Sarah Harte: Ministers must speak out against war on Gaza while visiting the US

In less than five minutes the scene had changed. The statue of Michael Collins had been draped in a Palestinian flag. A table was set up and was being manned by people who were taking signatures for a petition.

The Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised a Solidarity with Palestine March. It was the 17th such march to have taken place on the streets of Cork since the war began in Gaza and hundreds turned out.

The banners and signs were a mixture of homemade and slicker, more professional-looking efforts. They included People Before Profit Free Palestine End the Occupation, the UCC branch of the Irish Federation for University Teachers, Parents against Genocide, Stop the Genocide, Cork Apartheid Free Zone, Stop Sitting on the Fence, Cork Teachers for Palestine, and Cobh Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

One woman held a poster which read: ‘Fact 17,000 children in Gaza are separated from their parents’. A man with a Workers Party sign read: ‘10 Thousand Children Slaughtered in 15 weeks by Israel’. A man with a long red beard held a painting of a Palestinian child screaming.

One pre-teen held a sign saying ‘Stop Murdering Children’. An image of a blood-strewn Palestinian mother clutching her blood-spattered little girl adorned another poster which reminded me of the Virgin Mary statute in the sense that it had echoes of the Madonna and child.

Small children’s clothes including babygrows were pegged to a clothesline that ran along the side of a truck with pink and blue paper love hearts pinned to the garments bearing messages and names of children who have been killed. One couple stood with a large photo of a smiling toddler, dressed in pink with little bunches of hair, saying ‘Honor al-Zamli, Murdered by Israel’.

As two women chanted loudly on the stage, small children wandered around — a handful draped in Palestinian flags. Parents with buggies and double buggies, some with plastic covers, pushed small children. Several people, including children, held empty saucepans to draw attention to the deliberate blocking of aid and food to Gaza and the induced starvation.

The juxtaposition of images of murdered children and the rosy-cheeked, well-fed children on a Saturday afternoon — safe with their families and communities protesting — was both stark and unmissable.

One man held a sign saying: ‘Joe Biden Child Killer’. Another man held a small, humble handwritten brown cardboard sign that read: ‘No Shamrock for Joe Biden’. The open petition demanded that all political parties boycott the St Patrick’s Day celebrations at the White House. The logic behind the boycott is that the Biden administration is funding, arming, and enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

There is a view that Joe Biden may lose the American election because the core support he relied on the last time among young American voters, in particular, will have disappeared due to his appalling handling of Palestine. The macro politics of American elections aren’t our business but what our gang do in Washington on St Patrick’s Day is.

Whether Israel is carrying out genocide from a legal point of view will eventually be decided by the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) but a recently handed down preliminary verdict by a sceptical court suggested that Israel has a case to answer.

The question of whether Irish politicians should visit Washington is one the Government has batted away. Sinn Féin, who loudly called for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, have their tickets booked. How plausible is it that they will spend their time as they claim to berate key American politicians about Gaza whom they will meet in the traditional exercise of soft diplomacy and fundraising?

The Palestinian ambassador to Ireland, Dr Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, has said that she will respect whatever decision is taken by the Irish government and Sinn Féin, but that if Irish politicians go to the White House they should use the opportunity to raise the plight of Gaza with Biden. In a remarkably balanced statement, Dr Wabba Abdalmajid said: “It’s a celebration, it’s your national day. It’s an important event. I know that you need to celebrate, it’s totally your right to do that, but this time because of what’s going on in Palestine I just want to hear if they go, that they mention it.”

On St Patrick’s Day, as more young families return to the very same spot on the Grand Parade for the parade, Irish politicians will be getting set for a long day of meetings and festivities in Washington. Meanwhile, unless a ceasefire is brokered (the likelihood of this remains unclear) the massacre of Palestinian children will continue.

It is estimated that around 11,500 children have been killed over the last four months in Gaza. Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, has reported that a child is killed every 15 minutes in Gaza, one out of every 100 children in Gaza.

So dire is the situation that, as reported last week by the BBC, 800 civil servants in both the US and Europe have taken the uncharacteristic step of signing a petition warning that their own government’s policies on the Israel-Gaza war could amount to “grave violations of international law”.

Political responsibility

In the petition, a crucial distinction was drawn between failing to prevent something and being complicit in it. In the context of our national day, a hard personal question for Irish politicians as they climb aboard that plane, lift a drink to their lips and beam back at their hosts during the Paddy’s Day jolly, is whether they are complicit in one of the worst catastrophes of this century, including the wholescale murder of children.

When the ICJ issues its final verdict over the coming years, our political leaders will have to audit themselves, remember where they were on St Patrick’s Day, and if they were in Washington DC what they said and to whom. Given that the Irish government is considering joining South Africa’s legal action against Israel, it must signify that they are leaning in favour of prosecuting Israel for genocidal intent.

As for us, we can contact our politicians to reinforce the message that we expect any politicians who go to speak up loudly, and unambiguously that we do not support the mass killing of children and that Joe Biden should call for a ceasefire. We do not support a situation where children are having limbs amputated by medics who have no anaesthetics or even painkillers. We do not support a situation where Caesarean sections are being carried out on mothers with no anaesthesia. It was a message summed up pithily on one poster I saw popping up amongst the crowd on Saturday: ‘Not in my name Mr Martin, Mr Vardkar Save Gaza’.