Subject:  Nazi Dog Supports Israel
Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 16:56:54 +0100


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Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 3:09 PM
Subject: [scotsdebate] Nazi Dog Supports Israel


Rebel with a confused cause

Adair's loyalists (and his dog) support Israel while republicans back
Palestinians. It doesn't make sense

Northern Ireland - Observer special

Henry McDonald
Sunday May 19, 2002
The Observer

Israel has found a new ally in its war against Yasser Arafat and the
Palestinian Authority - Johnny Adair's dog.
Rebel, Adair's pet Alsation, has become the latest member of the
Ulster loyalist community to display support for Ariel Sharon's
assault on the West Bank and Gaza. Last Monday afternoon the UDA
commander's four-legged friend was seen being taken for a walk along
Belfast's Shankill Road with the Star of David flag wrapped around
its body. Rebel, a Zionist version of Superdog with his Israeli flag
turned into a cape, was paraded along just days before his master was
released from prison.

In UDA redoubts such as the Lower Shankill and Tigers Bay it seems
every lamppost is now festooned with the Jewish state's flag. In
response Palestinian flags have been put up in large numbers across
republican strongholds. The INLA in particular has been keen to
express support for the PLO and even more extreme forces in the
Palestinian controlled areas. 'Victory to Jenin' and 'We support the
suicide bombers' are commonplace on the walls of Duncairn Gardens,
Newington and Ardoyne.

It is hard to work out which side in Belfast adopted either the
Israeli or Palestinian cause first. One fact is certain: as if things
in the Middle East were not bad enough already, the two protagonists
in the Israel/Palestine tragedy now have the Most Oppressed Peoples
Ever on their respective sides. Because when you suffer from MOPE
syndrome, believing you are the most hard-done by race/class/ethnic
group on the planet, you are prone to seek out the suffering of
others and make it your own. Among the MOPE in north Belfast, whether
of the Orange or Green variety, there appears to be a deep
psychological need, a desperate want to be seen as Ireland's
Palestinians or Ulster's Jews. This is because both MOPES have to be
seen as just as oppressed and downtrodden as peoples who really are
oppressed and downtrodden in the Third World.

Republicans, right across the board from the Officials, Provisionals,
INLA and latterly the Real IRA, have traditionally supported the
Palestinian cause. Since they identify the PLO and its off-shoots as
somehow anti-imperialist, republicans give unconditional and largely
uncritical support to the Palestinian nationalist movement. Israel
therefore is totally dismissed as an apartheid/racist entity,
ignoring the fact that unlike most Arab dictatorships, there exists a
left-wing opposition inside the Jewish state, a relatively free
press, a healthy literary culture that encourages dissent and
dialogue with the Palestinians and Western-style freedoms for women
and minorities that their counterparts in the Arab world can only
dream of.

This unthinking attitude towards Israel within republicanism filters
through to wider Irish society, to the point where so-called Irish
peace activists can embark on crusades against Israel's brutal,
stupid heavy-handedness on the West Bank but chose to turn a blind
eye to the slaughter of Israeli women and children in pizza parlours.
Indeed it is hard to accept these peace activists bona fides at all
if they are unprepared to speak out and protest against Palestinian
atrocities. The day they stand outside Hamas headquarters to
demonstrate against the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians is
the day they should be taken seriously.

What is even more puzzling though is the UDA's new enthusiasm for
Israel. Although there has always been a strain of sympathy for the
Jewish state inside the unionist community, the UDA is the one force
that has flirted most frequently with neo-Nazis and fascists. Every
summer since the first Drumcree siege in 1996 English Nazis have come
over to Northern Ireland and been billeted in the homes of LVF and
UDA members in Portadown and the Lower Shankill. Adair himself has
become something of a pin-up boy for the neo-fascist fringe in
Britain, especially among football hooligans with far Right
tendencies. All of these rag bag of bonehead thugs and Hitler-loving
freaks share one thing in common - a loathing of the Jewish people
and the state they founded in 1948.

It may be pretentious and absurd for loyalists and republicans to
draw parallels between their squalid little territorial battles in
north Belfast and the daily tragedies in Israel proper, the West Bank
and Gaza, but there may be one positive outcome from this dual
association. According to informants inside the British far right,
groups such as Combat 18 are exasperated over the UDA's recent
backing for Israel. Apparently some in Combat 18 are even threatening
to boycott the Lower Shankill in protest at the forest of Star of
David's planted around Johnny Adair's home turf. And those Nazis that
do come will certainly not be offering to walk Rebel in his Israeli
cape up the Shankill.

henry.mcdonald-AT-observer.co.uk

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