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"THE majority of the Irish people have always cherished Ireland's military neutrality and recognise the positive values that inspire it, in peace time as well as in war", says the banal little White Paper on foreign policy recently produced by Dick Spring.
I wonder how many Irish people cherish the positive values that he has evinced in his reaction to the murderous assault by Israel on Lebanon?
A statement issued by his Department on Sunday evening conveyed the following comforting message: "The Tanaiste expressed his grave concern at the deteriorating situation in the Lebanon which has led to the loss of many innocent lives and has caused hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens to flee their homes. The Tanaiste called on all sides to exercise the uttermost restraint and avoid any escalation which could lead to further casualties and suffering".
And that was that, apart from some concern for the safety of Irish troops stationed in southern Lebanon as part of UNIFIL: what they are doing there is a separate matter.
The Israeli assault on Lebanon, it is claimed, was in response to the firing of rockets into northern Israel by Hizbullah, although nobody was killed in those attacks. The Israeli assault has involved massive air and sea attacks on civilian areas and, inevitably, the murder of innocents, i.e. the deliberate (or foreseeable) illegal killing of people.
According to the newspapers of yesterday morning, the five day assault by the Israelis had resulted in the killing of 23 Lebanese civilians and the wounding of 80 others. Several more were killed and wounded yesterday. Of the 23 killed up to Monday night seven were killed when an ambulance was deliberately shot at from Israeli helicopters. Those killed in the ambulance were Mahmound Daher (90), Mona Shweik (35), Noha Alakleh (35), Houdou Alakleh (11), Zeinal Geha (7), Honein Geha (3) and Mariam Geha, aged one month.
Speaking on Saturday, Maj Gen Amiram Levin, OC of the Northern Command of the Israeli army, said: "To my regret, it is impossible to guarantee 100 per cent pinpoint accuracy ... However, all civilians who were wounded were located in the vicinity of terrorist Katyusha [rocket] launching sites and terrorist bases and at times even next to Katyusha rocket positions".
The Israeli attack on Lebanon is contrary to international law in being a disproportionate response to the attacks made on Israeli itself. It is also in breach of international agreements on the protection of civilians in time of war. In addition, and directly related to the Katyusha attacks on northern Israel, Israel is in illegal occupation of a swathe of southern Lebanon in direct defiance of a 1978 UN Security Council resolution.
The Israeli attack has resulted in nearly half a million people in southern Lebanon having to flee their homes and congregate in Beirut. There, the infrastructure of the already broken city has been targeted by the Israelis.
The Prime Minister of Israel, Mr Shimon Peres (a Nobel Peace Prize winner), says it is too early to talk of a peaceful settlement. "It's too early to negotiate", he said on Monday, the day after Dick Spring called on all sides to exercise the uttermost restraint and avoid any escalation which could lead to further casualties and suffering".
It is too early to negotiate because Shimon Peres has got to wrong foot the Likud opposition decisively on security in advance of the general elections on May 29th. He has also got to soften the cough of Syria, which is proving difficult in the "peace" negotiations. Syria is the proxy target of this assault on Lebanon.
OF course, it is true that Israel has suffered appallingly from terrorism directed both from Lebanon and the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank: 63 people were killed in Jerusalem earlier this year in two suicide bomb attacks.
But that provides no justification morally on legally for the response, given the scale of that response and the foreseeable impact on innocents civilians (in criminal law a person is presumed to intend the foreseeable consequences of his/her actions. Why should the same standards not be applied in judging the actions of states?).
Apart from this direct culpability, there is an indirect culpability on the part of Israel for what has happened because of its treatment of Palestinians. Amnesty International reported last year: "More than 30 Lebanese nationals some abducted from south Lebanon, continue to bed held in administrative detention in Israel, some of them since 1985. Some were tried and have already served their sentences; others have never been brought to trial.
"Over 200 detainees are still held incommunicado without charge or trial in the Khiam detention centre in an area of south Lebanon controlled by Israel. Some have been detained for 10 years in poor conditions and for most of that period have not had access to their families or to the International Committee of the Red Cross".
In an Amnesty International report of February 6th of this year, widespread violations of human rights by the Israeli authorities were documented as having happened from the time of the peace accord with the PLO on May 4th, 1994.
It noted: "Since 4 May, 1994, Israeli forces have arrested more than 6,000 Palestinians . . . Many of those arrested and held incommunicado for long periods have been tortured and ill treated. Secret internal guidelines for interrogation allow Israeli officials to apply a moderate measure of physical pressure . . ."
"Palestinians held for interrogation are commonly hooded and subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation, usually while shackled in painful positions ... More than 150 Palestinians have been killed by members of the Israeli security forces since May 1994, many in circumstances suggesting they were victims of extra judicial executions or other unlawful killings".
And all that Dick Spring can bring himself to say in the face of this is an expression of "grave concern at the deteriorating situation".
DOES neutrality mean that we are neutral or indifferent to murder perpetrated by states, to the terrorisation of a million people by one of the best equipped armies in the world, to torture, detention and isolation? I presume that Dick Spring condemned "in the strongest possible terms" - or in some other well coined phrase drafted by those who wrote the banalities of the White Paper - the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. If so, fine. If not, where was he that day?
What then is to prevent him from asserting the "positive values" that "inspire" our neutrality by condemning unreservedly the atrocities now being perpetrated by the state of Israel. And if that means it would be prudent to bring our boys home from their spectator role in southern Lebanon, so much the better.