Saturday 5 October 2024

Them Poor Arabs Two By Two?

The Zionists would later try and assassinate him, but when the Black and Tans had finished in Ireland, then Winston Churchill deployed them to Palestine to enforce the Balfour Declaration, placing them among the generally unsung fathers of the State of Israel. Still, what goes around, comes around.

How long can an interim last? The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has been going since 1978. Deployed, of course, in the South, one of the biggest contributors to it has been, and remains, the Irish Army, which is stationed all the way down by the Border.

The Irish have suffered the most casualties in UNIFIL, with their 48 fatalities comprising more than half of all 88 fallen members of the Irish Defence Forces since 1960. Who bombs Southern Lebanon? Whoever it is, they will soon kill a great many more of the Irish, who are refusing to abandon their posts.

While this has long been an element in forming Irish public opinion around these matters, it has had no impact in general in Britain, in the United States, or in Australia, nor any impact in particular within a Labour Party that was still quietly quite Irish (especially in Scotland, where it has just made significant gains), within a Democratic Party that was still organisationally very Irish, or within a Labor Party that was still very, very, very Irish, indeed.

Well, it has had no such impact so far. There is no reason why that should remain the case, and every reason why it should not.

2 comments: