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The Eurovision Song Contest is due to take place in Tel Aviv next week and some campaigners have called for the event to be boycotted.
The Journal.ie commissioned Voices articles from both sides of the debate so you can read an opinion piece from the other side here.
THIS WEEK ISRAEL celebrates 71 years of independence.
In 1948 when the modern Israeli state was born, Israel was a very small, poor country largely consisting of desert.
Its tiny population, many of them Holocaust survivors, had to build a new life and a new country in the ancient land of their forefathers.
They had to do this against repeated aggression from their Arab neighbours who tried to wipe Israel off the map.
Today, Israel is a prosperous, dynamic country of eight million people. The Israeli economy is one of the most innovative in the world.
Israel is proud of its rich, diverse mix of peoples, among them: European and Middle Eastern Jews, Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs, Druze and Circassians.
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, the only country with free politics, freedom of speech and press, the only country in the region where the LGBT community is equal and free.
Israel, like Ireland, has managed to preserve its freedoms despite having to deal with conflict from its first day.
Later this month, Israel will host the Eurovision for the third time. Ever since the 1950s, the Eurovision has been a leading cultural event bringing people together in mutual celebration of peace and music.
Ireland and Israel have long excelled in it; Ireland has won the competition seven times, Israel four. We welcome people to Tel Aviv, a vibrant, open diverse city on the Mediterranean coast and I wish the best of luck to Ireland’s entry this year, Sarah McTernan.
Regrettably, there is a small group of extremist activists who have tried very hard over the past year to prevent the Eurovision happening this year or at least to stop Ireland’s state broadcaster RTE from airing the event.
These people like to call themselves ‘pro-Palestinian.’ Actually, they are not.
Their activism, their hatred, their negative calls for boycotts, and their aggressive intimidation of people who support Israel do not do anything to improve the life of a single Palestinian but show that their only agenda is an anti-Israel one.
They pretend that the Jewish people have no right to live in the places where they were born and where their history, religion and culture are deeply rooted since ancient times.
They ignore that since the 1990s continuous attempts to reach a peace agreement have been rebuffed and have been met with more and more Palestinian terrorism.
Only last week, Israeli civilians once again became the target of more than 600 rockets fired indiscriminately at towns and cities in southern Israel.
Hamas, the Palestinian terrorists who carried out those attacks, have committed a double war crime. They are intentionally targeting civilians in Israel while also using their own civilian population as human shields for their military assets and rocket launching sites.
In essence, all of this is being backed by those extremist boycotters.
While debate over Israeli policy, like a debate of any country’s policies, is, of course, legitimate, the extremists constantly try to bash and defame Israel by abusing terms and descriptions hijacked from other agendas, places and times.
The most extreme of those false allegations come dangerously close to being covered by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by representatives of 31 countries – including Ireland.
These include, for example, denying the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination; describing Israel as a racist state; dehumanising and demonising Israeli Jews.
This is not about the Eurovision. Millions of Europeans, including Irish people, Israelis, Palestinians and others around the globe will watch the Eurovision Song Contest.
Those who hate Israel want to stop that shared joy from happening. They won’t succeed.
Ophir Kariv is the Ambassador of Israel in Ireland.
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Well balanced and non judgemental article.. if only everyone could think and act that way…
What we need is a Whole System that works,
It’s time to drain the sespool of leaders and show them with your VOTES , who are the real bosses , they work for us ,NOT the other way around
@Karllye kripton: the politicians don’t decide what drugs get approved, to do so would drive healthcare to a dystopian system to be decided by public opinion rather than expert medical professionals, so I’m unsure how votes would achieve your desired effect
@Karllye kripton: that’ll make a huge difference .. not .. you cant vote out any of the leaders in THE HSE .. they are employees if the state …
@Vocal Outrage: Unfortunately this isn’t true. Look at Orkambi. Deemed to be not cost effective by the NCPE. Recommended not for reimbursement. Simon Harris decides to fund it. Despite this money coming at the expense of various other cost effective treatments. I wish the general public were fully aware of what a self serving decision this was, and how much it has cost the HSE, for a very marginal benefit, when you look at the overall CF population. But it looks good in the press.
@Peter Wheen: my point exactly, when you make populist medical policy decisions like that, against professional advice, then other parts of the service will suffer. I guess I was referring to how it should be
My mum was seen by many consultants in a private hospital in Dublin for pains that eventually had her bed ridden. After 4 months of various tests and different pain killers she took very ill and rushed to hospital. A simple CT scan not done previuosly by any consultant showed she was riddled with cancer and died the next day. My trust in private hospitals was questioned from that day onwards..
I remember my granfather saying he was on 9 pills a day in his late 70s. Now a day most fit 30 year olds are putting 4 tablets into themselves
Something is definitely wrong if half a million people are on anti depressiants. It’s all a scam
@Tom Padraig: Perhaps rather than blaming the medication, you should consider the circumstances that lead to people requiring antidepressants as opposed to labelling it all a scam.
@Philip Kavanagh: He is not wrong. One example would be the number of teens on Meds to treat their “ADHD” because they once told mummy to fork orf after eating a bag of skittles and downing five cans of red bull.
@Philip Kavanagh: As evidenced by the experience of those involved in the Air Corps chemical scandal, many if not most people on ADs do not need them. However they are the current quick “fix” for clinicians and a very lucrative one for industry.
The overprescription of ADs is a scourge & a scandal. The increase in anxiety & depression is being driven by what we eat, what we drink and what we breath.
ADs are one of the current unsustainable answers to an already unsustainable problem, counselling is the other.
Treating depression & anxiety along with so called suicide prevention is a fooking industry at this point.
@Ronan Sexton: He is wrong. Some people need antidepressants for a specific period, others will be on them for life. Like for most illnesses, medication is only one of the range of treatments. To write it all of as a scam is dangerous and stupid.
@Chemical Brothers: Back up your unsubstantiated claim with actual sources that “many if not most people on ADs do not need them”.
@Philip Kavanagh: The numbers on antidepressants in Ireland is simply staggering. To believe that all these people actually have mental health illnesses is simply beyond belief.
We are mass medicating a massive portion of our population out of ignorance.
I suppose the matter of not wasting billions on whats planned to be a multi tier health system for our kids in the supposed “best new hospital in the world (if you are wealthy and can afford expensive health insurance)”, would allow us buy a couple of billions more worth of drugs.
Can I ask if Dr. O’Connor believes, like a recently published Cork based gastroenterologist, that IBS is a psychosomatic illness?
“More than 50 per cent of my outpatients have symptoms caused by psychosomatic conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome, which cannot be elucidated or cured by the molecular biologists”
@Chemical Brothers: wow, a little off topic, no?
@James Brady: Not really IBS and the like is overwhelming Gastroenterology Depts in all our hospitals. If all Gastroenterologists think IBS is psychosomatic then the problem is not being dealt with properly and is a further drain on the same pot of resources.
It stands to reason that if spending on expensive drugs means less money for other hospital spending then if something else is using up funds like for huge numbers of unnecessary “arse covering” endoscopy that then further eats into the same pool of money.
@Chemical Brothers: It’s not unnecessary. It is necessary to investigate or you can’t say with confidence that pt has IBS as opposed to something more serious. IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion. If gastroenterologist is arranging endoscopy to investigate, they are likely looking to rule out conditions with overlapping presentations such as coeliac, crohns, ulcerative colitis. When all investigations are negative and the symptoms are still of concern, it is not unreasonable to attempt treatments which have evidence of working in these cohorts of patients such as specific diets etc.
@Stephen Chaney: Thanks for reply. Considering the large percentage of those diagnosed with IBS in outpatient clinics would an approach of trying diet first rather than an expensive, invasive, unpleasant endoscopy procedure with attendant risk be a better course of action?
Is the endoscopy first approach being driven more by fear of missing a cancer and being sued for same rather than what may be a simpler approach?
Genuinely just asking, have had cameras both ends with nothing sinister found but have subsequently had success with dietary measures but not necessarily measures that consultants are familiar with.
This is one of the best articles offering a comprehensive and fair analysis on our Health System, I can’t fault it. This should be framed.
Agree with Dr O’Connor – balanced views sustained by experience. Have been treated well in both systems, though public AnE requires patience.
In the UK there are set targets for delivery – something like Cancer surgery within 4 weeks maximum. If we set our public hospitals targets and then offered the patient free private care if not met that would focus minds on efficiencies.
@Pat Redmond: or just pay hospitals (and drs etc) per procedure. The countries with the shortest waiting lists are those with systems based on insurance where hospitals are paid like that.
he makes some valid points, but the chances of Ireland producing a high quality low cost health service are slim. We don’t do low cost for things like that in this country.
Great article and much that needs to be said- just would like to suggest another option- we need to recognise that the price tag on patented medicines bears no relationship to the cost of bringing the drug to market- but is the price unilaterally set by Pharma and is based on the maximum profit it can bring to its shareholders- which for life saving or life enhancing drugs is very high indeed. We need to bring some balance of power to the negotiating table to prevent monopoly abuse- ultimately by replacing the monopoly with an alternative incentive such as grants for R&D.
Off topic.
have your say