Geoffrey V. Gray writes:
My wife and I were walking down the street in Galway, Ireland, and passed a white-haired human rights worker standing behind a table. Above him were banners calling for the boycotting of Israeli products by the EU. A pamphlet listed stores in Galway that sold Israeli goods and how to spot them. A banner above his table read "Israel kills 300 children in Gaza." A crowd was gathering and my wife and I stood watching.
A woman started screaming that the man behind the table had harassed her and had called her a murderer. Another man, who said that he was a Jewish theology professor from France, was also screaming that the posters were lies. The man behind the table had a video camera pointing at the screamers. He said only, Stop harassing me.
The woman (who I later learned was married to an Israeli) went off and got a garda (cop). He spoke to the man behind the table and said he had to leave or he would be arrested for disturbing the peace. The man said he wouldn’t leave.
I went up to the cop and told him what I had seen: two individuals verbally abusing the human rights worker. A short time later a handful of gardae took the man away in a paddy wagon.
What had happened: the pro-Israel screamers successfully used emotional blackmail—presenting the intensity of their rage as evidence of horrible mistreatment–to elicit protection from the police. Does this MO sound familiar?
In U.S. First Amendment law the idea that a speaker can be silenced because of the reaction he or she creates is called a “heckler’s veto” and the Supreme Court has pretty much said that such vetos ought not be recognized.
In all fairness though the story leaves open the possibility that the human rights worker wasn’t taken away because of his “hecklers” causing a disruption but instead that perhaps the cops looking into things and found he didn’t possess some politically neutral municipal license to set up his display or that he was on private land or etc. Doesn’t sound like it, I know, but one can jump to conclusions.
It could be that one has to have a permit to set up a table on a public street. It could be that the cops knew what side their bread was buttered on. More likely Geoffrey Gray is right. The pro-Israel types were so outraged the cops assumed he must have done something to them.
Sure Sin, and that is the first thing that is looked for when the “authorities” are trying to quell a perceived explosive situation. However, you are right, he might have been carted away using this method, but the method would not have been employed (in this limited case scenario) unless there was an unruly heckler (and especially if there is a number of them).
Anyone willing to stand on a street corner pushing the BDS movement should be prepared to face the consequences. It is inflamatory. The other side will not sit back quietly. It should be expected that someone will try to provoke an incident. This is the politics of the street. I am unwilling to publicly support BDS for the simple reason I am not willing to take on a street fight for doing so. That should be simple. Who ever said that life is fair.
I’m sure the guy who advocated for a BDS was willing to face the consequences, which I expect he assumed would be to have a a few passersby shout at him. What, I presume, he didn’t expect was to have the cops take sides in the matter. I don’t know what kind of a tradition of free speech they have in Ireland. But even if it’s a modest one, I would think that peaceably advocating for a boycott (even, yes, of Israel) would be far from crossing the line.
You are of course perfectly right that life is unfair, which is why the rest of us have to stand up for free speech whenever anyone has the courage to show it.
This type of nonsense is gaining momentum, I have personally seen it before, I have been involved in it. It is just an expression of the fanatical nature of these positions. Here is a public lecture where you can get as close as possible to these types of unruly outbursts, it usually occurs when the opposition has nothing to say in response, in my experience –
Brandeis Zionist Blowhard, Finkelstein Lecture
A man behind a table outside in a street in Ireland is hardly a human rights worker. What organization was he working for?
You are right, he is not likely a “human rights worker” which implies that he is one of those professionals that are associated with NGOs. Rather he is human (lower case) who is concerned with the rights (lower case) of other humans (lower case). You know, a regular citizen that is interested in human rights (more lower case). That would be just a concerned volunteer citizen certainly a nobody that the Hasbara should be concerned with.
Here is another heckler outburst –
“YOU’RE FOOLS, YOU’RE IDIOTS!”
“presenting the intensity of their rage as evidence of horrible mistreatment–to elicit protection from the police”
A very nice sentence.
Phil, you are becoming more and more desperate. These stories are so absurd they are actually funny.
Considering that the municipality of Galway has officially expressed sympathy for the BDS movement, does anyone have more information on this incident? I couldn’t find any. I can only speculate that the protester set up his table in a public area where
he needed a permit and didn’t have one, or that the particular area was off-limits
for his activity by Galway ordinance.
I take the eye-witness writer’s word for it that there was loud verbal abuse of the
BDS table man. This happens all the time in similar situations here in the land of
free speech. Nobody has to like your message, and they have a right to say so as
well as the can muster.
Yet more on the Jewish Joseph Mengele clones, popularly known as “Israelis”
“Just as in the case of the rampage against Jenin, the attack on the USS liberty, the massacre of Gaza, the crushing of Rachel Corrie, the torture of American citizens, and a multitude of other examples, Israel is using its considerable, worldwide resources to interfere with the investigative process.”
link to counterpunch.org
BDS is the only approach to this state.
Bomb Dismantle Subdue
You mean like in “put ‘er down”? As in viscious dogs? I prefer the original meaning
of BDS. It will suffice so long as it continues to grow.
You don’t need a permit to set up a street stall in Ireland for political/campaign events. All cities and a number of large town both north and south have stalls and demos in solidarity with the Palestinians – some on a weekly basis. I guess the cops took advantage of the fact that this man was on his own and it was easier to lift him rather than deal with two screaming zionists.
It is never a good idea to have less than two people holding the fort and I’m surprised to hear that one person was manning the stall in Galway since this city has a very active Palestine Solidarity Campaign group.
However, the zionist have very little active support in Ireland outside of the rabid right all of whom could be accommodated in the back room of a small pub.
I know members of link to
. This incident will not end as the hecklers had intended.
I’ll be turning 65 on Wednesday and I never thought I’d live to see Jews turn into fascist bully boys. I think this amazement that I feel is the moving force behind MondoWeiss; it certainly is what moves me to come here to read and to comment.
Amen. Worse is to know that you are/have been paying taxes for so many decades now to insure this morphing.
Video of False Arrest of Irish Friends of Palestine Against Lisbon activist in Galway
link to youtube.com
Irish Friends of Palestine Against Lisbon : Protest, EU Parliament Ofices, Dublin
link to youtube.com
sorry to swamp the board, just 2 more links:
Activist with Irish Friends of Palestine Against Lisbon arrested in Galway yesterday
link to indymedia.ie
Irish Friends of Palestine link to ifpal.ie
here’s the video…
oops that didn’t work.
here’s the link to the video: link to youtube.com
Thanks so much, redjade!
So the old zionist yelled at the anti-zionist with the Gaza protest stand guy. The old zionist then complained to the Irish guard. The guard took the zionist complaint at
face value and told the anti-zionist to pack it up. An American couple told the guard
the anti-zionist was merely asking the riled up zionist to be civil in discourse–that is, quit shouting at him, lower the decible level to quietly discuss the issue. The guard said it was illegal for the anti-zionist to film him as the guard was getting information from the American couple. Although the guard took in the objective viewpoint of what had happened given by the American couple, he chose to arrest the anti-zionist for “creating a public disturbance.”
The two Irish passer-bys interviewed also backed the anti=zionist man’s POV; that is
that it was a simple matter of free speech and the guard was in the wrong.
What is the law in Ireland? This seems a simple matter of free speech–I can’t imagine
an American cop arresting somebody under in this scenario in the USA. Why did the
Irish guard choose to enforce the zionist complaint, when the zionist was making all the loud noise, was aggressive, and all the eye-witnesses interviewed said so? Was it really illegal to film the Irish guard being filmed while interviewing the Americans? Since
the man with the protest stand was arrested for disturbing the peace, why wasn’t the
zionist–especially since the eye-witness the guard interviewed said it was the zionist
who initiated any public disturbance possibly involved?
Looks to me like the young Irish guard was pretty stupid in the first place by merely
assuming what the zionist said was true, and then his ego came into
play when the anti-zionist objected to this.
Justin Morahan, Indymedia Ireland writes:
This is not the first time that Israeli tourists have attacked peaceful Palestinian protestors in Ireland. The following is a personal account of what I witnessed once at the GPO, published in “Three Little Dogs” (excerpt from Letter to US Senator Tom Harkin):
“I noticed an altercation between a pro-Palestinian group and a lone young Israeli who had pulled the table cloth from under their leaflets, I heard him say as he walked away: ‘That’s all you can do – abuse people, not engage in dialogue.’
As he passed by me I said to him quietly ‘I will engage in dialogue with you’
He then told me that he had been in the IDF, had killed ‘Arabs’, was proud of it and was going back to kill more. He said that God and Abraham had given all of Israel to his people. When I countered some of these points, he stood back and said:
‘I am superior to you because I am a Jew and you are only a Gentile’ ”
The arrogance of the State of Israel and the people whom it has brainwashed is unbelievable.
It is an outrage that Gardaí in Galway arrested Tommy Donnellan on foot of a complaint by two Israeli-connected tourists but paid no heed to the counter complaint made by a North American tourist, Mr Geoffrey V. Gray, against the same Israelis.
link to threelittledogs.blogspot.com
Email the Irish National Police:
Garda Professional Standards Unit
gpsu@garda.ie
National Crime Prevention Office
crime_prevention@garda.ie
Garda National Immigration Bureau
gnib_dv@garda.ie