Free Republic

The chair of Shannon Airport warned the Minister for Transport that protests and airside incursions at the airport were a “grave risk” and a threat to the international reputation of the State. The letter to Minister Darragh O’Brien last May said security breaches at Shannon that month were part of a “persistent and deeply concerning” trend. However, a further incident took place in November when protesters managed to reach an apron and taxiway, before spray painting a US military aircraft. In last year’s correspondence, the airport chair Conal Henry pleaded for help, saying the incursions posed a very serious security...

In the past 2,000 years there have been numerous descriptions of Jesus of Nazareth, but the image of an Arab Jesus – “the first Palestinian fedayin who carried his sword” – as depicted by Yasir Arafat at a sideshow of the United Nations in 1983 was probably the most grotesque. Present at his first press conference at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on September 2, 1983, I heard the words from the UN simultaneous English interpretation of his spoken Arabic: “We were under Roman imperialism. We sent a Palestinian fisherman, called St. Peter, to Rome. He not only occupied...