Jennifer Horgan: Stop glorifying war — a call for peace is not a betrayal of innocent Palestinians
There is nothing easily said about what’s happening in the Middle East. Its complexity is absolutely beyond most of us. There is so much room for miscommunication and misunderstanding.
At a Cork march last weekend, the slogan was chanted: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." For the marchers present it was a simple call for freedom and justice. Seeing the footage online, people not present, and potentially far away, may have heard in it a call for the destruction of the state of Israel.
That was not the intention. I recognise people in the footage; I know them to be good people who don’t support Hamas. I know they marched last weekend for Palestinian people, half of them children. Good people marching against genocide obviously wouldn’t support it in any context.
And yet, they can’t control how their chants and slogans are being heard. Sinn Féin’s banner, held up in images of the event online reads ‘Stand up, Fight back.’ I wonder what that means. Who should fight back exactly? Innocent Palestinians? Hezbollah? Hamas? Israel?
There is nothing easily said about what’s happening in the Middle East. Its complexity is absolutely beyond most of us. There is so much room for miscommunication and misunderstanding. So, I’m surprised by people shouting and marching for anything other than peace.
Of course this is what people feel they’re doing, marching for Palestine, but arguably, pro-Palestinian chants, slogans, and flags, however warranted, add fuel to an already devastating fire.
And then there is the unhelpful commentary from both Pro-Palestinian and Pro-Israeli commentators seeking to transplant this conflict onto historic ones closer to home.
“Huge protest in Dublin,” writes Irish actor Liam Cunningham on X, highlighting another pro-Palestinian march. “The walk begins from the General Post Office. In 1916, the Easter Rising led to the end of the brutal settler occupation of the Republic Ireland.”
It’s a valid reference, our own story of oppression, and again I believe the intention is good. But Cunningham might mention other, more recent gatherings on this island, such as the one this summer to mark the 25th anniversary of the Omagh bombing in which 29 people, 16 of them under 25, and two unborn babies lost their lives.
The Real IRA attack, on August 15, 1998, was the single bloodiest atrocity of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Lest we forget, Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan, 21, was killed in the bomb, described the crowds at the service as a “powerful testimony to community spirit and cohesion 25 years after our small town was ripped apart”.
The footage of the Cork Pro-Palestinian march includes people brandishing the sign: ‘Ireland knows occupation.’ Yes, it is true. We do. And Ireland also knows what it is to lose innocent children in the most horrific circumstances. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why we are so ready to march.
But in marching, in showing empathy to anyone experiencing such horror, we might do better to raise flags of peace and to chant slogans of peace too, rather than those of war.
More than most, Ireland has a duty to spread Michael Gallagher’s message of peace, reconciliation, and dialogue right now. If John Hume were alive today, that’s what he would be doing. I have no doubt about it. As he once put it: “Without dialogue, there is no possibility of peace.”
Comedian Tadgh Hickey is doing something similar, re-energising old grievances: “We in Ireland know only too well the oppressor's propensity to carry out atrocities and then lie and obfuscate to protect themselves and deny the oppressed justice.”
Such romantic camaraderie from Hickey is similarly unhelpful. It marks an absence of something else, the willingness to hold peace above war, life above death, and the future of all children over any cause.
More culpable are some of those who take the other ‘side.’ Journalist Zoe Strimpel, as a professional writer, is a far worse culprit than most commentators put together. The columnist somehow saw fit to write a racist article last week against all Irish people in her defence of Israel. Ireland is neither ‘progressive’ nor ‘nice’, wrote Strimpel.
In her wisdom, she decided now was the right time to recall de Valera sending condolences on the death of Hitler. Why now, Zoe Strimpel? To be clever? To stir up again the old hatred between our two islands?
Indeed the in general seems keen to deepen the divide between us, choosing to write about schoolchildren in Belfast flying Palestinian flags and chanting old IRA slogans. Clearly, the holds schoolchildren to higher standards than their own journalists.
And then of course there is the former unionist politician Arlene Foster, who, on October 17, shared a 15-year-old photograph of President Michael D Higgins supporting Palestine with the caption “The President of Ireland. Thank goodness for the UK and the King”.
Drown out such dross and we might hear the mother of 22-year-old Kim Damti, Jennifer Damti, who spoke of the disappearance of her daughter, later confirmed dead. We must hear her again, a mother in the depth of her pain saying: “I didn’t bring my children up to hate anybody… So many other mothers here today. I’m not the only one. Everybody is missing somebody.”
We might hear Fidaa Al-Baz, a mother of four who lives in Gaza City, who has been sheltering inside her home since Israel declared war on Hamas. We must hear the terror in her voice as she declared that she and her children will “stay in Gaza City and die in dignity rather than live through the pain and humiliation of being forced to leave our homes.”
Or, we might hear more considered people like Tánaiste Micheál Martin who is careful to focus on the loss of life in the region as a whole. Or, Mary Robinson, who acknowledged the war crimes of Hamas and Israel and who cried as she expressed her pain over the one million children of Gaza.
Or, we might pay heed to footballer Mohamed Salah, who while making a call for humanitarian aid to Gaza, rightly said: “All life is sacred and must be protected.”
This focus on the loss of life, sprung from a belief in the value of every life, beyond equivocation, is what we need. What is happening in Gaza now is beyond comprehension. A call for peace is not a betrayal of innocent Palestinians. It is the only call that can bring the world together, not drive people further and further apart.
In his most downloaded podcast, Journalist David Sorota, interestingly reposted by Liam Cunningham, asks anyone commenting on social media to take a deep breath, to check if they are using the massacre of people to “channel their priors”.
More of us need to take deep breaths at this precarious time; we need to step away from the keyboard, keep our silence, check our humanity, and focus on messages of peace, not war.
