'I used to hate Israel. I used to think the Left was always right. Not any more. Now I loathe Palestinian terrorists. Now I see why Israel has to be hard. Now I see the Left can be Right -- as in right-wing. So why did I change my mind so completely?Powerful stuff and nicely written. However Nicky had to write a follow-up to that article, based on the reaction to it:
Strangely, it began with my anger at Israel's incursion into Gaza in December 2008 which left over 1,200 Palestinians dead, compared to only 13 Israelis. I was so angered by this massacre I posed in the striped scarf of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation for an art show catalogue.
Shortly after posing in that PLO scarf, I applied for funding from the Irish Arts Council to make a film in Israel and Palestine. I wanted to talk to these soldiers, to challenge their actions -- and challenge the Israeli citizens who supported them.
I spent seven weeks in the area, dividing my time evenly between Israel and the West Bank. I started in Israel. The locals were suspicious. We were Irish -- from a country which is one of Israel's chief critics -- and we were filmmakers. We were the enemy.
Then I crossed over into the West Bank. Suddenly, being Irish wasn't a problem. Provo graffiti adorned The Wall. Bethlehem was Las Vegas for Jesus-freaks -- neon crucifixes punctuated by posters of martyrs.
These martyrs followed us throughout the West Bank. They watched from lamp-posts and walls wherever we went. Like Jesus in the old Sacred Heart pictures.
But the more I felt the martyrs watching me, the more confused I became. After all, the Palestinian mantra was one of "non-violent resistance". It was their motto, repeated over and over like responses at a Catholic mass.
Yet when I interviewed Hind Khoury, a former Palestinian government member, she sat forward angrily in her chair as she refused to condemn the actions of the suicide bombers. She was all aggression.
This aggression continued in Hebron, where I witnessed swastikas on a wall. As I set up my camera, an Israeli soldier shouted down from his rooftop position. A few months previously I might have ignored him as my political enemy. But now I stopped to talk. He only talked about Taybeh, the local Palestinian beer.
Back in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, I began to listen more closely to the Israeli side. I remember one conversation in Shenkin Street -- Tel Aviv's most fashionable quarter, a street where everybody looks as if they went to art college. I was outside a cafe interviewing a former soldier.
He talked slowly about his time in Gaza. He spoke about 20 Arab teenagers filled with ecstasy tablets and sent running towards the base he'd patrolled. Each strapped with a bomb and carrying a hand-held detonator.
The pills in their bloodstream meant they felt no pain. Only a headshot would take them down.
Conversations like this are normal in Tel Aviv. I began to experience the sense of isolation Israelis feel. An isolation that began in the ghettos of Europe and ended in Auschwitz.
Israel is a refuge -- but a refuge under siege, a refuge where rockets rain death from the skies. And as I made the effort to empathise, to look at the world through their eyes. I began a new intellectual journey. One that would not be welcome back home.
The problem began when I resolved to come back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey. But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.
An Irish artist is supposed to sign boycotts, wear a PLO scarf, and remonstrate loudly about The Occupation. But it's not just artists who are supposed to hate Israel. Being anti-Israel is supposed to be part of our Irish identity, the same way we are supposed to resent the English.
But hating Israel is not part of my personal national identity. Neither is hating the English. I hold an Irish passport, but nowhere upon this document does it say I am a republican, or a Palestinian.
My Irish passport says I was born in 1983 in Offaly. The Northern Troubles were something Anne Doyle talked to my parents about on the nine o'clock News. I just wanted to watch Father Ted.
So I was frustrated to see Provo graffiti on the wall in the West Bank. I felt the same frustration emerge when I noticed the missing 'E' in a "Free Palestin" graffiti on a wall in Cork. I am also frustrated by the anti-Israel activists' attitude to freedom of speech.
Free speech must work both ways. But back in Dublin, whenever I speak up for Israel, the Fiachras and Fionas look at me aghast, as if I'd pissed on their paninis.
This one-way freedom of speech spurs false information. The Boycott Israel brigade is a prime example. They pressurised Irish supermarkets to remove all Israeli produce from their shelves -- a move that directly affected the Palestinian farmers who produce most of their fruit and vegetables under the Israeli brand.
But worst of all, this boycott mentality is affecting artists. In August 2010, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign got 216 Irish artists to sign a pledge undertaking to boycott the Israeli state. As an artist I have friends on this list -- or at least I had.
I would like to challenge my friends about their support for this boycott. What do these armchair sermonisers know about Israel? Could they name three Israeli cities, or the main Israeli industries?
But I have more important questions for Irish artists. What happened to the notion of the artist as a free thinking individual? Why have Irish artists surrendered to group-think on Israel? Could it be due to something as crude as career-advancement?
Artistic leadership comes from the top. Aosdana, Ireland's State-sponsored affiliation of creative artists, has also signed the boycott. Aosdana is a big player. Its members populate Arts Council funding panels.
Some artists could assume that if their name is on the same boycott sheet as the people assessing their applications, it can hardly hurt their chances. No doubt Aosdana would dispute this assumption. But the perception of a preconceived position on Israel is hard to avoid.
Looking back now over all I have learnt, I wonder if the problem is a lot simpler.
Perhaps our problem is not with Israel, but with our own over-stretched sense of importance -- a sense of moral superiority disproportional to the importance of our little country?
Any artist worth his or her salt should be ready to change their mind on receipt of fresh information. So I would urge every one of those 216 Irish artists who pledged to boycott the Israeli state to spend some time in Israel and Palestine. Maybe when you come home you will bin your scarf. I did. '
''I BET you're a Protestant." The opening line of an email I read as I horsed down my toast. A fine thing to say to a man from Birr. We've a lovely castle.Supporting Israel, the unacceptable position to take?
The previous week I'd written an article that was published in this paper. It explained how my political ideologies had shifted, following a seven-week stint in Israel and Palestine. I wrote how it wasn't acceptable to have a difference of opinion on the Israel issue in this country. How being pro-Palestinian has become part of our Irish national identity. How the Left can be Right, as in right-wing.
The fall-out has been quite spectacular. I've been called everything from a Protestant to an agent of Mossad. Letters to the editor have been flying in since, like rockets from the Strip. But, unlike the rockets from Gaza, not all the letters have been sent with spleen.
I expected hate mail. And I got it. But I didn't expect the support from a largely silent group of people -- Irish people. It seems there are true liberals out there; people prepared to listen to both sides of the story. Unfortunately they are surrounded by foaming scarf-wearers, clutching their boycott sheets and Bic biros.
It's the foam that gives the fear. Nobody wants to be bitten by a rabid dog. Or a Bic biro. So, as a result, the Irish support I've received has been largely by private correspondence. Strictly for health reasons. I'm contagious.
Private support, but very public abuse. The blogs and boards have been hopping. My favourite so far: "As far as Larkins go, Nicky is clearly more Celia than Jim."
I like it. Funny, but loaded.
But the most interesting forum has been on Facebook. Since becoming an agent for Mossad, I have also turned my hand to international matchmaking. As a result of the article, new Facebook friendships have been popping up all over the place.
Women who wouldn't be allowed to walk in public with
a man outside the internet cafe are now firm friends with chest-thumping provos. Bound together online by a mutual hatred of Israel.
Solid foundations are vital in any new relationship. I'm glad I've brought some love to the world. Unfortunately, none of this love has been extended towards my film. The mud-slingers have been quick to write off a film they haven't yet seen. It seems in our bid to become a socialist state, we're also doing Socialist Realism. But we drank too much Fanta at the party conference. Now we're fully fledged Soviets, sending dissenters to Siberia. Online.
Stalin would be proud. He'd have loved Facebook these past couple of weeks. One of his pre-Facebook mates had some similar ideas on Jews in Germany in the Thirties, as some of the online sentiment shows in reaction to the article.
Is it too far a stretch to conclude that the rise of anti-Semitism on this island is in tandem with the death of a certain Tiger? Are we just bitter that there's a financially thriving state out there? A financially thriving race? And, worst of all, one that doesn't need our approval? Is that what we are really talking about when we dispute Israel's "right to exist"? Or is it just plain old anti-Semitism?
Either way, we'll all have something to say about it. On laptops, while eating toast.'
'It will visit every county and borough including the Shetland Islands and the Channel Islands with a visit to Dublin to celebrate a unified Ireland'Pardon? Shome mistake shurely (as Private Eye would say)...
I will leave out the word 'accidental' from that first sentence because I am not sure of its validity and that leaves us with 'killings by the IRA of civilians could be described as "murders"' - "No shit, Sherlock"'Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness has acknowledged that accidental killings by the IRA of civilians could be described as "murders".
In an interview with the Independent, he said the IRA "was involved in incidents which resulted in the accidental killing of innocent people".
Mr McGuinness added "the term used by the relatives of those people who were killed was that they were murdered".'
'Further to this and this I have lodged a complaint with the BBC:
- Complaint type: BBC News
- Location: England
- What is your complaint about: Radio News
- Programme title: 5Live 10pm news bulletin Friday 5 March 2011
- Transmission date: 05/03/2011
- Complaint category: Offence
- Complaint summary: Choosing to intreview Gerry Adams re the Queen's future visit to Ireland
- Full complaint: BBC 5Live 10pm News carried a piece about the upcoming visit by the Queen to Ireland. The BBC chose one person to interview about this visit; not the BBC's royal correspondent but Sinn fein's Gerry Adams. So for an opinion on the first royal visit to Ireland for 100 years the BBC choose the man who lead an organisation (Sinn Fein), in the public's mind, intrinsically linked with the terrorist organisation (the IRA) that blew up and killed the Queen's uncle, Lord Mountbatten, in 1979. Did anybody at BBC 5Live News wonder if it might be a trifle tasteless to interview a leading figure in Sinn Fein about the visit of the Queen to Ireland bearing in mind that history?
- Receive a reply: Yes
- Contacted us before: Yes
- Complaint related to previous contact: No
- Title: Mr
- First name: NotaSheep
- Surname: MaybeaGoat
- Email address: notasheepmaybeagoat@gmail.com
- Under 13: No
- I wonder how long I will have to wait for a reply and how the BBC will justify their choice of guest... Somehow I doubt that they will accept a breach of taste.'
'Dear Mr MAYBEAGOAT
Reference CAS-637702
Thanks for contacting us about BBC Radio 5 live.
I understand you felt it was inappropriate to interview Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams on the subject of the Queen’s first official state visit to Ireland.
The visit of the Queen to Ireland has created a lot of debate due to the history between the country and Britain over a number of years. As such, we’ve heard from a number of figures across our broadcasts, including Gerry Adams.
While you may personally disagree with the views of Mr Adams, he is fully entitled to hold them in the context of legitimate debate. For other views on the visit, please see the BBC Online link below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12652934
Nonetheless, your complaint will be added to our audience log, a daily report of audience feedback that's circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.
The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content.
Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.
Finally, I have attached an invitation from BBC Audience Services' Head of Communications & Complaints, asking you to participate in our customer survey. We would welcome your views on our service.
Kind Regards
BBC Complaints
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
NB This is sent from an outgoing account only which is not monitored. You cannot reply to this email address but if necessary please contact us via our webform quoting any case number we provided.
__________________________________________
Dear Mr MAYBEAGOAT
Thank you for your recent email to the BBC. It is our aim to provide the highest standard of responses to emails we receive. To help us do this, I am writing to ask you to complete a customer satisfaction survey which is being conducted by the research company Ipsos MORI.
Your response will help us to judge how your most recent email was handled, so we'd be grateful if you could rate the service you received and the quality of our response. We aren't expecting you to rate the BBC, its output, or any previous contacts you may have had with us. The purpose of this survey is to help us understand the level of service we currently provide when responding to emails and to ensure we achieve the highest possible standards. We may use your individual responses to help in our staff training and performance management.
The questionnaire is very straightforward to complete and should take no longer than 5-10 minutes. You can log onto it in two ways, depending upon the email system you are using. You can either click onto the following website address, or paste it into your address bar (where you normally type in a website address). You will be guided through the questionnaire automatically once you have logged into it.
Website Address: http://survey2.infocorp.co.uk/webprod/resources/bbcinfo/ start.asp?st=6&pass=CAS- 637702-7DF6Z9
Thank you very much for taking the time to assist us.
Keith Jones
Head of Communications & Complaints, BBC Audience Services'
'Thank you for your reply.
Gerry Adams is indeed entitled to hold his views and if the BBC wish to promote them then that is a matter for you and your collective consciences. My point was that on that news broadcast you chose to broadcast just one interview: with the man who lead an organisation (Sinn Fein), in the public's mind, intrinsically linked with the terrorist organisation (the IRA) that blew up and killed the Queen's uncle, Lord Mountbatten, in 1979.
Interestingly of the seven people interviewed on the page to which you linked - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12652934 - six welcomed the visist whilst only one did not. That was the one person that you decided to give air space to on the news broadcast in question. Why not any of the others?
The BBC is often guilty of blatant bias, in this case you were clearly guilty of a complete lack of taste and decency as well.
By the way, the invitation from BBC Audience Services' Head of Communications & Complaints, asking me to participate in our customer survey has expired. So you clearly don't welcome my views that much.
Regards
NotaSheep MaybeaGoat'
'The rain beats down on a small Irish town. The streets are deserted. Times are tough. Everyone is in debt and living on credit. A rich German arrives at the local hotel, asks to view its rooms, and puts on the desk a €100 note. The owner gives him a bunch of keys and he goes off for an inspection.
As soon as he has gone upstairs, the hotelier grabs the note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher hurries down the street to pay what he owes to his feed merchant. The merchant heads for the pub and uses the note to pay his bar bill. The publican slips the note to the local hooker who’s been offering her services on credit. She rushes to the hotel to pay what she owes for room hire. As she puts the €100 note on the counter, the German appears, says the rooms are unsuitable, picks up his €100 note and leaves town.
No one did any work. No one earned anything. Everyone is out of debt. Everyone is feeling better. And that is how a bail-out works.'
'Ireland. In 2001, the National Pension Reserve Fund was brought into existence for the purpose of supporting pensions of the Irish people in the years 2025-2050. The scheme was also supposed to provide for the pensions of some public sector employees (mainly university staff). However, in March 2009, the Irish government earmarked €4bn from this fund for rescuing banks. In November 2010, the remaining savings of €2.5bn was seized to support the bailout of the rest of the country.
The final example is France. In November, the French parliament decided to earmark €33bn from the national reserve pension fund FRR to reduce the short-term pension scheme deficit. In this way, the retirement savings intended for the years 2020-2040 will be used earlier, that is in the years 2011-2024, and the government will spend the saved up resources on other purposes.'
'Moody’s cut its evaluation of Ireland’s creditworthiness by five notches to Baa1 and warned further downgrades could follow if Dublin was unable to stabilise its debt situation.”The Irish downgrade was significant and severe,” said Nick Stamenkovic, bond strategist at RIA Capital Markets in Edinburgh. “The timing of it is a bit of a surprise, since Ireland has just passed the bailout. The decision by Moody’s is very procyclical.”'I just cannot see how this will anything but very, very badly for Ireland, the UK and the EU. I believe the expression is "we are all going to hell in a handcart".
'Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring risk on German, French and Dutch bonds have surged over recent days, rising significantly above the levels of non-EMU states in Scandinavia.Read the whole piece and ask yourselves how on earth do we all get out of this mess? I really don't see a way, it looks like doom and disaster all the way to me.
"Germany cannot keep paying for bail-outs without going bankrupt itself," said Professor Wilhelm Hankel, of Frankfurt University. "This is frightening people. You cannot find a bank safe deposit box in Germany because every single one has already been taken and stuffed with gold and silver. It is like an underground Switzerland within our borders. People have terrible memories of 1948 and 1923 when they lost their savings."
The refrain was picked up this week by German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. "We're not swimming in money, we're drowning in debts," he told the Bundestag.
While Germany's public and private debt is not extreme, it is very high for a country on the cusp of an acute ageing crisis. Adjusted for demographics, Germany is already one of the most indebted nations in the world.
Reports that EU officials are hatching plans to double the size of EU's €440bn (£373bn) rescue mechanism have inevitably caused outrage in Germany. Brussels has denied the claims, but the story has refused to die precisely because markets know the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) cannot cope with the all too possible event of a triple bail-out for Ireland, Portugal and Spain. '
'Israeli NGOs horrified by the developing humanitarian crisis in Ireland have organized a flotilla called Viva Dublina. A spokesman for Viva Dublina said: “We are horrified by the developing humanitarian crisis in Ireland!” Viva Dublina has been loaned one of the world’s largest luxury cruise liners by an Israeli shipping mogul to act as a flotilla from Ashdod to Dublin. The mogul wrote a letter to Ha’aretz saying: “I am horrified by the developing humanitarian crisis in Ireland!” The ship will be used to return the useless junk and out of date medications sent on flotillas manned by anti-Israeli Irish activists that are currently clogging the warehouses in Ashdod after Hamas refused to accept the “donations”. Egypt has asked if the flotilla can stop in El Arish to take similar “donations” that are clogging the warehouses there. Egypt says it prefers to use its warehouses to store kassam rocket parts and Mercedes-Benz sedans for Hamas.'Do read it all...
'Irish unveil tough four-year recovery plan
Can the BBC really not understand why if the Irish need this austerity plan to 'help solve the country's debt crisis', the UK might need to take some similar measures to stave off similar intervention by the IMF and the EU? With this in mind will the BBC now start reporting why the Conservatives are having to 'savagely cut' UK public spending , or will they continue to push the Labour Party/Trade Unions line? I think we all know the answer to those questions...The Irish government announces its austerity plan
The Irish government has unveiled a range of tough austerity measures designed to help solve the country's debt crisis.Among the spending cuts and tax rises are a reduction in the minimum wage, a new property tax and thousands of public sector job cuts.
The four-year plan is designed to save the state 15bn euros ($20bn; £13bn).
The government is also negotiating a bail-out package with the EU and IMF, expected to be worth about 85bn euros.
The recovery plan outlines plans to cut 24,750 public sector jobs, achieve savings in social welfare spending of 2.8bn euros, and raise an additional 1.9bn euros from income tax.
It also details plans to raise VAT from 21% to 22% in 2013, with a further increase to 24% in 2014.'
'Bono's anti-poverty foundation ONE is under pressure to explain its lavish salaries after it was revealed that only a small percentage of money it raises reaches the needy.
The non-profit organisation set up by the U2 frontman received almost £9.6m in donations in 2008 but handed out only £118,000 to good causes (1.2 per cent).
The figures published by the New York Post also show that £5.1m went towards paying salaries.'
"(Tony) Blair is set to become EU President within weeks if Ireland votes 'Yes' in its referendum on the Lisbon Treaty tomorrow. The former prime minister's candidacy for the new post will be rushed through as quickly as possible, according to government sources."Rushed to ensure that an incoming Conservative government can do nothing about the Treaty.
"New guidelines for Irish media to cover the Lisbon Treaty referendum take effect at noon Friday (7 August).Fairness, democracy, equality; just three words that seem to be alien to the EU.
Announced by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI), the new guidelines clarify that there is no requirement to allocate an absolute equality of airtime to opposing sides of the referendum debate during editorial coverage.
The proportion of airtime allocated to opposing sides must however "be fair to all interests and undertaken in a transparent manner."
The Irish are to vote on the Lisbon treaty for a second time on 2 October, after a majority rejected the document in a referendum 12 June 2008.
In previous referendum campaigns public broadcasters were obliged to give equal coverage of both the Yes and the No campaigns, after a former professor at Trinity College, Anthony Coughlan, made a complaint at Irish courts in June 1997 over unbalanced media coverage by the public broadcaster RTE, which gave 42,5 minutes coverage to the yes-camp and 10 minutes to the no-camp in a referendum on divorce."
"Even the proposed plebiscite was scarcely fair - the ballot slips only had ja printed on them. Austrians wanting merger with Germany would have had to bring their own nein scrawled scraps of paper to the polling station."Another idea for the democrats in the Irish and EU governments.
