Our posturing on Gaza makes Ireland complicit too
Protesters in support of Palestine gather in Cork. File picture: Larry Cummins
We’re a great old country, all the same. We hate injustice. We rally, we fight, we won’t let you trample on us, and we won’t let others be trampled. Until, that is, we will.
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the West Bank and Gaza, visited Galway last month.
She was there to give a lecture as a guest of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the university.
Given her status as both an academic and an advocate for human rights, I expected her to be in such demand during her visit that it would be impossible to secure an interview.
Would she be too busy talking to Government officials or meeting with the Tánaiste, perhaps? Maybe even a pre-recorded interview for Friday’s Late Late Show, given the enormous and persistent interest here in the plight of Palestinians dying in their tens of thousands?
Nothing of the sort.
When I met her, she was wandering around the campus flanked by a PhD student and nobody else. The only media I’m aware of who sought comment from her were the Irish Examiner and Galway Bay FM. We politely asked for 10 minutes of her time. She gave us 30.
She said a lot during that half hour, but the most remarkable thing was this: “There’s this tendency to be very supportive with rhetoric, as Ireland has, but when it comes to taking concrete actions, there is zero. Not a little. Zero.
Is this a fair assessment of our country’s actions thus far? Does our stance amount to rhetoric?
Good old Ireland. Lifelong friend to the Palestinian people. Champion of the underdog. A country with an inherent sense of right and wrong has, according to this expert, taken no meaningful action as a genocide has been perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
All the while, we’re slapping ourselves on the back for what a great little nation we are.
Albanese said it as matter-of-factly as she says everything else. Five days later, she presented a report, ‘Anatomy of a Genocide’, to the UN Human Rights Council, a report she was assisted on by five postgraduate students from Galway.
It was, and still is, world news.
Albanese, so lauded by many for her professionalism and advocacy, was attacked by US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, who accused her of having “a history of antisemitic comments”.
It was a preposterous remark, designed to distract from a report that laid bare the barbarity of Israel’s US-backed annihilation of a people.
But, while the Biden administration’s scurrilous deflection may have been depressingly typical, what was the Irish Government’s public response to Albanese’s comments?
Well, as if to prove her point, it was zero. Not a little. Zero.
It might argue otherwise. Last week, Tánaiste Micheál Martin announced that Ireland will, rightly, intervene in the case initiated by South Africa against Israel under the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice. The intent to do this was first reported two and a half months ago, on January 14.
The response to the Tánaiste’s announcement was in many quarters sycophantic, a tired symptom of a people worn down by social media, where right and wrong are argued inanely and endlessly by fools, vested interests, and powers that would be; by people worn down by global inaction, rhetoric, empty threats, and tired promises under the guise of diplomacy.
Pro-Palestinian social media accounts shared the headlines as yet another example of Ireland’s leadership as a conscientious nation standing up for the little guy.
It’s a sad indictment of the state of the world order that a country like Ireland, which has failed to sanction Israel, has continued trade with Israel, that has maintained diplomatic ties with Israel while its leader has committed — and continues to commit — a genocide, is so lauded for its moral courage.
Then people like Francesca Albanese remind us that actions speak louder than words. Usually, we can criticise ourselves all we like, but the second a stranger does it, we turn on them like rabid hyenas.
On this, however, her critique is welcome.
There are many, many Irish people who feel bewildered by a Government that hides behind an “it’s complicated” narrative to disguise moral cowardice in taking the fight to evil.
Individuals are appalled. Individuals are unable to sleep. Individuals can’t unsee the images of dead babies, made motherless long before their short lives are ended.
Individuals can’t process the skeletal bodies dying on hospital beds 80km from Tel Aviv, where DJs continue to drop beats to the masses.
There are Irish citizens on the ground in Gaza working for the United Nations and other humanitarian organisations.
For about six hours between midnight and dawn on Monday, rumours circulated on social media that one of the seven World Central Kitchen aid workers killed in a series of targeted Israeli airstrikes was Irish.
The information was wrong, but what was telling in that dreadful moment was how we appropriate different levels of outrage depending on the skin colour of the victims.
There are more than 350 Irish peacekeepers in neighbouring Lebanon, a country I spent three years in with our Defence Forces; a country that has had white phosphorus dropped on it by Israel.
Ireland still trades with Israel, a country that this week warned us that breaking trade links between Ireland and Israel fails to consider the impact on Irish businesses, “as well as any possible reciprocal measures that might be implemented as a result”.
I’ve lived and worked in these places and seen with my own eyes what vacuous performative posturing does. To quote Albanese, it does zero. Not a little. Zero.
Simon Harris is stepping into the big leagues now. He needs to do something. For shame. Do something. There can be no hiding behind pseudo-diplomacy and complex legal arguments.
Until we take action, our little country is just as complicit as everyone else’s.
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