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| IRA PLO - one struggle mural in Northern Ireland |
- 10 IDF soldiers murdered by IRA terrorist sniper
- British and Israeli Intelligence uncover strong links between former IRA terrorists and Hamas
- Gadhafi supplied IRA
- Anti-Semitism playing a big part
- More attacks planned against Israel
Four Libyan arms shipments in the mid-1980s (when Adams, despite his increasingly absurd denials, sat on the IRA's ruling Army Council) proved particularly devastating, reinvigorating its floundering military campaign; a fifth, the Eksund, was intercepted by the French navy in October 1987.
By this time, contacts had been established with Hizbullah which led, intelligence sources believe, to the development of new tactics such as the "diversionary" mine attacks used with deadly effect in south Lebanon and Northern Ireland, most notoriously at Warrenpoint, County Down in 1979 where 15 British soldiers were killed.
More recently, Britain has claimed that IRA-developed bomb-making technology passed on to Hizbullah has been used against its forces in Iraq.
But the most enduring regional relationship forged by the Irish Nationalist movement was that with the PLO. This too dated from the early 1970s, when Fatah organized arms and terrorist training for IRA and INLA operatives in Libya and Lebanon.
The PLO was involved in financing the attack which killed Lord Louis Mountbatten's in 1979 and IRA-PLO cooperation continued well into the 1990s.As British troops battled against IRA terrorists and braved riots the PLO supplied the funding as the IRA returned the favour in training and manpower for the PLOs war against Israel.
Concerns that it persisted even after the signing of the Belfast Agreement which ended the Northern Ireland conflict were behind the investigation by British and Israeli security services of the possibility that the IRA trained and actually provided the sniper who killed 10 IDF soldiers with an obsolete bolt-action rifle near Ofra in March 2002.
The discovery by Paul Collinson, a British explosives expert working with the Palestinian Red Crescent, of 200 "exact replicas" of IRA-issue pipe bombs in Jenin after Operation Defensive Shield aroused further suspicions of continuing paramilitary links.
Irish Republican / Nationalist support for the Palestinians has been political as well as terrorist since the official end of the IRA's war with Britain.
Sinn Fein which remains bitterly hostile to what it once termed "the obnoxious phenomenon that is Zionism," - Adams, as an international pro Palestinian peacemaker manqué, personally adopts a relatively a hateful tone, leaving it to his international affairs spokesman, Aengus O'Snodaigh, to articulate the party's official positions.
For example, in June 2006, O'Snodaigh described Israel as "without doubt one of the most abhorrent and despicable regimes on the planet."
Two months later he claimed that the Second Lebanon War was the result of "continued Israeli aggression, expansion and occupation in the region" and called for UNIFIL's deployment on the Israeli side of the Blue Line.
During Operation Cast Lead he demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Ireland and compared him to Josef Goebbels.
Sinn Fein repeatedly calls for the suspension of the EU's preferential trading agreement with the Israeli "rogue state" on the grounds of its "horrific crimes against humanity" and, in February, Adams himself launched the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' "Israel/Palestine Report" in Northern Ireland's parliament buildings, which calls for an economic, political and cultural boycott/divestment/sanctions campaign against Israel.
Republicans are also prominently involved in non-party anti-Israel activism, particularly in the Belfast branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, where Sinn Fein cadres work alongside convicted IRA terrorists and members of dissident groups such as Eirigi.
THE STRIDENCY of Irish Republicanism's anti-Israel campaign has, unsurprisingly, given rise to accusations of anti-Semitism. Certainly, the movement is tainted with an anti-Semitic past. Arthur Griffith, who founded the original Sinn Fein movement in 1905, used the pages of his newspaper to rail against "Jew Swindledom" (9/10ths of all Jews were, he proclaimed, "usurers and parasites") and the Dreyfusards.
While similar prejudices were commonplace in all the political parties which descended from his organization, only the eponymous rump which remained after the splits of 1921 and 1926 habitually preached Jew-hatred, culminating in a demand for an Irish-German alliance in 1939.
The "new" IRA, itself soaked in anti-Semitism, took a similar view and attempted to forge a working relationship with the Germans. The death of its leader, Sean Russell, on a U-boat bound for Ireland on a mission sanctioned by Ribbentrop was an early blow to its hopes; he was buried at sea with full military honors, his body wrapped in a Nazi flag (Republicans still hold an annual commemoration service for him which senior Sinn Fein members have regularly addressed). That later efforts came to nothing was due, not to any lack of will on the IRA's part, but to the chaotic state of the organization and the success of Irish intelligence in quelling subversion.
In the post-war period, anti-Jewish concerns continued to shape the worldview of many in the Republican movement. Its official newspaper, the United Irishman attacked "Jewish finance," "Judaeo-Masonic news agencies" and the Jews themselves as "the bitter enemies," . Some, most notably the Republican icon Sean South, joined Fahey's viciously anti-Semitic Maria Duce movement and became active in the 1950s in warning against such dangerous agents of the World Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy as Larry Adler and Danny Kaye!
Overt anti-Semitism has also been a feature of Irish Republicanism since the movement regrouped in the late 1960s, but the frequency with which its anti-Israel rhetoric crosses the line to open anti Semitism is not rare.
Graffiti supporting suicide bombers and officially sanctioned murals glorifying Palestinian terrorism ("IRA/PLO - One Struggle," "Gerry Arafat") were commonplace in Republican areas during the worst days of the second intifada, giving the Palestinian flags, ubiquitous in Republican areas, a more sinister complexion.
One prominent Irish Nationalist even suggested that decommissioned IRA weapons after the Northern Ireland war with Britain be given to the PLO for use against Israel.
Israel is continually delegitimized and demonized at Irish nationalist demonstrations and in publications such as Sinn Fein's official weekly, An Phoblacht, and the on-line journal, The Blanket where Nazi analogies have been routinely employed ("Hitler speaking Hebrew", "the Julius Streicher-type tyrant" Ariel Sharon).
Anti-Semitic undertones in their whispering campaign against former Northern Ireland minister Peter Mandelson have also been cited as evidence that there may be more to all of this than anti-Zionism.
In a century of all-consuming struggle against Britain, Irish nationalism has always found time to castigate the Jews.
Israeli and British intelligence working together have uncovered many Irish / Palestinian links, from activism, deep rooted political cooperation to arms smuggling and active IRA involvement in training and active participating in attacks together against Israeli soldiers and civilians.
More frighteningly the cooperation has increased over the years and it is feared that the more 'professionalism' in Hamas terrorist tactics is the result of IRA training and expertise and this can only be a catastrophic outcome for Israel and its citizens.
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Concerns that it persisted even after the signing of the Belfast Agreement which ended the Northern Ireland conflict were behind the investigation by British and Israeli security services of the possibility that the IRA trained and actually provided the sniper who killed 10 IDF soldiers with an obsolete bolt-action rifle near Ofra in March 2002.
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| Rioters in the West Bank (left) and Northern Ireland (Right) |
The discovery by Paul Collinson, a British explosives expert working with the Palestinian Red Crescent, of 200 "exact replicas" of IRA-issue pipe bombs in Jenin after Operation Defensive Shield aroused further suspicions of continuing paramilitary links.
Irish Republican / Nationalist support for the Palestinians has been political as well as terrorist since the official end of the IRA's war with Britain.
Sinn Fein which remains bitterly hostile to what it once termed "the obnoxious phenomenon that is Zionism," - Adams, as an international pro Palestinian peacemaker manqué, personally adopts a relatively a hateful tone, leaving it to his international affairs spokesman, Aengus O'Snodaigh, to articulate the party's official positions.
For example, in June 2006, O'Snodaigh described Israel as "without doubt one of the most abhorrent and despicable regimes on the planet."
Two months later he claimed that the Second Lebanon War was the result of "continued Israeli aggression, expansion and occupation in the region" and called for UNIFIL's deployment on the Israeli side of the Blue Line.
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| British soldiers (Left) and Israeli soldier (Right) battle rioters in Northern Ireland and on the West Bank |
Sinn Fein repeatedly calls for the suspension of the EU's preferential trading agreement with the Israeli "rogue state" on the grounds of its "horrific crimes against humanity" and, in February, Adams himself launched the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' "Israel/Palestine Report" in Northern Ireland's parliament buildings, which calls for an economic, political and cultural boycott/divestment/sanctions campaign against Israel.
Republicans are also prominently involved in non-party anti-Israel activism, particularly in the Belfast branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, where Sinn Fein cadres work alongside convicted IRA terrorists and members of dissident groups such as Eirigi.
THE STRIDENCY of Irish Republicanism's anti-Israel campaign has, unsurprisingly, given rise to accusations of anti-Semitism. Certainly, the movement is tainted with an anti-Semitic past. Arthur Griffith, who founded the original Sinn Fein movement in 1905, used the pages of his newspaper to rail against "Jew Swindledom" (9/10ths of all Jews were, he proclaimed, "usurers and parasites") and the Dreyfusards.
While similar prejudices were commonplace in all the political parties which descended from his organization, only the eponymous rump which remained after the splits of 1921 and 1926 habitually preached Jew-hatred, culminating in a demand for an Irish-German alliance in 1939.
The "new" IRA, itself soaked in anti-Semitism, took a similar view and attempted to forge a working relationship with the Germans. The death of its leader, Sean Russell, on a U-boat bound for Ireland on a mission sanctioned by Ribbentrop was an early blow to its hopes; he was buried at sea with full military honors, his body wrapped in a Nazi flag (Republicans still hold an annual commemoration service for him which senior Sinn Fein members have regularly addressed). That later efforts came to nothing was due, not to any lack of will on the IRA's part, but to the chaotic state of the organization and the success of Irish intelligence in quelling subversion.
In the post-war period, anti-Jewish concerns continued to shape the worldview of many in the Republican movement. Its official newspaper, the United Irishman attacked "Jewish finance," "Judaeo-Masonic news agencies" and the Jews themselves as "the bitter enemies," . Some, most notably the Republican icon Sean South, joined Fahey's viciously anti-Semitic Maria Duce movement and became active in the 1950s in warning against such dangerous agents of the World Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy as Larry Adler and Danny Kaye!Overt anti-Semitism has also been a feature of Irish Republicanism since the movement regrouped in the late 1960s, but the frequency with which its anti-Israel rhetoric crosses the line to open anti Semitism is not rare.
Graffiti supporting suicide bombers and officially sanctioned murals glorifying Palestinian terrorism ("IRA/PLO - One Struggle," "Gerry Arafat") were commonplace in Republican areas during the worst days of the second intifada, giving the Palestinian flags, ubiquitous in Republican areas, a more sinister complexion.
One prominent Irish Nationalist even suggested that decommissioned IRA weapons after the Northern Ireland war with Britain be given to the PLO for use against Israel.
Israel is continually delegitimized and demonized at Irish nationalist demonstrations and in publications such as Sinn Fein's official weekly, An Phoblacht, and the on-line journal, The Blanket where Nazi analogies have been routinely employed ("Hitler speaking Hebrew", "the Julius Streicher-type tyrant" Ariel Sharon).
Anti-Semitic undertones in their whispering campaign against former Northern Ireland minister Peter Mandelson have also been cited as evidence that there may be more to all of this than anti-Zionism.
In a century of all-consuming struggle against Britain, Irish nationalism has always found time to castigate the Jews.
Israeli and British intelligence working together have uncovered many Irish / Palestinian links, from activism, deep rooted political cooperation to arms smuggling and active IRA involvement in training and active participating in attacks together against Israeli soldiers and civilians.
More frighteningly the cooperation has increased over the years and it is feared that the more 'professionalism' in Hamas terrorist tactics is the result of IRA training and expertise and this can only be a catastrophic outcome for Israel and its citizens.
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