David Norris (Independent)

In Ulysses, James Joyce reminds us all of our shared humanity. Bloom, as he walks around Dublin, considers his repressed Jewish people all over the world. I never believed I would see a Nationalist crowd in Derry applauding a British Prime Minister who told the truth fearlessly. It was extraordinary.

Bloom would use the imaginative force so movingly evoked by Senator Harris to encompass also the plight of the Palestinians. I am unashamed to condemn utterly the murderous assault on the peace flotilla. In what was the equivalent of Bloody Sunday for the Israelis, a group, nearly equal in number, of innocent and peaceful protestors against an outrage against humanity in Gaza was slaughtered by Israeli commandoes.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I welcome that the Government has expelled an Israeli diplomat. It did so in a dignified way and made clear there was no specific accusation against that person. It was to show our complete disapproval of the way in which the Israeli authorities secured and wrongly used passports from friendly countries to murder a Hamas person in a third country. The worst aspect was the use of false information by Mossad agents to suggest they were the children of Holocaust survivors to get special German passports. This was a betrayal of everyone murdered by the Nazis.