Proinsias De Rossa MEP has no constructive contribution to make to the Middle East peace process. His ill-informed incendiary article of March 9th portrays the Israeli victims of suicide bombers as the provocateurs. The perpetrators and supporters of Palestinian terrorist murder and mayhem are portrayed as innocent bystanders, writes Alan Shatter
In doing so, he uses the pejorative and loaded language of Palestinian terrorist groups to demonise the Israeli state and pillory it for daring to defend innocent civilians against attack.
Cynical use of the Holocaust as a propaganda weapon by Israel's enemies has become commonplace. The attempted Nazification of the Jewish state by those committed to its destruction is not merely a repugnant historical obscenity, but has been properly described as ideological anti-Semitism by Prof Irwin Cotler, a leading human rights scholar and Canada's current Justice Minister.
In his critique of the controversial security barrier, De Rossa invokes the tragedy of the Warsaw ghetto and announces his newly acquired "understanding" of why the world stood by whilst six million Jews were gassed, burnt and buried alive.
Referring to the town of Qalquilya and the impact of the barrier, he implies that its construction is merely a prelude to the killing en masse of the town's inhabitants. This analysis is a grossly false and inflammatory encouragement of hatred and violence.
The Warsaw ghetto was created by the Nazis to persecute, isolate and ultimately kill Polish Jews. The Israeli security barrier is a last-resort attempt by the Israeli government to protect its citizens (Jews and Arabs) against suicide bombers.
It is the culture of martyrdom espoused by Palestinian terrorist groups (including the Fatah off-shoot and Arafat-controlled Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade) that has not only destroyed the peace process but has acted as the catalyst to the barrier's construction.
Since the start of the current intifada, 950 men, women and children have been killed by Palestinian terrorists and 6,300 injured, many seriously, and their lives permanently destroyed.
Seventy-five per cent of those killed and injured were civilians deliberately targeted in their homes, in bed, in schools, on buses, in bars, restaurants and at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. If the killing stopped, the Israeli barrier would have no purpose and would be dismantled.
While De Rossa disproportionately criticises Israel and its current government, he does acknowledge that "Palestinian freedom will not be obtained by murdering civilians" and, referring to our own peace process, states that "we know on this island terrorism destroys freedom".
I wonder if he met the leadership of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah and the Al Aqsa Martyrs and share these insights with them? Did he explain to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) that constructive progress could only be made in our own troubled peace process when the IRA went on ceasefire?
Did he tell them that our Mitchell report provided the structure for the progress we made, and ask why the PA failed to implement the central confidence-building measures of the 2001 Mitchell report which, addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stated that the PA should "make a 100 per cent effort to prevent terrorist operations" and should take "immediate steps to apprehend and incarcerate terrorists operating within the PA's jurisdiction"?
He might also have asked about the PA failure "to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure", a core proposal of the UN-approved road map.
Or why the Arafat-controlled media continue to present suicide bombers in heroic guise? Or why teenage children and young mothers are used as suicide bombers (the ultimate in child abuse), and why children are used as human shields by Palestinian gunmen?
The persecution of Palestinian journalists working within PA-administered areas should also have been discussed. Just 10 days ago some 200 journalists occupied the chamber of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza City to demand that the PA investigate attacks on them. Questions should also have been asked about the misuse of European Union funds by the PA and the endemic corruption that recently resulted in the resignation of over 300 Fatah members.
If Proinsias De Rossa had a constructive contribution to make, these issues would have been discussed in his article.
Given the personal political journey he has travelled concerning the troubles on this island, it is extraordinary that the views he is now expressing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the language used by him, coincides with the virulent anti-Israeli propaganda of Sinn Féin and Provisional IRA on display on walls in Belfast. Could it be that on this issue Sinn Féin and the Labour Party share identical views?
Ishak Halaleva, Turkey's Chief Rabbi, told mourners at the recent funeral of six of the Jewish victims of Istanbul's suicide bombings that "throughout time, Jews have been victims of violence and massacres only because they are Jewish".
Pogroms and persecutions are part of the Jewish historical experience, as is being falsely pilloried for the failures and actions of others.
The 21st-century version of the pogrom is the deliberate targeting of civilians by Palestinian suicide bombers in Israeli towns and of Jewish communities elsewhere, including those in Turkey, Argentina, and France.
Bearing in mind Europe's history and this State's failure to provide a safe haven for the persecuted Jews of Nazi Germany and the survivors of the concentration camps, Irish members of the European Parliament should choose carefully the language used by them.
Alan Shatter is a former chairman of the Joint Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee and a former Fine Gael TD