October 7 should have been stopped before it happened - an Irish perspective by by Don Mullan

"I cannot accept that the Israeli intelligence services – one of the best resourced and most sophisticated in the world – were caught entirely blindsided."

People, holding banners and Palestinian flags, gather to stage demonstration to show solidarity with Palestinians and demand permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to support South Africa case against Israel on January 13, 2024 in Dublin, Ireland [Stringer – Anadolu Agency]

On the evening of 31 January, 1972, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Widgery, accepted an invitation from British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, to conduct a public Inquiry into the Bloody Sunday massacre. A massacre I had witnessed the day before in my hometown of Derry, Northern Ireland, as a 15-year-old schoolboy.

Prime Minister Heath told the Lord Chief Justice that he needed to remember that the British were ‘in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military war but a propaganda war.’

It was a political steer, indicating the desired outcome of the Inquiry. Truth was to be the sacrificial lamb. When, three months later, Widgery delivered the official report of his Inquiry, he had done his master’s bidding. He found the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent. British paratroopers had murdered unarmed civilians. Lord Widgery murdered the truth. And, in so doing, he also killed the non-violent Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement and handed the initiative to the men of violence – on all sides.

My community had agreed to cooperate, in good faith, with the British public Inquiry. When Widgery delivered his whitewash, it was clear our trust had been betrayed. In the end, many young men and women reasoned that there was no such thing as British Justice and, therefore, decided to fight fire with fire. In the process, they were branded ‘terrorists’, a politically loaded term aimed at dehumanising and delegitimising their decision to resist what they increasingly saw as another chapter of British colonial dominance in the north of Ireland.

For the next quarter of a century, the British government and its military resourcefully sought to crush Irish resistance, using every method conceivable. Their actions, however, succeeded only in giving birth to new generations of resistance whose political leaders, in the end, had to be engaged in what became a dynamic peace process.

As we look south-east towards Gaza today, we witness the merciless, revenge-driven, folly of Israel, under the malign and collapsing leadership of... Read More https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240130-october-7-should-have-been-stopped-before-it-happened-an-irish-perspective/

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