The one thing I like about the Occupied Territories is that they call a spade. The land belongs to the Palestinians, but is occupied by Israelis. And with their customary callousness. In the last year, in the Gaza Strip, it’s reckoned that 18000 Palestinians have died. On the West Bank ,including east Jerusalem, up to 300 Palestinians were killed. Not many, that. Comparatively. But of course to the bereaved family, it wouldn’t have mattered a damn if it’d been 300 or 300,000 – their pain would have been exactly the same.
In terms of morality, it’s hard to know which are more contemptible: the Israelis or the Western world. As I noted in an earlier blog, the Dublin Dail couldn’t summon up the cojones to pass a bill banning all goods and services coming from these areas. To be fair to the likes of Micheál Martin, he’s not at the same level as a member of the IDF shooting dead a Palestinian child. But if you know your Bible, you’ll know that Saul (later to become Paul) held the coats of those stoning St Stephen to death. Micheál fits into the same coat-holding category, by gutting the Occupied Territories Bill. He knows services far outweigh goods, so of course he’s found reasons to avoid blacklisting services.
Without wanting to remove blame from the Israelis, there’s something deeply cowardly about saying “I’ll not kill anyone, but if you’d like me to have a car running when you escape from the bank with the loot, having shot dead several bank employees, count me in, I’m yer man”.
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