Ireland: Politician says that Israel has ‘taken Nazism to a new level’

Via Harry's Place (Eve Garrard):

Sinn Fein TD has said sorry for a tweet she posted some years ago in which she declared, among other obnoxious remarks, that Israel has ‘taken Nazism to a new level’. She has now announced that “I apologise unreservedly and wholeheartedly to people I have offended …… I never intended to cause hurt or distress to anyone.”

This apology is couched in a form of words that is quite frequently used by people who have found that the uncensored expression of their views about Israel and its supporters has turned out to be politically damaging to them. It’s a singularly irritating form of words, and it’s worth pinning down just why this is so. For a start, let’s not overlook just how extreme Réada Cronin’s particular claim was: she was saying that the Jewish state has engaged in the practices which were used by the Nazis at their very worst. Just think what those practices actually amounted to back in the day, and think also of the complete lack of evidence that Cronin provided when claiming that Israel is doing the same kind of thing today. (Nor could she possibly have provided it, since it doesn’t exist.). That appalling and unfounded charge is what she’s apologising for, and she casts her apology for it in the language of regret for giving offence.

It’s true that quite a lot of Jews will indeed be offended by being told that Israel engages in industrial-scale mass murder, with attendant rapes, tortures, and hideous medical experimentations on millions of helpless Palestinians, in the total absence of evidence for this. (Why, it’s almost as if people are prepared to make up disgusting lies about Jews – whoever heard of such a thing!)

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