A single question for Brian O'Shea, the Kerry hotelier who refused to take a booking from an Israeli named Arik Bender because of Israeli policies towards Palestinians, but who insists that that he is not anti-Semitic. Good. So here's the question: would you have refused the booking from an Israeli Arab? And if you had accepted it, Mr Holier-Than-Thou, what does that make you, asks Kevin Myers
Actually, I'm rather glad of Brian O'Shea and his sanctimonious posturing about a distant tragedy. It enables me to ask a hypothetical question somewhat closer to home, namely about his fellow Kerryman Martin Ferris. For whereas Arik Bender is a journalist - not, I agree, the most savoury of callings - Martin Ferris is much, much more: he was caught smuggling a shipload of weaponry to the IRA. He rejoined the IRA on his release from jail, and double-jobs now as a TD and a member of the IRA army council. Busy fellow.
So, Brian. Would you take a booking from this convicted terrorist, who still belongs to a terrorist organisation, one which is still engaging in terrorist activities?
Danny McBrearty
But it's on ceasefire, it shrieks piously and constantly. Why of course it is - provided your name isn't Danny McBrearty, who was dragged from his coach in Derry last Sunday week by an IRA squad, and shot repeatedly through the legs. And it's not on ceasefire if your name is Raymond Kelly, the 20-year old from South Armagh who last month was beaten with sledgehammers and metal bars by the local IRA, to within an inch of his life. His ankles, legs, arms, hands and wrists were smashed into pieces: and so much flesh and skin were ripped from his body in the course of the attack that it was as if he'd been flayed alive.
Do you take bookings from South Armagh, Brian?
You know, I don't think we're in any position to give lectures to other countries about their "policies", no matter what they are. We are a small country, but we make up for it with the extravagance of our self-regard and the enormity of our hypocrisy, now coming back to haunt us like ghouls. For do you not get a sinking feeling in your stomach when you consider the moral compromises that have been made by our State, and by democracy?
What in the name of God have we been about? We have fêted killers, created two different sets of laws for criminality, abandoned the moderation of law for the despotism of expedience and allowed terrorists who hated our State and our institutions to enter political life without ever disavowing their crimes or their potential for more terror.
So in this unprincipled slum, Brian, is it so very surprising that people like you can become odiously sanctimonious about the Middle East? For despite having abandoned all morality of action at home, we have apparently retained the ability to deliver moral homilies to others abroad.
Ceasefire violations
Over a year ago, the IRA imported a consignment of AN 94 rifles from Russia, and last March it ransacked the RUC Special Branch headquarters in Belfast, making off with vital intelligence discs. Both these events were clear and inexcusable violations of the ceasefire.
The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, later met Gerry Adams to discuss these crimes, and emerged from their meeting to indicate publicly that he accepted the Sinn Féin leader's word that the IRA was not involved. He did not, at least, say that he had a piece of paper in his hand, but he did imply peace for our time.
But he already knew from other sources that the IRA had imported guns from Russia. He had already been told that the IRA was responsible for the Castlereagh break-in. So why was he repeating Sinn Féin untruths which he should really have known were untrue? Why was the elected leader of this country giving his moral and political backing to a falsehood that was intended to help a terrorist organisation get away with its terrorist deeds?
And so, Brian, the issue isn't so much you and your disgraceful attitude to Israelis as the moral confusion and unprincipled fog which the peace process has introduced into political life in Ireland. Democrats compromised their principles, endlessly, repeatedly, shamelessly; but terrorists didn't. They didn't abandon their war, didn't say it was over, didn't disband, didn't promise to obey the rule of law, but instead treated us to a secret but hollow masquerade of decommissioning, even as they were rearming.
War footing
Christ, Brian, they even had me fooled some of the time; and I think that's because some republicans - decent, brave people such as Alex Maskey - really do want to embrace peace, with all its implications, its confusions, its disappointments. But the IRA, as an organisation, remains on a war footing. It has used its privileged position in the heart of democracy in Stormont to loot intelligence files and to assemble hit-lists, even as most of us were dancing around the maypole, putting flowers in our hair, and giddily lisping that peace has come.
Peace has come. Really? Ask Danny McBrearty, with his bullet-shattered legs, if peace has come. Ask Raymond Kelly if peace has come, though I doubt if his body, as broken as anything you could ever have found in a medieval torture chamber, could hear you.
Our body politic is rancid with corruption, our laws have been made meaningless to propitiate killers, our Dáil contains some the most disgusting, unprincipled politicians in Europe, yet we have a hotelier in Kerry presuming to pick and choose his clientele according to the country that they come from. God Almighty.