Worth remembering that once there was a US President that stood up against Zionism, was a genuine peacemaker & did not use his office for personal gain.

 

Jimmy Carter did so much during and after his term as US President which brought benefits to the world and truly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize when it was eventually awarded to him in 2002.

He was not perfect but Jimmy was a deeply religious man who actually tried to live by the basic tenets of Christianity and, unlike Trump, used his public status not for personal wealth but to promote peace.
In fact he was the antithesis of the present day US President who is the personification of 5 of the 7 deadly sins that I was taught as a child in Christian religious class to beware of namely: pride, greed, lust, envy and wrath.

Among Jimmy's achievements:
-Helped mediate peace between Egypt and Israel through the 1978 Camp David Accords.
-Was the first President that called for a Palestinian homeland.
-Began the transfer of ownership of the Panama Canal from the USA to the country of Panama.
-Established Human Rights as an important element of U.S. foreign policy.
-Introduced energy conservation for the first time as a key element of US policy and established the Department of Energy.
-Spent decades after his Presidency personally helping to build houses for the poor, funding disease eradication programmes and undertaking diplomatic peace missions across the world.

I will never forget his interview on BBC Newsnight in the early 2000s when he warned the world of the dangers of the Israeli right-wing Zionist wealthy lobbyist group known as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), mentioning how they had corrupted US politics, saying that one could not successfully run as a small town sheriff in the USA if they were up against you. He correctly stated that they were a barrier towards achieving a just peace in the Middle East.

The Nativity of Jesus could never have happened in 2026

 

Photo from the 'Vatican News' media

Earlier this month the Galway Advertiser newspaper published my letter entitled "The Nativity of Jesus could never have happened in 2026."

I, as with the vast majority of the Irish people and indeed of the whole world, am horrified by the utter brutality of the Israeli occupation forces (both the military & the colonists) in the West Bank and Gaza and had to 'put pen to paper' once again.

But I was inspired also by Pope Francis's inauguration during Christmas 2024 of the "Nativity of Bethlehem 2024" scene placed in the Vatican which featured the baby Jesus lying on a Palestinian keffiyeh. The scene was crafted by Palestinian artists Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi from Bethlehem and featured olive wood figures of Joseph and Mary with the infant Jesus swaddled in a black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh. It gave due recognition to the present day sufferings of the Palestinian peoples whether they are Muslim, Christian or secular. 

 

My letter below:

The Nativity of Jesus could never have happened in 2026

 

It was only a few weeks ago on January 19th that Christmas Day was celebrated amongst the oldest Christian communities in the world, namely in the Middle East. It got me to reflect on the story of the Nativity or birth of Jesus and its significance in the 21st century.

The story is well known. Joseph walks alongside his heavily pregnant wife Mary sitting on a donkey as they journey across difficult terrain from their home in the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Joseph’s ancestral home of Bethlehem in Judea to register for a census required by the imperial Roman authorities. Once there they found there was no room available to rent for their stay. So they had to make do by taking shelter in a stable amongst animals where Mary subsequently gave birth, laying the new born baby in an animal feeding trough (manger). Singing angels appeared in the night sky and asked shepherds looking after their flocks of sheep in the hills above Bethlehem to go to the stable where the baby Jesus lay. Nearly two weeks later three magi or priests from lands far to the east of the Jordan River followed a star to Bethlehem to present gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the new born infant and family. As a result of their visit though, soldiers later came to Bethlehem to carry out the orders of King Herod (the ruler of the Roman vassal state of Judea) to kill all baby boys under the age of two in order to stop the fulfillment of a prophesy that one of them would become a future "King of the Jews". To save Jesus from certain death, the family fled Judea and took refuge in Egypt. They only returned to Nazareth after the death of Herod.

In spite of the poverty and terror in the ‘Holy Land’ during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius and his local client ruler King Herod, it is unlikely that the Nativity could occur in 2026.

For a Palestinian Arab from Nazareth would be generally forbidden from traveling to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank even if it was his ancestral home. The same holds for Palestinians going in the opposite direction. Even if they managed to get a permit from the occupying military power, they would have to go through multiple Israeli checkpoints, a eight metre high separation wall as well as encounter illegal settlements and their armed Jewish residents who are increasingly and violently taking over Palestinian lands (against international law) through attacking, evicting and killing the indigenous population. Where Palestinians have being forced by an Israeli campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide to escape to nearby Jordan or Egypt they, unlike the family of Jesus who temporarily fled to Egypt to save their lives, would be able to return to their homes, which more than likely would be occupied by Jewish colonists.

Nor would the three Magi ever be allowed access to Bethlehem in order to give gifts to a new born child. It is probable that the Magi were members of the Persian priestly caste of Zoroastrianism, then the main religion of the Parthian Empire centred on what is now Iran (formerly Persia). Few if any Iranians today would be allowed to visit Bethlehem by the occupying state. Nor would frankincense and myrrh and be so readily available as gifts. Grown primarily in war-ravaged Somalia and Yemen, the frankincense and myrrh trees are facing major threats from climate change, over-exploitation and population growth.

The heavenly sounds of angels singing have been replaced by the sounds of armed drones.

But there are other aspects of Palestine/Israel in 2026 that evokes the story of the Nativity. As in the time of Jesus the people of Palestine use donkeys to transport people and goods, this time though in Gaza to flee Israeli bombardment.

Whilst Jesus was born in an animal’s stable, today so many Palestinian women in Gaza give birth in the unsanitary conditions of tents made from plastic and tarpaulin as their homes and hospitals had been deliberately destroyed by the Israeli military.

Shepherds like those that came to worship Jesus at his birth still live in Bethlehem but their lives, lands and sheep are threatened daily by armed Zionist colonists.

The narcissism and tyranny of Tiberius and Herod emulates in so many ways that of Trump and Nethanyahu, both groups of rulers accepting or implementing a collective slaughter of civilians.

Two thousand years after Jesus, Christianity faces extinction in the land of its birth due to colonisation and ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Christian and Muslim populations in the occupied West Bank and genocide in Gaza.

Jesus message of peace and ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ in 2026 is more important than ever before

Margaretta D'Arcy- feminist, Irish republican, internationalist, socialist, artist, environmentalist, anti-war activist, anti-imperialist campaigner.

 

So many warm loving tributes have been paid by so many people to the great and unique Margaretta D'Arcy over the last week that I agree wholeheartedly with.

The last time I met this iconic inspirational woman was a few weeks ago at one of the weekly Thursday 'Campus Anti-Genocide' protests she regularly took part in which were held to highlight the University of Galway's unacceptable refusal to cut its research links with the Haifa-based Technion university that has strong links to the Israeli military industrial complex.

The first time I met her was in the late 1970s when I was a student union activist impressed by her and her late husband John Arden as they promoted the British "7:84" left wing political theatre group to the students of what was then the University College Galway (UCG). The group's name came from the fact that 7% of the population of Britain owned 84% of the country's wealth. She was then and always remained a fiery passionate left-wing idealist who stayed true to her radical beliefs.

Over the decades she was always on the front line standing up against oppression and for justice both in Ireland and elsewhere.

Galway and the world will be poorer for her departure.

The Galway Lads Completed the Barcelona Marathon for UNICEF Ireland’s GAZA Crisis Appeal.

 

Thanks to the generosity of so many people, my son Dáire and his three friends-Conor Breathnach, Ruadhán Durkin and Seán MacUidhlinn- raised €2500 in their BARCELONA MARATHON run on Sunday last for the worthy cause of UNICEF Ireland’s GAZA Crisis Appeal.

American Universities are becoming once again the conscience of their nation

I am so proud of the students of the prestigious University of Columbia, especially its many Jewish students such as Jared Kannel (see video above), demanding an end to the occupation, colonization and genocide of the Palestinian people made possible by the provision of American-made planes, bombs, tanks, ships and missiles from successive US governments.

Facing arrest and imprisonment, these courageous New York-based students are putting their own careers and futures on the line to stand with the people of Gaza and the West Bank who are being slaughtered daily by a brutal army of occupation assisted by armed racist colonial settlers.

But they have succeeded in lighting a spark of resistance which has inspired university students all across the United States to follow their lead.

When I was student myself, I spent a fantastic summer living on the campus of the University of Columbia and was fully aware of the history of progressive protest on its campus.

Columbia and other American campuses during the 1960s and 1970s were the epicentre and key spark for the anti-Vietnam war movement in the United States. They initially faced huge political and public hostility. But they kept going and helped change public opinion towards a war in South Asia where huge numbers of the indigenous population were been bombed incessantly from the air, land and sea by American military.

American students are once again becoming the conscience of the nation.

Songs & Poems for Peace at Vigil for Palestine, Galway

 

I was glad to have joined great people last night at the Vigil for Palestine on the Salmon Weir pedestrian bridge with the Galway Cathedral serving as an appropriate religious backdrop.

In spite of the heavy rain and strong winds, the poems read and Christmas hymns sung were clearly heard. Their message was peace, freedom and justice for Palestine and its peoples.

At the vigil, the traditional Nativity scene was given a December 2023 Gaza setting with the crib buried under the rubble of a collapsed building as happens daily due to the non-stop barbaric Israeli air and land bombing.

After the vigil the Nativity scene was transferred to the Cathedral where candles can be lit and prayers said for Palestine.

Well done to the Galway Palestine Solidarity Campaign for their great work in keeping the public aware of what is happening in Gaza and West Bank. They deserve our gratitude.

At the vigil it was great to meet up with Cha Taylor and Sean Regan, two good friends from UCG days.

Finally well done to the Christian community of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, for cancelling the Christmas festivities in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

The world this week lost one of the great iconic figures of the anti-apartheid movement. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a leader of the struggle against racist white minority rule in South Africa, and was for decades at the forefront of peaceful mass resistance against the regime. A rebellious priest he steered the Christian churches away from a lukewarm stance on apartheid towards a strong proactive opposition and a recognition that it was evil and immoral to tolerate it. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, he spent his first night of freedom with Desmond at the bishop’s residency in Cape Town. When he died in 2013, it was Tutu that gave the final prayers at his memorial service. Mandela would refer to him as the people’s archbishop and it was Tutu who  came up with the term ‘Rainbow Nation’ to describe the ethnic mix he wished for in a post-apartheid inclusive South Africa. It was to be a country for all its peoples and a recognition that many white South Africans over many years such as Helen Suzman, Archbishop of Durban Denis Hurley (his parents were Irish), Kathleen Murray (her father was Irish) and Joe Slovo were in positions of leadership in the progressive movement for liberty, equality and fraternity. A supporter of sanctions and boycotts, Tutu in the 1980s derided western leaders such as US President Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for their backing of the South African government whilst also condemning the Soviet Union and China for their anti-democratic anti-religious authoritarianism.  Throughout his life he was a strong opponent of Israel, demanding an international boycott of the country, seeing its treatment of Palestinians and the military occupation and colonial settlement of their lands as ‘apartheid’. Desmond also opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq by a US/UK lead coalition, spoke out against political corruption in post-apartheid South Africa, was a strong advocate for gay rights and campaigned for tough action on Climate Change.

From: International Defence & Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1978

 
During my student and post student days I was involved in the global campaign against institutionalised racism in South Africa, setting up a branch of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM) in UCG (now NUIG) during 1977, inviting its founder Kader Asmal to address the university’s Students’ Union assembly and being a participant in USI-led activities when student leaders from Galway such as Mike Jennings, Padraic Mannion and Grainne McMorrow were part of the movement during an era when powerful interests in Ireland tacitly viewed apartheid as a ‘necessary bastion’ against ‘godless’ communism. The IRFU arrogantly supported sporting tours from and visits to South Africa, and businesses such as Dunnes Stores sold their farm produce in their supermarkets. I demonstrated outside the Lansdowne Road stadium in the early 1980s during rugby matches alongside activists such as Michael D. Higgins, now President of Ireland; stood on the picket line at the Dunnes Stores branch on Henry Street in the mid 1980s with brave workers such as Mary Manning, sacked because they would not handle South African oranges and vegetables. These pickets were largely ignored by amongst others the wider Irish trade union membership until Bishop Desmond Tutu gave them international recognition by inviting the strikers to visit him in London during 1985 to thank them for their courageous efforts. In the 1980s I proudly wore my ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ tee-shirt dancing to the song of the same name by the Specials at alternative discos. I joined Michael D. and Sabina Higgins with other Galway anti-apartheid activists as well as Labour supporters in the Atlanta Hotel Dominick Street Galway on February 11 1990 as we emotionally watched on a big television screen Nelson Mandela being released from Victor Verster Prison after 28 years imprisonment.

Over recent years during my work visits to South Africa, I often met ANC veterans who talk admiringly of the grassroots support that they had from Ireland during the dark days. Some  would proudly inform me that they, from many different religious faiths, had been given their education by Irish clerics who regaled them with stories of the centuries-long struggle for Irish independence. Many viewed the conflicts in Northern Ireland and their own country as part of the wider global movement against imperialism, based on overcoming political establishments that used racial/class discrimination and police brutality to keep indigenous populations under control. Sinn Féin and the African National Congress (ANC) saw themselves as brothers-in-arms and Gerry Adams was part of the official guard of honour at Mandela’s funeral in 2013. Kader Asmal, Trinity law lecturer and IAAM co-founder who later become a Minister in Mandela’s government, had in the 1970s and 1980s arranged meetings between the IRA and the ANC’s military wing. But Desmond Tutu was always against armed conflict and consistently called for a peaceful settlement to the ‘Troubles’.

 

From: International Defence & Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1978

These ANC veterans would have agreed with Tutu though that the country still has so much to do to live up to the vision that both he and Mandela had of an egalitarian non-sexist non-racist Rainbow Nation, and that inequality, poverty, corruption, crime, femicide, xenophobia and racism were still prevalent.

 

During the apartheid era I, as a young impatient social activist, personally did often feel that Tutu, who was viewed internationally as the publicly acceptable tolerant face of the struggle for freedom, justice and equality in South Africa, was not radical enough and was too willing to cool the righteous anger of the oppressed masses. But in hindsight I admit that I was wrong and have over the years come to greatly admire the charming, smiling, gregarious, friendly, witty socialist churchman who was courageous beyond measure, willing to speak out against human rights abuses by the governments of Israel, USA, China, Soviet Union, UK and Myanmar.

A hero to so many over so many generations Desmond Tutu, throughout his long eventful life, saw himself first and foremost as a Christian priest rather than a politician who tried to live and to follow in the footsteps of his own hero, namely Jesus Christ. May he Rest in Peace/Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.

Teaching Coding in Al Balqa Applied University, Amman, Jordan

As part of my regular delivery of coding workshops in the Middle East, Africa and Greece within the wonderful Refugee Code Week initiative, I am not only sent to teach in refugee camps but also to the schools and colleges of the host countries. So during this week's schedule, I was assigned to provide Scratch coding sessions in the Al Balqa Applied University in Amman.

It was and is a fascinating experience. The administrative staff, lecturers and students are so enthusiastic in learning this branch of coding and delivering it to schools in Amman and elsewhere as part of assigned internships later in the year. 

One interesting thing that has impressed me in my work visits to the country is the high number of women undertaking engineering at universities and colleges. The attached photo from today of one of my workshops of engineering students provides ample proof of this.
There are a number or socio-economic factors why this is the case. But it is uplifting to see something so different to my own country Ireland where the numbers of females in engineering is still very low. We can learn from Jordan. So well done to Shoroq Trad, Haya Al-Omari ʚɞ and the other young Jordanian, Palestinian and other Middle Eastern women here in Jordan for taking on engineering and computer science as a future career!

Trump's Ban, Palestine & My Galway Workplace.

Recently my friend Ihab Salawdeh gave a highly illuminating talk on his homeland of Palestine as part of our institute’s “My Country” series. The idea is for staff/students working at the Insight Centre for Data Anlaytics to present informative but light-hearted overviews of their country to their colleagues. With over 30 nationalities represented at our university research centre, we have had some excellent insights into places far and near. 

The jovial Ihab introduced us to a Palestine that not too many outsiders are aware off; a land where, in spite of Israeli military occupation and colonial settlements, is rich in natural beauty, culture and history. The inhabitants of the Holy Land are proud of their ethnic cuisine, folk dances, vibrant musical heritage, traditional dress, scenic hillwalking routes, churches, mosques, synagogues as well as ancient Roman/Greek/Jewish and Byzantine ruins. Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem are great world centres of tourism and religious pilgrimage.

Thinking about Ihab’s talk and the ‘United Nations of Galway’ that is my research institute at NUI Galway, I have come to the conclusion that Trump’s decision to ban travel to the USA for refugees and people from seven countries that have majority Muslim populations will have enormous and immediate negative ramifications not just socially, economically and politically but also scientifically.
Some of the researchers at our university centre are respected scientists from Syria and Iran who often as part of their work attend research conferences in the USA and elsewhere. America is now off limits to them and the research community of Galway, Ireland, Europe and the world will suffer as a result.
Trump will I feel extend the ban to other countries with Palestine probably at the top of the list.

With Trump promoting his newly discovered Christianity (of the conservative strand) and his support of American business entrepreneuralism, I should remind him that Steve Job’s father was Syrian and that the family of Jesus Christ fled to Egypt as refugees to escape probable death at the hands of a despotic ruler.

Trump is bringing a coldness and darkness to a United States that has such a proud bright history of welcoming immigrants escaping religious, racial and cultural persecution.

Death of Peace activist in Middle East. He was a friend of mine

A few days ago I went to my local Catholic church to attend a mass in memory of a wonderful peace-loving man from the Middle East who was horribly tortured in prison by soldiers before being taken out through a screaming mob of religious fanatics to a hillside where he was publicly executed.

A social revolutionary, he was someone that I admired not just for what he had achieved in his short life but how he overcome prejudices even before he was born. For his mother was a young teenage girl who became pregnant whilst unmarried. In their very conservative traditional society, this would have meant being stoned to death. But her fiancée saved her from such a fate by marrying her even though he knew that the baby was not his.

Born into poverty, the child was forced to flee with his parents from their homeland to escape certain death at the hands of religious extremists.  The refugee family later returned to their village and lived quietly for many years. But later in life, the son became a target for the political and religious establishment when he started to travel around the country as a leading advocate for pacifism, religious tolerance, women’s rights, respect for children, and for a egalitarian classless society in order to end the economic exploitation of the masses by a wealthy clerical and political elite. Women and men flocked to open air rallies to hear him speak. His exploits were legendary: he once through his words saved a woman accused of adultery from being stoned to death by a group of fundamentalists. He befriended criminals, the sick, the poor, social outcasts, peoples of different faiths as well as members of the hated occupying army and their compliant state officials.  He condemned the hypocrisy of the all-powerful religious establishment who felt threatened by his ideology. They constantly harassed him, tried to break up his meetings, planted spies amongst his followers. Ever the pacifist, even when he was physically threatened, he never allowed his followers to use physical force to defend him.  But his enemies finally got him arrested on trumped-up charges of being both a blasphemer and an enemy of the state. He was condemned to a slow agonising death by a jeering crowd whipped up into a frenzy by clerics saying he had insulted their religion.

During his lifetime and since his death, some people have referred to him as a prophet, others say he was the son of God and there are those who think he was mad and delusional. I though over the years have been inspired by the radical progressive teachings of love, respect, liberty, equality and justice that were taught by this poor Jewish man from Galilee. Though I never met him, I would like to think that Jesus was a friend of mine.

May I extend New Year greetings of peace and goodwill to all my friends who are Muslims, Jews, atheists, Pantheists, Hindus, Buddhists, Druze, agnostics, Bahai’s and Christians. The cultural diversity and religious differences that we share strengthens our friendship.   
Áthbhlian faoi mhaise daoibh.

Gaza: World's Largest Concentration Camp

Gaza: where 1.82 million people are squeezed and imprisoned in a sliver of land; the descendants of people forced there as a result of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli military from 1948 onwards.

Gaza: the world's largest concentration camp

Gaza: besieged by land, sea and air by Israeli military forces for seven years, over twice as long as the Nazi siege of Leningrad.

Gaza: where today the people that stole their homes and lands can gather together to sit out on deck chairs, enjoy the sunshine, joke with friends and have a nice cold beer or two on a balcony or rooftop whilst looking out towards those poor unfortunate refugees who once lived in their neighbouhood as they are being mercilessly bombed with the latest high tech weaponry.

Gaza: where if I was a Palestinian living there, I would find it hard not to fire rockets at the illegal occupiers and colonists of my grandparents home especially when I see no future for my own children.

Gaza: Today's Warsaw Ghetto.

Joyeux Noel Film - the true message of Christmas portrayed

Click on image above to view the singing by a German soldier of 'Stille Nacht' & 'Adeste Fideles', the latter to the accompaniment of bagpipes played by Scottish soldiers

The French 2005 production 'Joyeux Noel' is one of the most emotionally captivating films that I have ever witnessed. In my humble opinion, it captures the true message of Christmas, namely 'Peace and Goodwill To All Peoples'. 

May I wish you and yours a joyful festive holiday (still a few days left!) and a progressive New Year.

Background to the film:
Along the Western Front on Christmas Eve 1914, soldiers from German, Scottish, English and French regiments organised unofficial ceasefires. Troops ventured into No Man's Land to exchange gifts, play football, sing songs together and bury their dead. 
Ordinary soldiers saw that they were one and the same, no matter what was the colour of the uniform.

Click on image above to hear Scottish soldier pipers playing "I'm Dreaming of Home"

Generals on both sides were incensed and scared that this laying down of arms and friendship across the divide would spread. So they ensured that no such large scale fraternisation ever happened again by ordering artillery barrages during subsequent Christmases. In an insane brutal war, there were already 3.5 million casualties by the end of 1914. Another 32 million would die before the war ended. 

The leaders of the main warring nations dressed up the conflict as a 'War To End Wars', a struggle for peace and liberty when in reality they were only concerned about expanding their empires. Whilst the ‘Allies’ promoted the war as a struggle to free small nations (e.g. Belgium) from German, Austrian and Turkish tyranny, World War One actually resulted in the victorious French and British dividing up the Middle East between them against the wishes of the local populations. 
The horrible legacy of this imperial carve up and the promises made to financiers and oilmen during and soon after WW1 are the conflicts in Iraq, Libya and Palestine that we have today. 

John Lennon and Yoko Ono recognised that throughout the ages, war and conflict were used by those in power to kill, butcher and maim peoples and the planet in order to maintain and expand their control. Their 1971 classic, Happy Christmas, War is Over (below) perfectly encapsulates this message

Peace, Justice and Equality to All Men and Women! 

Click on image above  to hear John, Yoko & Plastic Ono Band sing their 1971 anti-war song 'Happy Christmas, War is Over'

Merry Christmas

A Jesus in Today's Palestine

Could the story of the Nativity happen today in Palestine? 
Unlikely.
For would a poor young unmarried teenage girl in the West Bank, who had just announced that she was pregnant, not become a victim of male ‘honour’?
Even if she did survive, she and her new husband would have found it extremely difficult to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem due to road-blocks and travel restrictions placed on local inhabitants by the occupying Israeli military; the shepherds would have probably lost their grazing lands to compulsory acquisition for the erection of the ‘Security Wall’ and Jewish colonial settlements; and the three wise men from Iraq (Mesopotamia) would have being denied entry visas.

But even if the birth did manage to occur in Bethlehem, Israeli military border controls would have probably barred Mary’s family from crossing into Egypt to escape religious persecution thus sealing their faith.

Yet there is no doubt that an adult Jesus of the New Testament and of a modern Middle East would have ended their lives in a similar terrible fashion. For anyone preaching a message of peace and love, a call for people’s liberation from poverty and oppression, of respect for all races and creeds, of freedom for prisoners, and an end to the oppression of women would have made himself both an enemy of the state and of a religious fundamentalism that preaches intolerance towards non-believers and death to all apostates and blasphemers.

Yes, death would have come either from an American-made laser guided missile or from execution by a Islamic death squad.

Dying Embers of Middle Eastern Christianity

At a time when Christians across the world celebrate the birth of their founder, a dangerous cocktail mix of Christian, Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism is leading to the near extinction of native Christianity in its birthplace with a mass exodus of frightened Arab and other indigenous Christians fleeing rabid persecution.

At the beginning of the last century, Christians represented a quarter of the population of the Middle East. Their churches dotted the landscapes of what is now Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. When Islam appeared in the region in the seventh century, Arab Christianity was already six hundred years old. Its worldwide influence was profound. They practised the custom of ‘prostration’ now almost exclusively associated with Muslims, and had always used (and still does) the term ‘Allah’ to refer to ‘God’. Egypt's Coptic Christians gave to the early Irish Celtic church its tradition of monasticism. Assyrian Christian scholars translated many of the Greco-Roman and Persian scientific texts into Arabic, thereby helping in the flowering of Islamic civilisation under the Abbasid Caliphate. From the eight until the eleventh century the Nestorians, with their heartland in modern Iraq and Iran were the most influential of all Christian churches with bishoprics stretching as car as southern Arabia and eastern China.

A religious tolerance more or less held in the Middle East for centuries until it began to be replaced about one hundred years ago by hatred and even genocide. This began in World War One when, according to many leading historians, the Ottoman Turks massacred three million Armenians, Assyrian and Pontiac Greeks in World War One because of their faith and ethnicity.

From 2001, the ‘Born-Again Christian’ George Bush unleashed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that he termed a ‘crusade’ which has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Combined with the pro-Zionist views of influential right-wing American Christians, who believe that all of Palestine must become Jewish in preparation for Christ’s return to Earth for the great final battle of ‘Armageddon’ (aka the ‘Rapture’), the response across the Middle East and environs has been the unleashing of a wave of murderous religious extremism. Too often local Christian communitities became an easy and accessible target. Christians now make up less than 6% of the region's population.

Yet as with Russia and China, US foreign policy is driven by an imperial greed that has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, liberty and justice. Its key global allies are bigoted religious authoritarian regimes such as Israel with its campaign of colonisation of Arab lands by foreign Jewish settlers; Saudi Arabia where Christian worship and that of other religions is banned, where school children are taught to hate ‘infidels’ or non-believers, and where conversion from Islam to any other religion (apostasy) is punishable by death; Iraq where a campaign of ethnic cleansing has led to possibly 500,000 Christians fleeing the country since 2004; and an Egypt where religious discrimination is practiced, where churches are bombed; where reports of the kidnapping, rape and forced marriages of young Christian Coptic women to Muslim men are increasing.

The great Irish writer and Protestant cleric Jonathan Swift was correct in his analysis that “We have enough religion to make us hate each other but not enough to make us love one another”.

So surely there is an obvious case for the expulsion of these and other countries from a United Nations with its ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ that includes Article 18 which states “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”?

Sadly the EU and the Irish government will do little of substance to end religious and other types of persecution in countries where they have vested economic interests.

Finding the Truth in Netanyahu’s Speeches

My article below appeared as a letter in a recent edition of the Galway Advertiser:
One could agree with the sentiments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he says that an air, sea and naval blockade is necessary to “…prevent militants groups from getting weapons… whose only goal (is) to hit civilians and kill as many… women, children, old people…Under international law and under common sense and common decency, (there is a need to) interdict this weaponry and to inspect the ships that might be transporting them.”

Likewise Netanyahu could be correct in his analysis that allowing an aggressive Middle East state to obtain nuclear weapons “…threatens …world peace in a way that very few events could possibly threaten it. (This) nuclear challenge represents a ‘hinge of history’ and ‘Western civilization’ will have failed if (a Middle East state) is allowed to develop nuclear weapons…”

So it is time for the United Nations, supported by the Big Four Powers, to confiscate Israel’s nuclear arsenal and put in place a cordon to finally end the flow of 90 billons of dollars in US military and financial aid that has gone into the country since 1976 which has provided the IDF with the F16s, Apache helicopters and Sparrow/Sidewinder missiles necessary to kill thousands of civilians in its neighbouring states and facilitate the colonial occupation and settlement by racist fundamentalist settlers of Arab lands. Cromwell would gladly approve of a policy that has overtones of “To Hell or To Connacht”. Today the 1.5million civilians in the densely populated over-sized concentration camp known as Gaza can look out from bombed-out tenement buildings across the security walls onto the fertile fields and clean tidy settlements of what was, until only a few decades ago, their family lands.

Netanyahu talks of the ‘Jewish State’. But even in biblical times, the ‘Holy Land’ was never a land of Jews alone who were in fact only one of many indigenous peoples which included Canaanites, Amorites, Philistines and Samaritans. Jerusalem itself was a Jebusite city until conquered by a Jewish army under King David.

The Jewish people in Europe were almost wiped out 70 years ago by a regime that wanted to remove them from lands in Eastern Europe that it laid claim too based on racist myths. The Jews were forced from their homes, that were then given to German colonists (as with many other indigenous peoples in Eastern Europe), and herded into concentration camps where movement of food and other supplies was tightly controlled. Any individual resistance to this blockade led to a brutal armed response onto the entire population.
Ironic then that we see today’s descendants of that Holocaust behave like Nazis of old. They arbitrarily dictate what goes into Gaza and what doesn’t. Allowing canned meat but not canned fruit; allowing mineral water but not fruit juices. Banning computers, school books and cement is reminiscent of Hitler’s ideology of denying education and other basic human rights to ‘inferior’ races.

Europe should follow the example of the activists of the ‘Rachel Corrie’ ship (named after a female American peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer when she acted as a human shield protecting a Palestinian home from demolition) to ensure that history does not repeat itself. We owe it to the memories of the victims of the attempted genocides of the Jews, Armenian Christians, Kurds and Muslim Bosnians in the Europe-Middle Eastern region during modern times.

Will the International Community Ever Stand up to the Terrorist Aggressor State known as Israel?

Protests in Galway against armed Israeli attack on naval humanitarian aid convoy.
Location was the Liam Mellows statue at Eyre Square

This week’s armed pirate attack in international waters by the Israeli military on a peaceful flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza, resulting in the deaths of civilian passengers and the hijacking of ships and their occupants, is another demonstration of the terrorism that is a key characteristic of the Israeli state.

In the last few days, Israel has arrogantly dismissed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed by 189 states to make the Middle East a ‘Nuclear Free Zone’; in the last few weeks, it has vowed to continue expanding illegal Jewish colonial settlements on Arab lands; in the last few months it has been shown to have stolen international passports (including Irish) to provide cover for assassins sent to kill an opponent in another country; in the last few years, it has invaded Gaza and Lebanon killing thousands of innocent civilians, deliberately obliterating urban areas, transport/government infrastructure and covering agricultural lands with anti-personnel cluster bombs; in the last three years it has organised an illegal air, sea and land blockade of Gaza that represents the longest siege in modern times; in the last decade it has built a huge fortified wall on Arab lands in order to confine Arabs into nothing more than large concentration camps; in the last few decades it has built up an illegal nuclear weaponry arsenal; consistently defied UN resolutions; introduced racists laws against Arabs; and has invaded, occupied and settled Arab lands with racist Jewish colonial settlers brought in from Europe and beyond, ensuring in the process that any indigenous peoples left are stripped of their personal/national dignity by denying them control of their own roads, food and water supplies.

What more evil does Israel have to do before the western political community has the courage to take on the powerful Zionist financial and political lobby in the USA, Britain and elsewhere, as exposed by that fine elder statesman ex-US President Jimmy Carter, and put an end to the aggression and expansionism of a state that is a central cause of instability in the Middle East and the world?

The Irish government should be praised for unequivocally condemning Israeli piratical action and calling for an end to the illegal siege of Gaza. But surely, Ireland should now go further by expelling the Israeli ambassador and calling for a EU trade boycott of Israel? Likewise it should demand the sacking of the European taxpayer-funded 'Middle East Peace' envoy Tony Blair, who is distrusted in the region from his term as British Prime Minister, who spends so much of his time on the lucrative US lecture circuit or by acting as a high paid consultant to financial institutions/corporations whilst seeming to go AWOL when Israel launches one of its regular terrorist campaigns against unarmed civilians. Sadly he lacks the moral conviction of those brave Jews and Israelis such as the ‘Rabbis For Palestine’ who took part in demonstrations this week in London and elsewhere against the Israeli state murder machine.

This is the text of one of my previous posts that I think it is worth republishing at the time of the year that we celebrate the birth of a figure who preached tolerance, peace and love to all living things, but who ended up being tried as a threat to state and religion before being tortured to death.
Sadly his followers since have too often inexplicably used his name and teachings to kill and maim on all continents and in all centuries.
Just as astonishing is the fact that a modern day Jesus Christ from the biblical lands of Israel/ Palestine would more than likely be killed in his mother's womb or die a very young man.
For an evil stalks that blood-stained land masquerading on one side as "Allah" or "God's Will" and the other as "Defense of Democracy & Western Values" in a county known ironically as the 'Holy Land'.

Could the story of the Nativity happen today in Palestine? Unlikely.

For would a poor young unmarried teenage girl in the West Bank, who had just announced that she was pregnant, not become a victim of male ‘honour’?
Even if she did survive, she and her new husband would have found it extremely difficult to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem due to road-blocks and travel restrictions placed on local inhabitants by the occupying Israeli military; the shepherds would have probably lost their grazing lands to compulsory acquisition for the erection of the ‘Security Wall’ and Jewish colonial settlements and the three wise men from Iraq (Mesopotamia) would have being denied entry visas.
But even if the birth did manage to occur in Bethlehem, Israeli military border controls would have probably barred Mary’s family from crossing into Egypt to escape religious persecution thus sealing their faith.
Yet there is no doubt that an adult Jesus of the New Testament and of a modern Middle East would have ended their lives in a similar terrible fashion. For anyone preaching a message of peace and love, a call for people’s liberation from poverty and oppression, of respect for all races and creeds, of freedom for prisoners and an end to the oppression of women, would have made himself both an enemy of the state and of a religious fundamentalism that preaches intolerance towards non-believers and death to all blasphemers.
Yes, death would have come either from an American-made laser guided missile or from execution by a death squad after the customary gruesome torture.