Speak for Dublin, Punam

Dublin October 7, 2024

Punam Rane promises her Dublin constituents “fresh ideas, fresh thinking” on her website. There wasn’t much of that on offer in her speech to the City Council recently. Just the oldest, laziest,  stalest idea around: The Jews; where there’s a problem there’s the Jews behind it:

“How many of you know the entire economy of the USA is ruled by the Jews, by Israel? They will never be able to take a stance…it will cripple the whole US economy if they take a stance. They are afraid of taking a stance.”

When pressed, she clarified her words; of course she didn’t mean the Jews; this is what she meant:

“I’m just saying today the US economy is ruled by the Israel, it’s not wrong…what I’m saying is US is not able to take a stance today because of their financial dependency, that’s all I’m saying.”

For the record the US GDP is $29 trillion per year, the Israeli economy is $564 billion per year. So the American economy is more than 50 times the size of Israel’s – that would be a very little tail wagging a very big dog.

It’s rubbish go course; she meant the Jews and her real offence was to let the mask slip. Tom Tugendhat talks very eloquently about this, about his Muslim friends from the Middle East who see massacres ignored and are shocked at the liberal west, for what it comes down to, as Tughendhat points out is; the Jews, the Jews, the Jews.

The decks had been cleared for the Dublin debate, all trivial motions deferred by agreement, apart from designating Dublin a Breastfeeding Friendly City. It’s official. That was nodded through. Dublin’s elect needed all the time they could muster to express righteous moral outrage.

Councillor Doolan kicked off his motion with some context; “Twelve months ago our hearts were breaking as we watched whole families wiped out” ending the sentence with “by Israel”

What?

You’re meeting on October 7. You’ve picked the anniversary of October 7 to have a meeting that is silent about October 7.

And so it went on. A child’s poem written, apparently in English, climaxed with “from the river to the sea” a yearned for eradication that earned an ovation from all sides.

At least Labour brought up Syria and Yemen. But only because they’re being victimised by the “rogue state” Israel. In a sentence about the Houthis and Bashar al Assad, Israel is the rogue state. Spot the odd one out.

Councillor Flynn cast through his magisterial understanding of history and found an exact parallel; Operation Barbarossa. The blitzkreig invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. A surprise invasion by 4 million troops across a front from the Arctic to the Black Sea causing millions of deaths, including 500,000 Jews killed by Einsatzgruppen. Identical in every respect except for…oh never mind, when it comes to the actions of Israel, parallels with panzers and einsatzgruppen are never very far behind.

And on it went, they managed to fit a lot of “psychotic”, “genocide” (again and again and again), “psychopathic”, “terror gang” (idf naturally), “apartheid” into their 2 minutes each. But not Hezbollah or Iran.

It was a two dimensional view sliced through a three dimensional situation.

When Britain’s appeasement had failed in 1939 and on the day war was declared, Arthur Greenwood rose in the House of Commons to denounce the appeasers. As he stood a cry rang out in the chamber;  “speak for England, Arthur”

Speak for Dublin, Punam.