Thomas Neilson Paulin (born 25 January 1949) is a Northern Irish poet and critic of film, music and literature.
[2] His passionate arguments and desire for a political poetry hails from the influence of John Milton, according to critic Jonathan Hufstader, though his outrage "often consumes itself in congested anger".
[4] His poem "Killed in Crossfire" when published in British newspaper The Observer aroused some controversy for referring to a Palestinian boy being "gunned down by the Zionist SS".
[5] According to Denis MacShane in Globalising Hatred: The New Antisemitism (2008), it was Paulin's expression of his "anger and anguish at the behaviour of Israeli troops".
[6] In an interview he gave to the state-owned Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram Weekly, Paulin described Israeli government actions in Palestine as "an historical obscenity".
[4] After his comments in Al-Ahram raised controversy, he said in a letter to The Independent and the Daily Telegraph, that his views were "distorted", writing, "I have been, and am, a lifelong opponent of anti-Semitism ...