Compassionate ties

Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar flew to Boston and Washington last week to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day which falls on March 17, his country’s national day, as is traditional with the Irish diaspora. He began with an event at the John Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston where he said no one could ignore the deaths and devastation inflicted on Gaza. Focusing on fatalities among children, he said, “The life of a child is the greatest gift of all. Childhood should be a blessing. Today in Gaza. for so many it is a death sentence and a curse...

“If we are not consistent – if we do not see and respect the equal value of a child of Israel and a child of Palestine – then the global south, most of the world in fact, will not listen when we call for them to stand by the rules and institutions that are the bedrock of a civilised world. We will all be losers and our world will be infinitely less secure,” he said.

In Washington, Varadkar held meetings in with members of Congress and went to the White House to call on President Joe Biden, who like Kennedy, is of Irish heritage.

The Irish Times reported that Varadkar was urged to snub this year’s events to protest Biden’s unstinting support for Israel during its deadly and devastating war on Gaza. Varadkar – who is of Indo-Irish background – responded by saying it would be a “big mistake to boycott” Biden who likes to proclaim his Irish heritage in the US where 36 million out of 332 million are of Irish descent. A boycott would not be politically correct or financially intelligent as there are scores of Irish politicians in Congress and lucrative business relations between the two countries. The encounter with Biden also gave Varadkar the opportunity to take up the Gaza war and urge Biden to use his considerable leverage on Israel to terminate the conflict.

By demanding an end to the war from the outset, Ireland has been the outlier in Europe after Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct.7. Due to a traditional affinity between the Irish and Palestinian peoples, there is strong popular support for the Palestinians in Ireland and a pro-active pro-Palestinian lobby group.

While European leaders remained silent about Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza during the early weeks of the war, Irish President Michael D. Higgins did not. He lambasted European Union (EU) Commission President Ursula von de Leyen for flying to Tel Aviv where she met Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and expressed EU solidarity with Israel. Higgins said she “not speaking for Ireland and she wasn’t speaking for the opinions that [the Irish] hold.” As the death toll in Gaza rose, Higgins castigated Israel for violating international law by attacking “an innocent population.” This, he said, “reduces to tatters” the body of international law for the protection of civilians enacted after World War II.

Varadkar said Israel’s response to the Hamas Oct.7 surprise attack which slew 1,139 in southern Israel appears to be “something like revenge” after Israel had killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza while claiming the campaign is in self-defence. Varadkar also said Palestinians have been “horribly treated now for 75 years and denied self-determination and denied their own state.”

Such statements by Higgins and Varadkar prompted Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu to tell Palestinians to “go to Ireland or the desert.” While the Israeli government dismissed his statement, nothing was said about why Ireland has taken a tough stand on Israel’s Gaza war.

Many Irish people see Israel as a British colonial entity imposed on Palestine and its people with the purpose of serving British interests in a strategic, oil-rich region. This Irish view was reinforced after Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and began to build settlements in the conquered territories in violation of international Law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Like Palestinians, the Irish people suffered horribly from settler colonialism. In Ireland, the colonialists were British rather than Israeli. In Ireland, millions fled the country during repeated periods of famine in the 18th and 19th centuries which culminated in the Great Famine from 1845-1852 when 1 million died and 1 million left the country. At that time Britain refused to block the food exports from Ireland. Persecution, land expropriation, and hunger have not been forgotten in Ireland, as these elements in Israel’s occupation will not fade from Palestinian hearts and minds for a long time to come.

In 1980 Ireland became the first EU member to declare that a solution to the Arab/Palestinian conflict with Israel had to be founded on a sovereign Palestinian state. Since then, every Irish government has given priority to achieving this objective which has been adopted by the international community as a whole, including the US, but rejected by Israel.

Although both houses of the Irish parliament have pressed the government to recognise the state of Palestine, the government has responded by saying it would do so once the EU does. This attitude has rankled legislators who argue that pro-Israeli EU governments will not agree, and Irish recognition is long overdue. The Gaza war has stepped up pressure on the Irish government to take this step.

Writing about the war, The Irish Times’ distinguished columnist Fintan O’Toole cited Roman historian Tacitus (56-120 AD) who quoted the Scottish chieftain Calgacus, leader of the resistance to Roman rule, as saying of the Romans, “They make a desert and call it peace.” O’Toole added that Israel seems to be following the Roman example by killing thousands of Gazan civilians before declaring “peace in a blood-soaked wasteland of rubble and dust.” Modern scholars regard Tacitus as one of the greatest Roman historians.

Photo: TNS