Mohammed Hijab – Why some Unionists Support Israel – Belfast Lecture

			Salam Alaikum, salam, personality, I
		

			bring the microphone because this is
		

			where I live in many of the churches, mostly posted on the congenital, they quite as a side of
Israel, their clips, not Zionist, but they will disregard Palestinian question and say that we need
to help our Jewish brothers, mostly brothers. How would someone respond to that? Because we think
that's why we would support them, especially if we would build a profit in this regard. Besides
that, that's my question.
		

			So, I mean, I find it interesting that
		

			in Belfast, there are still these divisions, I was looking at the census data before I came here
today, and I saw that people in Belfast could actually identify it to a greater extent, either
consciously, or capitalism.
		

			Like, for example, I think only 17 to 27 of the population consider themselves to be religious in,
in Northern Ireland, or Northern Ireland, which is less than the numbers you would find in England,
for instance, or other provinces will be my kingdom.
		

			This is this indicates something interesting, I think that people have attached their identities
with these labels. Okay. So anything antithetical to their identities, they oppose it. Focus has a
psychological knee jerk reaction, where if you probe them and ask them, What do you actually know
about the situation in Palestine or Israel, I don't even have the facts, either. It's just that it's
us. And that is what you refer to a psychologist, in group and out group dynamics. So it's become a
thing now, for example, driving around in Belfast, I see the Union Jack flag. This is an unusual
thing. If you compare it with the rest of England, I mean, it's almost a over compensatory attitude.
		

			But the root of this over compensatory attitude by some of the extreme members of the if you like
unionism, whoever, however they identify it is actually a search for meaning identity. They don't
know what to connect themselves with. So they're connecting themselves with the people who are
ambivalent or otherwise, it's different to such connection. Like if you're gonna have someone in
Birmingham, London, what do you think of the, you know, the situation in Belfast? And
		

			how would you rate it and they wouldn't even know about possibly, frankly, I promise you, they
wouldn't know where Belfast isn't that they wouldn't care whether these Unionists want to depart the
United Kingdom, or didn't want to replant the United Kingdom. So I think now, we need to show these
people who are using this kind of identity politics to frivolity and the capriciousness of their
identification policies, that is totally irrelevant.
		

			And if you ask these people, for example, I have a hunch,
		

			although it's not backed by census data, or whatever, but I have a hunch that even if you go and ask
the SoCal Protestants, right, if you ask them,
		

			What do you to call Jesse Lee in terms of religion? Right? I think a lot of them wouldn't even
identify themselves. So they say that I don't know if I believe in God or not.
		

			I believe I'm agnostic or something like that. A lot of these people they are, like Richard Dawkins,
famously and interestingly said he's, he's a traditional plus is, he's posited by tradition, my
convention, where he's not actually Protestant, of course, in Naples.
		

			I was speaking to the guys about this, I said, Look, this whole issue here in Northern Ireland has
to do with Protestant and Catholic. There's only one way to saltation as if they were adopted Islam.
		

			There are some issues, though, but honestly, in terms of how we respond to these people, is by
probing them,
		

			and let them reveal their own ignorance. And so doing some What do you think about what are the
differences between Protestants and Catholics? I'm gonna ask a Protestant, give me five differences
between Protestantism and capitalism. If I went and asked the people who identified as Protestant in
Belfast or anywhere else in Northern Ireland, to name the five differences between Protestantism and
Catholicism, my hunch is that they will not be able to do that. That's my hunch. So the word
Protestant for these people has not been it's not really hasn't got as much religious value. That's
more identity than political that once you expose that to the interlocutor, and you let them see the
		

			blindness of the unbelief,
		

			and the blatant tribalism, blind tribalism that they allege. I think that
		

			The first step to breaking and deconstructing their unwitting and blind allegiance to a country
which there is no there is nobody supporting it and so on so forth