Given our colonial history, we have a duty to stand with the Palestinians

MORE than 650 Palestinians and 31 Israelis have died, so far, as a result of ‘Operation Protective Edge.’ For two weeks, each day’s news has brought fresh horrors: yesterday, 12-year-old Palestinian, Rabee Qasim, was killed by an Israeli shell as he led a donkey and cart through a Bedouin village.

We may wonder if TDs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace would have found incriminating evidence on a US military plane in Shannon, even if they’d been invited in and offered a seat. But because we’re Irish, many of us agree with everything Wallace said about the US-backed Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip.

You can see our knee-jerk support for the Palestinians as a “dark seed in the Irish anti-colonial mindset”, as Jason Walsh, of the Christian Science Monitor, said. I agree that a self-serving comparison, of Nationalists with Palestinians and Unionists with Israelis, is often made in the North.