In an alternate universe, I am not here to write this diary. Only the ghost of my dead teenage self, a dead teenage self who never lived to see the internet emerge, is left. The reason is, that in 1993 in the aftermath of the Warrington bombing and the deaths of two English children aged only 3 and 12 in Main Street of their industrial, heavily Irish-descent, town in the North of England, the British government finally lost patience with the IRA, and the communities from which it drew most support, and launched a massive pre-emptive strike against the IRA in its strongholds. Living as I did for the first 23 years of my life, and my parents and most of my family still do, on a tough, strongly pro-IRA, housing project in North Belfast, I was a victim of collateral damage. Perhaps I died when the RAF dropped bombs on my street, as an IRA man lived there. Or maybe I died at school, when white phosphorous shells of the Royal Artillery mis-hit the IRA arms dump at which they were aimed and melted my teenage flesh as I sneaked up to the back of the football pitches with my mates for a smoke.
Either way, I am dead.
By the logic of those supporting Israel's actions in Gaza, I am regrettable but acceptable collateral damage.
Maybe you would have looked at television pictures of my teenage corpse, with my handsome, still slim, rugby-playing build and wild mop of hair characteristic of the dedicated Stone Roses fan, and then went off to the internet, had it then existed, and posted some pictures of equally innocent dead English people or Northern Ireland Protestants. Maybe you would have blanked out my teenage face - or maybe you would never have seen it, as the British, learning the lessons of Kuwait, would doubtless have imposed reporting restrictions on journalists covering an offensive they knew was destined to kill many civilians. Perhaps you would have blanked by name out, and remembered the names of children like Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry, or Marie Wilson and Ronnie Hill murdered at a war memorial, or 22 year old Nigel McKee and 23 year old Davy Harkness, murdered on their way home from work when they had their whole lives in front of them, and told yourself this was a democracy's justified response to a terrorist gang with no democratic legitimacy. After all, the IRA killed far more Irish Catholics than the British Army ever did, and had far less democratic legitimacy than Hamas. Maybe you'd say that with their kangaroo courts, kneecapping teenagers, carrying out brutal extralegal executions of suspected informers, protection rackets and anti-American stance, no measures were too tough to take against the IRA.
Maybe you'd have told yourself that kill ratios don't matter. It was OK to kill Irishmen becuase the IRA were killing English people having a drink in their local pub?
Of course you wouldn't have said that. We're Irish, we're white and Christian. Our cousins who emigrated to your country, like the Jews, did much to create and nurture so much of what is best about being American. And the IRA were just a justified response to British oppression.
And you'd have been wrong. Because, cut the South Boston romanticism, the IRA did murder civilians, often intentially, in Northern Ireland both Catholic and Protestant, in England and even in contintental Europe. On many occasions. They practiced Hamas-style rough justice, usually with a pistol through the back of the knees. On many occasions. And for recidivist young offenders - teenage car theives and house breakers - they'd take the six-pack option: a shot through each knee, each ankle, and each elbow. When I was 14, me and a couple of friends found one of these guys about two minutes after we heard the shots. Yes, he was a bad bastard, but that was the point when I stopped thinking about the IRA as 'our boys' and a liberation movement.
But even given all that, do you think American public opinion would have worn a Gaza-style offensive in North and West Belfast, or South Armagh or our own West Bank in Derry? In fact, do you think British public opinion would have worn that sort of behaviour towards people in Ireland? No chance, and that's why, thankfully, it never happened.
But when Israel do the same sort of thing, we're supposed to say it's OK because Israel is a democracy, and Hamas are a group of terrorist gangsters? I hate to break it to you, but the IRA weren't Robin Hood, either, and if the Brits with the world's oldest democracy of any size (disgusting as some of their excesses were) had behaved in Northern Ireland the way the Israelis are in Gaza, The Troubles would still be blazing at their height, and vastly more English people would have died in their local pubs when the IRA bombed them. Maybe I, a pinko liberal progressive who has no time for any form of nationalism, include that of my own country, would even have set off one of those bombs myself? Violence is sometimes necessary - I'm no pacificst - but brutality and injustice begets brutality and injustice.
British and American public opinion would never have worn that sort of behaviour towards us because we're white and Christian, whereas the Palestinians are brown and have a funny religion. Yes Israel's behaviour is racist - and I deplore the cheap tossing about of that term. It's not genocidal or Nazi or Himmlerite or any of the other stupid, offensive and inaccurate terms tossed off at Israel and its supporters, but racist. Of course, Israel doesn't want a final solution against Arabs or Muslims or Palestinians, and all other things being equal they'd much rather have a coffee with them while watching a football match and get on famously. But racist, yes, because when the chips are down the Israeli government sees Palestinian lives - innocent Palestinian lives; Palestinian children's lives; as worth less than nothing.
Sure maybe, Palestinian kids do hate Israel and some of them pose in photos with guns. Been there done that. When I was 10, I thought the IRA were great too. I've done both sides of this argument - my sister's first boyfriend shot dead by a British soldier with a Tom Clancy complex at 17 while running away from a checkpoint beacuse he hadn't paid a fine. The British soldiers involved were convicted of murder but got out after less than three years. Still that was better than what happened when my 12 year old cousin, a few years before I was born, was shot a British soldier who went psycho in an observation tower. That was back in the early 1970s, and they didn't even press charges when she died.
I've watched the news when my fellow countrymen of a different persuasion were blown to bits because a bad warning was phoned in or they were in the wrong place or they were civilian contractors doing construction work for the police. I have no truck with terrorism because I know terrorism. And still, I don't think I've ever seen a democratic state do half the bad things that Israel has done in Gaza in the past fortnight.
And what really stinks is that this is a naked election ploy. There's an Israeli election in less than a month, and Olmert and Livni's Kadima is trailing Netanyahu's Likud in the polls. I'm sorry, but killing kids for votes - there isn't a word bad enough to describe that.
Yes, Israel has a right to exist. Yes, Israel has a right to use force to defend itself and its citizens. But no, Israel does not have a right to use dead Palestinian children as an election weapon. And no, it does not the right to have us take it seriously when it points all the fingers at Hamas when it's own land-theiving policies in the West Bank are at least as much a cause of continuing violence.
I thought long and hard about posting this - it's more personal than I like, and Israel/Palestine commentary is already ample in the blogosphere and the mainstream media, all over the world. I am very cautious about lecturing people in other countries about what should work for them - we were the victims of shallow media and diplomatic opinion and well-meaning nonsense too often ourselves.
But I am thankful that I can live in such a beautiful country as Ireland today without fear, and as a politician sometimes opposing democratically and sometimes working bi-partisanly with people I would have considered enemeies a decade or so ago. I only hope and pray that the people of the Holy Land may soon have the same privellege. As progressives, our duty is to stand with the progressives and peaceniks - and there are many - on both sides of the Palestine conflict, not to amplify the propaganda of either extreme.
Moral certainty is easy when you're thousands of miles away - and that applies to Europeans as much as Americans, and even those of us who live in similar conflict zones. But, ultimately, it helps no-one, Jewish or Arab, build a peaceful and secure future for themselves and their people.