heaven above
November 16th, 2004, 11:20 AM
'Irish nationalists' link to Nazi graffiti probed
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1285959&issue_id=11682
JIM CUSACK
GARDAI are investigating possible links between a small, right-wing "Irish nationalist" group of anti-Semites and the spraying of swastikas on Jewish sites in Dublin.
Graffiti was daubed on a Dublin synagogue and the Irish Jewish Museum while acts of desecration were carried out at a Jewish cemetery at the end of last week.
Chief Rabbi Jacov Pearlman, who also received a threatening and abusive phone call at his home on Thursday, yesterday said he deplored any act of racism against any minority group in Ireland.
The same black aerosol spray can was used to daub the museum in Portobello, the Progressive Synagogue in Rathfarnham and the cemetery at Dolphin's Barn and gardai believe all the incidents were connected.
The vandalism coincided with the defacing of the National War Memorial at Islandbridge which was daubed with slogans in yellow spray paint. No single suspect has yet emerged and there was no initial indication that the events were linked to any anti-Israeli reaction to the death of Yasser Arafat.
However, it coincides with the emergence of a racist group terming itself "Irish nationalist" with both anti-British and anti-Israeli views.
The group appears to favour some form of "racially pure" Ireland. Nothing is known about the size of the group and it may consist of only two or three people.
It does appear that a small number of people from Ireland, sharing extreme right-wing views, have been communicating with each other over the internet.
Messages from Ireland regularly appear on a bulletin board on the American-based right-wing Stromfront.org site which has dozens of Irish members.
Messages from Ireland include one from a man calling himself "Barry" which is headed "50 reasons why the Holocaust didn't happen".
"Barry" also urges the distribution of a leaflet, provided in printable form on the message board, which includes extreme anti-Semitic views and denies the mass killing of the Jews by the Nazis.
It claims: "About 74,000 people died in Auschwitz, mainly due to typhus at the end of the war. The Revisionists have assembled overwhelming evidence but your media does not allow you to hear about it. There is no pluralism of debate allowed. The six million figure never had any basis in fact. The fact is that the so-called 'Nazi gas chambers' (which serve as a pretext for the present system of tyranny) never existed."
Similar sentiments have emerged from other extreme underground groups associated with the vandalising of Jewish cemeteries and synagogues in other European countries.
Yesterday the curator of the Irish Jewish Museum, Raphael Siev, said: "The museum is now almost 20 years old and there has never been any graffiti of a negative nature on the walls. I feel very upset. It is very worrying. People must know that this an Irish Jewish museum portraying the lives and times of Jewish people over the past 150 years. It is very worrying that an Irish museum should be defaced in this way."
The former Irish diplomat said he discovered the swastika when he arrived on Thursday morning to give a guided tour of the museum, which contains an old synagogue on its first floor, to students from St Mary's Holy Faith school in Glasnevin. He said the students were appalled by the swastika.
Mr Siev said that since the museum was inaugurated in 1985 by the then Israeli President, Chaim Hertzog, whose father was chief rabbi of Ireland, he had never received any negative or abusive calls or letters.
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1285959&issue_id=11682
JIM CUSACK
GARDAI are investigating possible links between a small, right-wing "Irish nationalist" group of anti-Semites and the spraying of swastikas on Jewish sites in Dublin.
Graffiti was daubed on a Dublin synagogue and the Irish Jewish Museum while acts of desecration were carried out at a Jewish cemetery at the end of last week.
Chief Rabbi Jacov Pearlman, who also received a threatening and abusive phone call at his home on Thursday, yesterday said he deplored any act of racism against any minority group in Ireland.
The same black aerosol spray can was used to daub the museum in Portobello, the Progressive Synagogue in Rathfarnham and the cemetery at Dolphin's Barn and gardai believe all the incidents were connected.
The vandalism coincided with the defacing of the National War Memorial at Islandbridge which was daubed with slogans in yellow spray paint. No single suspect has yet emerged and there was no initial indication that the events were linked to any anti-Israeli reaction to the death of Yasser Arafat.
However, it coincides with the emergence of a racist group terming itself "Irish nationalist" with both anti-British and anti-Israeli views.
The group appears to favour some form of "racially pure" Ireland. Nothing is known about the size of the group and it may consist of only two or three people.
It does appear that a small number of people from Ireland, sharing extreme right-wing views, have been communicating with each other over the internet.
Messages from Ireland regularly appear on a bulletin board on the American-based right-wing Stromfront.org site which has dozens of Irish members.
Messages from Ireland include one from a man calling himself "Barry" which is headed "50 reasons why the Holocaust didn't happen".
"Barry" also urges the distribution of a leaflet, provided in printable form on the message board, which includes extreme anti-Semitic views and denies the mass killing of the Jews by the Nazis.
It claims: "About 74,000 people died in Auschwitz, mainly due to typhus at the end of the war. The Revisionists have assembled overwhelming evidence but your media does not allow you to hear about it. There is no pluralism of debate allowed. The six million figure never had any basis in fact. The fact is that the so-called 'Nazi gas chambers' (which serve as a pretext for the present system of tyranny) never existed."
Similar sentiments have emerged from other extreme underground groups associated with the vandalising of Jewish cemeteries and synagogues in other European countries.
Yesterday the curator of the Irish Jewish Museum, Raphael Siev, said: "The museum is now almost 20 years old and there has never been any graffiti of a negative nature on the walls. I feel very upset. It is very worrying. People must know that this an Irish Jewish museum portraying the lives and times of Jewish people over the past 150 years. It is very worrying that an Irish museum should be defaced in this way."
The former Irish diplomat said he discovered the swastika when he arrived on Thursday morning to give a guided tour of the museum, which contains an old synagogue on its first floor, to students from St Mary's Holy Faith school in Glasnevin. He said the students were appalled by the swastika.
Mr Siev said that since the museum was inaugurated in 1985 by the then Israeli President, Chaim Hertzog, whose father was chief rabbi of Ireland, he had never received any negative or abusive calls or letters.