Gerry Adams --Liar & Hypocrite-- Ally of Britain, Ally of Hamas

Gerry Adams, leader of the Sinn Fein party in Northern Ireland, came to the Land of Israel the other day, and was interviewed on Israel Radio's network 2 [Reshet Beyt] on 7 Sept 2006. Curiously, he was spouting a sickly sweet "peace" line, on the radio at least. He wanted peace between Israel and Hamas, he told us, just like "we" have achieved peace in Northern Ireland. He sounded quite clearly like any British "peacemonger," like the British government indeed. It seems that on the Land of Israel, the Sinn Fein's policy and the real British policy of supporting Arab murderers of Jews have come together. Sinn Fein and the Royal Institute of International Affairs strangely converge when it comes to Israel.

In addition to advocating the obtaining of peace through chatting with Hamas that denies Israel's right to exist, Adams was also propounding a false version of history of the Land of Israel. Or, if not that, then he was morally undercutting the Sinn Fein's right to oppose British rule in Northern Ireland. How so?

Adams spoke of British occupation in Northern Ireland going back four hundred years or more. He is aware of course that 400 years ago, the rulers of England brought settlers from Lowland Scotland to settle in Northern Ireland, sometimes called Ulster. Hence, these settlers were Celts, like the native Irish. The Scottish settlers were also Protestant and mixed with those of the native Irish who were Protestant. Today, this group of mixed Scottish-Irish descent, Scotch-Irish [as they were called in the United States], are the majority in Northern Ireland. There is also a Roman Catholic minority there that is presumably of more purely Irish ancestry. The majority wants to stay part of the United Kingdom and not join the Irish Republic.

So how does Adams justify the Sinn Fein/IRA struggle against British rule there which opposes the majority's wishes? The argument is that hundreds of years ago, the area was part of Ireland and purely inhabited by native Irish and there was no English/British occupation. The fact of what the majority wants now and of the demographic changes that go back hundreds of years does not matter. Northern Ireland must be without British rule, must not be part of the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and must join the Irish Republic, despite what the majority in Northern Ireland wants.

Well, actually, I can see some merit in that same argument, that same principle, if applied to the Land of Israel. Judea-Samaria are historic parts of the Land of Israel. In fact, Judea was the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland. In fact, in Roman nomenclature, all of the Land of Israel was called Judea. The Arabs conquered the Land in the seventh century, eventually making the Jewish inhabitants --already excluded from the Jerusalem area [the Aelia Capitolina polis or colonia] by the Byzantine Empire-- into second or third class subjects, called dhimmis in Arab-Muslim law. Arab-Muslim oppression drove many Jews to leave Israel [and the Muslim domain altogether]. The period of Arab-Muslim rule before the Crusades is the period of origin of significant Jewish communities in northern Europe, called Ashkenaz by Jews. Meanwhile, Arab settlers and other Muslims [Turks, Kurds, Persians, Circassians, Indians, Bosnians, etc.] immigrated into and settled in the Land of Israel over the centuries.

After the Crusader conquest of 1099, The Western European Christians contributed their share to depopulating the Land of Israel of much or most of its Jews by means of the massacres of Jews that the Crusaders perpetrated during the first dozen or so years of their rule in Israel. So it is entirely appropriate that Gerry Adams, a denizen of northwestern Europe, come to the Land of Israel to help the Fatah and Hamas murder and drive out the Jews.

Adams is a liar by misrepresenting the history of the Land of Israel as if the Arabs were the natives, the original people of the Land. He is a hypocrite for not applying to the Jews the rights that he takes as an Irish nationalist over the whole of Ireland. If he were consistent, he would support a Jewish struggle to recover and hold all of the Land of Israel, at the expense perhaps of the descendants of the Arab settlers. Of course, Arabs conquered Israel long ago, and Arab and other Muslim settlers came here to settle long ago. But the same is true of Northern Ireland. As a matter of fact, Arabs have not ruled the country since before the Crusades. After the Crusades, Israel was ruled by Muslims who were not Arabs, first the Mamluks and then the Ottoman Turks [although the Turks allowed local Arabs into their governing class in the 19th century]. The local Arabs never opposed foreign rule as such, as long as it was Muslim.

Meanwhile, it is very convenient that Gerry Adams, in the guise of a "revolutionary" leader and hero, comes to the Land of Israel to support Arab rule here like a good European, or at least a loyal operative of the European Union. Indeed, the EU has made clear its racist, Judeophobic policy of denying Jews national and civil rights throughout the Land of Israel, which European powers had recognized in 1920 [San Remo] and 1922 [League of Nations] as the Jewish National Home. Of course, the rabidly Judeophobic EU conveniently forgets all this, as well as the fact that one of its leading members, the United Kingdom --Gerry Adams' supposed nemesis-- betrayed its commitment to foster development of the Jewish National Home in Israel, flagrantly preventing Jews fleeing the German [and Austro-German] Nazis from finding refuge in the Jews' internationally designated national home. By the way, demonstrating British and general European loyalty to international law is the fact that the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League found the British 1939 White Paper on the Land of Israel to be in violation of the mandate. Yet this finding did not change British behavior nor does the EU today --claiming to represent an age-old European civilization-- seem to remember any of this rather recent history.

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UPDATING: old, 19th century photos of the Western Wall prayer place have been added to the two posts quoting from Pierre Loti, and the one post quoting Gustave Flaubert.
Coming: more on Jews in Jerusalem, etc.