Israel not getting fair play in West
I AGAIN arose this morning to the chanting of "free, free, Palestine", outside the Israeli embassy.
I am living a couple of doors up from the embassy.
I am delighted that people feel passionate enough about something to engage in peaceful protest with such regularity.
However, I am concerned that those protesting are unclear on certain facts and the overall picture. In 1922, after World War One, a legal document known as the British Mandate for Palestine was drawn up by the League of Nations.
This agreement came into effect on September 26, 1923. It formalised British rule in Palestine (1923 -- 1948) and required the British to set up a "Jewish homeland" there.
After World War Two, Jewish survivors of the death camps were not given back the property that had been appropriated by others in their absence.
Neither were all survivors taken in as refugees by the allied states. Instead they were encouraged to return to their "homeland", Zion.
Subsequently, in 1948, Britain chose to withdraw from Palestine and the aforementioned mandate was taken over by the United Nations Trust Territories. The result was civil war between the new state of Israel and its Arab neighbours.
When I hear protesters and European media sources stating Israel is a "rogue terrorist state" I find this appalling.
For me it seems that the Jewish people were handed a poisoned chalice and that Europe and America have a lot to answer for in the ongoing atrocities in Israel and Palestine.
To stick a traumatised race in the middle of the Islamic world, in a territory that wasn't really ours to give, and then wag our collective finger at them when they act nervous and trigger-happy, is a travesty.
Pat Malone
Dublin 4
Irish Independent
