Greens

I'm sure it's just my imagination, but it seemed like every time I turned on the radio this weekend I heard a member of the Green Party talking about the Middle East, Israel, the US, etc. It's always that "Israel is to blame; America's to blame". Always.

I read this article by former German Foreign Minister & Green Party member Joschka Fischer twice to make sure I wasn't missing the overt anti-Israel slant, but it's not there.

The war in Lebanon is not a war by the Arab world against Israel; rather, it is a war orchestrated by the region's radical forces - Hamas and Islamic Jihad among the Palestinians, Hizbullah in Lebanon, together with Syria and Iran - that reject any settlement with Israel. Conflict was sought for three reasons: first to ease pressure on Hamas from within the Palestinian community to recognize Israel; second to undermine democratization in Lebanon, which was marginalizing Syria; and third to lift attention from the emerging dispute over the Iranian nuclear program and demonstrate to the West the "tools" at its disposal in the case of conflict.

… Israel has a key role to play here. Twice, it withdrew its troops unilaterally behind its recognized borders, namely from Southern Lebanon and Gaza. Both times, Israel's land-for-peace formula resulted in land for war. Now, with Israel under threat, peace with its Arab neighbors seems a more distant prospect than ever.

Yet today's war in Lebanon can open up a new opportunity for peace. The sooner the guns are silenced in Lebanon the better. But let's not forget the war's starting point: the clash within Hamas over whether to recognize Israel. And let's not forget the attitude of moderate Arab governments toward this war and to the hidden intentions of those who sought it.

Why is it no one in the Irish Green Party ever expresses anything even vaguely as reasonable? I'd love to ask John Gormley what he thought of Fischer's article.