From Belfast to Palestine

It is hard to estimate the terrible damage that England has brought to the world over the many years of their so-called empire. But, right now, Belfast and Palestine stand out to me as similar atrocities. The English in their cocky and unquestioning royalist views of the world have moved into every imaginable space on earth inhabited by those whom they viewed as "lesser peoples" and treated as though they were not people at all. 

For seven hundred years or so the English took possession of Ireland, pushed the native Irish aside, gave the land to Englishmen, constructed an English government, suppressed and almost destroyed Irish Catholicism. But in the north, they did as they have done in so many places in the world; they colonized. They moved Scotch and English Protestant immigrants into the north of Ireland, gave them the land, secured them in political power by completely disregarding the native Catholic Irish, and that was that. When the English were finally discouraged from their rule of Ireland, they agreed to the Irish Free State only under terms of protecting their colonies in the north --- hence, Northern Ireland, that sad residue of English terrorism that has existed ever since the 1920s.

Why does Palestine look so familiar to me? Once again, it was the English who took command of the region in the east of the Mediterranean which included the area known then as Palestine. What was then Palestine was the whole of what we now call Israel plus the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The population was predominately arab and there was only a minority of Jewish people. However, England, in their inimitable blind way, determined that they would make Palestine into a haven for European Jews. Mind you, I have no problem with the Jewish people as such; it is the English that I am talking about here. At any rate, by the late '40s, Jewish people had successfully colonized Palestine and had successfully pushed the Arab Palestinians into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. At that point, the dear English grew tired of administering the mess they had created and announced their intention to withdraw. Interestingly, the Jewish people went to the United Nations and requested recognition as the State of Israel. Does that sound familiar? Palestine --- for the Arab inhabitants, that is --- was reduced to those two small territories which were never recognized as a separate state. So now, rather than allowing Palestine to appeal to the UN for statehood, we demand that they settle their status with, you guessed it, Israel. And, believe it or not, the Unites States continues to cover for English idiocy by protecting Israeli interests around the Middle East.