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Post by theguvnor on Nov 25, 2023 11:49:23 GMT
As a follow-up to this, here's a news article: www.rte.ie/news/2023/1125/1418433-gardai-dublin/The fact the Irish government has borrowed water cannons from Northern Ireland hasn't gone down well considering how those were used in the north up until recent times.
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Post by tisbearself on Nov 25, 2023 11:52:31 GMT
I'll take your word for it, but it is difficult for me to see Ireland as influential apart from those areas where its relations with UK/ England are concerned, and perhaps, at least in the past, where it involved countries that had received large numbers of Irish emigrants (e.g. USA) or missionaries (e.g. some countries in Africa). Unlike some other small European countries like Netherlands and Belgium, Ireland didn't have colonies or significant shipping interests to spread its influence. The country only gained independence within the last century so it doesn't have a long past history of influence.
Perhaps Israel was a bad example given the UK involvement with establishing Israel. But Spain, France and Denmark, why would they care about Ireland's opinion?
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Post by theguvnor on Nov 25, 2023 12:15:39 GMT
It had people to spread its interests and a good bit of the Empire was run by the Irish and Scots at ground level. It even became something of a joke during the height of the Empire that the English served as figureheads but people like the Irish, Anglo-Irish and Scots got on with doing the actual administration. Spain has particular links with Ireland stretching back centuries due to its armed forces having large contingents of Irishmen in them at points and there is a lot of trade between both states. We have positive and negative relationships with Spain. The same is true for France. French and Spanish and Irish history have a very large number of points where they intersect. One of Spain's more important historical figures for example is this bloke and the name should give you a clue to his ancestry: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldo_O%27DonnellWe are popularly supposed to be Milesians after all and our ancestors are supposed to have wandered over to Ireland from Iberia. Although that's a myth it likely has some truth encoded in it somewhere.
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Post by theguvnor on Nov 26, 2023 12:35:03 GMT
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Post by tisbearself on Nov 26, 2023 13:02:17 GMT
That was a dumb thing for Varadkar to say, however since he seems to often say dumb or insensitive things it's par for the course.
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Post by theguvnor on Nov 26, 2023 14:00:30 GMT
He's somewhat tone-deaf. A 'lost' child is when someone wanders of at the supermarket or shopping centre. However, there is a really strange political atmosphere right now in Ireland where Israel is loathed in some places (and I do mean loathed) and yet we also have issues like the riots over all sorts of issues. There is an intersection of loads of competing narratives.
If anyone thinks I am overdoing it by saying Israel is loathed they can google speeches by some Irish politicians. Yet alongside this dislike for Israel, there is also a dislike for Islam in the minds of many of the same people. Personally, I think sending aid to Gaza and politely suggesting perhaps a ceasefire might be a good idea was about as far as we should have gone. Jews in London are actually scared to go out, I've now seen several ugly incidents of taunting and mockery. The latest was when my wife asked me to go with her for an ultrasound the other day. We had staff and other patients brushing past Jewish patients and one receptionist let one stand in front of her for several minutes before she acknowledged him and carried on a conversation in Urdu with a colleague in which she stressed the words, 'Gaza' repeatedly. This hospital is routinely used by a lot of the Orthodox Jewish community but because it has a lot of Muslim staff many of the Jewish community have been noting they feel unsafe going there now. Normally there are loads of them waiting for appointments, this time and the last time I noticed the number of Jewish patients was minimal. I imagine unless it is urgent many of them have cancelled or moved appointments.
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Post by tisbearself on Nov 26, 2023 14:24:00 GMT
In US there are frightened Jewish people too. The large hospitals and institutions here tend to be very sensitive to diversity issues as well as heavily funded by wealthy donors who are often Jewish or associated with Jewish investors, colleagues etc, so any doctor or other professional who publicly disses Jewish people, rips down pro-Jewish posters, or makes some big social media post in support of Palestine gets fired immediately. This has already happened a number of times.
It's not stopping the pro-Palestinians from holding marches and demonstrations etc but since they seem to be going about it like bulls in the china shop (disrupting Black Friday shoppers in NYC with a march yesterday, for example) it's not winning much support for their cause and is making most people care about Palestine even less than they already do.
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Post by theguvnor on Nov 26, 2023 14:52:42 GMT
Many of the staff in London's hospital at the administrative level are black or Muslim and they don't like Jews and they aren't overly keen on Eastern Europeans. You often get a bit of tension at reception desks going on.
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Post by tisbearself on Nov 26, 2023 19:10:20 GMT
Well we now have this lovely situation where a Jewish teacher at a public high school in Queens, NYC went on her own time to a pro-Israel protest, without discussing it with her students or anything, and the students at her high school arranged a riot at the school and terrorized her at her home. Hey, any old excuse for a riot. Most of these kids have probably been born and raised in USA and couldn't find Palestine on a map. Plus they're largely PoC and the teacher is white so we have them making racial slurs against her being a white person as well. nypost.com/2023/11/25/metro/jewish-teacher-hides-in-queens-high-school-as-students-riot/I realize teens do stupid things but there are huge numbers of Jewish people in NYC as well as working in education generally, so this is totally unacceptable and I hope the message can be driven home for the sake of whatever percentage of these kids might have some realistic chance of achieving a better life if they get a clue. The sad part is, people like that teacher are often the ones who care most about actually helping the kids and are willing to go into those schools and try to teach them. That will soon end if this keeps up.
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Post by theguvnor on Nov 26, 2023 20:09:16 GMT
Unacceptable. If a teacher chooses to go to either a march for Palestine or a protest against anti-Semitism on their own time it is their own business and so long as they don't endorse any illegal groups or do anything similar it is no one else's business. However, issues like this occur here as well. Most of the people on the march have little knowledge about Mandatory Palestine or the Palestine state or the founding of Israel and this is jus the latest thing to click like about and support. The background to the events in Gaza is messy and incredibly murky and I am not a great fan of either side's current approaches. Those terrorizing her at home should be expelled in my view. I doubt 'Natty McFatty' could tell me anything about the history of these areas if I asked them.
The kids in the quotes indicate how people are bringing other narratives from elsewhere into this. This whole black people against the Jews dimension is also present in reactions to the events in London. I'm very glad I am not working in Stamford Hill which is a mainly Jewish area as there have been reports of numerous fights and incidents over this up there over the last few weeks.
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Post by blackforest on Nov 27, 2023 0:49:54 GMT
Full disclosure: My father is Jewish (converted to Christianity in adulthood), and I give financially to Jewish Voices for Peace. I've been lurking in this thread and reflecting despondently over American priorities. I hope is ISN'T true that New Yorkers care about shopping for big screens on Black Friday and not about Palestinian children getting their limbs blown off in refugee camps. The back-and-forth over protester tactics is both an ad hominem diversion from the issue of the morality of bombing so many Palestinian civilians ("See how nasty 'YOUR side's' protestors are behaving?"), and it's all a drop in the bucket compared to the serious genocide going on abroad. (And no, the "human shields" canard does not advance this discussion - it merely blames the victims and takes the onus off Israelis to prove it).
To that end, I'm heartened to hear not only of the Pope's support for the ceasefire, but also that my parish is hosting a day of prayer for and end to all of this horrid carnage.
I'm signing off with the mute feature because I'm really not in the mood to argue today. I have little more to say but wanted to offer an alternate Catholic view on this matter.
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