had not been inspired to give a similar performance a couple of years earlier during the barbarous and genocidal treatment imposed by China on its Muslim population. At the time China was accused of systemic human rights violations in the province of Xinjiang against more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, placing them in prisons and detention camps where they were ‘’re-educated’’. Many forced abortions took place, while sterilizations were performed on all women of child-bearing age. Was that particular T.D. showing off his love for the Muslims, or was it plain old anti-Semitism? No matter, what took place in China was genocide.

What has been happening in Ukraine for over two years is also genocide. Newsreel footage taken soon after the commencement of the invasion showed Russian tanks firing shells at apartment blocks, while houses, hospitals, railway stations and schools were been bombed to smithereens. There were no Ukrainian army units hiding in those buildings waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting Russian invaders. Additional newsreel footage show the bodies of many civilians summerly executed, and with their hands tied behind their backs. Some 28 documented cases are currently being taken against Russia claiming that many surrendered Ukrainian soldiers had been executed by its army, while it is also known that numerous Ukrainian children have been kidnapped, and later transported to Russia. Those atrocities also amount to genocide.

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NATO is a military alliance of 32 countries, founded in 1949 and consisting of 30 European nations plus the US and Canada. It was the cornerstone of the West’s defence strategy during the Cold War, with an attack on one member considered to be an attack on all. Following the end of the war NATO was re-conceived as a ‘’cooperative-security’’ organisation and as of today has some 3.39 million active military personnel. (Compared to 1.32 million for Russia.) It is also deemed one of the most successful collective defence alliances in history. Austria, Cyprus, Ireland and Malta are not NATO members. In 2000 the Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Secretary General of NATO that he wanted his country to join NATO, but he did not wish to go through the usual application process. It went no further than that. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 both Finland and Sweden decided to join, for obvious reasons.

When fighting erupted in 1991 in Yugoslavia after Croatia and Slovenia had declared independence most NATO countries wanted to intervene, but China and Russia opposed the idea. Eventually military action was taken with NATO stating that it was for humanitarian reasons. Russia has been allowed to continue its genocidal invasion of Ukraine while NATO sits on the sideline, which brings up the obvious question as to why has it not intervened in that situation? The answer is always; ‘’because of fear of expanding the war’’. To be fair, many NATO and UN countries, along with much help from the US, have been supplying weapons to Ukraine, thus ensuring that Russia will never succeed in over-running the country completely. But is that enough?

Russian people love very strong leaders, or at least those perceived to be. Add a uniform and a collection of chest-medals and you are away on a hack. Vladimir Putin was a junior member of the KGB in 1998 when President Boris Yeltsin decided to appoint him director of the Security Service, and a year later to the position of prime-minister. Shortly after the latter appointment Yeltsin himself decided to step down, thus ensuring that Putin was automatically promoted to the position just vacated. Vladimir is a great admirer of the old Russian Empire, and in 2008 decided to invade Georgia, a country which had gained its independence in 1991, falsely accusing it of having inflicted genocide on South Ossetia where many Russian nationals lived. 20% of Georgia remain under Russian military occupation today. Later Chechnya attempted to obtain its independence, which resulted in a civil-war, but the secessionist rebels were defeated by Russia.

Following the overthrow of the pro-Putin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 Russia invaded Crimea, and shortly afterwards over-ran Donetsk, located in eastern Ukraine. Later, a Malaysian commercial jet-plane was shot down over Donetsk by Russian artillery, which resulted in the death of all 298 people on board. By now it had become clear to the rest of the world that Putin was attempting to rebuild the Russian Empire, or as much of it as he could. His spurious claim that the invasion of Ukraine was being carried out in order to defeat the Nazism that was endemic in the country was simply a made-up excuse.

Ukraine is not yet a member of NATO, although it has been promised full membership sometime soon. Latvia and Finland became NATO members following the invasion of Ukraine, with both countries sharing a border with Russia. Putin’s claim that he did not wish to have a NATO country sitting on his doorstep makes no real sense, as with the advanced technology of modern weapons there is no need to be sitting alongside your enemy to be a threat. The truth is that the West has no desire to invade Russia, even though shortly after the end of World War Two General George Patton did call for the overthrow of the Soviet Union, ‘’while we have the army over here’’, because of the growing international fear of Communism. But those days are long gone. While Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons is just so much hot air. Its a ‘’no-go’’ area for both sides.

When Putin was appointed President totalitarian government became the order of the day, resulting in the disappearance of a free press, and with news programmes confined to churning out propaganda. Although he is small in stature, barely five feet seven inches on a good day, from time to time carefully selected photographs were released for public delectation, showing him in such manly activities as demonstrating his great judo ability, horse-riding (while bare-chested), and many other ego-enhancing roles. The Russian people lapped it up, but the real Russian heroes were the many thousands who had from the outset publicly protested the invasion of Ukraine. They are undoubtedly still suffering for their bravery.

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Today trade-deals are a very important part of international commerce, many of them involving the removal of any or all scruples or moral compass during discussions. One country might abhor another countries lack of civil-rights, but when it comes to doing a deal with the likes of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others, those matters are conveniently pushed aside.

Commencing in 1973 the North African country Libya cemented strong links with the IRA, supplying them with arms and also providing training facilities. After Muammar Gaddafi became dictator of the country in 1977 he too continued to support them. Libya was involved in the Lockerbie bombing of a Pan-Am plane in 1988 which killed 270 people, and the downing of a French plane over Niger the following year, killing all 170 on board. In 1983 the Irish prime-minister Charles Haughey met with Gaddafi inside the dictators tent somewhere in the middle of a large desert, where he attempted to cut a deal involving cattle exports to the country. The meeting lasted three days, and the outcome made Irish farmers very happy. A few days later US planes bombed Gaddafi’s tent!

About six years ago an article appeared in ‘’The New York Times’’ advising anyone owning or working for a company that owed money to a Chinese company; ‘’do not travel to China’’. Shortly afterwards the Irishman Richard O’Halloran flew to Shanghai to sort out a dispute between the company he worked for and the Chinese authorities He was an executive with ‘’Calls Ireland’’, an aircraft leasing firm based in Dublin, which was an offspring of ‘’China International Aviation Leasing Service’’. Following his arrival he was held prisoner in the country for almost three years, from February 2019 until January 2022! Not in a prison it has to be said, but in an apartment, until the matter was finally settled to the host countries satisfaction. One might well enquire as to why it took so long to sort the problem out.

No information has ever been released by the Irish government, the Chinese authorities, or the companies regarding the final fiscal arrangement. Towards the end of the affair the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs asked (told?) Richard’s wife Tara not to make any statement to the media! She actually did, but only to say that they were both ‘’grateful for everyone’s support’’, while an Irish government statement proclaimed the obvious; ‘’It has been a difficult journey for Mr. O Halloran and his family’’. To criticise China would almost certainly have put an end to the lucrative trade-deals that were in place between the two countries. Australia had already paid a high price for daring to be so naughty.

In 2023 Russia hosted seventeen African countries at a business conference held in a luxurious Moscow hotel, where many trade-deals were concluded, and from which many quid-pro-quo’s emanated. Shortly afterwards South Africa took a case of genocide against Israeli conduct in Gaza to the International Court Of Justice, at Putin’s request, the same man who had started the war in Ukraine. Hypocrisy is a universal blight, irrespective of ones views on what is happening in Gaza.

Nelson Mandela visited Ireland shortly after becoming President of South Africa, and in a major speech praised the ten young workers from a Dunne’s Stores Dublin branch who had refused to handle South African goods while the old apartheid regime was in place. Many of the workers lost their jobs because of the protest, which lasted almost three years, while each of them had to endure condemnation from the church, being pushed around by the police (some of them were even followed to their homes by members of the Special Branch), and being victimised by their employer. At the same time many Irish singers and entertainers, plus the Irish rugby team, had no problem whatsoever in plying their trade inside that blighted country.

In 1997 a famous Libyan writer living in London, Hisham Matar, wrote to Nelson Mandela requesting his help. At the time the authors father had been locked-up inside a Libyan prison for almost twenty years, having once been a prime leader in a revolt against that countries dictator Muammar Gaddafi. It was an almost identical story to Mandela’s own, and here he was being asked if he would intercede with Gaddafi in an attempt to obtain his fathers release. His request was turned down, as South Africa had recently completed trade-deals with Libya. It has ever been so. The triumph of commerce over humanity.

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The last time Ireland was voted onto the United Nations Security Council occurred during the Covid crisis, towards the end of 2020. The country served on that august body from January ‘21 until December ‘22. At the time everybody in the country was being repeatedly warned by government ministers and medical experts not to gather in groups, as that would accelerate the spread of the virus. And most people accepted the advice. Across the Irish Sea the British government issued similar warnings, but later it became known that the prime-minister Boris Johnson and many of his colleagues had thrown lavish parties during the epidemic, breaking their own rules. The Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs threw a party at Farmleigh House for himself and his colleagues in order to celebrate Ireland’s acceptance unto the UN Security Council, where numerous bottles of bubbly were consumed over a number of hours. Farmleigh House was an excellent location for the knees-up, having once belonged to the famous Guinness family. Simply a matter of ‘’do as I say, not as I do’’. A small item, but heart-warming.

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In every war that has taken place since the enactment of the 1948 Genocide Convention war-crimes have invariable occurred. Because of the high death-rate inside the Gaza Strip it would appear that not sufficient protection is being given to its ordinary citizens by Israel. While many Hamas fighters are living amongst those ordinary citizens, the operation to take them out has not been a deliberate act of genocide. Nonetheless the bombing does constitute a war-crime.

The word ‘’genocide’’ has often been used lately in relation to Israel, with hardly a mention of China or Russia. Even though China supplies weapons components, equipment and raw materials to Russia in support of its war in Ukraine, and for almost five years Russia had used chemical weapons in Syria against the rebels, during that country’s civil-war. The ‘’rebels’’ were anyone opposed to the dictator Bashar al-Assaad. Putin has also overseen the slaughter of thousands of Syrian civilians and the displacement of millions, with some two million Syrian refugees living along the border with Turkey. Of course there were international protests, but not too many. It would appear that the only problem in the Middle East is Israel.

Almost since the beginning of time, history has recorded the numerous misdeeds carried out by the world’s top powers. Today the main trouble-makers are Russia, China and Iran, with North Korea there for good measure. During the mid-20th-century the United States, because of its overblown fear of Communism, interfered in many South American countries, while at the same time supporting the French in their futile attempt to hold on to Vietnam. In 1958 it initiated a coup in Iraq in the interest of French, British, and American oil-companies.

Even today US and Britain continue to be criticised for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in what turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt to uncover weapons of mass destruction. Of course all Saddam Hussein had to do at the time to avoid the war was to comply with the UN resolution of November 2002, allowing inspectors into the country to confirm if Iraq was living up to its disarmament obligations. The fact that he did not do so was suspicious. Later unconfirmed reports stated that weapons of mass destruction had been removed to a neighbouring country by the Iraqi regime days before the invasion.

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‘’Israel is the only problem in the Middle East’’. As long as enough people accept that proposition there will never be an end to the Palestinian conflict. A recent statement by a Hamas leader relating to Gaza included the comment that they will never accept a ceasefire until Israel withdraws completely and permanently from the region. The word ‘’ceasefire’’ means absolutely nothing to Hamas, an organization whose entire raison d’etre is to wipe out the state of Israel. Beginning in the late 19th century the Jewish people had sought a homeland where they could live in peace, following centuries of persecution and slaughter throughout the ‘’civilised world’’. While the Christian church was the main reason behind that hatred, they were also ostracized throughout the Russian Empire where all religions were banned.

The worlds population is over seven billion today, while the two main religions are still Christianity and Islam. The former has 2.8 billion followers, with the latter at 1.9 billion, but is confidently predicted to outstrip Christianity by 2050. Since its inception in 1610 Islam has spread through conquest, trade, pilgrimage and missionaries, just as Christianity had done. That great Muslim advance was halted from spreading into Western Europe at the Battle of Tours in France, where a Christian army defeated a large army of Spanish Moors.

As most modern Arab countries happily accept Jewish tourists, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other Gulf States being prime examples, it is to be hoped that they might be happy to live alongside those same people as equals, and in peace. But will the day ever arrive when a total cessation of violence comes about? 28 members of the 193 strong United Nations do not recognise Israeli sovereignty, of which 25 are Muslim, plus Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. While Iran is undoubtedly the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East, as it supports Hamas and other terrorist groups, it is not on its own. Qatar also helps finance Hamas, while Lebanon hosts Hazbollah. Iran even finds the time and money to support Putin’s misadventure in the Ukraine, providing many of the drones used by the Russians, while it has recently agreed to supply numerous short-range ballistic missiles as well.

Amongst the 28 states who do not recognise Israeli sovereignty are Algeria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. Those states that do recognise Israel include Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. While places like Afghanistan, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela are just simply basket-cases, is it remotely possible that rich states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Oman and others, might be persuaded to take a giant step in helping to sort out the problem in the Middle East? They are investing enormous amounts of money in tourism, including massive advertising in the West. Peace might work wonders, and also bring more tourists.  

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Israel is the smallest of blips on a map of the world, nestling there amongst the numerous Arab states almost surrounding it. There is simply no good reason why fighting should be allowed to continue in that small piece of land. Great hatred in a small area. The Roman Catholic Church taught its followers to hate the Jews, which was later expanded by the Eastern Orthodox church, Protestantism, Restorationism, and all the other ‘’ism’s’’. And now Islam. We are advancing backwards. The teaching of hatred is simply an abomination, and should not be a part of our modern world.

‘’Ceasefire’’ is a wonderful word. But what is required is for world-leaders to get together and come up with a real solution to the problem, not some half-baked stalemate that will come apart shortly afterwards. In the East and the West there are some very strong leaders who might just be capable of pulling it off. We have all of us contributed to the situation that currently exists. Hopefully we may also be capable of solving it.

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Ron Walsh. Copyright 2024.