Posted on 10/16/2023 2:03:16 PM PDT by Olog-hai
President Michael D. Higgins has strongly criticized the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen for comments on the Middle East conflict which she made on a visit to Israel last Friday.
Ms. von der Leyen did not include a call for Israel’s retaliation to conform with international law.
President Higgins said he agreed with those who criticized the intervention of the European Commission President.
He said: “I don’t know where the source of those decisions was. I don’t know where the legitimation for it was, and I don’t know where the authority for it is, and I don’t think it was helpful.”
He added: “It may not have been meant to have malevolent consequences, but certainly we need a better performance in relation to European Union diplomacy and practice.”
President Higgins also said that he had read and heard the statements from the Taoiseach and the Tánasite on the escalation of the conflict, and he said that Ms. von der Leyen was “not speaking for Ireland and she wasn’t speaking for the opinions that they hold”. […]
He said it was important to retain and insist on the veracity and cogency of international law.
He said: “To announce in advance that you will break international law and to do so on an innocent population, it reduces all the code that was there from second world war on protection of civilians and it reduces it to tatters.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at rte.ie ...
and in the universities (but I suppose that could be encompassed as political elite and urban fringe elements)
The IRA would have, and that would in effect be a civil war, even if most people didn’t fight.
The IRA was actively on Hitler’s side during WWII, seeking aid from him for their “S-Plan”. The Free State actively interned or jailed over a thousand of them during this period.
Just a bystander here, but I'm close to half-Irish and half-Jewish (and a Catholic convert). I have many Irish friends, and yes, for whatever reason, the Irish sensibility over there is markedly casual about disdain for "the DJEE-ews."
Other than Eamon de Valera, whom they elected to run Ireland decades ago, I don't know where they meet any Jews.
During what period did you live there?
I lived there during the most of the 1970s till the early 1980s and experienced nothing of the sort.
So does the deliberate, indiscriminate murder of women and children and the kidnapping of them to use as human shields.
What Mr. Higgins does not seem to understand is the necessity for clear and unambiguous communication. You speak to your opponent in a language they understand. Israel is doing precisely that now.
from the 90s onwards...
Yes. Higgins continues to promulgate the double standard. Not a word about Hamas.
What part of the country?
I lived in Dublin city and the suburbs. My late father was Jewish and never experienced any antisemitism whatsoever. I was raised Catholic and I never heard a single word about my father from anyone.
also Dublin and the suburbs with a lot of contact with universities and university students....I’m glad your experience is different than mine. It could well be the case that it engulfed the country starting in the 90s, and starting in the universities and spread from there....and that is also basically the love affair the country has with islam and all things that can be classified as “refugees”....
The country certainly started getting “Europeanized” during the 1990s. This accelerated when Irish gave up its national currency in 2002.
I was at a dinner two nights ago where former Taioseach Bertie Ahern was the guest of honor. He was Taoiseach during the Good Friday Accords and instrumental in getting them passed. Comments on negotiations and international law, but avoided directly commenting on the current conflict.
I’ve been over four times. My cousins in Co. Galway, while not being overtly anti-semitic, never had a good word to say about Israel
With no offense meant to your relatives, badmouthing Israel (which 99 times out of 100 happens on a false basis) can’t be described in any other terms than overtly antisemitic.
None taken, they are a product of their environment.
Their view was not held by the Irish Peace-Keepers in Golan whom I met in Tiberius when we were both on holiday from our respective missions (mine was in Sinai).
The relatives have never been on the ground in the mid-east and seen the reality.
as I contemplate the origin and nature of my experiences with Irish antisemitism...I do think it is precisely the rapid Europeanization of the 1990s, and the simultaneous taking up of the PLO cause. The PLO cause was darn near universal...far more popular in universities than the Irish Republican cause....in my experience and observations any way.
And then you fast forward to today...but it all began then, and there, and for those reasons....
So the Irish cause for republicanism is actually forgotten.
well...maybe....maybe not.
Sinn Fein is the leading party in the North, and, in the Republic. Never thought I’d see the day.
Ireland will be united within my lifetime. I don’t personally have a stake in that, so I can’t say I sad or glad about it. But it’s a demographic reality.
The sales pitch for being “unified” was as an independent nation-state, not as a vassal province of the EU. So that’s another lie sold to the uninformed populace.
right!
It always boggled my mind that as Europe got momentum....Sinn Fein never opposed it....in fact, I think for the most part, they actively supported it.
I truly found that strange.
(But within the context of Europe, within my lifetime, Northern Ireland will once again be in it, and it will subsumed under the vassal state of Ireland....whatever that is.....)
Given that Sinn Féin are internationalist leftists, it really is not that surprising. Puts paid to their lie of being “republicans”.
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