Israel’s ambassador to Ireland has dismissed comparisons between the political situation in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, saying they were “very different conflicts”.
In an interview to be published in Hot Press magazine today, Zion Evrony said: “The historical, religious, cultural, geographical divide in the Middle East is far deeper, far broader than the conflict in Northern Ireland ever was.
“Also, Hamas is not the IRA. The IRA never called for the elimination of Britain itself; the destruction of the British people; the takeover of Britain by the IRA. Hamas refuses to even recognise Israel’s right to exist.”
The ambassador also said Fianna Fail TD Mary O’Rourke was wrong when she stated that Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to mass-murder.
“I do not accept what she says. She’s wrong,” he said.
He claimed death toll figures for Palestinians during the recent bombardment of Gaza were also wrong.
“The numbers are based on Hamas sources and, obviously, they are biased. A report now says that two-thirds of the Gaza dead were either Hamas fighters or connected to Hamas.”
The ambassador said he did not understand calls for a boycott of Israeli products in Ireland and said such action would lose Irish jobs.
“I really don’t understand the calls - especially from some in the trade unions here - for a boycott. I thought their job is to promote the creation of more jobs here. A boycott would lead to many Irish jobs being lost. This would only exacerbate an already bad economic climate.”
Mr Evrony also said Holocaust denier David Irving should not be allowed to deliver a lecture at NUI Galway next week.
Irving has been invited by the Literary and Debating Society to attend a debate on March 19th.
“I don’t think he deserves an opportunity to express his hate-filled message. He is somebody who denies the Holocaust; somebody who has a total misunderstanding of the uniqueness of the Holocaust, the magnitude of the Holocaust, the fact that six million Jews were murdered by the German Nazis for one simple reason: they were Jewish. So, any attempt to deny this, which is a historical fact, is despicable.”
Irving served a prison sentence in Austria in 2006 for glorifying the German Nazi Party, which is a crime there.
He lost a libel case in London in 1998 against Penguin Books and US historian Deborah Lipstadt who had described him as a Holocaust denier in her book Denying the Holocaust.
A planned speech by Irving to in UCC last March was cancelled. The Philosophical Society, which had invited him, blamed the cancellation on violent threats by individuals along with a campaign of intimidation against society members.
It was the second time he was been barred from speaking at a UCC-related meeting, as the first invitation in 1999 led to protests.