Nazi memorabilia for sale in Dublin. Appropriate?

Snickers Man

Points taken, without retracting any of mine.

You'll forgive me if your use of the phrase "dish-cloth headed bastards" led me to some hasty presumptions about your views of Arab people.

dandyelevan

Your point is taken and I didn't wish to generalize.
Still, the PLO armed elements (A/Es) led by Abu Amin Dyak who murdered Pte. Hugh Doherty and kidnapped and later murdered Pte. Kevin Joyce in 1982...Dyak was later hanged by the Lebanese Government in Beirut for many other murders.
Also, those PLO members who decapitated six French UN soldiers at Tyre in September 1978, and caused a Medivac helicopter crash at Siddiquin in March 1979 (which by the way was dispatched to aid some of their own fighters wounded in a gun -battle with Fijian UNIFIL troops near the Typepocket) killing three Norwegian medics, and the pilot. ) I was one of the first on the scene of that crash. Some of the PLO had a 'game' they liked to play with captured UNIFIL lads. They forced some of them to dig their graves on the roadside before eventually releasing the lucky ones.
I spent Christmas Day 1978 as a reluctant 'guest' of PLO bandits on a country road east of Tyre City.
Not a nice experience I assure you.

gandalf

gandalf wrote: »

You are aware that a lot of those men joined the Irish Armed Forces in 1939 fully expecting Ireland to side with the allies

Where's your evidence for this? A single, solitary member of Dáil Éireann, James Dillon, advocated that Ireland join WW 2 on the side of Britain. He was promptly expelled from Fine Gael.

Neutrality was almost universally supported in this state; it was as universally popular here as the British state's policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany was in Britain between 1932-1939. Being a democrat with a massive political mandate - in the 1938 General Election, de Valera's Fianna Fáil won a majority of the votes, not merely a majority of the seats - Dev was 110% correct to keep Ireland neutral. The fact that the British state was financing a sectarian, supremacist occupying state in the Six Counties between 1921-1972 (at least) - operating anti-Irish laws including the right to imprison the Irish without trial for as long as they wanted, laws which in 1967 were infamously the expressed envy of the Apartheid South African Minister for Justice - ensured he could never convince Irish people in 1939 that the British Empire had a sudden conversion to defending human rights. Preposterous notion.

gandalf wrote: »

They decided to join forces that were fighting with a truly dreadful regime. If I was around at th.

First, you seem to be implying here that in 1939 there was some sort of Nazi Final Solution in place that people who joined, of all organisations, the British Empire's forces were courageously joining to fight against. This is utter revisionist ahistorical drivel, of course. Why peddle it?

Second, in 1939 the British Army paid much more than the Irish Army paid and because of a shortage of trained soldiers it increased the salaries it was willing to pay to trained soldiers such as those in the Irish Army. Trying, for current political reasons, to dress the motivation of these Irish Army deserters up as something it wasn't is a travesty of the historical reality.

Snickers Man

dandyelevan wrote: »

Your point is taken and I didn't wish to generalize.
Still, the PLO armed elements (A/Es) led by Abu Amin Dyak who murdered Pte. Hugh Doherty and kidnapped and later murdered Pte. Kevin Joyce in 1982...Dyak was later hanged by the Lebanese Government in Beirut for many other murders.
Also, those PLO members who decapitated six French UN soldiers at Tyre in September 1978, and caused a Medivac helicopter crash at Siddiquin in March 1979 (which by the way was dispatched to aid some of their own fighters wounded in a gun -battle with Fijian UNIFIL troops near the Typepocket) killing three Norwegian medics, and the pilot. ) I was one of the first on the scene of that crash. Some of the PLO had a 'game' they liked to play with captured UNIFIL lads. They forced some of them to dig their graves on the roadside before eventually releasing the lucky ones.
I spent Christmas Day 1978 as a reluctant 'guest' of PLO bandits on a country road east of Tyre City.
Not a nice experience I assure you.

I'm sure it wasn't!

And I can readily understand why so many Lebanese despised the "armed elements" of the various PLO factions who marauded through their country. Desperate young men armed to the teeth with battlefield weapons and little or no systematic discipline such as one might expect to find in a properly constituted army are likely to be a law unto themselves and make life very unpleasant for the locals.

However, as you pointed out, the PLO was an umbrella group for several rival factions, many with their own powerful outside backers and their own private agendas who frequently went to war with each other as well as their sworn enemy, Israel and its allies. This does not deny the right of the Palestinians a voice to make their case heard through an umbrella organisation with some semblance of a consensus on what might be a suitable redress of their main grievances.

For that reason I can't accept that a PLO representative office in Dublin was "inappropriate", to use the language of the OP.

If it were, then surely it would be just as inappropriate to entertain the representatives of the backers of the SLA who murdered privates Smallhorne and Barrett, (among others) namely the state of Israel.

Wouldn't it?

dandyelevan

I think we're straying from the original OP here and any time now 'The Grapes of Wrath' may descend upon me from the Mods.
However, as a soldier most of my adult life I've little knowledge of, or interest in the Politics of it all.
I do realize that some people saw the PLO et al as freedom fighters, heroes, etc, etc, but my experience of those groups, limited though it was, was through face to face negotiations in the Tyre District which they controlled, to try and ensure the safe passage of UN personnel through the northern suburbs of that City, and over Kashmaiyya Bridge which they also controlled on the Beirut road. From those dealings and other incidents I formed my own opinions which I kept to myself.
I also knew many of the SLA / DFF/ IDF and my opinion of these folks is no different.

The PLO office in Dublin?
More Irish Government appeasement.
The Israeli Embassy in Dublin?
Israel is a sovereign democratic Nation, and in case you don't know, Ireland was the first country to acknowledge the State of Israel in 1948.
There's even a plaque on the lawn of the Knessett presented by the Irish people stating as much.

Now let's get back to the original OP.

Snickers Man

dandyelevan wrote: »

I think we're straying from the original OP here and any time now 'The Grapes of Wrath' may descend upon me from the Mods.

True, but I would suggest that the relevance to the OP is the extent to which a particular ideology, or nation, or its military representatives should be held in such contempt by the general public that one should not associate with them in any way. Even up to the point of wanting to own products associated with them.

There are some, especially in America, who regard any sympathy with the Palestinian cause as evidence of one's being a fellow traveller of terrorists, or an anti-Semite or both. Look at such people's apoplectic treatment of characters as diverse as Vanessa Redgrave and, er, our own Mary Robinson for daring to be critical of Israeli actions. You'd think they'd bought an SS dagger or something!

In Ireland, it's probably fair to say, the consensus is more in sympathy with the Palestinians (and why not?) and of course there is a reaction from others that such sympathy is misguided, based on ignorance and if one only looked at the situation one would be surprised to learn of the validity and righteousness of the Israeli case.

Such people might be surprised to learn of Ireland's early diplomatic support for the state of Israel that you mentioned. Although I thought the US was the first to recognise that state on the day it declared independence.

None of this is meant to "lecture you" on the subject; just making my points. I spent some time in the Middle East myself in the 1980s, although not in Lebanon and certainly not as a soldier.

I support Ireland's links with Palestinian representatives and the votes in both the Dail and Seanad in support of recognising it as a State, although such recognition has been put on the diplomatic "long finger". I don't believe the actions of some of its less disciplined guerillas in Lebanon, which I have no doubt happened, should preclude that.

dandyelevan

I was greatly surprised to find that Ireland was the first to recognize the State of Israel. I saw the plaque for myself when I visited the Knessett in 1979.
Anyway, we'll agree to differ on what we see as 'terrorists' and I can only see the PLO et al as such. Who the Americans see as terrorists change almost daily, to suit their own political ends as you well know.
It was common knowledge (and laughably so if it wasn't so bloody serious at the time) that the bombs & bullets used against UNIFIL by the SLA were supplied by Israel and their production paid for by the USA...meanwhile, the USA also paid most of the bills for UNIFIL, including OUR ammunition...while the various PLO groups were supported with Russian money via Syria.
In the end, when one is getting shot at, ambushed, kidnapped, mortar bombed or shelled while you are simply trying to bring a bit of peace to the world, the last thing you think about at the time is politics.

( btw, on a lighter note, I celebrated my 40th birthday on duty in Gaza City, and a 'dryer' birthday celebration I've never had !)