Why should Israeli settlers influence an Irish election?

The Ireland I grew up in was a repressive place. Some of the best friends of my adolescence were gay but they could not tell anyone. It wasn’t until they were in their 20s or 30s that they finally had the confidence to come out.

The country’s ban on homosexual relations was overturned primarily because of one man: David Norris. Throughout the 1980s, he fought a long battle in the Irish courts. He didn’t win, so he took his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where he did. Eventually, gay relations were decriminalized. That was in 1993, a mere 18 years ago.

Today, David Norris is a candidate for the post of Ireland’s president. As an emigrant, I don’t have a vote in the election scheduled for next month. If I did, I would cast it for him.

Norris has tirelessly championed human rights at home and abroad. Together with a retired bus driver Tom Hyland, he made the situation in East Timor a priority issue for Irish foreign policy in the 1990s. And while the Dublin government accommodated the invasion of Iraq by allowing Shannon Airport become a de facto US military base, Norris called for George W Bush and Dick Cheney to be tried for war crimes.

Palestine solidarity lands him in trouble

Yet it is his support for the Palestinians that has landed Norris in the most trouble.

As I wrote last month, Norris withdrew from the presidential race because of a smear campaign undertaken by Zionist blogger John Connolly. (Happily, Norris has now returned to the contest and has been formally nominated as a candidate).

Connolly drew attention to how Norris had written to an Israeli court in 1997 urging it to be lenient towards his former partner Ezra Nawi, who was convicted of having sex with a minor. By Norris’s own admission, it was an error of judgment for him to make the appeal. But there is a huge difference between requesting leniency for an offender and approving of an offense. In this case, all Norris did was say that his friend was an otherwise decent man, who would be unlikely to ever commit such an offense again.


Well-respected

Although I have met Norris a few times, I don’t know Nawi. But I understand that he is well-respected among Palestine solidarity activists. A plumber by profession, Nawi has spent many years rebuilding Palestinian houses that have been destroyed by the Israeli military. In October 2009, he was sentenced to a month in a jail for obstructing an Israeli bulldozer that was being used to demolish Bedouin homes in the South Hebron area. Norris has been hugely supportive of his ex-partner’s political work by, among other things, raising funds for it.

John Connolly has written that his knowledge of Nawi is mostly based on conversations he had with “the Jewish community of Judah and Shomron, who have fought with Nawi for many years.” Judah and Shomron – or Judea and Samaria – is a name Zionists give to the West Bank. The “community” referred to here is comprised of illegal settlers.

Nawi has been punished for his past misdemeanor. Yet the settlers who keep Connolly “informed” enjoy the full support of the Israeli state, even though their activities contravene international law.

I don’t see why Israeli settlers should have any say in who becomes president of Ireland. And I don’t see why David Norris should be pilloried for doing nothing worse than saying his friend was someone of good character.

Our president is supposed to represent all the Irish people, wherever they live. I would be proud to have David Norris representing me.

●First published by The Electronic Intifada, 29 September 2011.

Israel lobby dictates who may run for Ireland's president

Until recently, I was convinced that the tiny pro-Israel lobby in my native Ireland was of little significance. When the first Gaza Freedom Flotilla was attacked last year, the best that lobby could do was wheel out two guys named Tom. Both Tom Carew and Tom Cooney competed with each other on the TV3 channel to see who could make the most absurd argument in support of Israel’s murder of nine peace activists onboard the Mavi Marmara.

On a quick visit to Dublin last week, I was surprised to hear that one of this wacky duo is now working for the national government. In April, Cooney was named an advisor to Alan Shatter, the Irish minister for justice and defense. A statement announcing the appointment indicated that Cooney, a law lecturer in University College Dublin, was something of an iconoclast, alluding to his track record of championing civil liberties at home and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

There was no mention of his views on Israel, a curious omission given that his new boss Shatter is a committed Zionist. Whereas the Irish government was generally more balanced in commenting about the Freedom Flotilla II than many of its EU counterparts over the past few months, Shatter was openly hostile to the effort, declaring it was “something of a mystery” to him why anyone could feel the need for a “political protest” against the Gaza blockade. Worryingly, Shatter has been put in charge of the department of defense by Ireland’s relatively new prime minister Enda Kenny; that department has awarded contracts to Israeli weapons firms in the not-so-distant past.

My trip also coincided with a protracted debate about who should be Ireland’s next president. Even though the role of the president in Ireland is largely ceremonial and the holder of that office has no executive power, elections for the position can be vicious affairs.

According to opinion polls, the front-runner in the race (the election is still several months away) was David Norris, a scholar of James Joyce who undertook an eventually successful legal challenge against Ireland’s ban on homosexual relations in the 1980s. This week, however, Norris from the contest after it emerged he had written a letter to an Israeli court in 1997 urging that it be lenient in sentencing his former partner Ezra Nawi, who was convicted of statutory rape of a 15 year old Palestinian.

Don’t get me wrong. I am horrified by the very idea of an adult having sex with a child. Unquestionably, Norris showed poor judgment in making his appeal, particularly by writing it on official headed paper supplied by the Irish Senate, of which he is a long-standing member.

Nonetheless, there is no evidence than Norris did anything more sinister than seek mercy for somebody he loved.

It is telling that it was not child protection advocates that drew attention to Norris’ relationship with Nawi. Rather, it was Zionist blogger John Connolly, an Irish law graduate living in London.

Connolly stated that his “main problem with Norris in recent times has been his outspoken criticism of Israel”. Among the alleged misdemeanors he cited were that Norris had invited Ilan Pappé, the dissident Israeli historian, to address his colleagues in the Oireachtas, Ireland’s parliament.

Connolly’s blog post inspired journalists with the reactionary Irish Independent to delight in Norris’ difficulties. Kevin Myers, one of Ireland’s best-paid columnists, inferred that Norris wouldn’t dream of writing to Arab governments demanding that they treat gay men or lesbians fairly. This was a patently ludicrous claim as Norris has been a consistent champion of human rights throughout the world.

Despite being few in number, Irish Zionists appear to be growing in clout to such a degree they can determine who may and may not stand in elections. The conclusion that they have no qualms about undermining democracy seems inescapable.

·First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net), 3 August 2011.