Senior ministers concerned about effects of Occupied Territories Bill.

Great waste of time during a housing and refuge crisis, soon to be followed by an infrastructure crisis. All to virtue signal and to no benefit to the Irish public. I’m sure this will resolve all the troubles of the Middle East. Can’t imagine any stance taken by our government might possibly backfire. Ah sure, he’ll just retire on his cosy pension if that happens. So brave.

Just on the topic of there being no evidence that Israeli textbooks contain material that might result in Israeli children hating Palestinians:

https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/hls.2013.0062

Specifically, Israeli history, geography and civics books must, first and foremost, relay the Zionist message of the Jews’ historic rights to the land of Palestine/Israel (as a condition for their acceptance by the Ministry of Education into the officially sanctioned curriculum)

Some quotes from an inerview with the author:

Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli academic, mother and political radical, summons up an image of rows of Jewish schoolchildren, bent over their books, learning about their neighbours, the Palestinians. But, she says, they are never referred to as Palestinians unless the context is terrorism.

They are called Arabs. "The Arab with a camel, in an Ali Baba dress. They describe them as vile and deviant and criminal, people who don't pay taxes, people who live off the state, people who don't want to develop," she says. "The only representation is as refugees, primitive farmers and terrorists. You never see a Palestinian child or doctor or teacher or engineer or modern farmer."

Children, she says, grow up to serve in the army and internalise the message that Palestinians are "people whose life is dispensable with impunity. And not only that, but people whose number has to be diminished."

The argument made earlier that:

There's no evidence that Israel's education system has indoctrinated Jewish children with hatred towards Arabs. Therefore, there's no evidence that most Israeli Jews have anything against Arabs.

is truly infantile in its stupidity.

Huh?

What does that have to do with my post?

My post which did only one thing, which was to point out that the claim that Israeli textbooks do not contain anti-Palestinian material was incorrect.

Dave McCullagh absolutely skewering Alan Shatter over his disingenuous nonsense on the Six-One right now, and I'm fully here for it.

But given the prophecies of doom that some against the bill spout, that our economy will collapse if we do anything to offend the holy USA, surely that will help solve some of those issues, right?

Ye can't have it both ways. Ye can't say on the one hand say that any anti-Israel moves will have dire economic consequences due to Israel's close connection to the US, and on the other that any such legislation is pointless virtue signalling.

Which is it?

Right. But the other poster was talking about the housing crisis, infrastructure crisis etc - in other words of 'too much' growth, as it were. An economic recession would obviously alleviate those issues, yes?

a recession won’t alleviate the housing crisis.

It’ll just make houses more affordable for people that are already wealthy.

A recession means job losses, no salary increases, banks not willing to lend etc etc.