Transitions

I finished off reading The Occult. It’s a good book. I should write down some notes as in six months time it’ll be as if I haven’t read it.

I also watched Part II of Zefferelli’s Jesus of Nazareth and, in the evening, Jesus - The Evidence, which raised the interesting possibility—unthinkable to Dad—that Jesus might never even have existed. He could be an invention of Paul of Tarsus, a convenient embodiment of Old Testament myths and propaganda for the new faith.

Today the IRA shot and seriously injured a magistrate as he left church with his family. His 22-year old daughter was killed. There’s a conflict and a paradox to be resolved here, because I have a gut revulsion at such killings but . . . but . . . I support the IRA because I do believe their cause to be a just one—the British Army is an army of occupation and is supported by the prejudiced apparatus of the six county Loyalist state. But, as Grant said last night, the sloppy frame of mind that regards the deaths of innocents as an unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of war is to be hated. He’s right. Those who supposedly abhor Reagan’s machinations in Central America and Thatcher’s Falklands campaign yet cheer and clap when the IRA explode a bomb and people die are hypocrites.

But would anyone have shed a tear for Heydrich when he was killed? This is an uncomfortable point for me to think about. The anger and bitterness of the magistrate’s family can’t be avoided. Does one innocent death negate justice of a cause? How would I feel?

I’m trying to resolve this point, and there’s no resolution . . . I have sympathy for the Republican cause, but often I feel IRA killings can’t be justified by this or any argument.

This is terribly written. I can’t free my mind from preconceptions. This transitional period has existed for a year now and gives no hint of a way forward or up. . . .