Opinion

Little Ireland once loved little Israel…. but not any more - Pat McArt

If Israel and its allies don’t like being called out for the massacre taking place in Gaza, too bad. We’ll live with it

The protest in Dublin heard calls for Ireland to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice
A protest in Dublin hears calls for Ireland to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (Brian Lawless/PA)

It was hot and heavy on social media the other night, an Israeli supporter suggesting what happened on October 7 justified what the IDF was doing in Gaza.

There were 1,200 innocent Jewish people killed and almost 200 taken hostage. He had no sympathy whatsoever for the Palestinians. If there was 28,000-plus dead and 60/70,000 wounded in Gaza, they brought it on themselves.

The other guy was having none of it. Palestinians were uprooted from their homes in 1948 and many were massacred. And, for good measure, if anyone cared to check – I did – between 2008 and September 2023, more than 6,400 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces.

[ Ireland's support for Palestine: An explainer ]

So, who exactly, he wanted to know, were the victims here? And he concluded: “You Israelis don’t get to re-write history, that this all started on October 7.”

That last point got me thinking that we know a hell of a lot about revisionism on this island. Indeed, we should probably have taken out copyright on that word.

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My father lived through the Second World War and was a massive supporter of the Israeli state. What had happened to the Jews in the concentration camps was a stain on humanity that would never be erased. Because of this they were totally deserving of their own homeland. That was his deeply held opinion. And so, being not only a loyal son but also seeing so many parallels between the Irish situation and that of little Israel being surrounded by big bad Arabs, I was 100% on board with his thinking.

That was then, this is now. A lot has changed since those innocent days.

What Hamas did on October 7 was barbaric and indefensible. No sane or moral person could say otherwise. That is not up for debate.

Visitors look at photos of Israeli people who were killed during Hamas’s attack on October 7 and those who have died during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, displayed on a giant screen at the National Library in Jerusalem (Leo Correa/AP)
Visitors look at photos of Israelis who were killed during Hamas’s attack on October 7 and those who have died during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, displayed on a giant screen at the National Library in Jerusalem (Leo Correa/AP)

However, and despite what most of the leaders in the Western world would have us believe, what Israel has done – and is currently doing in Gaza – most certainly is.

Absurd claims being peddled by the likes of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his apologists in the West, particularly Biden and Sunak, that the Israelis are “only defending themselves” are risible, the evidence to the contrary overwhelming.

Denying 2.2 million people water, electricity, fuel, medicines and food is not defence. Dropping 6,000 bombs in a week on a place not much bigger than Ireland’s smallest county, Louth, is making zero efforts to protect innocent civilians. Killing huge numbers of women and children indiscriminately is clearly barbaric. Shelling and attacking hospitals and refugee centres are war crimes. And as the International Court of Justice has indicated, there is already “a plausible case” to sustain allegations of genocide.

Palestinians line up for food in Rafah (Fatima Shbair/AP)
Palestinians under siege in Rafah line up for food (Fatima Shbair/AP)

Today Ireland is regarded by the Israelis as by far the most hostile country in Europe to what they are doing in Gaza. And make no mistake, they are livid. Absolutely enraged.

There have been a growing number of strongly-worded attacks on the Irish stance both in the domestic media in Israel and in international publications in recent times. One in particular, which caught my attention, was in the Jerusalem Post at the weekend where, in a major opinion piece by Jewish academic Amotz Asa-El, Ireland was described as being “fed by self-importance, ignorance and malice” towards the Israeli state, and that our “abuse” – his word – has gone “from tragedy to farce”.

In his piece, which subsequently got a lot of traction on social media, Asa-El also suggested Ireland was “inciting” other European countries to act against Israel.

I hope he’s right.

Because of our own history, most Irish people, north and south, don’t buy the depiction of a country supported politically, militarily, diplomatically and financially by the United States as victims. We know only too well what BS sounds like, what it’s like to be occupied and to have to listen down the centuries to the hypocrisy of those justifying that occupation.

Now Spain, Norway and Belgium are breaking away from the original EU line of 100% support for Israel, as promulgated by EU president Ursula von der Leyen. That is, seemingly, Ireland’s fault… we “incited” them to do that.

So, should we be ashamed or worried about Israeli opprobrium? You have got to be kidding…

I think in years to come Ireland will be lauded – that we were the first country in the Western world to oppose the nodding ducks in the various houses of parliament

I think in years to come Ireland will be lauded – that we were the first country in the Western world to oppose the nodding ducks in the various houses of parliament.

Calling for a ceasefire and standing with a people who have no army, no navy, no air force, no defence system and which is getting massacred – and I have deliberately used that word – almost on a daily basis by an IDF armed to its teeth by the most powerful military complex on earth and its UK and EU allies, is the right thing to do for the sake of humanity.

If Israel and its allies don’t like that, too bad. We’ll live with it.