Identification with Israel/Palestine
This post is essentially a delayed response to Bartholow's post regarding identification with causes, movements, groups etc. outside of NI. I've been meaning to comment on this post for a while, but didn't feel that I could get beyond making a banal remark about the siege mentality of the loyalists and the affinity of the republicans for movements of national liberation. I did, however, stumble across the following passage about the Israel/Palestine question in Glenn Patterson's book, Lapsed Protestant:
"In fact, the parallels between the two conflicts are so well developed in the minds of most Northern Irish people as to have passed over into their own country's sectarian iconography. In various parts of Catholic west Belfast, therefore, you will come across murals depicting the PLO and the IRA as comrades in arms (and indeed throughout the 1970s the local press regulary carried reports of republicans receiving training in camps in Lebanon); Protestants, meanwhile, have traditionally admired the Israelis for their uncompromising response to what they both regarded as terrorism. In my teens many Protestants wore (and perhaps many still wear) the Star of David, each of its six points being said to represent one of the counties of Northern Ireland. For a time my local member of parliament in south Belfast was a man, a minister of the chruch, who claimed, apparently in all seriousness, that the Ulster Protestants were descendants of the lost tribe of Israel and as such had an unshakable claim to their six county state" (p. 177, emphasis added).
Patterson then notes that the MP was assassinated by "five men with a very different idea of the arithmetic of homeland," i.e. republicans.
I welcome your thoughts, conclusions, and ongoing debate on this question.
Bartholow's Post
"In fact, the parallels between the two conflicts are so well developed in the minds of most Northern Irish people as to have passed over into their own country's sectarian iconography. In various parts of Catholic west Belfast, therefore, you will come across murals depicting the PLO and the IRA as comrades in arms (and indeed throughout the 1970s the local press regulary carried reports of republicans receiving training in camps in Lebanon); Protestants, meanwhile, have traditionally admired the Israelis for their uncompromising response to what they both regarded as terrorism. In my teens many Protestants wore (and perhaps many still wear) the Star of David, each of its six points being said to represent one of the counties of Northern Ireland. For a time my local member of parliament in south Belfast was a man, a minister of the chruch, who claimed, apparently in all seriousness, that the Ulster Protestants were descendants of the lost tribe of Israel and as such had an unshakable claim to their six county state" (p. 177, emphasis added).
Patterson then notes that the MP was assassinated by "five men with a very different idea of the arithmetic of homeland," i.e. republicans.
I welcome your thoughts, conclusions, and ongoing debate on this question.
posted by Jim at 11:06 AM
1 Comments:
I never realised there was this connection between the Loyalists/Republicans and Israelis/Palestinians.
I find it fascinating that seemingly disconnected peoples can find such affinity with each other's causes.
It's inspiring and depressing at the same time.
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