Letters to the Editor: Ireland has to stop facilitating Israel's war crimes in Gaza
The 36th Cork rally in solidarity with the people of Palestine on Saturday, June 22, organised by the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Picture: David Browne
On Sunday, the UN marked International Widows’ Day, and estimates that there are 258m widows in the world.
Nowhere is the international community more complicit in the suffering of widows than in Gaza, where Palestinian women face an indiscriminate Israeli war machine, funded and facilitated by US and other Western powers.
The UN reports that “more than 1m Palestinian women and girls in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger, with almost no access to food, safe drinking water, functioning toilets, or running water, creating life threatening risks”.
In January, the UN estimated “at least 3,000 women may have become widows and heads of households, in urgent need of protection and food assistance, and at least 10,000 children may have lost their fathers”.
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Having warned of a “red line” if Israel launches a bombing campaign on the refugee camps of Rafah, US president Joe Biden has proven there is no “red line” whatsoever; no point at which his administration will stop the flow of weapons to the Israeli military.
As for Ireland’s role; our government’s commitment to recognise a Palestinian state has not been followed by any concrete action to support the human rights of the Palestinian people, or to hold Israeli authorities to account. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s scornful response has been to commit to “strengthen” the illegal settlements.
With the produce of illegal Israeli settlements still sold on Irish supermarket shelves, does anyone wonder why Israeli authorities show such scorn for our Government?
Our Government must, at long last, enact the Occupied Territories Bill and the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill. We have had enough posturing; we need practical measures to end Ireland’s facilitation of Israel’s war crimes.
The judge’s decision to allow the attacker of a young woman on a Limerick street to walk free from court is mind-boggling and shocking.
The brutal attack on that young woman, going home from work, and that could have killed her or left her brain dead was monstrous.
In America recently, we were shocked when the legal system allowed the killers of Jason Corbett walk free, denying Mr Corbett, his family, and friends justice.
We really thought this could not or would not be allowed to happen in Ireland.
But now we see it happen.
It recently came out from under the carpet that some women soldiers and a few men were sexually and physically abused by rogue personnel. We had hoped all that had stopped.
The Limerick verdict denied that young working woman any bit of justice and it puts others at risk.
And it blackens the Irish army, its soldiers, and all personnel. It’s a bad day, a bad decision in every way.
Natasha O’Brien did Ireland and every person in Ireland, of all genders and all ages, a great service.
Humanity is being led to a cliff edge by reckless international leaders, as it was in 1914.
The third world war will be the West against the rest of humanity, and if it goes nuclear, there will be no winners, and there may be no humanity.
Since the end of the Cold War, the US, with just over 4% of the world’s population, has been misusing Nato and other allies to maintain its military and economic domination over the rest of humanity. It has achieved this so far by waging aggressive resource wars, or instigating proxy-wars in breach of the UN Charter, and international laws, that have cost the lives of millions of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, and elsewhere.
Successive Irish governments have been complicit in these wars. Our traditional active neutrality has been abandoned step by step, including by joining Nato’s Partnership for Peace, allowing US military to use Shannon airport, sending Irish soldiers to serve with Nato missions, and with EU neo-colonial missions in Africa, and planning to abandon the triple lock, thereby undermining the role of the United Nations.
The Defence Forces have been downgraded and the conditions of service for its members are so inadequate that this has led to a recruitment and retention crisis.
Defence Forces personnel are training Ukrainian soldiers; the provision of military equipment to the Ukrainian army while Ukraine is engaged in a war with Russia is a clear breach of neutrality.
Ireland should be promoting international peace, in the interests not only of the Irish people, but in the interests of all humanity.
Supporting the West against the rest of humanity, is putting Ireland on the wrong side of history.
As we relish the warm, dry spell, please remember to put out a dish of fresh water in the evening for the birds and the hedgehogs.
The funding of the national cancer strategy was in the news recently with the Irish Cancer Society launching their Budget 2025 submission.
The headline point the society made was that they there is a gap of €180m in national cancer funding.
According to the HSE’s own figures, the national cancer control programmes annual budget for implementing the national cancer strategy should have increased incrementally over the past eight years to be €110m higher this year than it was in 2016.
But the actual incremental increase was only €65m. The Irish Cancer Society is saying that we are now looking at a loss of almost €180m over the last seven years.
Those losses are having a knock-on impact on lots of things.
The society is saying screening is not being expanded as planned and waiting times are becoming protracted and the loss of targets that are not being met is palpable. Cancer surgeries are now frequently delayed. We have radiotherapy services operating below capacity.
It’s utterly shocking to learn that access to new medicines is much slower in Ireland than in other European countries. The investment in structure is lacking which is a massive issue for services.
I am incredulous to learn that some diagnostic equipment can’t be utilised because of these funding shortfalls. Clinical trials are short of target.
The Irish Cancer Society is telling us that this is having a real life impact on people when they are diagnosed, and as a result, the level of care that they are getting is falling way short of the expected standards.
It’s a pretty lengthy list of problems that the Irish Cancer Society has diagnosed and they are linking this serious imbroglio to a shortfall in the funding of the cancer strategy.
The society are now calling for a renewed emphasis on funding for cancer services ahead of the next budget.
All I can say is “over now to the government”.
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