Sunday, April 30, 2017

Jews and Ireland

This post is not about Jews IN Ireland, they have been in Ireland for hundreds of years and it is one of the few European countries that never persecuted them. I am an American of Irish decent. I am legally entitled to Irish citizenship. Let me explain that, if you are second or third generation Irish and live in America, you are entitled to become an Irish citizen. I am fourth generation. Having said that, both my parents were Irish and I have more Irish in me than most second or third generation Irish in America. Because of that fact Irish law entitles me to be an Irish citizen. I am an American first and foremost even though I still have family in Ireland.

I think America has been the best place for the average guy to live in the history of the world and am the first to point out the mistakes and tragedies we are responsible for. To ignore our history of slavery or the internment of the Japanese is ignorant and often hateful. It is a denial of history and those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it.

The Irish got our country back, self determination, from the English in 1922. Later they formed the Republic of Ireland which is primarily Catholic. I grew up Catholic. I am not a Catholic and haven't been since I was 12. Northern Ireland is still Protestant and part of the English empire. During the 1960s and 70s the Catholics in Northern Ireland were kept mostly in walled ghettos I don't know if there is such a thing as "white privilege", I do know that there has never been Irish privilege. Up until the 1700s the Irish were the primary group of slaves sent to Antigua. In fact, Irish slaves were cheaper to buy than African slaves at one time. In fact they used to breed Irish women with black slaves so that their children would be slaves.

During the 1970s I favored the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. I was in my teens. I felt hatred for what the English were doing in Northern Ireland. On Bloody Sunday in 1972 they killed 14 unarmed Irish Catholics for protesting how they were treated in Northern Ireland. Separate and unequal. In Northern Ireland Catholics were not allowed to be police officers. It was also illegal to speak Gaelic, our language in Ireland. Britain stopped the slave trade in 1839 for both Irish and Africans. It was a Scottish man that reminded me of this.

I had to ask myself what we should do if Ireland were reunified. What if Protestant Northern Ireland was reunited to make one Ireland, just like Germany was reunified, just like people want to see Korea reunified. I would want to see Irish Protestants treated as family as one people.

Now we get to the Jews. The Jews were sent out of Israel a long time ago. They lost their home. They spread throughout Europe and were treated badly. During World War II they were outright exterminated. Even the Jews in America were treated like garbage at that time. In fact, they weren't even allowed into most country clubs and had to build their own resorts. That is what the Catskills was.

After World War II a situation existed. If you were a Jew who lived in Poland and was sent into a ghetto controlled by the Nazis and turned in by the Poles, would you have wanted to stay there? There were Jews who tried to come to America from Germany prior to the war and were sent back. Would you want to return to Germany after World War II if you were Jewish? Americans did not even know about the holocaust until after the war. The government knew, the people didn't. It was intentionally kept from the American public so we wouldn't all hate the Germans. They don't trust you to ever know the truth, they prefer to lead your opinion before letting you know the facts.

There are people who deny the Holocaust, I know that, they are imbeciles. There are fascists that hate Zionism, the Jewish belief and wish for a homeland. Their ignorance annoys me. What were the Jews to do after World War II,  return to Germany? Would you if you were Jewish? My guess is not. Then where were they to go? America had already turned back people who ended up in gas chambers, so had England. They returned home and created Israel. I support Israel.

I do not believe that anyone can born a slave or in debt. How I is it moral to tell someone that they are born with no rights and only debts? How can Israel support treating Palestinians as less than human? I am a Zionist who believes in the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish nation. I also believe that they are undeserving if they do not allow Palestinians to be treated as free people.