Israel's Irish foes have just come up with their most shameless plan yet
Every country in the West has its fair share of politicians who love nothing better than to indulge in noisy grandstanding about Israel. For some reason, though, Ireland's quota seems to be particularly fervent.
Last October, you may recall, local councillors in Cork responded to events in the Middle East by officially banning Benjamin Netanyahu from visiting their city. Admittedly, it is not known whether the Israeli prime minister actually had any intention of visiting it. If he'd been planning to fly in as part of a major diplomatic mission to strengthen economic ties between Israel and Cork, or simply to treat his wife to a romantic trip to Cork Butter Museum and the Old Cork Waterworks Experience, he certainly never said so on the record. But, either way, the disappointment doesn't appear to have made him rethink his strategy on Gaza.
Still, Cork's councillors will have been heartened to see that the Irish government is keeping up the fight. Micheál Martin, the Taoiseach, says that Israel is guilty of genocide. To his great frustration, however, the leaders of few other European nations seem to agree with him. In order to persuade them, therefore, he's come up with an inspired plan. In the Irish parliament this week, he said: 'We're hoping that we will broaden the criteria by which genocide is judged by the Geneva Convention.'
In other words: since other leaders don't agree that Israel is guilty of genocide, we'll simply change the definition of 'genocide', until they do.
At present, the word is generally understood to mean a deliberate attempt to eradicate a race of people. What the new definition would be, I don't know. 'Deliberate attempt to eradicate a proscribed terrorist organisation'? 'Deliberate attempt to force the release of the 58 hostages the terrorist organisation is still holding captive, over 19 months after it abducted them'? 'Refusal to respond to the single biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust by merely lighting some candles and singing Don't Look Back in Anger'?
At any rate, I just hope this doesn't give our own Government any ideas. Otherwise some members of it might think: 'Hang on. If we broaden the word 'genocide' to mean 'posting offensive opinions on social media', we can keep Lucy Connolly banged up for life.'
A prisoner has attacked a prison officer using boiling water. That's the second time this has happened in a month. And so, once again, the public is left asking itself the following question.
Who on earth decided that prisoners should be allowed to have kettles?
Someone must have. Indeed, there must have been a high-level meeting, at which some very important people discussed the matter, and concluded that no possible risk could arise from permitting dangerous criminals to access a device that can be used to cause third-degree burns.
Whoever these people are, they presumably haven't read Decline and Fall. Evelyn Waugh's sublimely horrible debut novel, published in 1928, contains a chapter about an ultra-progressive prison governor. After one inmate, a carpenter by trade, verbally abuses the chief warder, the governor concludes that the inmate is suffering from a 'frustrated creative urge'. So he orders that the inmate be provided with a set of carpentry tools.
Upon receipt of these thoughtful gifts, the inmate immediately uses them to saw off the prison chaplain's head.
This week's news, therefore, only serves to enhance Evelyn Waugh's stature as a satirist. Not only did he satirise the 1920s. He managed to satirise the 2020s, too.
'Hell is other people,' wrote the French philosopher, playwright and all-round ray of sunshine Jean-Paul Sartre. It seems, however, that his fellow countrymen now wish to make a slight amendment to his best-known line. Hell isn't other people. Hell is other people's children.
Hence the rapid rise, all over France, of child-free restaurants and hotels. More and more French people have had it up to here with the screeching of today's delinquent brats. So they wish to escape it. And plenty of businesses are happy to oblige.
All of a sudden, though, these blissful idylls are under threat – not from a child, but from a government minister. Sarah El Haïry, France's 'high commissioner for childhood', is furious about this adults-only trend – because, she thunders, it's nothing less than 'violence against children'.
Her critics will say this is nonsense. Indeed, they may even say she's got it the wrong way round. Keeping restaurants and hotels free of screaming urchins actually prevents violence against children.
None the less, I can't help feeling that she has a point. It does seem unfair to single out children. Mainly because nowadays, the people who create the most infuriating noise in public are invariably adults. Especially on public transport, where so many of them insist on merrily inflicting their favourite music on everyone in earshot. It's never good music, either. The people with the worst manners always have the worst taste, as well.
Anyway, no matter what Madame El Haïry says, the long-suffering people of France needn't worry. Their birth rate is now so low, there soon won't be any children left to annoy them.
'Way of the World' is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines while aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 6am every Tuesday and Saturday
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