Irish filmmaker Nicky Larkin once hated Israel. As a standard Irish leftist—an intellectually depraved drone—he felt duty bound to revile the Jewish State and adore the Palestinians.
But then Larkin went to Israel to make an anti-Israeli movie and the scales gradually fell from his eyes.
I used to hate Israel. I used to think the Left was always right. Not any more. Now I loathe Palestinian terrorists. Now I see why Israel has to be hard. Now I see the Left can be Right — as in right-wing. So why did I change my mind so completely?
Strangely, it began with my anger at Israel’s incursion into Gaza in December 2008 which left over 1,200 Palestinians dead, compared to only 13 Israelis. I was so angered by this massacre I posed in the striped scarf of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation for an art show catalogue.
Shortly after posing in that PLO scarf, I applied for funding from the Irish Arts Council to make a film in Israel and Palestine. I wanted to talk to these soldiers, to challenge their actions — and challenge the Israeli citizens who supported them.
I spent seven weeks in the area, dividing my time evenly between Israel and the West Bank. I started in Israel. The locals were suspicious. We were Irish — from a country which is one of Israel’s chief critics — and we were filmmakers. We were the enemy.
Then I crossed over into the West Bank. Suddenly, being Irish wasn’t a problem. Provo graffiti adorned The Wall. Bethlehem was Las Vegas for Jesus-freaks — neon crucifixes punctuated by posters of martyrs.
These martyrs followed us throughout the West Bank. They watched from lamp-posts and walls wherever we went. Like Jesus in the old Sacred Heart pictures.
But the more I felt the martyrs watching me, the more confused I became. After all, the Palestinian mantra was one of “non-violent resistance”. It was their motto, repeated over and over like responses at a Catholic mass.
Yet when I interviewed Hind Khoury, a former Palestinian government member, she sat forward angrily in her chair as she refused to condemn the actions of the suicide bombers. She was all aggression.
This aggression continued in Hebron, where I witnessed swastikas on a wall. As I set up my camera, an Israeli soldier shouted down from his rooftop position. A few months previously I might have ignored him as my political enemy. But now I stopped to talk. He only talked about Taybeh, the local Palestinian beer.
Back in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, I began to listen more closely to the Israeli side. I remember one conversation in Shenkin Street — Tel Aviv’s most fashionable quarter, a street where everybody looks as if they went to art college. I was outside a cafe interviewing a former soldier.
He talked slowly about his time in Gaza. He spoke about 20 Arab teenagers filled with ecstasy tablets and sent running towards the base he’d patrolled. Each strapped with a bomb and carrying a hand-held detonator.
The pills in their bloodstream meant they felt no pain. Only a headshot would take them down.
Conversations like this are normal in Tel Aviv. I began to experience the sense of isolation Israelis feel. An isolation that began in the ghettos of Europe and ended in Auschwitz.
Israel is a refuge — but a refuge under siege, a refuge where rockets rain death from the skies. And as I made the effort to empathise, to look at the world through their eyes. I began a new intellectual journey. One that would not be welcome back home.
The problem began when I resolved to come back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey. But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.
An Irish artist is supposed to sign boycotts, wear a PLO scarf, and remonstrate loudly about The Occupation. But it’s not just artists who are supposed to hate Israel. Being anti-Israel is supposed to be part of our Irish identity, the same way we are supposed to resent the English.
But hating Israel is not part of my personal national identity. Neither is hating the English. I hold an Irish passport, but nowhere upon this document does it say I am a republican, or a Palestinian.
My Irish passport says I was born in 1983 in Offaly. The Northern Troubles were something Anne Doyle talked to my parents about on the nine o’clock News. I just wanted to watch Father Ted.
So I was frustrated to see Provo graffiti on the wall in the West Bank. I felt the same frustration emerge when I noticed the missing ‘E’ in a “Free Palestin” graffiti on a wall in Cork. I am also frustrated by the anti-Israel activists’ attitude to freedom of speech.
Free speech must work both ways. But back in Dublin, whenever I speak up for Israel, the Fiachras and Fionas look at me aghast, as if I’d pissed on their paninis.
This one-way freedom of speech spurs false information. The Boycott Israel brigade is a prime example. They pressurised Irish supermarkets to remove all Israeli produce from their shelves — a move that directly affected the Palestinian farmers who produce most of their fruit and vegetables under the Israeli brand.
But worst of all, this boycott mentality is affecting artists. In August 2010, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign got 216 Irish artists to sign a pledge undertaking to boycott the Israeli state. As an artist I have friends on this list — or at least I had.
I would like to challenge my friends about their support for this boycott. What do these armchair sermonisers know about Israel? Could they name three Israeli cities, or the main Israeli industries?
But I have more important questions for Irish artists. What happened to the notion of the artist as a free thinking individual? Why have Irish artists surrendered to group-think on Israel? Could it be due to something as crude as career-advancement?
Artistic leadership comes from the top. Aosdana, Ireland’s State-sponsored affiliation of creative artists, has also signed the boycott. Aosdana is a big player. Its members populate Arts Council funding panels.
Some artists could assume that if their name is on the same boycott sheet as the people assessing their applications, it can hardly hurt their chances. No doubt Aosdana would dispute this assumption. But the perception of a preconceived position on Israel is hard to avoid.
Looking back now over all I have learnt, I wonder if the problem is a lot simpler.
Perhaps our problem is not with Israel, but with our own over-stretched sense of importance — a sense of moral superiority disproportional to the importance of our little country?
Any artist worth his or her salt should be ready to change their mind on receipt of fresh information. So I would urge every one of those 216 Irish artists who pledged to boycott the Israeli state to spend some time in Israel and Palestine. Maybe when you come home you will bin your scarf. I did.
Nicky Larkin’s ‘Forty Shades of Grey’ will premiere in Dublin in May.
www.facebook.com/ fortyshades
www.nickylarkin.com
Source: Independent. ie
H/T: David Gerstman’s Mideast Media Sampler, a daily newsletter that is an invaluable source of information and analysis. If you wish to subscribe, send me your e-mail address and I’ll forward it to David.
Anne’s Opinions, an Israeli blog, analyzes Irish Jew-hatred.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
37 Comments
Nick refers to the reflexive anti-English attitude of the Irish. That’s an important part of the overall attitude.
As a child in Australia, early 1970s, I heard a lot of the hatred of the English at family gatherings. For good reason, in the immediate sense – my great-great grandfather Michael O’Neill fled Ireland without a chance to say goodbye to his family because he shot the fox the English gentry were hunting.
But to continue harping on the English invasion and nursing grievances is stupid. Without the Royal Navy we would never have had the blessed luck to be born in Australia.
Ireland is a beautiful country and the people are as friendly as any I’ve met, if not moreso. However, the Irish passion manifests itself in illogical ways (cf, IRA) and this, unfortunately, is one of them.
Hmm – as a people, we are best known for drinking, talking and fighting. So betting on a rational attitude is an awfully long shot.
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I once met an Australian woman, not, so far as I know, of Irish descent, who was very bitter about the Australian soldiers sent off to be cannon fodder and slaughtered at Gallipoli.
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However, the Irish passion manifests itself in illogical ways (cf, IRA) and this, unfortunately, is one of them.
For the IRA to align itself with the now-so-called “Palestinians” is more than illogical, it’s stupid. Don’t they know that, as Shakespeare’s Margaret of Anjou would say, they’re whetting a knife to kill themselves, and their country; they’re strewing sugar on a bottled spider, whose deadly web ensnareth them about?
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It’s encouraging to read about this man’s willingness to critique his prejudices and subsequent readjustment of attitude toward Israel. Given Mr. Larkin’s access to a wide audience his personal account can some good.
I love the “Dummies book” graphic. Black humor at its best.
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Sorry that so many in the land of my mother’s birth are anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. The country is not just increasingly anti-Catholic but broke from pursuing the welfare state. The bills are coming due there. Catholic anti-Semitism–to whatever extent it still exists–is so ludicrous. We should have nothing but gratitude and a feeling of fraternity toward the Chosen People.
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Kevin
Ireland is a staunchly Catholic country. There has understanably been a backlash against the many scandals of late. But to describe it as “anti Catholic” is a bit odd.
As for our economic troubles. If you knew what you were talking about you would know that Ireland’s debt is a result of a rotten banking sector and a disasterous decision by the last government to guarantee the debts of the banks leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill. The current government has made cuts that have adaquetly compensated for our excessive spending however our debts remain unsustainable because the bank debt has become government debt. Conservative Americas analysis of the Irish economic crisis is a bit disjointed. On the one hand, Newt Gingrich constantly invokes Ireland’s 12.5 % corporation tax as the model to follow, while others on the right try to portrey Ireland as a failed welfare state.
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I can sympathise with Mr larkin as the same thing pretty much happened me after a trip to Israel.
However I feel I must defend Ireland’s honor given the many badly informed (and some bigoted) follow up comments.
Ireland has many pro Israeli bloggers, journalists and politicians. Many do a great job but unfortunately, in my view some of the pro Israeli commentators are odd balls who are hostile to literally everything that they percieve as being fashionable and popular. I’m sure most of you know the type I am talking about. These types do Israel’s image no good as they like to lump just about every unpopular right wing cause in with that of Israel. They have also married revisionist Irish history with being pro Israel. This is a massive mistake.
The reality in Ireland is as follows. The majority of the Irish people have sympathy with the Palestinian people. This is because we identify with certain things that come with a contentious ”occupation” such as checkpoints and internment. I don’t see anything wrong with this. It is very important to note at this stage that the rabid anti Israel element in Ireland, as represented by the Socialist Workers Party and the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign have no mainstream support. They are a very vocal tiny minority who unfortunately get way more press than they merit. The anti Israel/pro Palestinian demonstrations that one might see on an Irish street or campus is no different or of no greater intensity than one might see in any western country, including the United States.
Ireland’s largest political party ”Fine Gael” is very fair toward Israel. One of its most senior members, and current Minister for Justice and Defence is a devout Jew and Zionist. In my view Irish Republicanism and Zionism has much in common as they both have revolutionary roots yet are democratic in nature. As I noted before on this blog Ireland over the last 100 years may very well be the European country that has displayed the least level of anti semitism. The 1938 constitution which is still in use reflects this. It guarantees the rights of all minorities and specifically mentions Judaism as an official religion of the state (although this was removed by referndum in the 1970s along with the “special role” of the Catholic Church).
“Being Irish means hating Israel” is an irresponsible and inaccurate way of phrasing the situation in Ireland. But as a blogger, I understand the need to generate a bit of controversy, which is no doubt the objective of Mr Larkin’s article in Ireland’s main newspaper, one month before the release of his film.
Ted
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> In my view Irish Republicanism and Zionism has much in common … Ireland over the last 100 years may very well be the European country that has displayed the least level of anti semitism
Seriously?
Look, World War 2 was fought about a great many different things and it certainly wasn’t the crusade to save the Jews that some would have you believe. But the Nazis were a teensy bit antisemitic, so one might suppose that Europe’s least antisemitic country, keen to show how much its leadership’s ideology had in common with Zionism, might have joined in. Strangely, though, not only did Ireland stay “neutral”, not only did Ireland refuse even to allow the UK to use a small strip of Galway to help in the Battle of the Atlantic (even, it is generally reckoned, when Churchill offered them Northern Ireland in return), but De Valera signed the book of condolence at his local German embassy upon Hitler’s death. And today I can see Palestinian murals in Republican areas, while it is the Northern Irish Unionists who fly the flag of Israel.
World War 2 is a stain on the history of the Irish state. It is a tribute to the basic decency and moral clarity of the Irish that so many of them volunteered to join the UK’s forces despite their leadership’s “neutrality”.
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Corrie reaction was revulsion but – as I remember the passage – she felt a force larger than her move her to forgiveness.
I don’t know if I could do that – and perhaps this passage stayed with me because it seemed so supernatural – devine?
Don’t know who the author is, but the quote goes something like:
To err is Human,
to forgive is Divine,
And Not to forgive, is Human too …
In Jewish tradition, (as well as in all religions, even Quranic Islam), forgiveness is praised.
This does not mean that those who have caused harm ‘get off free’. They have to answer in the World of Truth, and to obtain full forgiveness there, and there is sometimes a great deal of ‘correction’ necessary for the Soul to undergo, independent of what has been forgiven in This World.
(It’s just easier if the person has already been forgiven here, as some part can be skipped, and the Heavenly Court can then get on with asking the Soul if it wants to be really forgiven for having caused so much harm.
(This is part of the reason it’s praiseworthy to forgive, to do it for G-D, not for the cruel person who has done harm, so that G-D’s Creation can achieve ultimate perfection much sooner.)
The Soul, while in the World of Truth, sees the harm it was responsible for, without any rationalizations, excuses, or ways to hide, and desperately, independent of how evil its behavior was here, wants to make it right.)
What happens after that, is not clear…
but in the end, after whatever suffering is necessary,
(usually, according to Kabbalistic teaching, requiring re-incarnation),
the Soul achieves its Tikkun (correction resulting in redemption, completion).
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exdemexlib – I think – among Christian churches at least – among so much of the leadership – the concept of forgiveness has been cheapened.
One can read of some of the worst of humanity – mass killers – and the first thing some of these people want to do is “forgive” them.
Even when they seek no forgiveness.
I do believe that the subject of giving forgiveness is a very “heavy” one worthy of discussion – but suffice it to say my belief is that not everyone should be granted forgiveness.
Where’s Dennis Prager when you need him?
Yet I also know – from at least a Christian theological perspective – forgiveness is as good for the aggrieved as the object.
So I have presented to diametrically opposed beliefs that I cannot reconcile.
In the case Robert mentioned to me this man underwent such a transformation – like the neo-Nazi skinhead that did a 180 (can’t remember his name) that it seemed to me at least almost divine in nature.
At the very least to be able to modify your core beliefs 180 degrees upon getting new facts shows a remarkable mind. His transformation wasn’t very human.
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There was an article in the Reader’s Digest, years ago, about a Ku Klux Klan member who did a 180 degree turnaround.
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Well, Ireland was neutral during WWII, even after the Luftwaffe bombed Belfast. So I’m sure the smart and cool people in Ireland are just fine with a few suicide bombers walking into pizza shops in Israel.
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Johnny – Belfast in Northern Ireland and not the Republic of Ireland so the Luftwaffe was “on target” so to speak
There is an interesting video floating around about an air was between a Spitfire and Bf109 – rather than spoil the ending I’ll just post the link –
I do think this scenario was a bit improbable but can sure see it in others.
The aerial sequence was to me pretty spectacular though …
http://player.vimeo.com/video/31202906?autoplay=1
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Bill
The majority of Allied airmen that landed in Ireland during the war were driven to the Northern border and released.
Ted
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Ted – sounds like another instance of movie makers distorting history – but I do know in Sweden – also neutral – crews were kept for the duration of the war – lots of bomber crews ended up there
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Pray for Beer Sheva. From a note on facebook this morning.
Israel in the south is undergoing daily rocket and missile attacks from Gaza for the fourth day now, with air-raid sirens going off during the day and the middle of the night. We just had an attack about 1/2 hour ago as I have been writing this letter, plus one around 3:00 in the morning. Schools are still closed, and other public places are opening and closing as they see fit. One missile landed and damaged a school yesterday, but thank G_d that no one was there. The Iron Dome missile defense system is doing a very good job of intercepting many of the rockets, but it is not capable of stopping them all, and the one that got through to the school yesterday happened because of a technical failure just at the time of the attack. There have been reports of shock and property damage from some of the missiles which have landed.
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I would like to tell you all of a passage in a book I read years ago that always stayed with me.
I am telling this not from a “preaching” standpoint – I don’t know if I could find it within myself to do it – but to simply bring to you a passage that stayed with me for many years. Perhaps it has remained with me to remind me of a state to which we should all aspire.
The book was called The Hiding Place and the author was a Dutch author named Corrie ten Boom.
Corrie’s family, devout Christians, was caught by the Nazis sheltering Jews in their home.
The book details her odyssey at the hands of the Nazis from the time of their capture – to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, to the immediate post war period.
Most of the book involves her time at Ravensbruck, where over the months she is starving to death, seeing her sister slowly deteriorate and burying her – I certainly don’t need to detail all the deprivations here.
Right after the war she is at her local church and who should see see there was her former SS guard and tormenter.
Tears are streaming down his face as he is asking her for forgiveness. He offered his hand to her.
Corrie reaction was revulsion but – as I remember the passage – she felt a force larger than her move her to forgiveness.
I don’t know if I could do that – and perhaps this passage stayed with me because it seemed so supernatural – devine?
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I doubt his remorse was genuine. He likely begged forgiveness out of fear of denunciation and reprisal. But even if it was genuine, he deserved nothing but contempt, never forgiveness. I hold the Germans to account forever for the many family members I will never know who perished at their hands. I and all devout Jews pray for Divine retribution from all our tormentors. May their downfall be utterly comprehensive and may it soon arrive.
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I hold the Germans to account forever for the many family members I will never know who perished at their hands.
Forever is a long time. Will you hold them to account in 2500?
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Yes. Forever. In 2500 too, if I’m still around to do so.
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Do you hold modern Catholics to account for the Inquisition? Can you imagine a Catholic holding modern Anglicans to account for the persecution of Catholics in Elizabethan England, or for the Gordon riots of 1780? How about a Protestant holding modern Catholics to account for the St. Bartholemew’s Day Massacre?
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In Elizabeth Goudge’s novel The Castle on the Hill, set in England during the Blitz, there’s a subplot about a man who believes one of his ancestors took part in a pogrom DURING THE REIGN OF RICHARD I. Consequently, he feels compelled to give a job to a Jewish refugee from Nazi occupied Austria.
By the way, Robert, I think you should check the Los Angeles County public library and the used bookstores and see if there’s anything of Elizabeth Goudge’s that you want to adapt.
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> Can you imagine a Catholic holding modern Anglicans to account for the persecution of Catholics in Elizabethan England, or for the Gordon riots of 1780? How about a Protestant holding modern Catholics to account for the St. Bartholemew’s Day Massacre?
Imagine it? This sounds like a typical day in Glasgow. When I saw “Elizabeth” in Glasgow, at the point where the wonderful Blanchett says “Do we not all worship the same God?” people in the audience actually started booing.
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Glasgow is, I preumse, a Church of Scotland city. There’s that much bigotry, still, between the Church of England and the Church of Scotland?
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No, between Catholics and Protestants.
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I hold those who perpetrated the Inquisition 500 years ago to account even today. Why wouldn’t I? Just as I would hold the German murderers to account for the same amount of time and longer.
As for modern Catholics, who said anything about them? They are to be judged according to their actions. With regard to Germans who were born after the period of mass murder, I would keep them at arm’s length. They are the children of the murderers and of those who enabled them, they were raised in an atmosphere of hatred, and nurtured by these avatars of cruelty. You are welcome to assume they remained unaffected, but I am not that naive.
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I hold those who perpetrated the Inquisition 500 years ago to account even today. Why wouldn’t I? Just as I would hold the German murderers to account for the same amount of time and longer.
So would I.
With regard to Germans who were born after the period of mass murder, I would keep them at arm’s length. They are the children of the murderers and of those who enabled them, they were raised in an atmosphere of hatred, and nurtured by these avatars of cruelty.
I agree. But, like modern Catholics, they should be judged by their actions.
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Right after the war she is at her local church and who should see see there was her former SS guard and tormenter.
I don’t think it was right after the war. I think it was some years later, after she had spent years in Holland, running a halfway house for former concentration camp prisoners and ex-POWS, and then travelled around Europe as an evangelist.
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Rick,
It has much more to do with being leftist than Catholic.
There are, and it pains me to write this too, many Jewish leftists who hate Israel, and non-leftist Jews, and they are cetainly in no way influenced by any position the Church ever had.
It may also explain why Irish Catholic leftists give Muslims a free pass no matter how many African Catholics they slaughter …
It would be interesting to see the documentary that Larkin finally did make,
(if it won’t gent banned …)
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It’s a remarkable thing, that even in an environment of rabid hatred there are those few that have the courage to honestly hear the voice of their God given soul and conscience. Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, in the bloodiest abattoirs, there will be the rare angel, sometimes in the most unexpected place, as in the case of the French Huguenots or Pope John Paul or an Irish cinematographer.
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Anti-Zionist/Anti-Israel/Divest/Boycott/IAW movements are a gift to the bien-pensant Irish, who have a smokescreen behind which they can hide the deep current of anti-Semitism that’s intellectually stunted the country and which, I hate to have to admit, was at least partially encouraged by the Catholic Church during the zenith of their political and social influence. (As a Catholic and someone of Irish descent, typing this causes me no end of pain, but the truth is the truth.) I also have to wonder about a county whose intellectuals and artists feel a need to organize into a monolithic group that presumes to speak for all of them – a sign of an unhealthy intellectual and cultural climate if I ever saw one. I was always under the impression that the creative life was where you found refuge from spokespeople and groupthink and orthodoxy – that was my attraction to it as a young person, in any case. As with many things I believed when I was young, this is something else about which I have been disabused by life and experience.
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Well, I don’t forgive him. He can go to hell, along with the rest of the anti-Semites.
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kishke
Posted March 12, 2012 at 8:29 am | Permalink
Well, I don’t forgive him. He can go to hell, along with the rest of the anti-Semites.
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Why can’t you forgive him? I do. To wise up takes courage and intellctual honesty.
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He spent a career supporting those who would murder my family. Now he says, oh sorry, I should have gotten my facts straight first. I’m glad he’s not supporting the murderers any longer, but sorry just doesn’t cut it.
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He also spent a career supporting those who would murder me.
I wonder if all those IRA terrorists, who support the PLO because they get arms that way, remember what happened to the Young Lady of Niger/ Who Smiled as She Rode on the Tiger?
Don’t get me wrong. I hate the pro”Palestinian” European pseudointellectuals as much as you do. Those nice Irish Catholic girls who took part in the Second Gaza Flotilla-I hope they have their prayers all said to Saint Maria Goretti. They’re going to need her intercession if they ever get their wish and Israel is, G-d forbid, destroyed and the Islamofascists are free to concentrate on Rurope,
including Ireland!!!
(Saint Maria Goretti is the patron saint of rape victims.)
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CORRECTION-DON’T DELETE.
They’re going to need her intercession if they ever get their wish and Israel is, G-d forbid, destroyed and the Islamofascists are free to concentrate on Europe,
including Ireland!!!
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Any artist worth his or her salt should be ready to change their mind on receipt of fresh information. So I would urge every one of those 216 Irish artists who pledged to boycott the Israeli state to spend some time in Israel and Palestine. Maybe when you come home you will bin your scarf. I did.
Do you know how rare this type of person is, not only as an artist but as a human being?
He is a true intellectual shining in a sea of faux intellectuals – those who stake their position and will defend it no matter what.
A man who, upon seeing for himself, can weigh the evidence and make a new position diametrically opposed to his own previous view.
G*d gave us all the ability to change – but so few us us truly use that ability – myself included.
It is something I have to continually check against myself.
That is so rare, and Nicky is to be admired.
I will spend more time this evening looking at his work…
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