Letter: No point being aggrieved next time someone chants ‘Up the Ra’, it was political unionism which facilitated the sanitisation of republican terrorism

There are many sympathisers on both sides who equally believe they know the cause and solution to the Israel and Palestinian problem – as well as many within our own province who see a similarity with our own troubles and who unashamedly try to sanitise the actions of Hamas.

Whenever the Prophet Muhammad supposedly received his revelation from the angel Gabriel in the early 7th century, he began preaching in Mecca in order that he would recruit followers to his religion.

Having failed, and only managing to recruit immediate family members, he decided to go to Medina which was the Jewish business hub in Arabia.

His idea was that if he went there and preached his religion to them, and they accepted him, then that would purchase for him respect, acceptance, and stature with his own people.

That is why in our beloved province today we have the political wing of the IRA in power, why we have ex-terrorists on the Policing Board, and a potential first minister who commemorates deceased Irish Catholic terrorists and who claims there was no alternative to the murders they committed .

Republicanism was sanitised through powersharing by unionist politicians, encouraged on by Protestant apostate clergy. When the Protestant community accepted the obscene appointment of Martin McGuinness as education minister, then deputy first minister, it was the beginning of the sanitisation of republicanism.

If unionism can accept those who murdered their loved ones, then why shouldn't their own community? So there's no point being aggrieved the next time someone chants ‘Up the Ra’, or because a sporting body who names its clubs and trophies after republican terrorists receives tens of millions of pounds in public funding, because it was political unionism that facilitated its sanitising and the unionist community who allowed it.

Leslie Marshall, Tandragee