April 11, 2007
[Editor's note: titled by me.]
I abhor the idea of a 'Protestant State' or a 'Catholic State' or an 'Islamic State' or a 'Jewish State'. The Zionist model was supported by Balfour in 1917 on the basis of the British Tory-imperial experience of subverting Liberal all-Ireland Home Rule in 1914 by arming the Orangemen in support of a 'Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People'; the result was the Irish nation being partitioned, and its Protestant communities mostly deprived of the opportunity to participate creatively in Irish politics. The 'Israel' concept was perceived by the Tory imperialists as 'a loyal Jewish Ulster'. The US has taken over the imperial interest.
The establishment of Israel as a Jewish State is the analogue of the Ulster (Protestant) Plantation which took place in the early 1600s, and was an English imperial act. Northern Protestants in the 1790s, however, were in the lead in establishing Irish democratic republicanism, on the Enlightenment model, inclusive of the native Catholic population. Some Northern Protestants, who adopt an aggressive anti-Catholic attitude, tend to identify with Israel. The current political scene in Northern Ireland, with the Paisley-Adams rapprochement, is an indication that progress is possible with an all-Ireland dimension. It will take time to bring down the walls, but people are working on it. The British influence is no longer totally malign. Paisley has shaken hands with Ahern in Dublin.
In Palestine perhaps the way forward, I hope, is a single democratic State, with guaranteed rights for all religious groups, right of return with compensation for displaced peoples, and a power-sharing government structure, such as to establish that government is not about one religious group voting another down, thus making them into second-class citizens. This used to be the case in Northern Ireland, but no longer is under the current political settlement. There may perhaps be lessons here for Palestine-Israel...
Roy H W Johnston PhD FInstP CIEI
Techne Associates: Consultants on
Techno-economic, Socio-technical, Political and
Environmental Issues. website.
Author of 'Century
of Endeavour'
A followup
clarification from Mr. Johnston:
In the interests of brevity I left out much background. The Ulster Plantation was not the origin of the 'single-religion State'. Religion and State were one and the same from ancient times. In mediaeval Europe all States were Catholic. Then under pressure of the Reformation some became Protestant, and in England in particular it assumed an exclusive 'national identity' status.
English colonisation of Ireland goes back to the 12thC; both were Catholic, but the Irish Church was decidedly native and pre-feudal; Norman feudal structures were imposed. Then when the English rejected the Pope, attempts were made, top-down, to extend the Reformation to Ireland; the Bible was translated into Irish in the 1620s, but it had marginal impact. Religion became a serious differentiator; the Protestants were the gang who came over, took the land, and displaced the native Irish-speaking Catholics. This is the key Israel analogue. But then, at the end of the 18thC, the Enlightenment inclusive republican aspiration emerged, under the leadership of Protestants like Wolfe Tone, who wanted to see '...Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter united under the common name of Irishman...'.
May I quote from a letter I have
today sent to the Irish Times, in the context of a current
critical discussion about Israel: '...Is it too much to
hope that perhaps somewhere there may emerge in Israel a
Jewish 'Wolfe Tone' fit to call for a common Palestinian
national identity to be accepted by Jew, Muslim and
Christian?'
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