MOST OF THE world is looking on at events in Gaza and Israel with a shared sense of revulsion. The actions of a band of Hamas terrorists, who randomly massacred at least 1,200 innocent Israeli women, men and children, were incredibly barbaric.
The unspeakable tragedy has affected this country too as 22-year-old dual Irish-Israeli citizen, Kim Damti, was killed along with hundreds of other attendees at a music festival. Having seen the images of this vibrant young person, it is difficult to fathom that she is dead.
Now, the state of Israel has launched a series of attacks on Palestine with signs this morning that a more ferocious assault is imminent. In the wake of what independent experts at the United Nations described as “indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza” which constitute “collective punishment” and are “absolutely prohibited under international law and amounts to a war crime,” some 1,500 Palestinians have been slain. Many seasoned observers expect that this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Public representatives on both sides are dug into a war footing and their rhetoric is deeply worrying. In a profoundly disturbing Morning Ireland interview last Monday, Palestine’s head of mission here, Ambassador Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, was asked to convey her sentiments on what happened in Israel. She asserted that she found the killings to be “shocking,” but that she was not going to criticise Hamas. Later pushed by presenter Audrey Carville as to whether she felt sympathy for Israeli victims and their loved ones, she declined to answer.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoan Gallant announced that his country is fighting “human animals” and a diplomatic colleague averred that “all gloves were off” as Israel moves from a policy of “containment to eradication.” This has included the deliberate bombing of hospitals and universities, as well as the cutting off of electricity, fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza.
It is impossible to gauge where this is going or how and when it might end, yet it appears a safe bet that things will get a lot worse before they get any better. Of course, the cruellest consequence of these renewed hostilities is what has been and will continue to be experienced by people who merely wish to carry on with the normal lives we take for granted and who are caught up in a war by accidents of birth and geography.
An extraordinary, and hugely depressing, corollary of what has been unfolding since Saturday is the objectively irrational response of many steadfast champions of Israel and Palestine from beyond the region. Prior to assessing what has been said by a number of prominent figures, it is crucial to take note, albeit briefly, of what is a tortured history.
Put bluntly and simplistically, it is very messy. It is entirely justifiable for students of the past to align more with either Israel or Palestine (for the record, I tend toward the latter). Owing to a variety of complex factors and regrettable occurrences, some compelling moral arguments can be made in support of each.
But it is unreasonable to allege that one is completely virtuous and the other is completely evil. There is abundant fault on both sides.
In the aftermath of the Hamas violence, Richard Boyd Barrett TD took to Twitter (X) to say that Palestinians “have every right to resist” and his party colleagues have relentlessly expressed their “full solidarity” with them.
Palestinians hostage in criminal siege of Gaza for 17 yrs.Since 1948 Palestinians victims of ethnic cleansing, murderous occupation & apartheid. They have every right to resist. Shocking double standards of western leaders supporting Ukraine resistance but condemning Palestinian. pic.twitter.com/eo8LpzG0gI
— Richard Boyd Barrett (@RBoydBarrett) October 8, 2023
Boyd Barrett also told the Al Mayadeen news agency that “the violence we have seen in the last few days did not begin with the events of the weekend.” Why do condemnations of the appalling deeds of homicidal thugs not feature far more centrally? Why are they not front and centre, in advance of any attempts at contextualisation or prevarication?
Conversely, in the United States, even politicians who have long espoused a near-slavish fidelity to Israeli hardliners are currently suspect. Addressing a rally on Boston Common, Democratic US Senator Ed Markey, who is a staunch advocate for his government’s funding of Israel, called Hamas “violent extremists” and reiterated that Israel has the backing of the US because of “a bond that will never be broken.”
The assembled crowd of mainly left-of-centre activists, however, disapproved and booed loudly when Senator Markey said that “there must be a de-escalation of the current violence.” At the same rally, the remarks of a congressional colleague and fellow Democrat, US Representative Jake Auchincloss, were cheered wildly when he contradicted Markey and claimed that “now is not the time for equivocation.”
After the gathering, Congressman Auchincloss made a truly chilling admission. His declaration was a “pre-rebuttal to a narrative that I don’t want to build – that both sides need to lay down their arms. And that both sides have equal responsibility.” How could an individual endorsed by the electorate as recently as 2022 oppose the cessation of armed conflict and the pursuit of peace, wherever on the planet it is? And how could one who has earned the voters’ trust be so manifestly ignorant of history?
Far from the cauldron in the Middle East, then, at one end of the spectrum, there are elected officials all too willing to gloss over the slaughter of innocents by Hamas madmen. And at the other, there are elected officials comfortable with condoning illegal and unconscionable wars by Israel.
The outsiders at the two poles of this dispute are similarly wrong, grievously wrong. And the vast majority who together recoil at their dangerous zealotry must not be afraid to say so because of what the misguided in our midst might say about us.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston lawyer, a law lecturer at the University of Galway and a political columnist with The Journal.
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