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AS THE FALL out from yesterday’s decision by David Norris to step down from the presidential race continues this morning, it has emerged that the trial of his former partner went unreported in Israel at the time.
Fourteen years on the details of it have brought down a one-time presidential favourite.
Writing in the Irish Times today, Mark Weiss reports that in convicting Nawi of the statutory rape of a 15-year-old boy back in 1992, the court in Israel ruled that the sexual relations were consensual in its 1997 decision. Nawi served a jail term of less than three months.
The Jerusalem plumber has however been in trouble with the law on numerous occasions.
As a political activist he was convicted of the illegal use of weapons, various drugs offences, entering a closed military area, threatening behaviour, illegal transportation of a foreigner and disturbing a public servant, the paper reports.
In 2007, he was arrested and later convicted of assault after getting into an altercation with Israeli troops in the West Bank. He told the Irish Times at the time that he was a thorn in the side of Israeli authorities.
In 2009, he told the New York Times: “I don’t consider my work political. I don’t have a solution to this dispute. I just know that what is going on here is wrong. This is not about ideology. It is about decency.”
Yesterday, it emerged that in relation to that incident in the West Bank, Norris had tabled a motion to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2009 in which he expressed “concern at the trial of Ezra Yizhak Nawi and the dangerous precedent that may be set”.
He argued that Nawi was being framed.
The motion was seconded by Michael D Higgins, now Labour’s presidential candidate, and Senator Mark Daly but both men told TheJournal.ie yesterday that they had been unaware of Nawi’s previous statutory rape conviction and that in this case it was a human rights issue.
As he bowed out of the presidential campaign yesterday, Norris said that in writing the letter to the Israeli courts seeking clemency for his former partner for the statutory rape of a teenager: “My motivation to write the letter was out of love and concern.”
Another cover up incoming, either that or it’ll be dragged on so long there will never be a conclusion. Remember all the investigations into Fine gael donor Denis o Brien and Actavo/siteserv and the dealings and debt write offs he received from certain banks? Still ongoing about 5 years later!!
Evidence based? The poor girl was let down by incompetent staff. End of.
@Brian O’Connor:
I don’t think that it was the nursing staff who were to blame to be fair, didn’t one nurse repeatedly try to get her seen by a doctor?
@Costigan Family: i was myself waiting on several occasions in ED 16+ hours…. I am yet to see one busy nurse….try retail or hospitality…. Its the management thats fails miserably… Poor girl…. May she rest in heaven…
@Costigan Family: it is not the overworked doctors’ fault that the HSE is chronically underfunded. There are one thousand vacant consultant posts because of the crap conditions offered by the HSE.
We seem very likely to have a general election this year
I will vote for the party that pledges to fight the monster that is our state bureaucracy
From the department of “social protection” to the HSE these unfeeling blobs make life a misery for huge numbers of people most of whom are on low/modest incomes and in difficult circumstances
If the word “republic” is to have any meaning then the state should be on the side of citizens. Instead it seems to be constantly stonewalling or fighting its citizens in long expensive court cases.
Time for real meaningful change
@Gerry Kelly: We accept that the state is not competent enough to provide food for example (collectized farms never worked) or consumer good etc why oh why then do we think that public sector beauacrats can run a health care system. Long lines, scarcity, misallocation of resources, no accountability, service users being seen as a burden, or a nuisances-all of these things are a result of state beauacracy. The state can fund healthcare, ideally through social insurance, but I shouldn’t actually run the system. Healthcare can be delivered to a high quality without long waits e.g germany, Switzerland etc.
The people in the Midwest were promised a centre of excellence by the HSE when the a&e was closed in Ennis and Nenagh. Brendan Drumm, Mary Harney and every Minister and HSE CEO since have let the people down. Hang your heads in shame.
.. they just don’t care, not the first time or last time.. will happen again..
Do you want the truth or an enquiry?
Civil Servants do not appoint people to find truth.
I’m afraid to think what I would do if this was one of my family members.
@Paul Kavanagh: Could not agree more Paul. I cannot as a parent imagine begging, pleading for help for my child as she lay dying before my eyes.
If the ministry for health, the ceo of the hse and the ceo of the hospital involved had the slightest most minute shred of dignity they should have resigned the minute this appalling tragedy happened.
Like you said I would seriously consider taking matters into my own hands if this happened to my child.
The stardust case had a tribunal of inquiry in 1981 that was a cover up. In 2009 the government published a redacted re-edited report from Mr Paul Coffey however in 2017 after the retired Judge McCartan review he stated looking at the evidence both the Keane review and Coffey review were wrong.
I not surprised about the terms of reference because government refuses to own their fatal failures and deny natural truths and justice. Her family should walk away.
@Liam Foy: It was found in the enquiry that the two top doctors on the ward that night were more interested in broken bones and minor injuries than treating the most seriously ill, I do think that says it all! They should be demoted or struck off.
“There are insufficient doctors to care for the numbers and acuity of patients presenting in the timescale expected by the triage system, the hospital and the community”, the report stated. Blame management and the Minister for Health, not the overworked, burnt out, doctors.
I must say from my inter action with Medical Staff in a major Dublin hospital, the care has been fantastic.
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