Daniel O'DowdTo be frank, anti-Semitism is not a political issue in Ireland. It’s not that it is not an issue. Rather, it’s that there is no political cost to being anti-Semitic in this country.
 

There is a small and dwindling Jewish community in this country which may make a marginal difference in a Council Election in a large Dublin constituency. Opponents of anti-Semitism and pro-Israel figures are few and far between, constantly under threat of character assassination or misrepresentation. 

The media is only interested in the issue in so much as it sells newspapers and boosts readership figures. In the Dáil and Seanad, the consensus is overwhelmingly anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and opposed to accepting any charge of anti-Semitism. In other words, there is no incentive, need or obligation to tackle anti-Semitism. With no check and no balance, hardline, anti-Zionist parties like People Before Profit and Sinn Féin can act as recklessly, as boldly and as offensively as they wish on Israel and the Jewish people – with no fear of reproach.

This has borne out time and time again, with no sign of things changing.

Continue reading @ The Times Of Israel.

Sinn Féin’s Anti-Semitism Comes At No Political Cost

Daniel O'DowdTo be frank, anti-Semitism is not a political issue in Ireland. It’s not that it is not an issue. Rather, it’s that there is no political cost to being anti-Semitic in this country.
 

There is a small and dwindling Jewish community in this country which may make a marginal difference in a Council Election in a large Dublin constituency. Opponents of anti-Semitism and pro-Israel figures are few and far between, constantly under threat of character assassination or misrepresentation. 

The media is only interested in the issue in so much as it sells newspapers and boosts readership figures. In the Dáil and Seanad, the consensus is overwhelmingly anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and opposed to accepting any charge of anti-Semitism. In other words, there is no incentive, need or obligation to tackle anti-Semitism. With no check and no balance, hardline, anti-Zionist parties like People Before Profit and Sinn Féin can act as recklessly, as boldly and as offensively as they wish on Israel and the Jewish people – with no fear of reproach.

This has borne out time and time again, with no sign of things changing.

Continue reading @ The Times Of Israel.

24 comments:

  1. Seems this is more of the same - label anti-Semitic anybody that asks questions of the brutal Israeli regime.

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  2. I cannot comment on this article as when I click on the link, I cannot ac ces it.

    But a general point. Criticism of the Occupation and of specific Israeli government policies can never be antisemitic but demonisation of the essence of Israel, of Zionism as some sort of existential evil and attribution of certain crimes (e.g. 9/11) to the hand of Mossad) which are all features of far-left (and sometimes far-right) and Islamist antizionism do certainly stray into that territory.

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    1. But even to portray Israel as the essence of evil is not anti-Semitic. It is anti-Israel. A person is no more anti-Semitic for opposing Israel than they are islamophobic for opposing Iran

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  3. Anthony

    Having read the article, I can see that the tweets from SF deputies about Israel forming ISIS; denying Covid-19 vaccines to the population of the West Bank and 9/11 conspiracy theories very much come within the range of antizionist antisemitism.

    Not for the first time the mask slips from Sinn Fein's professed public image of a progressive, human rights advocating and antiracist party to reveal the real malice and prejudices. They need to be reminded that the Zionist War of Independence was a cause celebre for many Republicans and leftists of the time; the Irgun's operations were based on those of Michael Collins and Republicans like Donal Donnelly of Omagh and Terrence "Cheeky" Clarke were ardent pro-Zionists.

    It is not Islamophobic to oppose theocratic regimes like those of Iran; those who do do not oppose the the existence of the territorial integrity of Iran; the Anti-Apartheid Movement likewise did not opposed the state and territorial unity of South Africa. But opponents of the existence of the State of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people do oppose the territory of (pre-1967) Israel.

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    1. Barry - glad that worked. Every now and then lonks cause a glitch and it takes a reader to point it out when they notice.

      The SF tweets you flag up are more the personal views of the deputies than SF and they are quickly pulled into line. As little time as I have for SF, I would not describe them as an Anti-Semitic party. In fact, a while back they were taking flak for fraternising with Likud as they were when staging photo opportunities with Israeli diplomats.

      You refer to individual TDs alleging "Israel forming ISIS; denying Covid-19 vaccines to the population of the West Bank and 9/11 conspiracy theories very much come within the range of antizionist antisemitism" - except that they don't. They fit within the range of actions framed as anti-Semitic by the lobby that wants to silence criticism of Israel.

      Because they might be wrong about what Israel gets up to or they might be deliberately and wilfully falsifying what Israel does, makes them only anti-Israel, not anti-Semitic. And their basis for being anti-Israel is probably rooted in their opposition to the Israeli history of war crimes and atrocity.

      A prejudice against Israel simply cannot be reduced to a prejudice against Jews.

      People who oppose the Zionist land grab and the colonising of Palestinian land in 48 with the concomitant war crimes against the Palestinians again cannot be described as anti-Semitic simply because they do not share your view on the history.

      Cleeky Clarke became an ardent Palestinian supporter, so it is is pointless reading too much into his perspective.

      People should be free to oppose the existence of whatever state they wish otherwise we are bound by the strictures of obligatory nationalism. If people want to oppose the existence of Iran or Pakistan they should not be labelled anti-Muslim for that. People should be free to oppose the state of Israel as much as they are entitled to oppose the state of Northern Ireland or the state of Pakistan.
      It looks to me as an enormous contradiction for any secularist to support a Jewish state for a Jewish people; much the same as it would be were they to support a Muslim state for a Muslim people or a Protestant state for a Protestant people. It is much more consistent for a secularist to be supporting a secular state for all the people.

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  4. AM
    Do you mean anti-Muslim? the term Islamophobia is a political label to silence criticism of Islam otherwise we might as well interpret anti-Zionism to mean anti-Semitic.

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    1. Christy - I considered anti-Muslim as it is more accurate but sought to use what seemed like a more discursive equivalent to anti-Semitism. But it doesn't work for the reasons you point out. Inverted commas might have caused it to carry more effect.

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  5. Barry. I am very much against anti-semitism. However, it appears many people are provoked more by words including anti-semetism which is never acceptable than the very real and current barbaric violence against the Palestinians.

    Why were people more upset by Hamas' words of wanting to drive Israel into the sea, when they didn't have the means to do so, than Israel chipping away at the Palestinian Territories and actually driving a people into the sea? The use of white phosphorus, targeting of civilians, schools etc. remains unmentioned in many discussions despite violence like this having a greater impact on humanity than mere words.

    I understand that hate speech may lead to violence but on the other hand Israel is actually carrying out disproportionate violence, breaking international law through use of banned weapons, illegal occupation, and embargoes including restrictions on electricity and drinking water.

    Deal with the clear and present danger first, with more vigour than hate speech which may or may not lead to similar violence. Is that not logical?

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    1. Simon

      It is not a question of prioritising hate speech over violence or repression.

      For example because Islamist terror may be a clear and present danger or that girl children in certain Islamic communities are at risk of FGM, there is no logical reason to downplay anti-Muslim hate speech and its effects from the likes of Tommy Robinson and Geert Wilders.

      Likewise the necessity of opposing the Occupation does not relegate the importance of the British Labour Party cleansing itself of its antisemitism culture as mandated by the EHRC or of dealing with the hate speech which has led to the murder of Jews by Islamist terrorists in France and Belgium.

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    2. Barry, none of that explains why you spend your time speaking out against not just antisemitism but criticism of Israel and rarely speak out against the maltreatment of those in Palestine.

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  6. Simon

    All true. My criticism of Hamas is that they do not treat Palestinians any better than the Israeli's do. Their tactics seem to revolve around provoking Israel and then feeding from the devastation left behind. The more they can cause the Palestinians to suffer the more they get in donations and weaponry... they are not innocent contributors to the Palestinians misery.

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    1. Christy, I understand where you're coming from but the situation is more complicated than that.

      Israel attacks Gaza regardless of what Hamas do. You are 100% correct that they use any attack, by any Palestinian group in the Strip as a pretext for a major attack in the same way loyalists claimed a purely reactionary stance, yet neither stands up to scrutiny as attacks continued during calm as well as storm.

      The PLO are in charge in the West Bank yet attacks on Palestinians there are commonplace. Illegal settlements flourish and the displaced flee.

      Back in Gaza if a group sends rockets to Israel Hamas get the blame even if another group is involved. These rocket attacks are a war crime. The "look at what you made me do" defense from Israel doesn't wash with me, particularly a disproportionate response. I can see suffering and hopelessness, pushing people to violent acts. That's not to excuse war crime but a more obvious reason than sacrificing your people for donations.

      I watched a documentary on Gaza and a common remark by the inhabitants is that they hate the world as we stand by and let Israel do as they please. There was a deep sense of anger and helplessness as different people said these same words and they meant it. It's not an excuse for a war crime as there can be no excuse but as an expression of feeling it is stark.

      I guess those donations of weapons and finance must be significant, to compensate for everything lost in the devastation. Donations do come in, but as a reason to wage war? I doubt it.

      The Palestinian people are war weary. Hamas were voted in originally by Christians as well as Muslims. Hopefully everyone can live in peace in Israel/Palestine. Hamas holds a big responsibility but if you're right in your analysis Hamas are more to blame than Israel not just as bad as.

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    2. Christy

      Hamas also executes alleged collaborators with minimal judicial process; represses women and jails journalists and peace activists. Note also the absence of elections since 2006.

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    3. Anthony

      The State of Israel was an explicitly secular Zionist project at least in its inception unlike many Muslim majority countries which institutionalise Islamic religious and cultural mores.

      There is another narrative around 1948 which is that 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were dispossessed as a result of a war which Israel's Arab neighbours started. Had the UN Partition Plan been accepted by the Palestinian leadership then the conflict and associated atrocities, including the massacres of hundreds of Arabs most notoriously at Deir Yassim by Jewish irregular forces (6,000 Jews also died in that war), may never have happened.

      The creation of the State of Israel was, in the words of Isaac Deutscher , a "historical necessity" arising from the Shoah/Holocaust. These were events which Trotsky foresaw in 1938.

      Anti-Israelism, as it is termed by Rabbi Julia Neuberger, is not, I grant, full-on antisemitism as that of Nazi vintage. But the accusations made against it; the 9/11 and ISIS nonsense, the harvesting of organs and denial of Covid-19 vaccines to the West Bank, power of the Zionist/Israel lobby hark back to centuries-old anti-Jewish themes such as the 'blood libel' (Jews killing Christian children); Jews being simultaneously behind communism and capitalism (as made explicit in the Hamas Charter) and the power of the Rothschild banking family.

      Yes, anger at Israeli treatment of Palestinian Arabs is a driver in this variant of antisemitism. But the violent and conspiratorial rhetoric used by many antizionists such as the tweets of the Sinn Fein TDs leads me to suspect that there are deeper, more primeval sentiments and intentions at play than mere human rights advocacy. For I have seen more than a few anecdotes (including from posters on this site) from professed Palestinian supporters dismissing the the mass atrocities of the Assad regime and the Chinese Communist Party's protogenocide of the Uighur and other Turkic peoples.

      Besides today's racists are more savvy in the ways in which they articulate their prejudices. Hence the codes in which African-Americans are demeaned in : the "welfare queens" and "urban" problems.

      Finally; if people are entitled to oppose any state (which on free expression grounds they are) I take it this would be on anarchist grounds. Where would that leave a Palestinian state?

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    4. Barry,

      The State of Israel was an explicitly secular Zionist project at least in its inception unlike many Muslim majority countries which institutionalise Islamic religious and cultural mores.
      That just sounds like nah nah - nah nah nah.
      It matters not. Its secular content did not detract from its war crime intent.
      There is another narrative around 1948 which is that 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were dispossessed as a result of a war which Israel's Arab neighbours started.
      That’s fine. No one here seeking to ban that narrative or shout anti-Muslim at the narrator. It is a narrative that people have every right to dissent from without being labelled anti-Semitic.

      The creation of the State of Israel was, in the words of Isaac Deutscher , a "historical necessity" arising from the Shoah/Holocaust.

      Deutscher is entitled to his opinion. People can dissent from that opinion without being labelled anti-Semitic. They could have set it up in Germany – they even considered stealing land in Africa for the purpose in the embryonic stages of the Zionist movement – which would have been fitting.

      Anti-Israelism, as it is termed by Rabbi Julia Neuberger, is not, I grant, full-on antisemitism as that of Nazi vintage.

      At last we are getting there.

      But the accusations made against it; the 9/11 and ISIS nonsense, the harvesting of organs and denial of Covid-19 vaccines to the West Bank, power of the Zionist/Israel lobby hark back to centuries-old anti-Jewish themes such as the 'blood libel' (Jews killing Christian children); Jews being simultaneously behind communism and capitalism (as made explicit in the Hamas Charter) and the power of the Rothschild banking family.
      Some of that is anti-Semitism and some of it not. We know the power of the Israeli lobby – just look at AIPAC. Blood libel is something you have tried to stick on criticisms of Israel’s Nazi like war crimes against Palestinian children. It is a matter of record that the Israeli state targets and murders Palestinian children. It is not because they are Jews that they perpetrate such but because they are land grabbing Israelis. And your attempt to smear that very substantive concern as anti-Semitic is arguably a bid to provide cover for their war crimes.
      You are now down to “suspecting” that some SF TDs are driven by more primordial concerns. It works the other way – you might be operating out of a primordial instinct to smear the accuser in order to shield the accused and allow them licence to continue with their barbarism.

      Yes, there is a large measure of inconsistency on the part of those who fail to address the war crimes of Assad and his regime. That still does not make them anti-Semitic, just anti-israel. And that anti-Israel sentiment is derived from a long standing emotional empathy with the victims of Israeli atrocity – the Palestinians. Am I a hypocrite because I disproportionately write about the trauma experienced by Liverpool fans but not that experienced by Rangers fans? It should only become a problem if I object or try to prevent others wishing to focus on the Rangers fans.

      People are free to oppose a Palestinian state. It might make sense to do so from an anarchist perspective. But the opposition to the existence of an Israeli state is not driven merely by anarchism. It is driven by the mental image people have of a war crime regime mercilessly attacking a defenceless people with whom they have emotional solidarity. That is not anti-Semitism.
      I don’t support Hamas – it has a long association with the Muslim Brotherhood. It is brutal yet much less so than Israel.

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  7. Armed Palestinian groups be they Hamas, PLO or PFLP have also attacked and killed children; that does not make them Nazi-like despite their then or current commitment to destroying the "Zionist entity"; an objective also shared by the homicidal theocracy in Iran which I also desist from calling Nazi-like.

    Reprehensible though the killing and wounding of Palestinian Arab children (whether rioting or not) on the West Bank by the Israeli occupation forces are; it does not compare with the exterminatory nature of Nazi atrocities which were motivated by a genocidal racist philosophy at the centre of which was "the Jew". If it did, then there would be camps, ghettoes, mass starvation, medical experimentation and all the other ghastly paraphernalia of Nazism. The West Bank is an occupation; Gaza is the site of an uneven conflict; neither is a Warsaw Ghetto; a Babi-Yar or an Auschwitz.

    That anti-Israelis such as George Galloway, Chris Williamson and Ali Abuminah of the Electronic Intifada find common cause with the Chinas, Assads, Venezuelas, Putins and Saddams of this world suggests that dislike of anything Western is more of a factor in their faux sympathy with the Palestinian Arabs. Islamist antizionism is motivated by opposition to the presence of any Jews on "Muslim lands".

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    1. Barry – deliberately targeting women and children is a war crime and therefore Nazi like. That Hamas do not do it with the zest of Israel does not make them any less culpable of war crimes, just responsible for fewer of them. You are not being asked to call Hamas Nazi like. That is your call. What you are being asked is to stop labelling as anti-Semite those who think Israel massacring children is Nazi-like.

      No one has claimed that the Israeli slaughter of Palestinian children is on a scale with what the Nazis did to the Jews, or even worse what they did to the Russians. Nor is the Shoah the point of comparison: the atrocities are. War criminals are all pigs from the same sow. But you continue to strive to distort the point in order to protect the Nazi-like activities of the Israeli state.
      Islamist antizionism is motivated by opposition to the presence of any Jews on "Muslim lands".

      That may well be so but we are not talking about Islamist anti-Zionism. There is nobody here defending the Islamists. At least on this site there has been a constant criticism of political Islam.

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  8. Anthony

    I am not labelling anyone who condemns the killing and targeting of children on the West Bank by the IDF as antisemitic and I genuinely apologise if that is the impression created.

    But it is the Nazi comparisons that I object to; I acknowledge you do reject comparisons with the Holocaust. However many of the complaints concerning antisemitism in the Labour Party involved just such comparisons featuring, for example, social media images of the swastika superimposed upon the Star of David.

    In the words of former Corbyn acolyte, Owen Jones "the realities of the Israeli occupation are grim enough on their own terms - military subjugation, the theft of land n- all justified by state-sanctioned racism - without a comparison (between the predicament of the Palestinians to that of the Jews during the Holocaust) which is as offensive as it is manifestly untrue. There has been no attempt to physically exterminate the Palestinian people; the comparison is meant only to bait Jews with the memory of their most murderous persecutors". (Owen Jones (2020) This Land. The Story of a Movement. London: Allen Lane p.220).

    How about sticking the Nazi label on the Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries who targeted thousands of teenagers in their communities for punishment beatings which on a few occasions led to death? How about sticking it on the British Army and RUC for targeting teenagers and younger with plastic bullets; live bullets and beatings. For me; child abuse is a sufficient description without introducing the N word.

    War criminals may indeed be all pigs from the same sow but some of the greatest crimes against humanity took place away from the battlefield such as the Shoah, the Khmer Rouge autogenocide, the attempted extermination of the Rwandan Tutsis and the transatlantic African slave trade.

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  9. Barry - why object to the Nazi comparisons when what the Israelis do converges with the brutality of the Nazi regime? I have looked at images of Gaza after Israeli bomb attacks and have looked at Warsaw after Nazi bomb attacks and it is impossible to tell the difference.

    If Jews are compared to Nazis it is in my view anti-Semitic but if some actions of the Israeli state are compared with the actions of the Nazi state I fail to see the problem.
    I think Jones is wrong - in my view it is not to bait Jews but to hold a mirror up to Israelis and invite them to look into it. The nation that supposedly arose from war crimes is now perpetrating them. What an indictment.
    If people want to liken some actions of republicans and loyalists to Nazis, why should they not be free to do so? Can Kingsmill, Dublin/Monaghan, Bloody Sunday all not be characterised as Nazi-like? You are free to use a different description but equally so is the person who sees them as Nazi-like, free to use what they consider an appropriate characterisation.
    War crimes and crimes against humanity regardless of where they were committed, on or off the battlefield, merit a Nazi comparison, providing that the point of comparison is made specific.

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  10. Anthony

    I know that we will always disagree on this but use of Nazi comparisons where they are clearly inaccurate always grate with me.

    In my younger days, I remember a foaming bigot at an SDLP conference fulminating that "those who support abortion are Nazis"; it was obviously beyond his limited ken that the women's right to choose abortion in Nazi Germany was banned.

    Similarly, the late Fr. Reid's comment that the Unionist regime treated Catholics "like Nazis" was totally inappropriate as was Mary MacAleese's similar comment on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz which she later recanted.

    Conversely, it would be way of the mark to call the Provisional IRA and loyalist paramilitaries "Nazis" even though there were far right elements in all of the armed groups.

    The optics between Gaza and Warsaw may look similar but whereas Hitler wanted to completely destroy Warsaw and exterminate its population; that was not the Israeli intention disproportionate though its response to Hamas rockets always are.

    It is crimes of genocide such as those at Srebinica, those of the Mayan population of Guatemala in the 1980s, the politicide in Indonesia in 1965 where 500,000 suspected communists were massacred (with the assistance of the CIA); the Sabra and Chatila refugee camp massacres, Belgium Congo genocide; the Pol Pot years and the African slave trade that merit Nazi comparisons because of the specificities around premeditation; advance planning; racial hatreds and the bureaucracy and taxonomies surrounding them.

    "The nation that supposedly arose from war crimes in now perpetrating them". Just like Mugabe in Zimbabwe and so many other former colonies in Africa tragically. It is by contemporary legal and humanitarian standards and protocols that states and nations are to be judged by, particularly if they are signed up to them, not their histories.

    Have a Happy New Year, Anthony and I hope that Liverpool resume their winning form Cannot have that lot down the East Lancashire Road taking your title!

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  11. Barry - comparisons are not inaccurate if we identify the points of similarity. The pounding of Gaza is like exactly like what the Nazis did to Warsaw. We might try and say that it was for a different reason but that hardly lessens the likeness nor the evil intent of either state. I think comparisons like that of Reid and McAleese were wrong because the points of comparison were wrong. But there have been actions by all sides to the North's conflict that merited the description Nazi like - Bloody Sunday / Dublin & Monaghan / Kingsmill. If we were to describe any of those as humane atrocities we would have cause for complaint, but not foe hearing them described as Nazi like.
    You try to reduce Nazism to premeditation and a certain type of atrocity. I don't do that. I think it lets those who wish to behave like Nazis off the hook.
    Mugabe deserved all the comparisons with White Rhodesia as could be thrown his way. I think you miss the point of Animal Farm.
    I think Liverpool are pretty lame at the minute. Despite having all the injury problems in the back line, it is the forward line that is not firing on all cylinders. Only for Curtis Jones messing up, the defence would have had three clean sheets against WBA.
    Happy New Year Barry

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  12. Anthony

    Nazism for me will always be symbolised by its its death camps into which millions were funnelled into simply because of who they were put them on the bottom rungs of the Nazi pyramid of racial hatreds and because through the desecration of corpses and wiping out of the Yiddish culture the Nazis sought to erase the evidence of their existence.

    The crimes of genocide that the Nazis were guilty of were unique and led to the UN Genocide Convention in 1948.

    The Nazi murders of 3.5m Russian prisoners of war led to the creation of the Geneva Convention.

    Both of these international conventions formed part of the post 1945 architecture of transnational institutions of human rights and democracy promotion. If force has to be used to ensure compliance with these laws and norms then so be it.

    I actually thought that Big Sam's WBA would give us a game after their result at Anfield! Pity about the shitstorm about TV pundit Karen Carney's comments afterwards.

    I still haven't got your email re Sunday Times' Sinn Fein article.

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    1. Barry - that is to highlight a defining feature of Nazism but it is wider than that. For me Nazism is about war crimes, not just a Holocaust. Their most heinous act during WW2 was their war of extermination in the East, not the Holocaust. Much of the Holocaust was an integral part of that war in the East. If Israel wants to commit war crimes then it can take the comparisons that go with it, much like any other state that perpetrates such crimes.
      Check your twitter messages as I sent it there a fee minutes ago.
      I think Carney was wrong and deserved criticism but per usual it got out of control with abusive nonsense fired her way

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