I WONDER if Education Minister Paul Givan takes two showers a day? He looks so fresh and aromatic, with that scrubbed Christian look you find on the faces of people who want to know if you’ve found Jesus yet.
Mind you, his faith and smiling features must have been tested by the reaction of many to his visit to Israel those few weeks ago. Paul, we’re told, was invited to visit that state which has for the last few years been killing as many Gaza residents as it can – the last count was somewhere around 70,000 men, women and children. Paul, I’m sure, smiled as he was shown around the Knesset, and when he was brought to see an Israeli school in the Occupied West Bank, he may have been picking up tips for the system back here which he heads.
You know the Occupied West Bank. That’s where Israel has been forcing Palestinians from their homes and sending in Israeli settlers to replace them. Sometimes the settlers kill any Palestinians who object to having their homes and land taken in this way; sometimes the settlers call in the IDF to help them complete the eviction.
The question is, why would our Education Minister accept an invitation from the state of Israel and visit a school built illegally in the Occupied West Bank? My best bet bet is that he was doing an Ian Paisley Snr. You remember the time Paisley held up an unconsecrated host in the Oxford Union and caused consternation among the audience when he mocked Catholic belief about the consecration of such hosts at Mass? Paisley later explained that he didn’t care tuppence what the people gathered in Oxford or anywhere else thought – he was talking to the people of Ballymena, whom he figured would be deeply impressed by his courageous denunciation of Popish idolatry.
So too Paul. For whatever reason, most unionists appear to be supporting gallant little Israel, as it squares up to the hostility of surrounding states and through his visit to Israel he was talking to them. Besides, the nationalist/republican electorate support the victims of the IDF, so of course unionists must support the IDF and all its works and pomps.
Not surprisingly, more and more people are realising what a toxic alliance Education Minister Givan has made with Israel. For weeks, if you said “Givan” people automatically thought of his Israel visit. But this is the point where Paul got lucky. A few days back, the Supreme Court in London was critical of the teaching of religion in schools in NEI. Sing Hosannah! Now public attention had been diverted from Paul’s Israel trip and is focused on classrooms and religion teaching in our schools. Paul, being a clean-as-a-whistle Christian, is happy to do battle to preserve Christianity in the classroom. It’s an example of a man doing a good deed for the wrong reasons. The good deed is that parents of faith are anxious that their children might suddenly get plunged into a Godless world once they go to school. Enter Paul the saviour.
Not that it matters, but I’m in total agreement with Minister Givan on this one. If a Catholic or Christian child has been brought up as a Catholic/Christian, s/he will be at first confused and then contemptuous of their parents’ faith if they encounter a school world that is Godless. You don’t allow your child to be in such an environment for some six hours a day, five days a week, without that experience teaching them a major lesson: that their religion/faith is a load of baloney.
Which leaves Education Minister Givan doing click-heel leaps round his Stormont office. Because now, when his name is mentioned, public thoughts don’t fly instantly to his unforgivable Israel junket. They turn to a new, fresher topic about which Paul appears to genuinely care: religion in our schools.
Napoleon said he didn’t want good generals, he wanted lucky ones. The DUP must be praising the Lord for the good luck He has showered on Givan.
