by Jay Rafferty
Disclaimer: For those who will not read this article before criticising it I would like to make it very clear that I am not anti-Semitic. Criticising a state for its policy of murdering civilians does not equate to hating that state’s religion. Equally speaking, supporting a people’s basic human rights does not mean one endorses their radicals. I do not support hamas. I am anti-terrorist, anti-coloniser, anti-occupier, anti-oppressor. I believe Palestine should be free.
Much has been made in the last few months on social media platforms about the Irish support and condemnation of the murder of Palestinians. I’ve seen posts, TikToks and YouTube shorts trying to explain this feeling of solidarity between the Irish, particularly Northern Irish Nationalists, and the Palestinian people. Some were clear, others were not.
The Irish in the south see in the treatment of Palestinians a reflection of our cultural past, the history of abuse we suffered under the British. Take for instance the rhetoric used by Israeli media and citizens to describe Palestinians. They’re depicted as animals, as sub-human. The same kind of dehumanization was used to depict the Irish as simian-like savages in British publications like Punch Magazine well into the 1970s. These kind of sketches in British publications often strived to legitimise English occupation of Ireland: John Bull stepping in to stop the hunchback Irish orangutan from soiling Éire’s lovely dress. Another example? How about the forced Palestinian migration to a tiny section of southern Gaza, paralleling Oliver Cromwell’s genocidal crusade in Ireland in 1649, claiming he’d drive us “To Hell or Connacht.”
Northern Irish nationalists feel a closer kinship with the Palestinian people. People here have been vocal in their support for Palestine long before October 7th. They sympathise with the carving up of one’s country, feeling as though they were cut off from their nation in 1921 by borders drawn by a foreign body, victimised by a sectarian political state and police force for many decades after. To the nationalist in Northern Ireland, Palestine is a fellow victim of colonialism and occupation and, therefore, an ally. Their flags are flown in our streets, their struggles memorialised in our murals.
Northern Ireland is a region still haunted by The Troubles, decades of sectarian violence and terror that have instilled a trauma in its people that has not come close to healing, not even 25 years since its official end. The government is still polluted with old sympathies and prejudices. Where support lies for Palestine or Israel best reflects this continuous division. Northern Ireland Unionists support Israel in opposition to the Nationalist support of Palestine. This backing on the Unionist side seems to stem from nothing more than a feeling that the enemy of their enemy is their friend.
In mid November, a motion was brought forward in the Dáil by the Social Democratic Party to expel the Israeli ambassador to Ireland from the country. Since the beginning of this year’s slaughter of the Palestinians, Dana Erlich, the Israeli ambassador, has accused Michael D. Higgins, the President of Ireland, several times of spreading misinformation and making inflammatory comments about Israel’s current attempted genocide of the Palestinian people. Mr Higgins said of the conflict that the Geneva convention had been reduced “to tatters.” You may think that tame compared to the language used in this article thus far. I am not a politician, I have no need for ambiguity. A spade is a spade and a genocide is a genocide.
Naturally enough, should an ambassador publicly criticise the sitting president of a nation (in Ireland the President is largely a ceremonial position, not one of executive authority) the ambassador’s position in that country could be challenged by the government. On November 15th, the motion to oust Erlich was defeated 85 votes to 55. Outside the Dáil over a thousand protestors marched in support of Palestine as 85 members of Ireland’s parliament chose the course of support or passive condemnation of Israel instead of an act to show powerful solidarity with the Palestinian people. The Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns hit the nail on the head, declaring: “words of condemnation are not enough.” At the same time, in the British House of Commons, the Scottish Nationalist Party proposed an amendment to the King’s Speech calling for a ceasefire to the conflict. This vote was defeated 294 votes against, 125 for.
Unsurprisingly the majority of these MP’s come from conservative parties such as the Tories or the Democratic Unionist Party (Northern Irish Unionists). The Labor party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, shockingly demanded his fellow party members to vote against a ceasefire, threatening his frontbenchers with sackings should they not comply. Many Labor MPs abstained from the vote. Silence is complicity. 56 defied Starmer and voted in favour of a ceasefire. Supporting Israel in their acts of terror shows us the Labor leader is scared of the ghosts that haunt his party. His predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, was eventually brought down by an anti-semitism “crises” in his party. You have to wonder if it is Mr Starmer’s personal values he’s trying to protect, values which clearly include the butchering of children, or if it’s his party’s image.
On the subject of complicity, the BBC News prides itself on impartiality. In a recent 6 p.m. news broadcast of the conflict two reporters interviewed a Palestinian mother in the rubble strewn ruins of a hospital and an IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) soldier at a temporary military camp on the border of Gaza. The mother is bawling, holding a limp infant to her chest. All around is din of similar distress and anguish. She is telling the reporter that they have no food, no medical supplies. She tells him that she can no longer produce milk to feed her newborn because she has not eaten in however many days. This woman wears a burka. Her words are translated by an even-voiced, dispassionate British translator. Immediately following this interview the programme cuts to the IDF soldier. White, blonde hair, blue eyes, clean clothing, seemingly in perfect health. She smiles at the reporter. Footage is shown of her operating a military vehicle. There is no noise in the background, no cries for help, no wailing in pain. She is happy. She is confident.
How can one sit with their family or eat their dinner at 6 p.m. in front of such a broadcast and not be appalled at the blatant, disproportion between civilian and soldier? Between a starving mother clutching her malnourished infant and the smiling woman shooting at her? How can anyone remain impartial watching that? I couldn’t stay in the room for most of the latter. Neutrality may be the ideal in journalistic standard, to approach an event (a slaughter) as just an observer, to catalog, not to feel. The war photographer Alexander Gardener wrote that the presentation of such images like the Palestinian mother’s interview might show “the blank horror and reality of war, in opposition to its pageantry,” but what effect, if any, is meant to be taken from the pageantry of the attacker and the the victim’s pleas for a basic human right side by side? Inaction is action and, where the BBC is concerned, the action is giving the last word to the murderers.
Despite the governments of both Ireland and the UK dragging their feet on this topic, protests in support of Palestine and an end to Israeli aggression have been prolific. From Belfast to Dublin thousands have flocked to show their support of the Palestinian people. The British Conservative MP Suella Braverman (who was sacked from her position as Home Secretary in mid November) equated these peaceful protests to Northern Irish religious “hate marches.” She was in fact referring to Orange Order marches, who pool their members from backgrounds that are traditionally unionist and conservative. It’s hard to expect any kind of understanding or support for Palestine from the British government when, after a forty year occupation and conflict followed by twenty years of peace the Home Secretary could not tell the difference between the Northern Irish that are her allies and the Northern Irish that are her opposition. They can’t tell the difference between paddies. What makes you think they can tell the difference between a hospital and a terrorist compound, between target and child? It should also be said that Braverman was not sacked because of her comments on the Irish but for critcising the London metropolitan police for being “too lenient” on protestors.
The crowds of pro-Palestinian protests are made up of people from all walks of life not just, as I said prior, Irish Nationalists. The Irish and Northern Irish, Catholic or Protestant, in between or other, it doesn’t matter. We saw enough violence in our history, in the last 50 years. We’ve seen enough terrorism, enough slaughter and bombs and soldiers, enough civilians bleeding out in rubble and plaster, enough children dead in our streets and homes. It’s why we support Palestine, it’s why we stand with Ukraine too. While our elected officials might use tempered language, while they tiptoe around the ugly words for fear of losing international support or standing, we will not and we cannot be anything but fucking furious.
At the time of writing (November 27, 2023) the UN has estimated that 13,000 civilians have been murdered in Palestine since October 7th of this year. 1.7 million have been displaced. The World Health Organization has stated that 160 children are killed in Gaza every day. That is one child every ten minutes. But numbers are easy to ignore and hard to grasp the magnitude of. Here is a link to a website which records the names, gender and age of those Palestinians murdered by Israel. Read their names. Say them aloud. Ask yourself can you remain neutral, can you remain quiet when this kind of sick slaughter is being sanctioned by your government, in your name?
The only message you need to repeat and repeat and repeat again is this:
Stop Israel from killing children.
Free Palestine.
Jay Rafferty is a redhead, an uncle and an eejit. He is the poetry editor for Sage Cigarettes Magazine, a guest lecturer on Irish Literature and a Programme Committee member for The John Hewitt Society. He is also the author of two published chapbooks, Holy Things (The Broken Spine, 2022) and Strange Magic (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). You can read his poetry, essays and reviews in several journals including FU Berlin Review, An Áitiúil Anthology, Unstamatic and HOWL New Irish Writing. When not losing games of pool he, sometimes, writes stuff. You can follow him on Twitter @JayRaffertyPoet or Instagram @SimplyRedInTheHead.
Hear hear. Stop the slaughter.