David Vance is the editor of A Tangled Web, an online Unionist newsletter that seeks to help maintain Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom.
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	The blood sacrifice

From West Belfast to the West Bank
By David Vance   May 8, 2002

An examination into the horrific murder of 13 IDF soldiers in Jenin has indicated that Palestinian terrorists are being trained by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the construction of deadly booby trap bombs.

Paul Collinson, a former British Royal Engineers bomb disposal expert now working for the Red Cross in the Jenin camp, asserts that the Irish terrorist group has probably been exporting its deadly expertise to the Palestinian killers that infest Jenin. The 200+ booby trap devices he has subsequently examined in Jenin are "identical in every detail to those encountered in Northern Ireland."

Tellingly, the former soldier believes that as well as the technological similarity between Palestinian booby traps and IRA booby traps, the street conflict tactics used by Palestinian terrorists in Jenin mirror those used by the IRA in the streets of Belfast. Luring soldiers into alleyways where concealed booby trap bombs can be placed to cause maximum carnage was a favorite IRA strategy. Palestinians now use this tactic against the IDF. It looks like they have been trained in the lethal ways of urban terror.

Just as disturbing is the revelation that Mossad has asked British security agencies to check on the movements of known IRA killers to help identify a sniper who shot dead seven soldiers and three civilians in 25 minutes - using 25 bullets from a bolt-action rifle. The IRA has used such specialized assassins for years to murder British soldiers. All such convicted killers were released from prison in 1998 and 1999 under the terms of the Irish peace process.

The similarity between the Palestinian movement led by Yasser Arafat, and the Sinn Fein/IRA movement led by Gerry Adams, are legion. Both organizations talk peace but wage war. Both organizations are fawned over by the EU and UN, and both can do no wrong in the eyes of the international political elite. Both organizations can be confident of getting a sympathetic media hearing, even as their victims lie bleeding to death in the streets. Both organizations share one other important dimension. Arafat seeks the end of the State of Israel whilst Adams seeks the end of the Northern Ireland as a part of the British state.

How can accommodation be reached when one party to a dispute has such an immutable objective? Where, in the words of Winston Churchill, is the point of compromise between a fireman and an arsonist?

If the war against terrorism is to mean anything then it must mean that all groups who threaten and use violence must be brought to justice. That should include all those from the West Bank to West Belfast.

Coming hot on the heels of the IRA's implication in training Colombian terrorists by the Washington Congressional Committee chaired by Henry Hyde, the central role played by the IRA in international terrorism is becoming clear.

Yet this is the one terrorist organization that has escaped any censure post-Sept 11th. Indeed President Bush has subsequently welcomed Gerry Adams into the White House. The appeasement policies introduced by Clinton have not been derailed by the new Bush administration, though a more careful scrutiny is taking place. Presumably the Irish-American vote remains a consideration.

In the meantime, Israeli soldiers die at the hands of IRA trained Palestinians. In Colombia, Government soldiers die at the hands of IRA trained FARC terrorists. In Belfast, democracy dies whilst such people have their prime apologists seated in Government.

Perhaps the UN fact-finding mission to Jenin might like to investigate the links between Palestinian and Irish terrorists in that area. They may want to examine the evidence of the terrorist devices employed against the IDF. That way, they may actually reveal a few facts about what really happened in Jenin that hitherto have been very carefully obscured.

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.

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