Tuesday 18 September 2012

Shatter Shattered

Alan Shatter is Ireland's Minister for Justice and Defence (formerly separate ministries).  He is a partner in one of Ireland's leading law practices specialising in family law.  He is also one of Israel's foremost 'friends' in Ireland.

A few days ago, Shatter opened a conference at Trinity College Dublin on the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg, the courageous Swedish diplomat posted in Budapest, who in 1944 devised ways of escape for tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. The Irish Times took the unprecedented step of publishing Shatter's speech in its 3000 word entirety.  It contains a number of dubious elements, including his assertion of the ahistorical 'uniqueness' of the Holocaust, and, egregiously, the recruitment of Wallenberg's illustrious name to the defence of Israel and to the legitimation of a potential Israeli attack on Iran.

Raymond Deane has written an excoriating and brilliant critique of Shatter's speech for Irish Left Review.  Read it here:

Exploiting Wallenberg

 

Conor

3 comments:

  1. You really need to update this!

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    Replies
    1. Dear Sharmin!

      You are quite right. I need to update the blog overall, not the piece on Shatter and Wallenberg. It's just so hard to do ...

      Thanks for reading me, anyway!

      Conor

      Delete
  2. Yes I was refering to the blog in general

    :P

    A pleasure as always

    ReplyDelete