Hamas Isn't the IRA

And when it comes to the peace process, the Middle East isn't Northern Ireland.


Michael Weiss
Slate
17 September '10

With the resumption of Arab-Israeli direct talks comes the regurgitation of a minority view that these talks are destined to fail because Hamas is excluded. The first salvo in this ongoing campaign came from Palestinian-American blogger Ali Abunimah, an advocate of the one-state solution, who expounded upon the need for recognizing Hamas in the New York Times. Peter Beinart made the same case in a broader Daily Beast column about Obama's failed foreign policy. What both had in common, apart from thinking rather generously of a totalitarian and anti-Semitic Islamist party, is use of the Irish Republican Army and Northern Ireland as a convenient analogy for the Middle East peace process. Didn't the British government eventually sit down with Sinn Fein, the IRA's "political wing," after decades of murderous mayhem in Belfast and Tube, pub, and other bombings on the mainland? And can't the same lessons learned from the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which inaugurated the end of the Troubles, be applied to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

There are many obvious reasons why this analogy fails. The IRA never employed suicide bombers or called for the wholesale destruction of Great Britain. Nor was it the client of a theocratic state intent on becoming a nuclear power. It was also thoroughly integrated with Sinn Fein and could therefore act with greater strategic cohesion than the fragmented Hamas, whose political and paramilitary leadership is spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank, and Damascus, Syria. But, most important, the analogy misconstrues the history of the Northern Ireland peace process and the ultimate aim of the Good Friday Agreement, which was, chiefly, to undermine the terrorists, not to legitimize them.

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Northern Ireland: Refutation Number 4539

Eamonn McDonagh
Z-Word Blog
30 August '10

Regular readers of this blog will know that we have repeatedly argued against the usefulness of the Northern Ireland analogy applied to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nevertheless, like the corpse of a drowned dog, it keeps bobbing to the surface again and again. The latest example is by Ali Abunimah in the New York Times. With a deep sigh and a heavy step I’ll now proceed to take it apart.

The conflict in Northern Ireland had been intractable for decades. Unionists backed by the British government saw any political compromise with Irish nationalists as a danger, one that would lead to a united Ireland in which a Catholic majority would dominate minority Protestant unionists.

This is false. Only the most extreme factions of unionism, those associated with illegal terrorist groups, rejected any compromise with Catholic nationalists. The rest only baulked at whatever they perceived as a first step towards the end of the Union. And far from supporting Unionist intransigence successive British governments sought to encourage their Northern Irish citizens to reach an acceptable internal compromise.

The British government also refused to deal with the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, despite its significant electoral mandate, because of its close ties to the Irish Republican Army, which had carried out violent acts in the United Kingdom.

Saying that the IRA had close ties to Sinn Féin is like saying that the United States Army has close ties to the United Sates government, with the important difference that in the Sinn Féin - IRA relationship it was always the latter that made the key decisions. Furthermore, the British government negotiated with Sinn Féin - IRA on a cyclical basis (fight a bit, talk a bit fight a bit) at least as far back as the Cheyne Walk talks of 1972. And finally, the great bulk of the violence carried out by the IRA occurred in Northern Ireland and was inflicted on ordinary people.

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Cameron's Flotilla Folly

Aaron Goldstein
American Spectator
29 July '10
Posted before Shabbat

If there was any doubt as to where Britain's Tory led government stood with regard to Israel it was removed when Prime Minister David Cameron paid a visit to Turkey to hold talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and announce his support for Turkey's bid to enter to the European Union. During this same visit, Cameron also described the Gaza Strip as "a prison camp."

It was a rather daft observation on the part of Cameron, especially when one considers the luxurious mall opened earlier this month in Gaza. This isn't to say that life in Gaza is all strawberries and cream. But that Cameron would pillory Israel while holding the Hamas-run government blameless in this state of affairs is very telling indeed.

By simultaneously describing Gaza as a prison camp on and endorsing Turkish entry into the EU while on Turkish soil, Cameron effectively endorsed Turkey's efforts to break Israel's blockade on Gaza through the flotilla campaign. In so doing, Cameron has for all intents and purposes declared that Israel has no right to defend itself. "The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable," said Cameron.

To borrow an English term, Cameron's statement is absolute bollocks. For Cameron to suggest that Israel wantonly launched an unprovoked attack the Mavi Marmara on May 31, 2010 is an act of defamation. IDF forces instructed the Mavi Marmara to dock in the port of Ashdod where goods would be inspected and any humanitarian supplies would be sent to Gaza through a convoy of trucks. The Mavi Marmara told the IDF to "Go back to Auschwitz."

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Hezbollah is not the IRA

Tony Badran
Now Lebanon
02 February '10

Islamist groups have invited a whole set of analogies purportedly aimed at better explaining them and how best to deal with them. One such analogy that has gained currency in recent years is the oft-encountered comparison between Islamist groups and the Irish Republican Army.

The point of the comparison is to show that as the IRA was purportedly co-opted through dialogue, the same method can be applied to other armed organizations as well. Hence, the argument runs, only such a peaceful process, and not military coercion, will lead to any given group’s decision to abandon violence, and ultimately to disarm and integrate into democratic politics. Of course, forsaking violence is not a prerequisite for dialogue, and engagement is further facilitated by a nifty conceit distinguishing a group’s “military wing” from its ostensibly more moderate or pragmatic “political wing.” Indeed, the British are currently pursuing this policy with Hezbollah – and going nowhere.

The argument has just been trotted out again in a rather fantastical and factually handicapped piece by Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson on the Foreign Affairs website.

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