WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST

By Ron Walsh

                                                                   After centuries of anti-Semitic persecution worldwide, and many large-scale pogrom’s carried out against them throughout the Russian Empire during the 1880’s, the majority of European Jews hoped to return to their ancient homeland in Palestine to build a sovereign and independent state for themselves.

                                                                   By the commencement of the Great War in 1914, Palestine had been ruled over from the imperial capital of Turkey, Istanbul, for four centuries, as part of the great Ottoman Empire, and had a powerful resonance for Muslims, Christians and Jews. It was the biblical homeland of the long-scattered Jews. To the Islam world it was the home of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, their third most sacred site after Mecca and Medina. On the 11th of December 1917 the Ottoman’s surrendered to General Edmund Allenby, Commanding-Officer-In-Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, close to the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem’s walled Old City. Britain’s conquest ushered in a new phase in the history of Palestine. At the time the country had a population of some 700,000 Arab’s, 61,000 Christians and 60,000 Jews.

                                                                    The Zionist movement was founded in 1882, with the intention that all Jews would be able to return and claim their rightful home in Palestine. Up to then there had been a small Jewish population in Palestine, but from that time onwards numerous immigrants started entering the country. In 1891 Arbs urged an end to Jewish immigration and land purchases, demands which were to remain constant for the next fifty years. But with land prices rising steeply at this time, Arabs continued selling land to Jews which, over time, resulted in close to ten percent of Palestinian land changing hands.

                                                                    Zionist progress was slow, and Arab hostility was becoming harder to ignore by the turn of the century. In 1904 the authorities banned the sale of land to foreign Jews. Violence was rare between 1882 and 1909, only a handful of people killed on both sides. For years ‘’the Jews were living as Ottoman brothers, loved by all the Ottoman races, living in the same quarters, their children going to the same schools. The Zionists put an end to all that’’. Following the 1914-1918 war attacks on Jews became more frequent.

                                                                    On November 2nd 1917 the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, wrote to the head of the World Zionist Organization, Lord Rothschild, to inform him that ‘’His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’’. This became known internationally as The Balfour Declaration, and simply infuriated the Arabs who declared ‘’Palestine is Arab. 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’’. But Jews had been arriving in Palestine since the early 1880’s, and now the numbers began to increase quite rapidly.

                                                                    A large wave of Jewish immigrants took place between 1924 and 1929, with the majority arriving from Poland, which had been hit by a severe economic crisis and a number of anti-Semitic persecutions. By now the Jewish population was over 110,000, with land purchases continuing. In Ottoman times tenants had not been been evicted when land ownership changed, they had simply answered to a new landlord. But now they were being evicted. Arguments over the ‘’Wailing Wall’’ in Jerusalem’s Old City, important to Arabs and Jews, led to violence in the summer of 1929, the worst since 1917. One major effect was to increase the physical separation of the two communities, while the disturbances also gave a boost to the campaign for Hebrew labour only.

                                                                      A Jewish native of Jaffa said of 1929 ‘’We had only two alternatives before us, surrender or the sword’’, and by 1931 Jews numbered 175,000, or seventeen percent of the population. Arab newspapers repeatedly complained about land sales, which accelerated from 1933, and those same newspapers named and shamed those who had speculated. The sale of a large tract of land between Haifa and Tel Aviv in 1933 resulted in a British Report noting the existence of a class of embittered and landless Arabs. That sale resulted in the eviction of 1,200 Bedouin, although some of them were resettled elsewhere.

                                                                       By 1936 the Jewish population had reached almost one-third of the country’s total, 380,000. ‘’The Jews are advancing on all fronts. They keep buying land, they bring in immigrants legally and illegally’’. The Jewish leader David Ben-Gurion said to a prominent Arab ‘’This land is everything for the Jews. There is nothing else. For the Arabs, Palestine is only a small portion of the larger and numerous Arab countries’’. But Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 was very menacing for the Jews. By the following year several secret Arab military organisations had been formed, weapons purchased, and with training been undertaken.

                                                                       On April 15th 1936 two Jews were ambushed and killed. It was the start of the attack, reprisal and counter-reprisal that was to set the country ablaze three years later, with strikes also spreading across Arab areas. The conflict over Palestine had passed the point of no return.

                                                                       1935 saw the largest influx of Jewish immigrants since Britain had been given the Mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations in 1920, with 65,000 Jews arriving, most of them fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany. Palestinians yet again demanded a halt to Jewish immigration and land sales. A renowned Arab guerrilla leader arrived in the country at the head of a 500-strong band of Syrian, Iraqi and Palestinian fighters and attempted to consolidate the rebel forces into a well-co-ordinated army. At the same time the Arab strike provided a good reason to get rid of Arab workers in the quarries near Haifa, and also to replacing Arab stevedores in the port. All Arab government employees who were out on strike were replaced by Jews, and because of the civil-war taking place in Spain the price of fruit was soaring, and economic pressure from Arab citrus growers provided the Arab Higher Committee with the face-saving decision to end the strikes in October of 1936.

                                                                        The terms of the British Mandate were simply unworkable, and could only be enforced by repressing either the Arabs or the Jews. The one workable solution appeared to be the creation of two sovereign states. Partition. While the Arab Higher Committee did not agree with the decision, the recently founded Arab National Defence Party did. Disorder erupted all over the country late in 1937 with Arabs attacking buses, railways and the very important Iraqi oil pipeline. Repression became the norm, and there were many incidents of brutality by British police and troops. The number of rebel forces was estimated to be around 10,000, with less than half of them full-time fighters.

                                                                        While countries in Europe worried more about Germany and the Sudetenland than anywhere else, by late 1938 Britain’s support for the mujahideen (rebel bands) was beginning to fall away, simply because it had received many reports stating that numerous villages were being coerced into supporting them. Arab informers had also begun providing information on rebels to the government. In the end, British military power – including the deployment of RAF aircraft – was the main reason for the defeat of the rebels.

                                                                       In May of 1939 Britain issued a new White Paper on Palestine stating that partition was out, and that Jewish immigration would be reduced to 75,000 over the next five years. It also provided for the establishment within ten years of an independent Palestine state, as it was now not part of their policy ‘’that Palestine should become a Jewish state’’. This should have been a time of great rejoicing for the Palestinians, but their negative response to such a stunning reversal by the British made absolutely no sense at all.

                                                                        Years later a Palestinian intellectual wrote ‘’Zionist opposition may have doomed the White Paper from the very start, but the Palestinians had, through their own reactions, lost the opportunity to enter the Mandatory administration at higher levels and prepare for their own postcolonial state. The price paid was increased social dislocation and political disorientation. It was short-sighted and irresponsible’’.

                                                                           Over the previous six years and up to 1939 the Jewish population had almost doubled, and now stood at 445,000, or thirty percent of the total. The world was now at war, which did so much to decide the fate of Europe’s Jews, together with the course of the Arab-Jewish conflict. Palestine’s war years were quite peaceful, with the country enjoying real prosperity by serving as a vast camp and supply base for British forces. Higher prices for food and demands for manual workers in Haifa and Jaffa were good for the economy, and for Arabs and Jews alike.

                                                                           But during the war years the future prospects for the Jews did not look good, with the restrictions on immigration, a ban on most land purchases (although with the help of compliant Arabs some Jews managed to find loopholes to overcome that particular problem), and the prospect of an independent state in which they would be a minority. But even before news of mass killings of Jews began to leak out from Nazi occupied Europe, illegal immigration saw to it that thousands of Jews were smuggled into Palestine and safety.

                                                                           In January 1942 the Wannsee Conference in Berlin secretly drew up plans for Hitler’s ‘’Final Solution’’, while Zionism had predicted the Holocaust many years previously. Jewish fighters began stepping up their campaign against British rule by planting bombs, robbing banks and assassinating policemen.

                                                                           During the spring of 1941, and again in the summer of 1942, it appeared that the Germans might break through the British lines in North Africa. In ‘42 Rommel’s Panzer columns advanced to within 150 miles of Cairo, which prompted one senior British officer to comment ‘’The Arabs would have touched their hats to any new conqueror’’. In May of ‘42 Zionist plans for the post-war era were spelled out at a major conference in New York, where calls for unrestricted immigration and the establishment of ‘’a Jewish commonwealth in the land of Israel’’ were called for. Facing British restrictions the Zionists worked very hard to influence the U.S. administration, as reports intensified about the Nazi’s mass murder of Jews.

                                                                            The idea of ‘’transfer’’ had always been part of Zionist thinking. Quite early in the 20th century a plan had been considered to buy land in Syria to resettle Palestinian Arabs, with Ben-Gurion proposing a population exchange of up to 225,000 Arabs and 1,250 Jews, based on the successful Greek and Turkish exchange in 1923. But Britain had turned down the idea because of the Arabs ‘’deep attachment to the land’’. Again in 1939 the Syrian Druze leader proposed to the Jewish Agency the sale of sixteen of the community’s villages in Palestine, and the emigration to Syria of their 10,700 inhabitants, for three million pounds. The outbreak of the 2nd World War put paid to that idea.

                                                                            For a long time following the defeat of Germany things remained relatively quite in Palestine, while on November 29th 1947 the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition the country into Arab and Jewish states. The proposal was backed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but as expected Palestine opposed the idea and was supported by Arab and Muslim countries. The proposed Jewish state was to consist of fifty-five percent of the country, including the mainly unpopulated Negev desert, while its population would consist of 500,000 Jews and 400,000 Arabs. Ben-Gurion declared triumphantly ‘’We are a free people’’. Arab legal, moral and political objections were overlooked in order to provide what was hoped would be a safe home for the remaining European Jews, whose numbers had been reduced by over half by the Nazi’s.

                                                                             In 1947 on November 30th a number of Jews were killed in Palestine, a day which would be marked as the commencement of Israel’s War of Independence, and which the Palestinians would refer to as ‘’Nakba’’, or catastrophe. With Arab fighters arriving from Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, Jewish quarters in the mixed towns of Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias and Jerusalem came under attack. Officers of the Arab Liberation Army accused many Palestinians of being ‘’traitors, cowards, spies and speculators in land’’. It was true that some had no wish to fight, and even agreed secret non-aggression pacts with their Jewish neighbours.

                                                                             On into 1948 and many killings were taking place on both sides. Britain could see no hope of solving the problem and after 30 years would soon be leaving, at the same time that the country was engulfed in war. In the aftermath of the Holocaust the sense of existential threat was very real for the Jews, and they went on the offensive, capturing more territory than had been granted them under the UN plan. When the fighting ended in January 1949 Palestinian casualties amounted to around 13,000, while Egypt’s came to 1,400. Iraq and Jordan lost several hundred fighters each, with Israel’s losses around 4,000 soldiers and 2,400 civilians. In July of that year, when Israel signed an armistice agreement with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, it controlled 78% of Mandatory Palestine, far more than the 55% it had been granted. King Abdullah of Jordan, who had always wished to unite both sides of the Jordan river, occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt.

                                                                               Over 250,000 Palestinians had fled or been expelled from their homes, and the end product of the 1948 war was the Israeli government’s refusal to allow the refugees to return to their homes. That was something that could only be changed in the context of a peace settlement with the Arab states, and in working out the issue of the confiscation of Jewish property which had occurred in many Arab countries. Israel was now a reality, while Arab Palestine was no more. A minority of less than 160,000 Palestinians were part of the new Jewish state, or 15% of the population.

                                                                                Outside Israel, refugees were scattered in the West Bank (which was occupied by Jordan), in the Egyptian-administered Gaza Strip (its original population more than doubled), and in makeshift camps in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. In December 1949 the United Nations passed a resolution which made the return of the refugees a prerequisite for a peace settlement, and required compensation to be paid to those who opted not to return. While some 20,000 Palestinians did manage to return, many failed.

                                                                                In July of 1950 the Law of Return granted Jews the world over the automatic right to live in Israel, privileging their rights over native non-Jews. During that year the Jewish population rose to 1.5 million, with most coming from Arab countries, where animosity towards Jews and levels of persecution had grown. In retaliation for the annexation of the West Bank in 1950 (recognised by Britain and Pakistan), the assassination of King Abdullah of Jordan was carried out by a young Palestinian male the following year.

                                                                                On October 12th 1953 an IDF force (Unit 101) under the command of Ariel Sharon entered the West Bank village of Qibya. The mission had been mounted in retaliation for a Palestinian attack that had killed an Israeli woman and her two children, on the previous day. 69 Palestinians were killed, over half of them women and children. In the wake of the killings, Moshe Dayan, who shortly afterwards became IDF chief of staff, changed retaliatory strikes from civilian to military targets and disbanded Unit 101.

                                                                                In April of 1956 President Nasser of Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal, resulting in war a few months later which was launched pre-emptively by Israel in collusion with Britain and France. The latter country was fighting a bloody anti-colonial rising in Algeria, where the National Liberation Front was receiving backing from Egypt. Israel’s justification for involvement was to end rebel raids from Gaza, while opening the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping was another. The battle was confined to the Sinai peninsula which was captured by Israeli paratroopers and tanks within days, and held for over four months until U.S. pressure forced the Israeli prime minister Ben-Gurion to order a full withdrawal.

                                                                                 Jordan was treating Palestinians much better than other Arab countries, granting them citizenship and dropping the use of the term ‘’refugee’’ in official documents. But like Israel it also delegitimised Palestinian identity. Lebanon imposed the most severe restrictions on the more than 100,000 Palestinians who had arrived by 1949, with prejudice and mistreatment very common. One teenage Palestinian refugee wept with humiliation when a Beirut street entertainer ordered his pet monkey to ‘’show us how a Palestinian picks up his food rations’’. Even Lebanese children taunted them, accusing them of having sold their land to the Jews. They were treated better in neighbouring Syria where almost 100,000 were taken in, while 300,000 Palestinians were allowed into Egypt, but lived under the military administration and emergency laws in the Gaza Strip that lasted until 1962. They were no more able to enter the Nile valley than they were able to return to their lost homes inside Israel.

                                                                                   Fatah was founded in the late 1950’s, and its goal was ‘’to liberate the whole of Palestine and restore it as it existed before 1948’’. When Algeria obtained its independence in 1962 it gave a great boost to the idea of an anti-colonial armed struggle. Syria agreed to host Fatah members and also arranged for military training, while General Nasser declared that the goal of all Arab states was ‘’the final liquidation of Israel’’. Early in 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was launched, calling for the total liberation of Palestine, and self-determination within the borders of the British Mandate. In 1965 a number of Fatah fighters entered Israel from the West Bank and planted an explosive charge inside the national water carrier canal, and while it did not detonate, the action was deemed a great propaganda coup. One member was shot dead by a Jordanian soldier while returning from Israel, which Fatah later claimed was its first ‘’martyr’’.

                                                                                    The raids continued throughout 1966 and into ‘67, upsetting Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, with the three states arresting many Fatah fighters from fear of attracting Israeli reprisals. In June of ‘67, in what became known as the ‘’six-day war’’, the Arab-Israeli conflict took a history-changing turn.

                                                                                    While Egypt was engaged in making deployment moves, on the morning of June 5th Israel performed a remarkable pre-emptive strike with the destruction of most of the Egyptian air force, while it was still on the ground. At the same time an over-land offensive was launched into the Gaza Strip, and another into Sinai. Nasser talked Syria and Jordan into launching attacks on Israel, with the involvement of the latter coming as a surprise, which provoked Moshe Dayan into sending troops into East Jerusalem. When King Hussein ordered his soldiers back across the Jordan river, Israel occupied the remainder of the West Bank unopposed.

                                                                                    A further air strike took out most of Syria’s air force, while at the same time ground forces captured the very strategic Golan Heights. A ceasefire was agreed on the sixth day by which time Israel had vastly increased the territory it controlled, and was now ruling over one million Palestinians. Arab losses were more than 20,000, while Israel lost 679 soldiers. The third Arab-Israeli war had been by far the shortest, and with the latter receiving international sympathy, but military victory would turn out to have been the easy part.

                                                                                    The opening up of the new territories brought surprise to Arabs and Jews alike. The majority of young Jews had never encountered an Arab previously, but now with the opening of Jerusalem tourists flocked into the Old City, while Arabs could now enter west Jerusalem. People from both sides made renewed contact with friends they had not met in almost twenty years. The Arab markets became popular in Gaza and other towns.

                                                                                    The Israeli’s had never anticipated taking control of the West Bank, and now their left-wing minority campaigned for the newly conquered territories to be handed back, Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan. That did not happen, but with the perception that it might, a number of Arab quarters were bulldozed to the ground on the Israeli side of the border with Jordan. A member of the IDF wrote of one such incident that he witnessed ‘’The fields were turned to desolation before our eyes, and the children who dragged themselves along the road that day, weeping bitterly, will be the fedayeen (in Arab states, a commando) of 19 years hence. That is how, that day, we lost the victory’’.

                                                                                    During the final few months of ‘67, Fatah, now partially under the leadership of an unknown Yasser Arafat began its ‘’general insurrection’’, with a number of small guerrilla operations that included shootings and bombings. Within six months almost two thousand of its members were in Israeli jails, with over 200 killed. Some Israeli leaders, worried about international opinion and of pressure being applied to withdraw from the newly occupied territories, described their occupation as enlightened. But they also warned that protracted military rule would increase Arab hatred because of the steps that would need to be taken in order to ensure security. To stay or to go? In the end Israel decided to keep the territorial gains made in June at the expense of a peace settlement. How long such a peace settlement might have lasted is another question entirely, but Israel’s military victory had simply been too big.

                                                                                      During the summer of 1968 the first settlement to be built after the previous years war sprang up in East Jerusalem, the first of many to appear over the coming years in occupied territory. The city mayor admitted ‘’Although this was uncultivated land, the very fact that compensation was offered by the people the Arabs regarded as conquerors, made for resentment’’. By 1969 there were ten settlements on the Golan Heights, two in Sinai and five in the West Bank, with others in the pipeline. One Israeli notable commented that they would ‘’anger our few friends’’, while the US and Arab governments were quick to condemn them.

                                                                                       In March of 1968 Arafat, who was by now the outright leader of Fatah, confronted a section of the Israeli army inside the Jordan Valley. Many Fatah fighters were involved, with backing from members of the Jordanian army, and although they suffered around 150 dead, the fact that the Israeli force left two tanks and a number of trucks behind, the skirmish was regarded by Palestinians as an image of triumphant resistance, which was praised by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. The following year Arafat became chairman of the PLO executive, and would remain so until his death in 2004.

                                                                                       Soon after the end of the 1967 war many Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza obtained work in Israel, where the economy was starting to boom, and within one year there were more than 6,000 such workers. By 1974 the figure had reached 68,000, mainly replacing Jewish workers in menial jobs such as agricultural, kitchens and construction. ‘’Everyone could see the progress the Jews had been able to make’’. Workers were leaving their homes in the morning, many of them lacking electricity and other utilities, to work all day in places where those utilities were taken for granted.

                                                                                       With economic improvements in the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian resistance to Israel moved to other locations, mainly Amman and elsewhere inside Jordan. But as the PLO presence increased inside that country, in 1971 a worried King Hussein decided to rid himself of the problem, because of harsh Israeli retaliations to raids originating from there. The PLO was driven out after some fierce fighting, which resulted in over 4,000 Palestinian losses and more than 2,000 taken prisoner, with some 600 Jordanians killed. A few thousand fled to southern Lebanon where the PLO, along with another group the Palestine Front for the Liberation of Palestine, initiated attacks on Israeli targets.

                                                                                       In one cross-border attack on a school bus twelve Jewish children were killed, followed by more attacks and the hijacking of Israeli planes. The most famous terrorist incident was carried out in 1972 at the Munich Olympic Games where eleven Israeli athletes were captured and killed. The PLO disclaimed all knowledge, but it was later discovered that they did have prior knowledge and that the operation had used ‘’Fatah funds, facilities and personnel’’. Arafat’s view was that ‘’violent political action in the midst of a broad popular movement cannot be termed terrorism’’. The view of Israel’s prime minister Golda Meir was that there would be no returning to the pre-1967 borders, ‘’We want only a minimum of Arab population in the Jordanian territory (the West Bank) it wishes to keep’’. Moshe Dayan’s son Assi thought differently, calling for the return of all the occupied territories as ‘’the price we must pay for a true peace’’.  

                                                                                        During the afternoon of October 6th 1973, the Jewish Day of Atonement, Egyptian and Syrian offensives erupted along the Suez Canal and on the Golan Heights. Tank battles, air strikes and artillery fights on a vast scale took place, something that Israel had not been expecting. Egypt advanced into Sinai, but the tide was shortly turned and eight days later when a UN brokered ceasefire was agreed, the Israeli army was less than fifty miles from Cairo and about twenty miles from Damascus. It had also encircled the Egyptian Third Army on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. Very few Palestinians had taken place in the fighting, nor did any Jordanians. Israeli losses were the highest since 1948, 2,650 dead. Egypt and Syria’s combined lost was about 16,000 fighters. Mistakes in intelligence-gathering was blamed for the lack of foreknowledge, which eventually lead to an official inquiry.

                                                                                        In the following year at an Arab summit in Morocco all twenty-one states agreed to recognise the PLO as the ‘’sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’’. Shortly afterwards Yasser Arafat appeared before the United Nations Assembly in New York where he offered Israel a choice between ‘’ the gun and the olive branch’’, a major boost for Palestinian morale and a large political advance. It also produced a split in Palestinian unity, with some accepting Israel’s right to exist and others arguing for complete liberation. On the Israeli side some simply saw it as PLO ‘’salami tactics’’, where it would slice away at the Jewish state until it was completely removed, with no desire for a two-state solution.

Throughout 1974 raids on Israeli civilian targets continued apace, and in one such raid eighteen people were killed including nine children, while in yet another twenty-one teenagers on a school outing died. In retaliation Israeli air strikes killed sixty Palestinian fighters in southern Lebanon.

                                                                                        In the 1977 election Menachem Begin’s Likud party emerged as the largest political party, with Ariel Sharon appointed as agriculture minister. Although the building of settlements had been taking place for some time, both Begin and Sharon ensured that their pace would be ramped up immediately inside the occupied territories and elsewhere. For ordinary Israeli’s it was a chance to move out of a small apartment into a house, with the attraction of cheap mortgages and tax exemptions. These settlements also functioned as strategic observation points, which helped to enhance security enormously. The number of new settlers in the West Bank had risen to 12,500 by 1980, with all buildings constructed by Palestinian workers who had become an indispensable part of the Israeli labour force, although social intercourse between both sides remained limited.

                                                                                         In November of ‘77 the president of Egypt Anwar Sadat paid a surprise visit to Israel where he was greeted enthusiastically, while the Palestinians were outraged. Shortly afterwards a peace treaty was agreed between the former enemies, resulting in all the land it had lost to Israel in 1967 being returned to Egypt, except the Gaza Strip which was historically part of Palestine. Hopes that the initiative would turn into a far wider Middle East peace settlement did not materialise, with Algeria, Libya, Syria and South Yemen severing all links with Egypt. The PLO leader Yasser Arafat was devastated, but never actually cut off contact with Sadat, while U.S. President Jimmy Carter stated that he wished for a homeland for the Palestinians. Angry statements were issued by the governments of Syria and Iraq and there were a number of attacks on Egyptian embassies, along with protests in Palestinian refugee camps.

                                                                                         During March of 1978 there was a diversion that had nothing to do with peace talks. A thirteen member Fatah squad landed by boat on a beach near Haifa, where they immediately killed an American tourist. Shortly afterwards a bus travelling on the Tel Aviv road was hijacked, and following a chase and shootout 38 Israeli civilians including 13 children were killed, with another 76 wounded. The raid had been approved by Yasser Arafat. A few days later Israel sent 25,000 troops into south Lebanon with the aim of pushing Palestinian groups away from the border. Following a week of fighting a ceasefire was agreed with over 1,100 killed, mainly Palestinians and Lebanese, and with thousands displaced.

                                                                                         Despite the killings many Israeli’s hoped for a better relationship with the Palestinians, and urged Begin to take that path. Over 300 reserve IDF officers sent an open letter to him advising that ‘’A government that prefers the existence of settlements to elimination of this historic conflict with the normalisation of relationships in our region will evoke questions regarding the wisdom of the path we are taking’’. In May 1980 six Israeli settlers were killed in Hebron inside the West Bank, and much Israeli public reaction indicated a lack of sympathy with the settlement projects.

Menachem Begin won a second term as prime minister in 1981 shortly after the surprise bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor near Bagdad. By now it was obvious that Sadat’s initiative regarding Israel would achieve nothing for the Palestinians, and in October he was assassinated by an Islamist gunman. His replacement Hosni Mubarak reaffirmed Egypt’s commitment to peace with Israel, but at the same time settlements that had been built in Sinai were evacuated, not something that would be followed-up for a long time.

                                                                                           In June 1982 Israeli forces moved into Lebanon in an attempt to completely destroy the PLO, following rocket and artillery attacks which had forced Israeli civilians to flee from border towns and villages. In London an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Israeli ambassador to Britain took place, carried out by the Fatah Revolutionary Council, a small Iraqi-backed group. It was rumoured that it was Saddam Hussein’s retaliation for the Israeli bombing of the nuclear reactor. Following a two-month siege of Lebanon, which included the killing of hundreds of Palestinians in two Beirut refugee camps, Yasser Arafat and over 6,000 Fatah fighters left for exile in Tunisia and other Arab countries. Gone from Jordan, and now gone from Lebanon.

                                                                                           Late that same year President Ronald Regan unveiled a plan for Palestinian self-government in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with the former linked to Jordan. It called on a ‘’Palestinian responsibility for internal security’’, and a freeze on settlements. Israel rejected the plan outright and Begin resigned as prime minister exhausted and depressed, with Yitzhak Shamir taking over. After the ‘84 election the Labour and Likud parties came together to form a government with a rotating premiership, Shimon Peres for the first two years and then Shamir. Yitzhak Rabin was appointed defence minister and the IDF was withdrawn to a small ‘’security zone’’ in southern Lebanon. By the following year over 100,000 Palestinians were crossing into Israel every day to work at menial jobs, but killings continued, and in ‘87 Rabin ordered the closure of all Palestinian universities. When a Jewish woman in the West Bank was killed, and her husband and children badly burned by a petrol bomb, settlers rampaged through a nearby town causing havoc.

By now an entire Palestinian generation had grown up knowing nothing else than life under Israeli rule. One young man explained ‘’My father was in his twenties in 1967, and told us that people had benefited from the occupation, at least at first. The Jordanians had put a lot of pressure on us, then the Israeli’s came and let us work in Israel. Suddenly there was more money. No one wanted to revolt. It didn’t mean that we liked Israel. By the time the Likud came to power, the younger people didn’t see things the same way that their fathers had’’. Forty percent of the Palestinian workforce was employed in Israel, but economic conditions were not so good now and the number of jobs available was declining, especially for the growing number of university graduates.

In December ‘87 a genuine accident involving an Israeli truck which caused the death of four Palestinian men was claimed by Fatah to have been a deliberate ‘’revenge attack’’, and was turned into the most widespread disturbance in many years. An intifada was declared, a popular uprising against Israeli rule. Roads were blocked with burning tyres and IDF soldiers were attacked with petrol bombs, bricks and iron bars, carried out by Fatah, the DFLP and some newer smaller groups. Gaza City and the West Bank resembled a war zone and strikes were called which damaged both the Israeli and Palestinian economies. After three months almost one hundred Palestinians had been killed with many injured, and also some Israeli deaths. Quite a number of Arab collaborators were killed as well.

There were many resignations by Palestinians serving in the Israeli police force, although that was not followed by the departure of any of the 18,000 employed in the civil administration. As the war continued, at an emergency summit in Algiers Arab leaders pledged support for the intifada and offered generous financial help. A short time later King Hussein of Jordan announced his ‘’disengagement’’ from the West Bank. At that time also one of Arafat’s closest advisers floated the idea of direct negotiations with Israel, and called for Palestinian independence within the boundaries established by the UN in 1947. This was immediately rejected by the majority of Palestinian leaders.

Towards the end of 1988 the Palestine National Council convened in Algiers where Arafat announced the creation of the state of Palestine alongside Israel, as per the UN partition resolution of 1947. For some veterans it was simply an act of surrender ‘’Thank God my father did not live to see this day’’. But the Palestinians had seized the moral high ground, ‘’A state for us and a state for Israel. That’s how things should be’’.

Official Israeli statements dismissed the idea outright as ‘’ambiguity and double talk, while no unilateral step can substitute for a negotiated settlement’’. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN and a recently elected Likud MP declared ‘’We’re in the middle of a PLO propaganda offensive. The whole world is focused on what Arafat is going to say, but they have ignored the PLO’s grand strategy, which is a staged, salami policy to liquidate Israel. They are signing declarations of peace as tools of war’’.

Shortly afterwards, at UN headquarters in Geneva, Arafat stated ‘’the right of all parties in the Middle East conflict to exist in peace and security, including the state of Palestine, Israel and their neighbours. We totally renounce all forms of terrorism’’. As a result the US then declared that it was prepared to hold ‘’substantive dialogue’’ with PLO representatives. Shamir’s response was that there would be no negotiations with the PLO, ‘’Once they talked about throwing the Jews into the sea, and the rest of the world said that the Jews were heroes. Today they don’t say that any more, but nothing has changed. Arabs are Arabs. They control 22 states in this region. And the Jews are the Jews. And they have one small state with a lot of problems. The sea is the same sea and the goal remains the same’’.

Nor were all Palestinians happy with the new direction of the PLO, none more so than the Muslim Brotherhood who soon surpassed it in indoctrination of a fanatic zeal, along with the much smaller Islamic Jihad which was affiliated with Fatah and had links to Iran. Late 1987 had seen the appearance of Hamas who declared ‘’Every drop of blood shall become a Molotov cocktail, a time bomb, and a roadside charge that will rip out the intestines of the Jews’’.

On a dark day in January of 1989 Israel’s prime minister Shamir arrived at an army base near Nablus in the West Bank where he met and spoke to IDF paratroopers who talked bitterly of having to do the dirty work of crushing the uprising. One soldier told him ‘’In order to enforce order we must be brutally violent against people who are innocent of any crime. I violate army regulations every day, and this weakens me. Everything we do bolsters the intifada’’.

Petrol bombs continued to be thrown, and curfews continued to be imposed. Several raids across the Lebanese border took place, which were the work of Syrian-backed groups opposed to Arafat, while those Israeli’s of the left and centre wished to see a significant response to the PLO’s declared position. Shamir warned of a civil war if divisions deepened, but ended any ambiguity by stating that he would not accept US conditions for negotiation, and also declared that settlements would continue. The PLO called him out for making no effort to achieve peace.

Despite the problems and the violence life went on as normal for many. In 1989 almost 90 percent of Palestinians from Gaza were still working, although the figure for the West Bank was now only 56 percent. The Israeli movement ‘’Peace Now’’, which was gaining more and more support, called for opposition to violence and an end to occupation. Another group, A Council for Peace and Security, was led by thirty retired IDF generals who stated that occupying the West Bank was no longer a military necessity, but Shamir suggested that compromise with the Palestinians was not possible. The intifada ‘’was a form of warfare against Israel and against the Arabs who want to live in peace with us. Ultimately, it was a continuation of the war against Israel’s existence’’.

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Such is the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the late 19th century until 1989. During the intervening years, and up until the present day, nothing has really changed. Tit for tat killings are still the norm and the impasse remains, with no end in sight.

Some historical highlights from the intervening years included the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. The Palestinians hailed Saddam Hussein as a hero who provided generous financial support for the intifada, but because of that and following his, over 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which destroyed many thriving immigrant communities and caused serious financial hardship in the occupied territories.

Then there was the assassination of Israeli prime minister Rabin in November 1995, by a right-wing Jewish extremist. The Oslo peace accord promised improvements in the occupied territories, but led to little in the end, mainly because of killings and revenge attacks. A number of bombings were carried out in Jerusalem and elsewhere, while the IDF sealed off the West Bank and Gaza and arrested many members of Hamas, resulting in thousands of Palestinians being cut off from their jobs in Israel.

Benyamin Netanyahu became prime minister in 1996 and formed what turned out to be the most right-wing government in Israeli history, pledging to support ‘’pioneering settlements’’. He was succeeded by Ehud Barak in 1999 who, during the following year attended a Camp David summit with President Clinton and Arafat, which also came to nothing. In 2001 Barak was replaced by Ariel Sharon who soon decided to construct a wall or barrier between Israel and the West Bank, in order to prevent suicide bombings. But Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli assassinations continued.

In 2004 Sharon announced that he had decided to withdraw all Israeli troops and settlements from the Gaza Strip, which was greeted by opposition from the country’s right. His decision to act unilaterally without prior talks with the Palestinian Authority showed his complete mistrust of Arafat, and was likely influenced by Barak’s 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon, which had been greeted by popular acclaim.

The 75 year-old Arafat had been in poor health for some time and passed away in a Paris hospital in November of 2004. Palestinians were both sad and relieved at the passing of the man who had symbolised their cause. Sad at his death, and relieved that change might now happen after so many years of getting nowhere. Shortly afterwards Mahmoud Abbas was elected as head of the PA and chairman of the PLO.

During the summer of 2005 the evacuation of Gaza took place, although many of the settlers had to be removed by the IDF. Hamas hung out banners proclaiming ‘’The blood of the martyrs has led to liberation’’, at the same time as 2,800 settler homes were razed to the ground by Israeli demolition crews. By now the PA was depending on EU and US aid, over one billion dollars a year, a remarkable amount. A prosperous new elite was created, with new hotels, restaurants, apartment blocks, offices and villas transforming the town of Ramallah, while the situation for the ordinary people remained the same. PA corruption was only too obvious, and most of the people swung behind Hamas.

Late in 2005 Sharon suffered a massive stroke, lapsing into a coma from which he would die some years later. During the summer of 2006 rockets were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the IDF replying with shells and air raids. In support of Hamas the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon mounted raids on Israel’s northern border, resulting in an Israel ground invasion which caused 1,300 Lebanese deaths, mainly civilians, and 165 Israeli’s, including 44 civilians. The Gaza and Lebanon attacks had been launched from territories which Israel had recently withdrawn from unilaterally. By its actions Hezbollah angered the conservative Sunni governments in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, who were very hostile to Iran and its Lebanese Shia ally.

In July of 2007 President Bush arranged for new peace talks to be held in Maryland, which was attended by Abbas and the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, along with representatives from Saudi Arabia and Syria. At the same time the IDF carried out a number of incursions into Gaza after rockets had been fired from there, mainly by Islamic Jihad. It appeared that there would be no end to the hostilities.

During January 2008 over 500 rockets and mortars were fired from Gaza which injured a number of Israeli’s, while almost 80 Palestinians were killed. Some months later Abbas and Olmert met for the final time, with the latter offering a ‘’take-it-or-leave-it deal’’ which included an almost total withdrawal from the West Bank. Israel would retain 6.3 % of the territory in order to keep control of the major settlements, with the Palestinians being compensated by a swap of equivalent Israeli land. The Old City of Jerusalem was to be placed under international control. Whether Olmert had gone beyond his brief will never be known for certain, but he was facing criminal charges resulting from his time as mayor of Jerusalem. In any case Abbas did not accept the offer, which may have been a chance for a two-state solution.

With the country still being hit by rocket fire from inside Gaza, and following months of intelligence-gathering on Hamas leaders, and also information regarding tunnels, bases, weapon silos, etc., Israel launched an attack on December 27th 2008 that included troops, F16’s, helicopters and drones. An Israeli spokesman stated that the IDF was defending its country’s civilians, which was true, but it was also killing high numbers of non-combatant Palestinians in the process. The UN accused both sides of committing war-crimes, while Abbas was said to have urged Israel to ‘’continue the military campaign and overthrow Hamas’’. When Israel declared a ceasefire it still appeared that there was no way out of the status quo.

                                                                                           At Cairo University in June of 2009 US President Barack Obama stated that he did not accept the legitimacy of Israeli settlements, which he claimed undermined peace efforts. He also appealed to Hamas to abandon violence and had appointed George Mitchell, well known for his effort in the Northern Ireland peace talks, as his Middle East envoy. Netanyahu was back as Israeli prime minister and he called for the Palestinians to formally recognise Israel as a Jewish state, before negotiating a two-state solution. He accepted that there would be a Palestinian state, although it would have to be fully demilitarised, with no army, missiles or control of its own airspace, while Jerusalem would remain Israeli territory. One Palestinian politician called the idea ‘’a ghetto, not a state’’, while another stated ‘’I will not be a Zionist. No Palestinian will’’. . Gaza erupted once again in November 2012, and ended eight days later with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that prevented yet another Israeli ground-invasion. While rockets hit Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for the first time, the US financed Iron Dome anti-missile system proved largely effective. Obama had put settlements under a harsher spotlight than any other US president, but in 2013 Netanyahu saw to it that settlement construction hit a six-year high, and announced the building of 1,600 housing units in Jerusalem during a visit by Vice-President Joe Biden.

                                                                                           In June of 2014 three Israeli teenage boys were kidnapped and killed, with Hamas denying responsibility but hailing the killings. Yet another war on Gaza commenced and over 55 days it suffered massive material and human loss. Because rockets were repeatedly being fired from residential areas inside the Strip, many civilians pleaded with Hamas fighters to stop the shelling. Netanyahu’s opponents complained that his management of the situation was a ‘’euphemism for maintaining a status quo of settlement and occupation, allowing no progress’’. Obama admitted in 2015 that his administration had failed to help resolve the conflict.

By the autumn of 2014 it appeared as though another intifada was about to take place following a spate of ‘’lone-wolf’’ attacks on Israeli civilians, mainly in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Inside a year 28 Israeli’s and 2 Americans were killed, while almost 200 Palestinians died, the majority of them in attacks on Israeli targets. When Netanyahu was elected for the third time as prime minister an Arab MP commented ‘’This country is Jewish and democratic. Democratic towards Jews, and Jewish towards Arabs’’.

The number of people on both sides of the divide who backed a two-state solution remained high, although it was beginning to shrink. Polling in December of 2016 showed support from 55% of Israeli’s and 44% of Palestinians, which was down from 59% and 51% the previous year. But Netanyahu never explained how a Palestinian state worth talking about could be created. As one Israeli journalist wrote ‘’One state for two peoples. First-class citizens, and second-class citizens’’. The Palestinian Authority had failed to obtain anything by negotiating with Israel, but continued to provide security co-operation, something that had undermined its authority and credibility. It was also regarded by most Palestinians as corrupt. Nor did it appear likely that any future Israeli prime minister would go far enough beyond Netanyahu’s position to make any significant difference, which boosted the appeal for armed resistance and also undermined the quest for independent statehood alongside Israel. . While it appeared that the acceptance of a two-state solution was dying, an alternative was being talked about, a single bi-national state in which Muslims, Jews and Christians would enjoy equal rights. In 2017, according to a joint Israeli-Palestinian poll, that idea was supported by 36% of Palestinians and 19% of Israeli Jews, and by 56% of Israel’s Arab citizens. That plan had always been supported by the small liberal wing of the Zionist party and was still being put forward by them, together with support from many Palestinians. It appeared to be the only way to reconcile deeply rooted historical grievances, while models given were South Africa, Belgium, Northern Ireland and Switzerland.

Donald Trump has recently claimed that if he were still President he would have solved the Israeli-Palestine problem by now. However, during his term as President he saw to it that his long-standing pledge to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was enacted. Together with the Palestinians, the Israeli’s were by now facing an uncertain future, despite their many advantages.

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On October 7th 2023 a few thousand Hamas fighters broke through the security fence separating the Gaza Strip and Israel, where they ended up killing more than 1,200 Jews, injuring over 2,000, and taking almost 250 hostages. The true details regarding the majority of the killings were absolutely horrendous, and although most of them were confirmed by international journalists, that did not stop many people questioning their authenticity. Five days later Hamas stated they had not killed any civilians inside Israel!                                                        . Immediately after the October 7th bloodbath, the prime minister of Qatar praised the actions of Hamas, a group that the country had always supported and where many of its leaders resided. The 2023 Football World Cup had been held in Qatar where, like most Muslim countries, civil-rights for women and gays are completely unheard of. The singer Rod Stewart had turned down an offer of one million pounds to perform there during the football tournament. In to-days over-commercial world there are not many singers, golfers, footballers, or anyone else, who are blessed with such a moral compass. Take a bow Rod. Not so Beyonce or David Beckham.                                                                                                                                                . Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states are nowadays presenting themselves to the West as ideal destinations for wonderful sun-drenched holidays. Nothing unusual there, and while its not going to happen overnight, oil will be almost a thing of the past in thirty years time. But something that those countries are not about to advertise is their dreadful civil-rights record, and if you have no particular interest in that subject, enjoy your holiday.

                                                                                   Our former President Mary Robinson, who for much of her adult life fought to achieve civil-rights for women in this country, was made a fool of some years back when she paid a visit to the UAE in an attempt to check on the well-being or otherwise of a daughter of the ruling family. Mrs Robinson later admitted that she had made a mistake. That particular daughter, together with a sister who has not been seen for a number of years, if she is even still alive, are for all intents and purposes being held as prisoners. The capital Dubai is home to many well-known international criminals who enjoy a care-free life-style there, including the infamous Kinahan gang, who, amongst other activities, provide financial support for Iranian-backed terrorism.  But do enjoy a carefree holiday in that lovely country.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     . Saudi Arabia is run by the rulers son, Mohammed bin Salman, the same man who came up with the plan to have the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi fooled into entering his countries embassy in Turkey, where he was immediately murdered and his body dismembered. Official public executions are carried out inside that country every week or so, and are witnessed by thousands who appear to enjoy them as much as if they were attending a regular game of football. But do have an extremely enjoyable holiday there.

                                                                                 Returning to Israel and the Gaza Strip; Following the slaughter on October 7th Israel launched a major attack on that coastal area with the intention of eliminating Hamas. At the same time rockets were still being fired into Israel from inside there. The barbaric and sadistic rampage carried out on that October day, along with the kidnappings and the continuing rocket-fire into Israel, are war-crimes.

. Can the deaths of so many Palestinian civilians inside the Gaza Strip be described as a war-crime? Obviously it is Israel’s intention to wipe out Hamas completely, thus removing the threat of yet another invasion and yet another slaughter. Within the cramped conditions of Gaza City rockets are being fired from close to peoples homes, and from even alongside them. Hamas does not worry about such niceties, and simply use the innocent victims to accuse Israel of genocide, and take away any legitimacy for its actions.

                                                                                 But are those deaths considered war-crimes? So many deaths are undoubtable worrying and very tragic, and it has to be said that the IDF should have taken far more care when replying in kind. While Israel’s reaction is completely understandable, the protection of civilians is of the utmost importance and should have been Israel’s first priority. The disproportion of innocent civilian deaths to those of Hamas fighters (even though the true figures on both sides are simply unknown) clearly indicates a war-crime.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     . Although many refer to the Palestinian deaths as genocide, that is not an accurate description. The systematic extermination of an entire people or national group is simply not Israel’s intention, despite the attempt of most Arab states and supporters to accuse them of such. Those same Arab states have never even made one really serious attempt to help the Palestinians, but they clearly have no problem in using Israel as a handy whipping-post, while at the same time Israel has done itself no favours in the matter.                                                                      . The religious psychos of Hamas and other Islamic groups have only one goal, and that is the complete destruction of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. But when the IDF achieves its task of eliminating Hamas inside the Gaza Strip, there will need to be serious discussions afterwards between both sides. Which will not turn out to be an easy matter.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   . One week after Israeli ground-forces entered Gaza a rocket exploded in the parking-lot of the al-Ahli hospital, killing and injuring many people. Afterwards, and with Israel condemned for the atrocity, large protest-marches were held in cities around the world. Some days later newsreel footage from American and Israeli cameras, and also  from an al-Jazeera camera inside Gaza, showed that the rocket had been fired from close to the rear of the hospital, that it had malfunctioned, and had then landed and exploded in the hospital car-park. But the anti-Israeli protests continued. Even high-spec rockets can malfunction, although the somewhat cheaper rockets used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad are far more prone to do so.  . A follow-up to that story is interesting. Within a day of the truth coming out, a press-conference was called by the Palestinian Authority, which as always was held under the watchful eye of Hamas. Any statements about to be made from inside Gaza, even those from hospital spokesmen, have to be okayed first by Hamas. Six hospital workers were paraded for the media and the spokesman stated that, just prior to the rocket exploding, the IDF had phoned to say that they were about to bomb the hospital! Unlikely, to say the very least! 

                                                                                 Many people have died inside the Gaza Strip, including members of the IDF and Hamas fighters, but there is no doubt that the vast majority have been civilians. Hamas came up with death-figures that would prove to the world what savages the Israeli’s really were, and that they intended to wipe out every Palestinian inside the Strip. Simply not true, but the reaction to the figures provided has been devastating for Israel. And no matter what the true figures really are, numerous civilians have certainly died.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            . Some weeks into the conflict a couple of hospitals were running short of fuel to operate their generators, prompting the IDF to deliver fuel to them, something Hamas initially claimed had never happened. When it became blatantly obvious that fuel had been delivered they then complained that only a small amount had been given. The IDF itself states that Hamas has plenty of fuel stored away for its own use, although how true that is nobody knows. But they certainly have enough fuel to continue firing rockets into Israel. Although most of their claims are obvious lies many journalists accept them, including some of the people who work for RTE. . On one occasion a female RTE television interviewer questioned an Israeli spokesman about the appallingly high death-rate inside the Gaza Strip, and appeared to be stunned when told that those figures had been provided by Hamas. Did she really think that the World Health Organisation sent some of its people around the war-zone counting bodies? Because Hamas certainly do not! Then there was the male RTE television interviewer who took the word of a hospital spokesman when he stated that there were no Hamas fighters inside the building or nearby. A short time later a number of Hamas fighters and IDF soldiers were engaged in a gun-battle just outside the hospital walls.

                                                                                  Soon afterwards a collection of rifles, hand-grenades, and other items were discovered inside a section of al-Shifa hospital, while a tunnel-entrance was also located inside the compound. Hamas continued to issue statements that it had no connection whatsoever with any of the hospitals, but its absolutely certain that Israel had made sure of its facts before going public, for obvious reasons. Israel also has possession of a film showing two of the hostages abducted on October 7th being taken through al-Shifa corridors on that very day, surrounded by Hamas gunmen and witnessed by a number of hospital workers. That particular breach of the 1949 Geneva Convention is also a war-crime.

                                                                                  Back in 2007 Human Rights Watch stated that Hamas had fired a rocket at its rival Fatah from inside the al-Shifa complex, and in 2015 Amnesty International reported that Hamas had used an empty outpatient clinic inside the same hospital to interrogate and torture people suspected of collaborating with Israel. Its quite obvious that statements from Hamas, even under the guise of the Palestinian Authority, should not be taken at face value.

                                                                                   Advice and even demands from Irish government ministers to Israel is not a great idea. The help and support given to the Jews from this country after Hitler came to power in 1933, and throughout the 2nd World War and afterwards, was something that never happened. And then, just to rub salt into an open wound, our international reputation was dishonoured when this country’s prime minister commiserated on the death of Hitler to the Nazi Ambassador.

                                                                                   Although most countries refused to take in Jews prior to, and even after the commencement of the war, as news of Nazi atrocities began to filter out during 1943 some of those same countries subsequently changed their minds. In America President Roosevelt established the ‘’War Refugee Board’’ in January of 1944, so as to assist anyone persecuted by the Nazi’s. Within a year of the wars end the US had taken in some 57,000 Jews, while the UK took in many also. Neutral countries including Norway, Switzerland and Denmark, also helped out. Today many of our leaders are telling Israel what it should and should not do, those very same Jewish people whom we had previously turned our backs on.

                                                                                   Down through the years we have attempted to rewrite our history regarding those very same war years. While we don’t actually claim to have won the war we like to think that we played a large part in it. While we were strictly neutral from the very start, we now like to claim that we backed the Allies from the word go. The truth is that from early 1944, at a time when it was clear that Nazi Germany was going to be defeated, we did decide to support the Allies.

Allied aircraft were then allowed the use of the Donegal Corridor, with captured German airmen being imprisoned for the remainder of the war, while captured Allied airmen were sent to Northern Ireland where they immediately rejoined their various units. There was also extensive co-operation between Irish and Allied intelligence, including weather reports. The choosing of the day for the Normandy landings was made by the Supreme Commander Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the help of a weather report from Blacksod Bay in county Mayo.

At the very start of the war many thousands of Irishmen and women enlisted in the British army, navy, and RAF, while many more enlisted in other countries. Not one of them ever received any recognition for their bravery from their own country, they were simply forgotten heroes. As for the over one thousand soldiers who had left the Irish Defence Forces in order to join up, they were simply treated as ‘’deserters’’ on their return.

                                                                                    Anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head once again following October 7th. In fact it had never really gone away, just simply lying dormant awaiting such an opportunity. It can be traced back to the time that Christianity emerged as a major belief and force. One passage in the Bible states that the Jews had ‘’sought to kill Jesus’’, while in another passage it is claimed that Christ called them ‘’the children of the devil’’. Generations of Christian leaders have spoken out vehemently against the Jews, so the persecution of them became commonplace in a medieval Europe dominated by Christian culture.

                                                                                    In many countries Jews were banned from owning land, from practising certain professions, and from living where they wished to live. One of the few jobs open to them was that of moneylender, since Christians were prohibited from practising ‘’usury’’. But the Jewish moneylender subsequently became a hated figure. It was written of them at the time that they were ‘’nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury’’.

                                                                                    During the years leading up to the Great War latent anti-Semitism was very strong throughout Europe, and the amount of violence suffered by Russian Jews was truly horrific, of which there were many examples. In one Soviet Union city in 1905, around 1,600 Jewish homes were destroyed while thousands of Jews were killed or wounded.

                                                                                    Immediately after the ending of that war a Communist uprising commenced in Germany, which was finally defeated some six months later by right-wing paramilitaries. A number of the key Communist revolutionaries had been Jewish, so the entire race was blamed for attempting to overthrow the government, while also being blamed for the loss of the war, agreeing to the terms of the Versailles peace treaty, and participating in the Weimar government which presided over the hyperinflation of the early 1920’s. It was against this background of a lost war and enormous discontent that a new political force was to emerge in that country. The National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis.

Its often said that we in Ireland do not really hate the Jews, that because we were once colonised we simply love the Palestinians. There is no doubt that many pro-Palestinian marches both here and around the world are carried out by people who have the true interests of the Gaza residents at heart. Unfortunately many of the marches are also peopled by Hamas supporters who celebrate October 7th, and who carry placards attesting to that view. The removal of photos of the Jewish people who had been kidnapped on that infamous October day, including children and the elderly, which had been erected in many towns and cities, particularly London, is simply horrendous. On social-media its a free-for-all, as usual, with numerous people texting that ‘’Hitler Was Right’’.

Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli marches are the expression of people who have the obvious legal right to do so, but why were there no such marches with regard to other serious conflicts in different parts of the world? In Syria, for instance, where for almost five years Russia had used chemical weapons on the country’s ‘’rebels’’, who were made up of anyone opposed to the dictator Bashar al-Assad. Putin has overseen the slaughter of thousands of Syrian civilians, the displacement of millions, and the destruction of many towns and villages, while more than three-million Syrian refugees are living along the country’s border with Turkey. Oh dear, if only Assad was a Jew, then the human-rights protesters might well have shown sympathy.

Then there is the little matter of Putin’s misadventure in the Ukraine, where a real genocide has been taking place, and from the very start of the conflict. The Red Army is renowned for torturing, raping, and executing civilians, far and way beyond any other man’s army. During its trek across east Germany near the end of the 2nd World War, with Berlin as its destination, it became notorious for the vast number of rapes it inflicted. Now it is deliberately shelling apartment-blocks, houses, schools, hospitals and whatever else takes its fancy, inside the Ukraine. Hospitals were always one of their favourite targets, as years ago they had flattened over 60% of all hospitals in Afghanistan. In one of the great Russian novels, set during a much earlier war, a young Russian hussar proclaims ‘’I am convinced that we Russians must die or conquer’’. Times haven’t changed. Oh, if we could only find some Jewish blood in Putin’s veins.

Where were the civil-rights people when thousands of very brave Iranian women and men risked their lives recently against that country’s brutal regime. The very same regime that supports and finances Hezbollah and Hamas, and whose fervent wish is to wipe Israel entirely off the map. It also manages to supply a vast quantity of drones for Russia use in the Ukraine.

And why is it that when China committed genocide against its ethnic minority of Muslim Uighurs in the country a couple of years back, we saw no large-scale worldwide support for those particular Muslims?

Racism is dreadful and so very hurtful to members of whatever particular group is being targeted, whether they be blacks, Jews, or any other race or minority. You do not need to be a racist to call for a pause or ceasefire in Gaza. But since October 7th racism has definitely become more pronounced worldwide, none more so than in the US, the UK, and in many European countries. Even right here in Ireland. Free speech is one thing, but these are simply hate-crimes.

Benyamin Netanyahu has been much-criticised for reacting as he did to the slaughter back in October, and even told that he should have turned the other cheek. Surely pie-in-the-sky thinking, as any other prime minister would have done the very same. Iran and Hezbollah will not drag the world into another world war, as some ‘’experts’’ predict, but they will certainly have to be dealt with. While many feel that the United Nations should have intervened in the Ukraine-Russia conflict from the very start, hopefully it will decide to contribute something worthwhile to the Middle East conflict later on. Even the Russian demagogue must realise that threatening nuclear weapons in this day and age is simply plain stupid, along with being quite dangerous!

Apart from a number of our politicians, we also have President Michael D. Higgins commenting on everything, left right and centre, even though our constitution clearly states that he has no right to do so. We have a foreign minister who is there to take care of such matters, not some loose-cannon residing inside the Phoenix Park. I am often reminded of what our writer and poet Patrick Kavanagh had to say about the Presidency; ‘’Make the Presidency an honorary post to be given to some celebrated Irishman at a nominal salary’

Benyamin Netanyahu was once known to have commented; ‘’If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there will be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there will be no more Israel’’. Sad, but true. And while peace may come ‘’dropping slow’’, it will indeed come if enough wise heads prevail following the demise of Hamas.

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Research for this article is attributed mainly to two excellent books, ‘’The Holocaust’’ by Laurence Rees (2017) and ‘’Enemies and Neighbours’’ by Ian Black (2017). Plus many newspaper articles and television documentaries.

Copyright 2023. R. W. Walsh