About Tom Paulin: Thomas Neilson Paulin is a Northern Irish poet and critic of film, music and literature. He lives in England, where he is the GM Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford.
You are either a Zionist or an anti-Zionist.
In my view the European culture carries a very heavy responsibility for the creation of Israel... it is a product of both British and Stalin's anti- Semitism, but the British never faced their own complicity in its construction.
I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale.
I think protest and actions have to be organised against the Israelis and their backers. There needs to be a concerted high profile campaign to raise awareness of the people in this country.
I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all.
I don't think the British carry a historical consciousness either.
I am not very moved by historical apologies.
Hitler bombed London into submission but in fact it created a sense of national solidarity.
Everyone who supports Israel is a Zionist.
I wish I could write lyrical poems, but I just write the way they come.
All I do is read books, really. I worry about that sometimes. I don't seem to have a hobby or anything.
I'm kind of domestic, untidily so.
Look, you're either a Zionist or an anti-Zionist: there's no middle way. Everyone who supports the state of Israel is a Zionist.
I do most of the cooking. I'm kind of domestic, untidily so.
My parents were Northern Ireland Labour party people. We read the 'Guardian' and the 'New Statesman,' listened to the BBC. The house was full of books. We didn't get a television until 'That Was The Week That Was' started. There was nothing to do but...
I think ideas should be flying about and banging into each other. It is a kind of energy. If you occupy static positions, then things sort of ossify.
'Ulysses' is the greatest anti-racist text in the English language, and it challenges right from the beginning the vicious racism which lies near the foundations of the Irish Free State and of the Irish republic.
Many black people I know are proud of the Irish part of their heritage - an Irish grandparent, say - but they recognise that many people believe in a form of racial purity. And it is from that belief that prejudice starts.
Again and again, I find something eerie in many Irish occasions - the unrelenting whiteness, the emotional tribal attachments, the violent prejudices lurking beneath apparently pleasant social surfaces, the cosy smugness of belonging.
Unfortunately, in the north and the south of Ireland, intolerant habits are part of the fabric of emotion, part of the identity crisis which afflicts the population of the country.
