Most Irish people are horrified by what the Zionist-Israeli government led by Netanyahu is doing to the people of Gaza-with the support of the US, GB and the EU.
I think the Irish people have a good sense of who’s right and who’s wrong in the war in Gaza. We get our sense of who is right and who is wrong from our own history of persecution and colonisation. We also get it from a radical understanding of the Gospel. Jesus always stood with the poor, the oppressed the suffering and the marginalised. He urged the people then and the people today to follow his example and always take the side of the poor and oppressed. He made it clear in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It means becoming engaged and taking sides with the poor and oppressed. So far we have not heard a clear message from the Irish Church.
The Irish people have shown that they are a compassionate people -during the struggle against Apartheid in S. Africa, during many conflicts throughout the world. They have shown solidarity with the oppressed by boycotts. They have responded in prayer and generous financial aid to poverty stricken people throughout the world. Irish missionaries have shown great courage and leadership in taking the side of the poor where there is conflict and war.
In the conflict in the Middle East it is clear who are the poor and oppressed. They are the people-men women and children- in Gaza who are being bombed and murdered by an Israeli government that has been persecuting them for years and years, ever since they were driven from their Homeland .
The Palestinians have been treated as second class citizens in their own country. To support the Palestinians is not to be anti-Semitic. In fact many Jews support the Palestinian people and their desire to return to the homeland from which they were expelled.
The Irish people know all about oppression and persecution. That is why the President of Ireland made such a strong plea for an end to the persecution and punishment of the Palestinian people. He sensed the mood and concerns of the people of Ireland. Of course he was condemned by the Israeli ambassador in Ireland. The Taoiseach has also reflected the mood of the Irish people when he described the Israeli response in Gaza as ‘revenge’ rather than self-defence.
The UN secretary general Antonio Guterrres said clearly that the Hamas bomb on October 7th “did not happen in a vacuum.” There has been a long history of oppression by the Israeli government. The Israeli government does not speak for all Jews or for all Israelis and does not represent all the people of Israel.
Today, the Palestinian people of Gaza are crying out to the world for support and for help in their time of need and suffering. We cannot stand idly by or say it does not concern me. To do so is to be complicit in their oppression.
We must act in whatever ways we can to show solidarity with the people who are being so brutally treated. These are innocent women and children –and they should not be punished. To do so is a war crime and against international laws.
The government of Israel and their supporters in Washington, London and Brussels must be challenged, just as the Apartheid government in South Africa was challenged by many people through boycotts and pickets and acts of solidarity that eventually brought about an end to the Apartheid state and brought in a new political dispensation.
We must do whatever we can to show solidarity with the oppressed and the suffering people of Gaza and the West Bank. There are many goods and companies that can be boycotted.
It is in practical ways that we can show solidarity. That was the message of the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is the only true meaning of Love in the world we live in where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and are persecuted. The Irish Catholic church must now make an option for the poor and oppressed in Gaza.
We must think of the suffering women, men and children in Gaza and think of what Jesus, a Palestinian Jew, would do or say. He surely would take the side of the persecuted Palestinians and challenge their Israeli oppressors to cease their war on the innocent people. He would surely reject the misuse of the Bible to justify war on the poor.
The West supported the Apartheid Regime in South Africa which was integral to the Cold War Agenda.
Before the Internet Ballykelly in NA was kinked with South Africa where the Brits had a Naval Base for
nearly 200 years.
The Americans left Greenham Common and the Brits declared that they had no strategic interests in Ireland.
When Costello labelled the state De Valera had piloted into a republic – a REPUBLIC. Britain was co-founding NATO, Britain’s Cabinet Secretary examined the Unionist Claim on the Six Counties and dismissed it Bunkum, but added that FOR STRATEGIC REASONS SOME PART OF IRELAND SHOULD REMAIN WITHIN HIS MAJESTY’S DOMINIONS. He passed the Memorandum to
Prime Minister Attlee, who marked it “Noted” and piloted a further IRELAND ACT through the
Imperial Parliament, falsely purporting to vest the future of the Six Counties in the Mickey Mouse
“Parliament of Northern Ireland.”
I do mot know what Strategic Interest was served by the continued existence of NATO following
the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Nor of the Nato advance on Russia.
I remain a Catholic but I know of no a predatory power which was defeated by a Boycott or a Decade
of the Rosary.
No reflection on courage of the Dunnes’ Stores Staff.
Nor the prayers of those who hunger after justice
It’s the unjust who have a near monopoly of thunderbolts