Activate Javascript or update your browser for the full Digital Library experience.
Next Page
OCR
Y
INFORMATION
9
wish BULLETIN
CIssued by the Department of External Affairs )
No. 22
TRELAND AND ISRAEL
_A_PARALIEL
(Speech made by Edward J. Flynn, former Chairman of
National Democratic Committee to Bronx Zionist
Organization on 27th October 1949)
I have tried, in my own way, to work for the establishment of the
State of Israel. The thought that I may have been of some small help in the
achievement of that goal is a source of great satisfaction to me. The recog-
nition, by the world, of the independent State of Israel is an historic
accomplishment. It was realized against great odds and stands as proof that
courage and determination, when joined with a just cause, arouse the sympathy
and help of right thinking peoples and nations.
Being of Irish descent, I was in a position to understand the desire
of Jews everywhere to accomplish the final fulfillment of centuries of struggle
because the parallel which exists between the long and tragic history of poth
the Jews and Irish needs no new emphasis. Now that the dream of an independent
State of Israel has been realized, I think it is not amiss if I say a few words
about the fight of the Irish people against the partition of their country, im-
posed upon them by Britain. Little has been said in the past few years about
this injustice to Ireland and most people have assumed that the establishment
of the Republic of Ireland in 1920 was the achievement that had been sought.
In this they have been mistaken because, unfortunately, not enough people are
aware of the manner in which Britain, in seeming to grant Irish independence,
created within the borders of the island its own separate principality.
For more than 2,000 years Ireland was one nation whose boundaries
were fixed by the sea. This unity survived the tides of invasion. The changes
of the centuries left this unity untouched. Ireland then meant, and still
means, the whole of the island and nothing less.
When, in 1918, by a free vote of the vast majority of its inhabitants,
Treland declared itself a free nation, it declared for freedom not only of a
part of Ireland, but all of it. Just as Britain, in the struggle of Israel for
realization of its true boundaries, sought at every opportunity to limit those