After I read the two articles I found about it, first on the BBC News site and then in the Irish News newspaper, (unless you have looked at their articles recently, you should be able to read a small number of Irish News articles without a subscription) I reasonably assumed it was an anti-Semitic incident. Although this has been a little frustrating for me because it’s become really unclear, fortunately it now seems that it MIGHT not have been anti-Semitic.
In any event, Belfast Sinn Fein released the following statement:
“The individuals who destroyed Jewish graves in the City cemetery in Belfast are either nasty fascist thugs or mindless nasty thugs.
Sinn Fein in Belfast City Council will make sure these graves are restored to their original condition. Republicanism abhors sectarianism and fascism. We hope that the Jewish community in Belfast understand our abhorrence and accept our deepest sympathy.
Belfast Sinn Fein”
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UPDATE 2/19/20 I want to add something to this. After reading the two articles I link to above, I thought the SF politicians quoted were ignoring the likely anti-semitic nature of the crime. I got an email address for one from the Belfast City Council site. In his response, he included the then head of SF councilors in Belfast and the SF MP for West Belfast. I exchanged a few emails with them. One thought it was anti-semitic, one thought it was just anti-social activity (in earlier incidents, other graves were destroyed) and one thought it was both. I was going to make an attempt at being a journalist and write a fairly professional article about it. I was worried that I hadn't done things right as a journalist, I was worried about angering SF politicians if I did something wrong by quoting them when I hadn't explicitly said I would at the very beginning, and even though a veteran journalist said I was okay, I had a lot of depression and anxiety about it, so I decided to do the very brief post you see. Why am I saying this now? These SF politicians were so concerned about the incident that they took the time to discuss it with me. In a recent post on his blog Juan Cole talks about SF and the Palestinians and says that unlike Germany with it's Nazi history, Ireland will be able to support the Palestinians without that kind of baggage. But That is not entirely true since Ireland was neutral and the IRA accepted aid from Nazi Germany. Unless SF has admitted recently that the IRA was wrong to do that, they are vulnerable to attacks. I go into more detail about that here. But multiple things indicate that SF IS VERY much against anti-Semitism (although it's not all favorable and some of it is ancient history much of this post is about SF and anti-semitism) and I wanted to make that even clearer to people who will criticize them over supporting the Palestinians. (I just did a google search for news about SF's current stance on the IRA and Nazi Germany, and subscribed to the Irish Times and searched that site and found nothing about SF changing it's stance on this (I found something from 2004 indicating that SF was still defending what the IRA did (using Google Advanced Search, I searched SF's web-site and found nothing, although several possibly relevant documents seemed to have been moved or removed (they probably can't archive everything (I also used the search function on SF's web-site and didn't find anything)))))
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UPDATE 2/19/20 I want to add something to this. After reading the two articles I link to above, I thought the SF politicians quoted were ignoring the likely anti-semitic nature of the crime. I got an email address for one from the Belfast City Council site. In his response, he included the then head of SF councilors in Belfast and the SF MP for West Belfast. I exchanged a few emails with them. One thought it was anti-semitic, one thought it was just anti-social activity (in earlier incidents, other graves were destroyed) and one thought it was both. I was going to make an attempt at being a journalist and write a fairly professional article about it. I was worried that I hadn't done things right as a journalist, I was worried about angering SF politicians if I did something wrong by quoting them when I hadn't explicitly said I would at the very beginning, and even though a veteran journalist said I was okay, I had a lot of depression and anxiety about it, so I decided to do the very brief post you see. Why am I saying this now? These SF politicians were so concerned about the incident that they took the time to discuss it with me. In a recent post on his blog Juan Cole talks about SF and the Palestinians and says that unlike Germany with it's Nazi history, Ireland will be able to support the Palestinians without that kind of baggage. But That is not entirely true since Ireland was neutral and the IRA accepted aid from Nazi Germany. Unless SF has admitted recently that the IRA was wrong to do that, they are vulnerable to attacks. I go into more detail about that here. But multiple things indicate that SF IS VERY much against anti-Semitism (although it's not all favorable and some of it is ancient history much of this post is about SF and anti-semitism) and I wanted to make that even clearer to people who will criticize them over supporting the Palestinians. (I just did a google search for news about SF's current stance on the IRA and Nazi Germany, and subscribed to the Irish Times and searched that site and found nothing about SF changing it's stance on this (I found something from 2004 indicating that SF was still defending what the IRA did (using Google Advanced Search, I searched SF's web-site and found nothing, although several possibly relevant documents seemed to have been moved or removed (they probably can't archive everything (I also used the search function on SF's web-site and didn't find anything)))))
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