AN IRISH-PALESTINIAN man who was due to speak at a podcast recording on the Mindfield Stage of Electric Picnic was unable to attend after his relative was killed in Gaza.
Zak Hania was due to speak with The Echo Chamber Podcast this afternoon at the Electric Picnic festival.
Hania was evacuated from Gaza in May, several months after his wife and children were able to escape.
Tony Groves of the Echo Chamber podcast told The Journal that Hania was absent because “he had to attend a family funeral as the Israeli Defence Forces have killed another of his extended family”.
Groves said he believes this to be the sixth relative of Hania’s to have lost their lives “either directly or indirectly” since 7 October.
“One member of his family has died of malnutrition,” said Groves, “so there is also starvation in the region and people dying because they can’t access medication.”
Groves said Hania wanted to “talk about love” at the festival.
“He is a big man for saying ‘what we need now is a hug’, and that’s what he wanted to talk about, how everyone needs a hug and a break.
“Zak is a big-hearted guy and that would have been his spirit.
“I can’t speak for him but what I will say is that I know he believes in the greater good of people, even in the darkest of times.”
Remarking on Hania’s evacuation from Gaza, Groves noted that it “took a lot of time and effort to get Zak out”.
“But even through this, he was keeping other people’s spirits up and trying to stay strong for his family,” said Groves.
“When he got home, he said to me, ‘I am going to hold you for a while’, and we just stood there crying.
“I thought to myself, ‘there is too much this man has gone through’.”
Meanwhile, Amnesty International hosted a ‘Voices for Gaza’ session which featured irish-Palestinian musician Róisín El Cherif and actor Liam Cunningham.
Speaking to The Journal, Cunningham said: “We hear all these wonderful words from our Taoiseach Simon Harris, but we still can’t pass the Occupied Territories Bill.
“I think people are sick of talk and they want to see action.”
The Occupied Territories Bill would prevent Ireland from trading in goods and services imported from Israeli-occupied territories.
Remarking on the ‘Voices for Gaza’ session, Cunningham said: “Hopefully we can get more people on the streets because there are many people who are disgusted with what is going on but they haven’t put their feet on the ground and we need more of that.
“And for any of the idiots who think this is some antisemitic gesture, it doesn’t matter that it’s Israel who is doing this, it’s doesn’t matter that it is happening to Palestinians.
“It’s one group of people doing it to another group of people, and that means it’s an attack on humanity and we can’t tolerate that.”
Further remarking on events like Amnesty’s at the Mindfield Stage of the festival, Cunningham said: “The kind of people who come to festivals are free-thinkers, they like music and diversity, they want information from different sources.
“We are not here to preach to the converted, there’s a lot of people here who have paid a lot of money to have a good time.
“But you should always give a little of that time to getting informed about what you could, or even should, be doing.”
He added: “So you can come along to events like these, then go ahead and have some fun.
“Get yourself a very expensive hotdog, go and listen to some music, have some fun and coming along to events like these won’t ruin your weekend but you’ll be doing the right thing.”
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