What has Celtic Football Club to do with Palestine?
There is no obvious connection. What has Sinn Féin to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict?
On the surface nothing. Why did the IRA ally itself with the PLO, viewing the
two armed struggles as the same? Again, it is hard to see any similarity, yet
Palestinian nationalism and Irish nationalism were closely connected.
Why is the Irish state less supportive of Israel than
any other western government and the one most likely to be sympathetic to the
Palestinians. It’s hard to think of anywhere that would be less interested in
the Middle East. Ireland until recently had few Muslims and few Jewish people. The
Middle East conflict would appear to concern Ireland no more than the Faroe Islands.
People have different views on international affairs. Not
every Muslim, nor indeed every Arab wants the destruction of Israel. Some people
on the far left can see that their values differ from those of Hamas. Lots of
Celtic fans are just interested in the football and support the club because
their friends or family did. But it is reasonable to suggest that the people
most likely to support a free Palestine are Muslims, the far left, Celtic fans
and people whose family are from Ireland.
The Irish sympathy with Palestinians is because many
see similarities between the history of Ireland and the history of Palestine. “The
Irish were occupied for a thousand years, were the victims of British colonisation
and British rule and were oppressed by the British state. In the same way the
Palestinians had their land stolen by Israel which still occupies it. Palestine
too was the victim of Jewish colonisation and Palestinians continue to be
oppressed by the Jewish state. Just as the IRA freed Ireland from British oppression
from the Shannon River to the Irish Sea, so Hamas will free Palestine from the river
Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea.”
I don’t know what it is like to be educated in
Ireland, but history teaching appears to be quite unlike teaching anywhere else
in Europe. It is closer to propaganda where the wicked British are blamed for
everything. No one else reads European history in this way. The French blame
the Germans less despite being invaded three times since 1870, than the Irish
blame the British.
Britain and Ireland in Roman times spoke two forms of
Celtic. Ireland spoke the Goldeic branch Britain spoke the Brittonic branch. In
the course of the next thousand years Britain moved from being largely Celtic
speaking to being largely Anglo-Saxon (Old English) speaking. Celtic was
gradually pushed towards Wales and the northwest of Scotland. After the Norman
Conquest we ceased to speak Old English and gradually modern English evolved.
But it would be ludicrous to suggest that the Celtic
Britons were occupied first by the wicked colonising Anglo Saxons and that we
are still under the Norman Yoke that forced us to speak English.
But the history of Ireland is not essentially
different from that of Britain. A Celtic speaking country in Roman times
gradually was settled by Vikings, Angles, Saxons and then Normans and in the
course of the next thousand years became primarily an English-speaking country
for that reason.
Ireland was no more occupied than Britain was. Norman
kings and their descendants ruled Britain and ruled Ireland too. British people
had no more choice of who their king was than Irish people did.
British and Irish people have each settled in the
other’s island. The Irish Scoti supplanted the Picts later waves of migration
in the 19th and early 20th century meant that cities like Dundee, Glasgow,
Edinburgh, London and Liverpool had large Irish populations.
If you look at the names of famous Irish people many
have British names. Gerry Adams, Michael Collins, Oscar Wilde and others would
not be in Ireland at all if a British ancestor had not moved there and no doubt
oppressed people called O'Connor.
Ireland wasn’t occupied it was part of the UK. The fact
that it later decided to split no more means that it was occupied than that Belgium
was occupied by the Netherlands before they split or that Slovakia was occupied
by the Czech Republic. No one in Europe speaks this way because it is
ahistorical. Rulers and boundaries have changed repeatedly in history. Poles
don’t say that Gdansk was occupied by the Germans. Danes don’t say that
Schleswig Holstein is under occupation because it used to be part of Denmark.
Anyone who tried to speak like this would be laughed at.
But just as the narrative about Ireland leads Celtic
fans, Sinn Féin and the Irish state ludicrously to blame Britain for
everything, it also leads them to blame the Jews for everything.
There are two main centres of Jewish population in the
world today, Israel and the United States. Both are the result of migration. But
it was no more unjust for Jews to go to the United States which used to belong
to Native Americans than it was for them to go to the Middle East. There are
any number of modern states which exist because of migration. In Biblical times
there were no Hungarians in Hungary, no Turks in Turkey and no Arabs in
Palestine. Japan settled its northern island Hokkaido in the 19th century. The
USA conquered much of its territory from Mexico. Russia spread from Muscovy to
Vladivostok, but no one says it occupies Siberia.
Modern Israel exists because of Zionism, the desire of
Jews to have their own country in the land that they were driven away from in
antiquity. You cannot therefore say that you are antizionist but not anti-Israel.
Without Zionism there would be no Israel. If you want Israel to cease to exist because
you oppose Zionism, then you want one of the two largest centres of Judaism to
cease to exist. That puts you next to Wannsee.
But Israel doesn’t exist just because of Zionism. If
the Israelis had been defeated in 1948 there would be no Israel. Those Jews who
survived would have been scattered just as they had at the fall of the Temple.
Israel exists in its present borders because the Arab
world tried continually to eradicate it by means of war. But the borders of
every European state also exist by means of war. Germany conquered Alsace
Loraine in 1871. France won it back after the First World War. The USA has the
borders it has because of wars with Britain, Mexico and the Native Americans
who lived there first.
There is nothing unique about Israel. Jews migrated to
Palestine and won wars. Palestinians were displaced. But those same
Palestinians also migrated there. The original Philistines from which the word
Palestine derives were neither Muslims, nor did they speak Arabic.
The attitude to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
uniquely prejudiced and never more so than when Sinn Féin, Celtic fans and
Irish people in general view it ludicrously through the lens of the wicked
British versus the noble Irish.
Israel’s right to exist is because it is sovereign
nation state. It exists because of migration, but so does Celtic Football club.
So does Ireland. So does everywhere.
Israel has the right to defend itself when attacked,
just like every other nation state. It has the right within international law
to defeat its enemy.
The history of Israel is not unique. It is
commonplace. It’s not much different from the history of the USA. The main
difference is that Muslims for religious reasons won’t accept the loss of territory
that used to be Muslim. This is why everyone marches about Palestine, no one
marches about Yemen.
But Israel and Israelis are treated uniquely. Celtic
fans who don’t care one little bit about other conflicts care uniquely about a
conflict involving Jews. Muslims who have benefitted from migration to live in
Britain oppose Jews moving to one tiny corner of the Middle East. They didn’t
care at all if one group of Muslims bombed or displaced another in Syria. Sinn
Féin calls for a cease fire because civilians are dying yet supported the IRA’s
campaign against civilians and didn’t call for a ceasefire until 1994. Irish
bombing civilians good, but Israel bad. To think these people might form the
next government of Ireland.
Ireland needs to grow up. You have been independent
for over one hundred years, stop blaming Brits and Jews for everything. Stop
supporting terrorists. Start behaving like a normal western democracy rather than
an extension of the Gaza Strip.
Celtic fans need to stick to football.
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