A.J. Caschetta
IPT News, June 9, 2024
“Irish, Spanish, and Norwegian diplomacy on behalf of Palestinians is as phony as today’s hipster, keffiyeh-clad Marxists calling for a “global intifada” on college campuses. They are motivated, first and foremost, by hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. The Palestinians are mere pawns in their game.”
When the governments of Spain, Norway, and Ireland together announced that they would recognize a state of “Palestine,” they assumed a responsibility as patrons to the putative 23rd Arab nation. It was a bold move, but it was all for show. They are out of their league and lack the ability to contribute in any meaningful way to the establishment of a new nation. Spain can’t even find Spanish diplomats willing to live in Ramallah to staff its new embassy in the capital of “Palestine.”
Spain, Norway, and Ireland share some common experiences that may shed light on their Palestinian advocacy and contempt for Israel.
Neutrality in the Face of Evil
All three were neutral in WWII. Ireland officially stayed out of WWII while cooperating only marginally with the allies. Its top diplomat, Joseph Walshe, Secretary of External Affairs, wrote in 1941 that “small nations like Ireland do not and cannot assume the role of defenders of just causes except their own.” Apparently, Dublin forgot that sage advice.
Spain was neutral in name only. Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the dictator of Spain, was a natural ally of Nazis and fascists. Both Hitler’s Luftwaffe and Mussolini’s Regia Aeronautica helped Franco’s side during the Spanish Civil War by bombing Barcelona and Guernica. Later, Franco gave Hitler a list of 6,000 Jews living in Spain. At their famous October 1940 meeting in Hendaye,
in occupied France, Franco demanded control of Gibraltar, Morocco, and Algeria after the war as his condition for joining the Axis powers, but Hitler had already promised Algeria to France’s Vichy government, so Spain did not join them.
