What are Western Values?
Portugal, Spain, France and Italy, Little Catholic Belgium slaughtered and robbed all about them, often with Papal Blessings or connivance for more than half a millenium.
And native and ethnic Irishmen and women were actively involved or complicity of
those crimes against humanity and sins against its Creator. No sooner had the Soviet
Union liberated most of Europe from Nazi tyranny than the Western “Liberal Democracies” rushed to re-establish their murderous and thieving hold on other landsand peoples.
The Protestant Netherlands were no less guilty. My wife and I, sheltering from a
downpour beside Lake Trasimene, where on Midsummer’s Day 217 BC the African
Hannibal killed or captured 25,000 Roman Legionaires, had a long lunch with a
Dutch Clergyman and his wife. The Clrgyman had been a Military Chaplain in
Indonesia in the late Forties and a convinced Imperialist, but his experiences had
cured him of his earlier delusions.
Then there was England/ Britain whose Statesmanship mirrored Mae West’s
Diamonds.
Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It.
My remarks here arise from reading Fintan O’Toole’s detection of a departure
from Western Values by Israel’s current regime.
What departure? Israel displays those values blatantly.
They are the values of the Irish TImes in February 1933 when that paper warned
of the gnashing of teeth that would follow a return of Eamon de Valera to government.
They are the values of the Irish Times of March 1933 when it exulted in Hitler’s
accession to power in Berlin.
Eamon de Valera’s values were consistently ethical. He recognised injustice and
opposed it without consulting bishops, popes, or editorials.
He was assailed by Desmond Fitzgerald when in 1935 he condemned the Nazi
Nurembourg Decrees which stripped German citizens of Jewish religion or descent
of their rights. When Churchill’s hero, that Knight of the Bath, Sir Benito Musssolini,
launched a genocidal assault on Abyssinia, Dev, at the League of Nations, demanded effective sanctions by the League against the aggressors, and offered
Irish troops to any League force assembled to defend Abyssinia, he was condemned
by Fine Gael. Pope Pius XI gave his blessing to the Aggressors, as did Rome’s Chief
Rabbi. The unification of Italy in 1871 lifted the restrictions imposed by the Vatican on
Jews over the centuries and they were naturally thankful.
At the League of Nations Britain’s Sir Anthony Eden dscribed Dev as hot-headed or
something like it.
But it should be recorded that Britain made Italy pay for its crimes – into the coffers
of the (then) British owned Suez Canal, for the passage of its troops and munitions
on the way to Abyssinia, saving a journey through the Straits of Gibraltar, around the
Cape of Good Hope, saving about 10,000 miles, much fuel, food and bellyaches.
Napoleon may not have been amiss about a nation of shopkeepers?
De Valera’s moral judgement was complemented by mathematical, rational
calculation. Most of Ireland’s tiny Jewish community supported the fight for
Irish independence and the Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Herzog, who sometimes
sheltered him from the British was known as the Sinn Fein Rabbi. They
remained lifelong friends. The Irish Constitution which guarantees freedom
of, and freedom from religion. recognises Judaism. But de Valera, who visited
Herzog when he became Chief Rabbi in Israel, never supported Zionism,
recognising its implications for the indigenous Arab majority in Palestine.
Very interesting article.