The Israelis really should have let Lynn Boylan in, you know.
As a general rule, it is a bad sign for any country when you start turning away the elected representatives of other countries, and – whatever else she is – Lynn Boylan is the duly elected representative of the people of Dublin in the European Parliament. She is also, therefore, a representative of that parliament as a whole, and her travel should be accommodated by countries that profess themselves to be friends of Europe – a category in which Israel, as I understand it, places itself.
Whether we like it or not (and I confess I do not, in this instance) global politics and diplomacy is founded on the idea that we recognise the legitimacy of other country’s elected officials, unless there is some express reason not to. To refuse to do so is to apply a sanction not only to that official, but to the people they represent. That is why in most cases where countries deny access to the representatives of other countries, it is because there is some dispute over whether they actually represent the views of that country. There are very real doubts (this is to put it kindly) over the legitimacy of Russian elections, for example. The most recent election in Belarus was so clearly rigged that few could credibly dispute it. Nobody sensible would claim that Kim Jong Un has a mandate from the people of North Korea.
But Lynn Boylan very clearly has a mandate from the people of Dublin, until such time at least as the next EU parliament election in 2029.
Obviously, your correspondent is human. And since I am human, I will not pretend that Lynn Boylan being turned away at the gates of Ben Gurion airport did not make me feel a frisson of schadenfreude. One can certainly understand the Israeli position, even if one disagrees with it.
This makes it worth considering the Irish position, which is equally self-defeating and contrary to the spirit of diplomacy.
It is the position of Ireland that it will at least consider, should the Israeli Prime Minister arrive on our shores, arresting him and detaining him and sending him to the Hague to face some kind of war crimes tribunal.
Evidently, this would never happen in practice: The notion of this country in essence kidnapping a foreign Prime Minister, let alone the Prime Minister of the United States’ closest ally, is so absurd to be laughable. The only reason that the Irish Government’s somewhat nervous position on this is remotely sustainable is that Dublin knows as well as everyone else does that Ireland is not on Benjamin Netanyahu’s list of holiday destinations, nor will it ever be.
The only reason the position exists, if we are honest, is to give some succour to the sweaty night-time fantasies of the Keffiyah-wearing brigade. It is as tenable as my own occasional daydreams about liberating Constantinople or replacing Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari.
The most concerning thing for Ireland in all of this should not be the fact of Lynn Boylan’s removal from Israel: It should be the fact that the Israelis will get away with it without as much as a raised eyebrow from any Irish ally worth mentioning. The UK will not chide them, even privately. The Americans may well applaud them. Even the EU parliament, which itself was insulted by the refusal to admit Boylan, will not raise much of a ruckus.
Largely because the view amongst most of our allies will be that Boylan, and by extension the people she represents, deserved it. And also because Ireland can hardly complain about the refusal to admit Boylan to Israel while it maintains the absurd fiction that Ireland itself might put Netanyahu in chains and bring him to justice. Our own diplomatic position is undermined by our po-facedness on this issue, and not for the first time.
As to the people of Dublin, they might, if they get around to it, wonder about what Lynn Boylan was doing trying to get into Israel in the first place: She was elected to represent their concerns at a European level. For some of her voters, certainly, Palestine and Keffiyah-wearing is a concern – she certainly did win that vote. But for many others, they might have hoped that Boylan might spend her time focusing on EU-wide solutions to housing affordability and challenges, or border control, or defending the trade position of Ireland in a world that is increasingly retreating from the free trade policies that have so enriched us.
The problem, really, is that in politics your likeability and reputation matters, and the reason that the Israelis can get away with turning away an Irish representative is that in the eyes of many of our own allies and friends, that particular representative is a crank who cannot be trusted to deal with them fairly. Had they tried this particular stunt with somebody seen as fairer to them, they might have found it harder to sustain.
Oh well. I’ll shed no tears for Boylan. But it is a pity that Ireland’s ability to project diplomatic heft on the world stage has been allowed to atrophy to the extent that one of our MEPs can be denied entry to a country, and there is precious little hope of any diplomatic support for us to rectify that insult. From anywhere in the world that matters.