Norris: Cui Bono?

There was something almost tragically inevitable about Senator David Norris’s withdrawal from the Irish Presidential campaign yesterday. Something about the whole affair that was so bleak and inescapably absurd that it rendered all the more epigrammatic the withdrawing contender’s choice of parting shot. For a moment like that, it had to be Beckett or Cervantes.

Support for the academic and gay rights activist drained away dramatically after it was revealed earlier this week that the Senator had advocated unsuccessfully against the conviction of his former lover, Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi, in a 1997 statutory rape conviction involving a 15-year old Palestinian boy.

While this information regarding Nawi’s sexual offences had been in the public domain since 2007, the Irish media are citing the publication of a story on a London Irish blog – The System Works – on 24 July as the genesis of this particular episode. Here’s an Israeli story from 2010 updating the story of covered up sexual assaults; found on The System Works. 

Nawi’s conviction for sexual offences was actually reported for the first time after he was arrested and tried for assault for his part in an altercation with Israeli troops demolishing Palestinian Bedouin homes in the West Bank village of Um El Hir in 2007. His case at the time attracted much high profile support including Naomi Klein.

John Connolly, the blogger in the driving seat at The System Works, maintains on his website that he was merely nudged by an Irish trade unionist friend to check whether or not “David Norris’s former lover (and I quote) has convictions ‘relevant to your interests’”. Connolly also goes on to evince surprise on 30 July when the letter appeared in the media. “Little did I know innocently blogging on Monday that Norris’s letter appealing for clemency in his lover’s sexual offence case would be leaked today.”

Suggestions have persisted that this document was actually leaked by the Israeli Embassy in Dublin. Furthermore it is alleged that it was already doing the rounds before Mr Norris supplied it to the Sunday Independent himself; this, according to the Belfast Telegraph.  The Israelis were obviously keen to nip that one in the bud and last night tried to scotch rumours that they were involved in the publication of the controversial clemency plea.

After the denial, the communiqué went on to eulogise the great respect the Israeli government had for Norris. That would presumably be same respect the Israeli government showed for Irish sovereignty when they used Irish Passports for some of its Mossad agents in the assassination of  Hamas commander Al-Mabhouh in January 2010.

I wouldn’t suggest for a minute that Mr Connolly is an agent of Mossad or anything so absurd; but that is apparently one of the accusations levelled at the intrepid blogger. Certainly, a quick perusal of his blog and its click-throughs hint at a more Zionist weltanschauung than I would personally profess but that’s neither a crime nor necessarily a sign of social deviance or subversion. (And anyhow, what do I know from Zionism?) I might however be inclined to the view that the Norris campaign’s enemies were happy enough to point a diligent blogger with an agenda in the right direction. What part the Israelis played in all of this is ultimately pure speculation but in situations like this, the rule of thumb is that denials rarely allay suspicions...

It must be said that by omitting to mention this letter previously (whether by accident or design), Norris really didn't do himself any favours. And doubtless there would be people who would say that writing the letter in the first place showed very poor judgement.


The Helen Lucy Burke exhumation earlier this year appears in retrospect as a mere dry-run. One might even surmise, not unreasonably, that Norris might have known or at least suspected that there was more to come in its wake. His popular support was in the end no match for the personal enmity and vehement ideological opposition to his candidacy displayed by vocal and influential arbiters of Irish public life. Even that might have counted for naught however if Norris and his campaign team had handled the affair with more adroitness.

What this whole affair underlines perhaps more than anything is the utter tawdriness of public life in the early 21st century; that politics, even in the low-rent bun-fight for figurehead roles, is a dirty and undignified game. If I were David Norris right now, I'd probably be having a very large drink to toast my good fortune in bowing out; don't all political lives end in failure anyway?  Let the rest of them backstab and brief against each other from here till Polling day, their failure will come soon enough.

That's how it is on this bitch of an earth...