Brian Feeney: What was Gavin Robinson doing beside graffiti at the Royal Victoria Hospital?

You might have seen the picture of DUP leader Gavin Robinson standing beside graffiti on the wall of the Royal Victoria Hospital supporting Palestine.

No, he wasn’t supporting Palestine, though the picture offered an ambiguous interpretation. He was objecting to the graffiti.

He claimed it is “upsetting” to members of the local Jewish community “who see it as directly pointing to them”.

How does he know? He didn’t say if any members of the local Jewish community had complained to him. The whole matter is so urgent it took him a mere six months to make an issue of it.

Brian Feeney: What was Gavin Robinson doing beside graffiti at the Royal Victoria Hospital?

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Was it because Diane Dodds had raised it in Stormont the day before? He’s hardly driving down the Falls Road turning into the Grosvenor Road on a regular basis.

Now Robinson has complained to the Local Government Ombudsman about the graffiti.

As a stranger to the district he may not know this, but the RVH is plagued with graffiti on its lengthy substantial walls. They’re a standing invitation to spray painters.

That has been the case for decades, covering all sorts of personal, local and international topics. It’s doubtful anyone regularly travelling past the RVH can remember a time when the walls were clear.

Let’s hope the ombudsman tells Robinson in the politest terms to have a titter of wit, for you can bet your bottom dollar on this: As soon as the health trust finds someone to wash it off, it’ll be restored bigger and better. Even worse, several more versions could be added.

No, to take a charitable opinion, the whole DUP performance seems a pathetic bit of virtue signalling.

Have you ever seen a picture of Robinson standing beside any of the loyalist paramilitary graffiti in his own constituency? Whole gable walls full of it.

Why has he never suggested it might be “upsetting” to the Catholic population of the Short Strand to pass such threatening murals? Does he not think the local Catholic community might “see it as directly pointing to them”? What has he done to encourage the local UVF gangsters to remove any of it?

Where was he in May and later July when Nazi swastikas, C-18 and NF slogans were painted in Antrim? Great opportunity to denounce
fascism.

Ah, but that is Robin Swann’s constituency and he did issue statements condemning the threats to health workers and damage to their homes.

Yes, but the RVH isn’t in Robinson’s constituency, so what was he doing there when he has so much important work he could be doing to remove offensive slogans and murals in east Belfast?

Of course the answer is because it’s about Israel, unionists’ second most favourite settler colony, so they automatically support it.

Doesn’t matter if it’s now an American settler colony with up to 600,000 American citizens, many of whom, armed and dangerous, are the most extreme illegal land grabbers, currently engaged in attacking and sometimes killing local Palestinians as they drive them off their land.

One of the many flaws in the unionist stance is the belief that all Jews support Israel and that state’s racist, apartheid treatment of Palestinians.

Unionists are in denial about the Jews who courageously protest in London, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere against the appalling savagery the Israeli army exhibits on a daily basis and the pitiless cruelty the Israeli government inflicts on the people of Gaza.

The DUP also ignore the fact that the most potent criticism of Israel comes from influential Jews like US Senator Bernie Sanders, or in Britain from Guardian writer Jonathan Freedland. Freedland warns that Netanyahu “will accelerate Israel’s path to international pariahdom”.

The silliest, illogical DUP trope of all is equating opposition to Israeli state policy with anti-semitism. Not to oppose Israel’s illegal actions for what they are is to give war criminals like Netanyahu carte blanche.

Unfortunately for Robinson and the DUP, their complaints about “anti-semitic” graffiti came the same week that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former sidekick Gallant.

Of course the US opposes the ICC warrants, but then the US, guilty of egregious war crimes itself, refuses to recognise the ICC because it’s certain to be indicted.

Nevertheless, the US is in bad company along with Russia, Iraq, Israel, Libya, China and Qatar.

When countries like the Netherlands and Canada and even strongly pro-Israeli British ministers say they’ll enforce the ICC’s arrest warrants, that leaves the DUP isolated. They don’t care.

As for Robinson, maybe standing in front of threatening murals in his own constituency and demanding their removal might give him some credibility attacking pro-Palestinian ones.