As I've said before, it's very easy to become precious about one's efforts to write and publish letters in the Irish Times. 'Outraged Middle Aged Man in South Dublin' is a stereotype of the spluttering puce-faced grumpiness that is held to characterise so many letter writers, and I don't want to inject more life into that flabby ghost than it deserves.
It's worth noting, though, that the Irish Times clearly doesn't like certain things: 1) a writer with a sense of history; 2) a writer who refers to ideology, particularly Israeli Jewish ideology, when seeking to intervene in the 'debate' about Gaza, genocide, Israel and Western complicity; 3) a writer who critiques Irish Times writers.
As a preface to my latest failure to get a critical angle onto the Letters page, that will suffice.
Last week, I sent in this effort. It was not published.
Conor
April 28, 2025
Dear Sir
Heba Saleh and Mai Khaled's article in today's Irish Times, 'Gazans fear Israel is enacting Donald Trump's "Riviera" plan' (IT, 28/4/2025) is extremely alarming. Prime Minister Netanyahu has opined that the Trump plan is 'the only viable plan to enable a different future' for the region. But whatever about building a 'Riviera' in the Strip, the projected ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has been part of Israeli and Zionist thinking and planning for over a century. The preferred euphemism was 'transfer'.
The understanding that a 'Jewish state' could only exist with a Jewish demographic majority in Palestine has always been a central tenet of Zionism. Theodor Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organisation, suggested in the 1890s that 'we shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border … expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly'. David Ben-Gurion, first prime minister of Israel, wrote in 1937 that 'We must expel the Arabs and take their place'. In 1937, his party Mapai, the dominant party among Jews in Palestine, held a congress in Zurich to discuss transfer, whose proceedings were edited and published by Ben-Gurion. Berl Knatznelson, the 'conscience of Labour Zionism', declared that transfer was 'the best of all solutions' to the demographic problem. And Golda Meir stated that 'I would agree that if the Arabs leave the country my conscience would be absolutely clear'. Thus, the ideological underpinning of ethnic cleansing in 1948.
Is this ideological complex is merely an ugly fact from the past? No. Early in the current catastrophe in Gaza, various Israeli politicians stridently argued that the assault should amount to a second Nakba. Further, the Israeli Intelligence Ministry, published on October 13, 2023 a 'concept paper' which proposed the 'transfer' of Gaza's population to Egypt's Sinai peninsula. Their re-housing there would be financially supported, in this plan, by a number of Arab states. Israeli action in Gaza should seek to 'effect a significant change in the demography and civilian reality in the Gaza Strip', with the 'transfer' plan the most favourable to Israeli security.
If this disaster befalls the Palestinians of Gaza, the political leaders of the Western world - Biden, Trump, Scholz, Starmer, Macron, von der Leyen - will be deeply and shamefully complicit. But the blood will be on Israel's hands.
yours sincerely
Conor McCarthy
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