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Ireland's Misguided Boycott Bill Ignores Israel's Security Concerns
(Jerusalem Post) Alan Shatter - During debates on the bill in the Irish Parliament to criminalize the importation into Ireland of goods or services produced in "occupied territory," none of its proponents referenced the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, Hamas' rejection of the Oslo Accords and a two-state solution, or its role and that of Islamic Jihad as Iranian surrogates. Also carefully ignored was the martyrdom culture cultivated by those groups and the Palestinian Authority; murderous attacks on Israeli men, woman and children; PA President Mahmoud Abbas' obsessive international campaign to demonize and delegitimize the Israeli state; and his recent initiative to reinstate the discredited UN motion labeling Zionism as racism. The bill, sponsored by Fianna Fail, the largest opposition party, is consistent with its history. It was the Fianna Fail party in government in "neutral" Ireland in the 1930s that denied residential visas to many German Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany and, postwar, to Holocaust survivors. It was its leader, Eamon de Valera, who as prime minister in 1945, upon learning of Hitler's death, visited the German Embassy in Dublin to express his condolences. The writer is a former Irish minister for justice and defense, and former chairman of the Irish parliament's foreign affairs committee.