Hamas strike on Israel - mod warning in OP updated 19/10/23

I posted the below on another thread in another forum. Some posters seem to be very angry at Higgins. But I'd be interested to hear what the perennially outraged zionist supporters on here could tell me what in the below speech would outrage them the most. Can you explain to me what would motivate you in the below to attack Higgins on it. Or why it should be global or even national news?

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A shoilse Ardmhéara Bhaile Átha Cliath, Airí, Teachtaí Dála, go háirithe marthanóirí ón Uileloscadh Suzi Diamond agus Tomi Reichental agus ionadaithe eile d’iadsan a maraíodh san tUileloscadh,

A cháirde,

I welcome this opportunity to be present with you all here today as we mark National Holocaust Memorial Day. May I thank Professor Thomas O’Dowd, Chairperson of Holocaust Education Ireland, for the invitation, and may I take the opportunity again to offer every good wish to Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder on his recent installation as Chief Rabbi of Ireland.

We all are so honoured yet again on this Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 to have Holocaust survivors Suzi Diamond and Tomi Reichental with us, and representative relatives of those who were victims. The personal recollections of Survivors of the Holocaust, deeply painful as they must be for those who make them, are so important, constituting as they do a powerful giving of witness, an invaluable authenticity as context to any words any of us may use, reminding us, as they do, of the millions of individual lives which together make up the collective experience of the Shoah – families murdered, families torn from each other, deaths suffered, sometimes witnessed, and so many others in solitary conditions.

Ensuring that we recall this period ethically, with the fullest context, nothing hidden, that all the victims are remembered, is of the utmost importance.

Today is an opportunity we must take to continue the painful task of breaking the many silences that still exist in relation to the Holocaust, however deeply painful as they may be. As Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel stated in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech in 1986:

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. [...] Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Today is a day in which we reflect on that monument to hatred that the Holocaust constitutes, we are challenged to engage with the moral challenge of asking what it teaches us, not to shirk the task of recognising as to how hatred of ‘the Other’ is generated, sustained inter-generationally, tolerated, made possible by the apathy of those who should have cared, and we must recognise how such indifference delivered into our times can have the gravest of consequences.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, now 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, with our knowledge that the Nazis, and the allies who supported them, ran over 44,000 camps, ghettos, and other sites of detention, persecution, forced labour, and murder during the Holocaust, it is a time to remember the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, together with the millions more murdered under the deadly attrition of Nazi persecution.

On National Holocaust Memorial Day, it is appropriate, too, to recall the bravery, generosity of spirit of those who have spoken and written of this time, the tenacity and great will to survive, all of which are a central part of the Holocaust story which today we are sharing internationally with others.

It is a privileged opportunity then that we have for all of us to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. It is a day for everyone to recall a terrible darkness, but also to seek the security of light and respond to the reality of a shared but diverse humanity that was rejected and defiled, a day to remember all those millions of people murdered in their name of being ‘different’, because of some characteristic intrinsic to their being, something that was an essential part of their identity – be it their ethnicity, faith or sexual orientation.

Such a recall as we make has a relevance for our present circumstances. We live in a world that is going through a period of rising political authoritarianism, polarisation, and violence. It is an atmosphere that threatens a shared existence, democracy and is one that promotes racism, division and exclusion.

We must remember that the Holocaust, while an event of unique horror, had preceding preparatory circumstances based on a falsity of myth, ignorance, extreme versions of nationhood, of peoples, while it developed incrementally, as with some disgraceful intellectual as well as political support, in a society that gradually accepted laws which removed rights from particular minorities and doing so by giving not only tacit but overt support to such changes. That is why only the fullest recuperation of all the facts of the period, and the period that succeeded it, will suffice.

Together with the Jewish community, Roma and Sinti communities, homosexuals, political prisoners, the physically and intellectually disabled, and anyone else considered a threat to the racism myth and policy of the regime by holding such characteristics of difference were also imprisoned, tortured and murdered.

As we come together today to remember the victims of the Holocaust, it is important that we recognise the very significant trauma of recent events, following the appalling atrocities which took place on 7th October perpetuated by Hamas.

The violence of that action, the killing, abuse and abduction of hostages from their families, of other young people attending a music festival, was a horrific and morally reprehensible act.

If we believe that life itself is what is paramount, that all lives matter, then we must acknowledge too that, since 7th October, too many lives, and particularly those of women and children, have been lost, that over half a million people as we speak are at the edge of famine.

In order for 2025 to see the beginning of the process of recovery for all those who have been so devastated by the events of recent months, including those who have lost their lives in both Israel and Gaza, it is incumbent on all nations to redouble their efforts for an end to the loss of life, an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and to commence the task of achieving such a lasting and meaningful peace as can provide security for Israel, while at the same time realising the rights of the Palestinian people.

When wars and conflicts become accepted or presented as seemingly unending, humanity is the loser. War is not the natural condition of humanity, cooperation is. We must recover and assert this principle at every level – nationally, regionally and internationally, and in our families. We must take steps to challenge hatred and persecution in whatever forms they manifest themselves. We can do this by promoting a world that is free from persecutions based on people’s differences and diversity, such as faith or ethnicity, thus making possible a world that is free, too, from war and conflict.

Holocaust Memorial Day brings us together from many different backgrounds, an occasion that promotes the essential empathy that constitutes a shared humanity, it stresses the importance of learning from the past, and the taking of the necessary actions for a more peaceful future.

As anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, homophobia and intolerance are once again on the rise in parts of Europe and many parts of the world, we must as we remember the Holocaust collectively, ensure the lesson it imposed on the world that such cruelty and hate, of the regarding of others as lesser, inferior in rights or participation, are heard and understood.

The Holocaust was enabled by a regime of systematic murder that began by the manipulation of language and belief and the spreading of fear. We, in our times, must be alert to the identification and confrontation of hate speech in any of its many guises.

We must work together to ensure that hatred and anti-migrant feeling, for example, are not allowed to deepen their shadow across Europe and the world. In the delivery of a moral context to our lives, we are all migrants in time.

I believe that it is vital, as new generations emerge, and their world ostensibly becomes further removed, in measured time, from the horrific event that is the Holocaust, that they are made acutely aware of the consequences of complicit actions of silence, of the averted gaze, of those who, by their culpable indifference, allowed the Holocaust to occur, all of those who participated in it, who facilitated it. We must ensure that every generation understands the horrors of the Holocaust and what it teaches us about the nadir of basic morality to which humanity can sink, and could sink again.

Such a move requires us to confront the horror of this period, but we must never forget the deeper challenge of asking how did it come to be? How did, and how can a process of dehumanisation be so effective and with such little resistance? What indifference, beyond any manipulation of ignorance and hatred, allowed it to become the terminus of horror that we are commemorating today?

Many around the world remember the Holocaust atrocities in different ways. In recent times, as part of the Crocus Project, Sabina and I planted yellow crocus bulbs in the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin.  We were joined by a group of children to remember the 1.5-million Jewish children who suffered and perished in the Holocaust and the thousands of other children who were victims of Nazi atrocities.

Let us continue to plant the alternative seeds that may yield a more peaceful co-existence on this our shared, vulnerable planet. May we achieve such an empowering, inclusive, ethical remembrance as not only reminds us of the nadir to which the Holocaust and the preceding hatreds brought humanity, but one that in our times renders us alert to the rise of xenophobia and the rhetoric of hatred. Let our concept of ethical remembrance be one that allows recovery, renewal of the recognition of our shared human vulnerabilities and possibilities, one that continues to uphold an obligation on us all to plant the seeds of an emancipatory future into the poisoned soil of a bitter past.

Beir gach beannacht agus guidhim siochán dúinn uilig d’on todchaí.

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There is a specific reason why I want you to point out the outrage and antisemitism in the above. So please let me know - at least about what you consider to be the most egregious passages.

Not all Palestinian supporters are Hamas supporters. On this thread, I would guess over 99% of people that support Palestine don not support Hamas. That blows that theory out of the water, even if it were 90%. Why was someone carrying a LGBT sign, what has that got to do with what Israel is doing ?

It doesn't matter what Hamas covenant is, the vast majority are not supporting Hamas. The vast majority are complaining about what Israel are doing, that's the focus.

When a country does what Israel are doing, I'm a bit surprised that Hamas aren't stronger and more active. Its easy for a terrorist organisation like Hamas to play on the vulnerable, easily led types that have had their families murdered, their land robbed etc… Its Israel that is fuelling Hamas, I'm starting to think its part of the plan to end up with a single state solution.

so why would he do this at a memorial to the slaughter of Jews?

why not pick a much more vicious conflict like e.g. Sudan. It would appear He hates the Jews and he hates Isreal

The Holocaust was enabled by a regime of systematic murder that began by the manipulation of language and belief and the spreading of fear. We, in our times, must be alert to the identification and confrontation of hate speech in any of its many guises.

I suspect that this might be the offensive bit. All of the following have been happening in relation to Palestine and Palestinians:

systematic murder                   over 46,000 dead, with thousands more missing

manipulation of language            for instance, the IHRA definition of anti-semitism

manipulation of belief              starting with 40 beheaded babies, where will it end?

spreading of fear                   attempts at spreading belief in anti-semitism such as in post 39564 above

identification of hate speech       dehumanisation of Palestinians

confrontation of hate speech        consider how those of us who stand up for Palestinians are shouted down

We could all add in hundreds of examples if we were just to go back through this thread where the above or support for it is rife.

The zionists no longer like being identified as such. They know their ideology is now anathema to the rest of the world, and this is why they want to shut down criticism of it under the guise of anti-semitism. Higgins has alluded to this here, although in a generic way. They hate him for it.

I have something to add about the above speech myself, but I want to hear from the pro-zionists first rather than speculate what they do and don't find offensive on behalf of their buddies.

"October 7th was a turning point for Jews and Israelis in Ireland. Life has become very different and difficult for them since then. They are subjected to abuse on a daily basis. Some people will call that anti-Semitism, while others will argue it’s anti-Zionism. "

The daily, personal, abuse of ordinary individual Jews and Israelis in Ireland is clearly anti-Semitism, not anti-Zionism. You were trying to conflate the two again weren't you, just in a more roundabout way

But an important point here is that this does appear to be anti-Zionism and not anti-Semitism (as she admits she never had the slightest problems as a Jew in the five and a half years before). I do accept her point that the atmosphere has very much changed in Ireland since October 7th and that is unfortunate for Israelis who live here. One wonders though if that is unique to Ireland, or if Israelis around Europe and elsewhere are 'feeling the heat' because of what has been happening in Gaza.

No not really.

It is a global Holocaust memorial day you know, not just in Ireland.

So if you want to organise a special day to remember the Germans who were killed in WW2 maybe you should think about doing it.Personally I don't think there is much demand for it myself, I guess having a world wide day to remember the country who started the whole war and caused such destruction in Europe I have a feeling might piss off all the countries in Europe they invaded during the war period.

Nuances are lost outside Ireland. The country is being portrayed as mindless jew haters whether people like it or not. Small countries need to box clever to survive in the world. Instead, recently our politicians have engaged in the type of student union politics that leads to isolation and this approach could lead to other repercussions for the Irish people.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-ireland-sharren-haskel-michael-higgins-b2687058.html

We need to see more tactfulness but with Israel it's too late. We won't have a chair, never mind an opinion heard, at any table dealing with Israel/Gaza.

It's self defeating not just for Ireland but for Palestinians as well.

You have to be inside the tent to help. We've put ourselves outside the tent.

Hamas a designated terrorist organization are resisting the genocidal state of Israel. Their ideology calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and not genocide. Maybe people are adopting the rhetoric of the enemy of my enemy is my friend in those marches. Britain allied with the Soviets against the Nazis etc.

Anyway, no idea why you're asking me. My comment was about anti semitism in Ireland and restricting access of our country to war criminals, (ISIS and IDF were cited).

Maybe you meant to reply to someone about Hamas flags?

You don't have any understanding of how foreign affairs works so of course you don't understand it.

You can't help the people you claim you want to help when a party to a conflict declares you persona non grata because you have been inept in showing extreme bias. You won't have even the minimal say because you'll be excluded from talks when they happen.

Ask yourself why the government constantly rejected calls to close the Israeli embassy? Do you remember what Coveney was saying about having someone to talk to versus having no one to talk to?

These are not difficult concepts to understand. It's how all small countries maintain some say in diplomacy with those they disagree.

Otherwise you're just ignored.

You are getting there.

Consider all the countries in the Middle East that have been invaded/attacked by Israel. Now you can get a flavour of how israel is viewed, not just in the Middle East but globally.

In the meantime, I won't be shedding any tears for the Germans who died in the war, despite many of them being innocent victims of the Nazi regime. However if we are to have a Holocaust day - remember that Ireland did not have anything to do with that, so I am unsure why we should have a holocaust day - from now on it might be a better idea to have an Irish Genocide remembrance day to remember all victims of genocides worldwide and not just one select group.

it wasn’t what was in the statement. It was the fact that he raised the Gaza conflict as some sort of comparison to the holocaust but decided not to mention much more violent conflicts where there is no ceasefire. Why would he do that?

"Here's an answer to a question that wasn't asked so that I may divert attention away from the question I was asked"

could anyone answer me a sincere question?

You see my list above of current conflict in the world. Why is Ireland so focused on Israel?