David Cronin, an Irish journalist based in Brussels and author of '
Balfour’s Shadow – A century of British support for Zionism and Israel’, will give a talk in Newbridge Library on Wednesday 25 October at 7.30pm,
writes Orla O'Neill.
The event is free and all are welcome. It is organised in association with the Kildare Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
November 2017 marks the centenary of the Balfour Declaration which began one hundred years of conflict with the Palestinian people. Cronin’s book traces the story of the rhetorical and practical assistance that Britain has given the Zionist movement and the state of Israel since that day. Balfour penned the letter to Lord Rothschild declaring how the British government viewed 'with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people'.
The author will also explore many connections between the British soldiers and diplomats who were based in Ireland during the War of Independence and then sent to Palestine to use their experience in Ireland to quell ‘disturbances’ in Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s.
Arthur James Balfour, who served as Chief Secretary of Ireland, was staunchly Unionist and an opponent of Home Rule. He was best known for ordering police to open fire on an 1887 land reform protest in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, resulting in three deaths, an incident which earned him the sobriquet Bloody Balfour.
Cronin’s book also reveals how a ‘picked force of white gendarmerie’ sent by Winston Churchill to Palestine included many Black and Tans and Auxiliaries whose presence was no longer required in Ireland. This force brought all their Irish experience to bear in Palestine, an experience which was considered to have given the force 'a military efficiency, combined with a certain ruthlessness'.
Copies of the book will be available to buy at the event and the author will be happy to sign them after his talk.
