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Yesterday Ireland held its National Famine Commemoration in Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford. The great famine was at its height in 1847 and in total over a million people starved to death and a million more displaced: many thousands of those lost their lives in horrendous journeys across the Atlantic in what came to be known as ‘coffin ships’. The owners of these vessels provided as little food, water and living space as was legally possible, when they cared about the law at all. Death rates of 20%-50% percent were common.
The Irish Famine was the greatest European humanitarian disaster of its time: a direct result of the brutal occupation of Ireland by the British Empire who treated Ireland as something to be looted and the Irish as a sub-human race not worth rescuing from famine.
The shared ancestral memory of the invasion, occupation and oppression of Ireland by the British lends added impetus to the strong empathy that Irish people have for oppressed and displaced populations and those suffering from famine. This is why there is overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause amongst the populace of Ireland and why huge demonstrations take place every week against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Sadly, the right-wing Irish coalition government of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party has disgraced itself with regards to its ongoing support for Israel. Initially Leo Varadkar hid behind the canards of the rest of the western political and media establishment, emphasising Israel’s right to existence and self-defence: ignoring the 75 years of Israeli atrocities before October 7th and the mass murder that was ongoing, while he muttered platitudes about ‘restraint’ and ‘proportionality’.
Irish Tánaiste (Deputy Prime-Minster) Michael Martin had not long come back from warm handshakes in Israel in September, but felt the need to scurry back to show his support in November. Here he is posing for an Israeli photo-op, looking with concern and empathy at a slightly damaged ceiling of a single Israeli house that had been hit by one small rocket fired from the strip.
Meanwhile Israel was levelling entire districts in Gaza: part of an indiscriminate bombing campaign that Israel had openly boasted would turn Gaza into a “city of tents” . And they kept their word with 70% of Gaza’s homes standing destroyed just a few weeks later. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were already dead, dying, injured and buried under rubble as Michael Martin posed for that picture.
With an election on the way, the rhetoric of the Irish ruling coalition has hardened but their true position remains one of supine obedience to Israel.
Throughout the bombing, starvation and invasion of Gaza, Ireland’s trade relationship with Israel has remained unaffected; that trade already stood at nearly €6 billion in 2022. The Israeli ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich remains safe and snug in Dublin despite endless popular calls for her expulsion.
The Irish government allows the U.S. military free run of Shannon Airport as a refuelling base on the way to the Middle East. Many suspect that the very arms that are killing thousands of children in Gaza are being shipped through Shannon. We cannot know for certain because Ireland chooses not to inspect the U.S, military planes that land at Shannon. Despite a huge uptick in flights since October 7th, Ireland refuses to change its stance on inspections.
An Occupied Territories Bill was tabled in 2018 by the independent senator Frances Black. The bill would ban any goods or services produced, even partially, in the Israeli-occupied territories—including the Golan Heights. The bill has been consistently opposed by the ruling coalition and remains blocked by them.
Aside from a few calculated platitudes in the media, the position of the Irish government as regards to Israel can be summarised thus: business as usual. There was one mild exception though: Fine Gael (mindful of public opinion) withdrew an invitation to the Israeli Ambassador to their Ard Fheis (national conference). The Israeli ambassador was incensed, and was promptly given a platform in the Irish Times to vent her fury.
“The contagion of anti-Israel sentiment reached surprising levels last week when my invitation to the Fine Gael Ard Fheis was withdrawn in a worrying sign that Israel is being further demonised in Ireland.”
The National Famine Commemoration was scheduled for a few weeks after Erlich’s rant: many national ambassadors are invited to attend and the Irish government didn’t have the courage to snub Erlich again.
So under a media blackout, the ambassador of Israel – the illegal occupier of Palestine and the nation responsible for an ongoing genocidal rampage and a man-made famine inflicted on over two million people – was invited to a memorial about the famine inflicted on Ireland in 1847 by an illegal occupier.
Can anyone possibly imagine a more disrespectful and immoral debasement of Irish history than this?
Sodium Haze has contacted multiple branches of the Irish government demanding to know if Erlich was present at the memorial and who invited her. At time of writing not a single branch has even acknowledged our questions.
This disgraceful episode is being quietly buried by the Irish media but it is essential that it is not, for it exposes perfectly the true policy of the incumbent government towards Israel.
Perhaps Haze readers will have better luck getting an answer from them than we have:
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It would be an awful shame if they had a deluge of emails demanding to know if Dana Erlich, the Israeli ambassador to Ireland attended the National Famine Commemoration in Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford on the 19th May and who in the Irish Government invited her.
The First Arab Muslims in the Levant were invaders, forcing their religion, language, and culture on the people already there. In this regard, the Arab Muslims are more akin to the British then they are the Irish..