He is worried about the stance that our government, particularly the Department of Foreign Affairs, is taking regarding Brexit. You should be worried too. It appears that the Irish government has decided that there is no special relationship with Britain, and that our attitude to Britain and Brexit will be subservient to the EU’s attitude. The idea that there is no special relationship is not only patently false (I’m writing this from Belfast, for God’s sake!), such a cavalier attitude to our nearest neighbour is extremely dangerous economically, verging on the financially treacherous. To equate Ireland’s position with respect to Brexit to that of France or Germany or, worse still, to the likes of Hungary is insane. There are 5. 00,0. Irish citizens living in England. We have a land border with Britain and a bilateral international treaty, the Good Friday Agreement, with London. We are umbilically attached to Britain in our two most labour- intensive industries, agriculture and tourism, where the British are by far our biggest clients. One- third of our imports come from Britain. The Dublin/London air corridor is the busiest route in Europe and one of the busiest in the world. In fact, the Irish airline Ryanair is the biggest airline in Britain, carrying far more British people every year than British Airways. It is plain to see that Irish relations with Britain cannot be outsourced to someone like Michel Barnier, the EU’s negotiator on Brexit. There is simply too much at stake for us to allow that. And it behoves the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Taoiseach to stand up for Irish interests which are profoundly and asymmetrically affected by Brexit. Why would a noted French federalist such as Barnier make an exception for Ireland in the EU negotiations with the EU? If the EU decides to punish Britain for its decision to leave the EU by imposing what is termed a hard Brexit, what part of Ireland’s national interest is served by going along with that? I can’t see how we would be remotely enriched by a federalist solution. If the EU decides to teach the British a lesson, do we cheerlead from the side like pliant idiots – to be patted on the head by Brussels – or do we argue that this goes against our national interest? Once your own government begins to act against the interest of your own economy, you have to ask questions. It’s not enough to say we have pooled our sovereignty and there’s nothing we can do. This means that we sleepwalk into a potential trade war with Britain where Ireland can only be damaged immeasurably. What if being a good European means being bad Irishmen and women? The omens are not good. The government’s stance that there can be no negotiations with Britain before Article 5. Ireland. It may make sense for a federalist French politician, but for Irish people, it makes no sense – unless our critical faculties are now subservient to the shibboleth of being ? If so, what is the point of the entire exercise? Before you think this is a Eurosceptic article, let’s just stop and clarify a few things. I think the EU has been good for us and can continue to be so. We have also been good for them. It’s a symbiotic relationship. For example, when the EU agreed to let the accession countries of Eastern Europe and French federalist politicians spoke loftily about a New Europe that the EU was forging, did you know that France threw up travel barriers and visa requirements for workers from those countries intending to travel and work in France? Rhetoric is clearly cheap.
Only three countries actually did the European thing and allowed east Europeans to come, work and live immediately, no questions asked. Those countries were Ireland, Britain and Sweden. Allowing people to travel is real integration, not sloganeering. I worry about the man who is negotiating for us: Monsieur Barnier. For example, in 2. EU Commissioner, he wrote a report for the EU parliament that advocated scrapping countries’ consulates in other countries. Under his federalist vision, the Irish consulate in Spain would be scrapped – so that if an Irish lad got a battering from the Guardia Civil, for example, there would be no Irish consulate to listen to his case and help him out. He also advocated in this report to close down all (Irish and other) consulates in non- EU countries and replace these with one EU consulate. This is deep federalism, so much so that I noticed reading these reports that the word “country” is never mentioned. Countries are never referred to as countries, but as “member states”. It appears that even the mention of the word country by the EU Commission undermines the long- term federalist project. Just click on the button below to get started. Your information may be shared with other NBCUniversal businesses and used to better tailor our services and advertising to you. For more details about how we use. Catering to the modern man with content that promises to seduce, entertain and continuously surprise readers.This column has argued for some time now that we stay in the EU, but draw the line at the present EU. We shouldn’t embrace any further integrationist stuff nor sign up to any further federalist projects. This means doing precisely the opposite of the Brits. Rather than following the British out of the EU, we should vow never to leave it. The EU can’t kick us out. There is no mechanism. We should simply opt out of Mr Barnier’s plans. This means we have full access to the EU, but we don’t need nor want to go any further – not because of some cultural aversion, but because it’s not in our interest. The way the EU reacts to Article 5. Next up will be the consolidated corporation tax threat. Ireland’s economic emissaries should assess what is in our interest and act accordingly. Right now, the British need friends. It’s their hour of need. We should be their friend in the EU, not because we are weak but because we are strong. The strong, self- confident country behaves generously. There is simply too much at stake for Ireland to allow our relations with Britain to be negotiated by a French federalist whose instincts will be to teach the rest a lesson by making it as difficult as possible for Britain. It is in our interest to have as soft a Brexit as possible with as little dislocation as possible. This might be impossible to achieve, but we have to try. We can’t wash our hands of Britain. How to Kill Goyim and Influence People: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. On another dry, sunny day in Jerusalem during the summer of 2. I weaved through the crowds of tourists, baby- faced soldiers, and packs of Orthodox settlers milling around on Ben Yehuda Pedestrian Mall, and headed toward Pomeranz, a Jewish book emporium on Be’eri Street, a busy road a few blocks away. As soon as I was inside the shop, a short, mild- mannered man greeted me in American- accented English. He was the owner, Michael Pomeranz, a former undercover narcotics agent and firefighter from New Jersey who had experienced a religious awakening and immigrated to Israel. When I inquired about the availability of a widely discussed book called Torat Ha’Melech, or the King’s Torah, a commotion immediately ensued.“Are you sure you want it?” Pomeranz, asked me half- jokingly. A middle- aged coworker chortled from behind a shelf. When a few customers stopped browsing and began to stare in my direction, Pomeranz pointed to a security camera affixed to a wall. The controversy began when the Israeli paper, Maariv, panned the book’s contents as “2. Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non- Jew.” The description was absolutely accurate. According to the authors, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, non- Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and may have been killed in order to “curb their evil inclinations.” “If we kill a gentile who has violated one of the seven commandments . Citing Jewish law as his source (or at least a very selective interpretation of it) he declared, “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”Torat Ha’Melech was written as a guide for soldiers and army officers seeking rabbinical guidance on the rules of engagement. Drawing from a hodgepodge of rabbinical texts that seemed to support their genocidal views, Shapira and Elitzur urged a policy of ruthlessness toward non- Jews, insisting that the commandment against murder “refers only to a Jew who kills a Jew, and not to a Jew who kills a gentile, even if that gentile is one of the righteous among the nations.”The rabbis went on to pronounce all civilians of the enemy population “rodef,”or villains who chase Jews and are therefore fair game for slaughtering. Shapira and Elitzur wrote, “Every citizen in the kingdom that is against us, who encourages the warriors or expresses satisfaction about their actions, is considered rodef and his killing is permissible.”Shapira and Elitzur also justified the killing of Jewish dissidents. Finally, the rabbis issued an extensive but crudely reasoned justification for the killing of innocent children, arguing that in order to defeat “the evil kingdom,” the rules of war “permit intentional hurting of babies and of innocent people, if this is necessary for the war against the evil people.” They added, “If hurting the children of an evil king will put great pressure on him that would prevent him from acting in an evil manner—they can be hurt.”Shapira and Elitzur justified killing babies and small children on the grounds of satiating the national thirst for revenge. However, the rabbis refused to appear at the interrogations, essentially thumbing their noses at the state and its laws. And the government did nothing. The episode raised grave questions about the willingness of the Israeli government to confront the ferociously racist swath of the country’s rabbinate. Even settlers are kind enough to turn up.”(In 2. British security officials prohibited Rabbi Elitzur from entering the UK in a formal letter signed by the Home Secretary for “fomenting or justifying terrorist violence . Following the publication of Torat Ha’Melech, Netanyahu strenuously avoided criticizing its contents or the authors’ leading supporters. Netanyahu’s submissive posture before the country’s religious far right highlighted the power religious nationalist figures wielded both in his own party and in his governing coalition. For the prime minister, a showdown with the rabbis threatened to unravel his coalition, derail his agenda, and alienate his party’s hardcore base in “Judea and Samaria.”When Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, established the country’s Chief Rabbinate, he pulled from a pool of religious nationalists following in the tradition of the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Abraham Isaac Kook, and his son, Zvi Yehuda Kook, the spiritual leader of the Gush Emunim who spearheaded the settlement movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after 1. I will never agree to the separation of religion and state,” Ben Gurion once told Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Leibowitz chastisted Ben Gurion for his fecklessness, warning that however mediocre and malleable the state rabbis might have seemed, their thirst for power was insatiable, and their reactionary impulses obvious. As usual, his prophecies were ignored, and his most dire predictions were fulfilled. Convinced they were living in the era of redemption, Zvi Yehuda Kook and his followers exploited the tacit alliance with secular Zionism to realize the dominionist goals of religious nationalism, positing the state as an ass that the Gush Emunim would ride until “the fulfillment of the Zionist vision in its full scope.” The Torat Ha’Melech affair demonstrated how far the Kookists had come since embarking on their heavenly mission. The dynamic that Ben Gurion had hoped to create had been entirely reversed, with the Israeli rabbinate holding the state in its palm, and molding it as it pleased. On August 1. 8, 2. Israel’s top fundamentalist rabbis convened an ad hoc congress at Jerusalem’s Ramada Renaissance hotel to flaunt their power. I stood in the audience with settlers and hardline rightists, watching in astonishment as one state- sanctioned rabbi after another rose from the podium to speak in defense of the authors of Torat Ha’Melech. My roommate, Yossi David, agreed to accompany me to the Torat Ha’Melech congress. He was the perfect person to help me translate the seemingly arcane Hebrew religious formulations that were likely to fill discussions at the event. Yossi was raised in an ultra- Orthodox home and was forced to spend his adolescence in a stuffy yeshiva where sports and the study of foreign languages were forbidden. He suffered under layers of stiff religious garb in the stultifying summer heat but never turned against the faith until the extremist environment his rabbis cultivated became unbearable. Five months after leaving his family and the ultra- Orthodox community, he had enlisted in the army, having been told by his adoptive family that it was the best way to assimilate into secular society. After basic training, Yossi was assigned to what is known in army speak as “the textile factory in Dimona,” but what is actually Israel’s secret nuclear reactor. His assignment was rescinded, however, when he was outed for dating a Palestinian girl, resulting in his deployment to Hatmar Etzion, a base near the settlement of Efrat. If you ask questions you are immediately labeled an annoying person. If you ask questions, you can’t accept racism,” he said. You might be able to accept it for ten, twenty years, even, but after a while, if you keep questioning, it all falls apart. Maybe our national slogan should be, . He arrived at the end of the event, finding himself in a scene of chaos. A young man had just lunged into a crowd of marchers and slashed three men with a knife he had just purchased. The perpetrator turned out to be a 3. Orthodox fanatic named Yishai Shlisel. We can’t have such abomination in the country,” the unrepentant Shlisel said afterward. Yossi remembered Shlisel from his yeshiva days. There, he explored issues of identity and his own connection to the Middle East through the radical Mizrahi discourse pioneered by academics such as Ella Shohat and Sami Shitrit. Yossi was born into a Tunisian family and saw himself as a part of the Arab world, defying the typical Israeli orientation toward Europe. He recalled the days before Oslo, before the separation, when he could take trips to Gaza with his grandfather, who spoke Arabic and employed Palestinians on his farm. One day, while standing in a market in Gaza City, his grandfather pointed back toward Israel, to the Ashkenazim, and remarked, “These are our cousins.” Then, motioning to the Palestinians in the street, he declared, “These are our brothers.”“He completely reversed the dynamic we were raised on in Israel,” Yossi said. We posed as modern Orthodox settler types out of concern that the secular media might not be particularly welcome at such a gathering, and that participants might be more open to volunteering their opinions to fellow religious Jews. Outside the conference hall, in a 1. IDs, presumably to confim that we had Jewish names, then waved us in with an approving nod. In the hall, prayers had just begun. Now I was swaying from side to side with a crowd of bearded settlers, chanting along to every prayer I could remember. Nearby stood a secular- looking young man with a red Golani Brigade T- shirt. Yossi recognized him as an Im Tirtzu activist from Hebrew University. His shirt showed a crude drawing of a tank above the slogan, “Force Without Mercy.”At the conclusion of prayers, eight major state- funded rabbis ambled up to the platform above the crowd, most representing an official yeshiva from a settlement or major Israeli city. With their long, gray beards, black suits, black fedoras, and wizened appearances, they looked as though they had been lifted from the imagination of some deranged anti- Semite. And here they were to defend a book that openly justified the mass slaughter of gentile babies, though to be sure, not all were willing to say that they agreed with its contents.
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