THE USUAL PURPOSE of this column is to examine some of the stranger and more surreal aspects of the Irish news each week.
With that in mind, it is rare that this week’s Budget announcement would be bumped from the proverbial front page. It is essentially an annual party where the nation gathers to learn by how much the price of cigarettes has increased.
The Budget is something we pay attention to perhaps with the intention of being let down. We hope against hope that some surprise measure will be announced to lift us from whatever hardship we may be facing. This never happens, and it did not happen this year.
The 8ft steel railing erected outside Leinster House to protect politicians from the wrath of the public was not even called for. So foregone is the conclusion of each yearly budget announcement that it doesn’t even rouse a gathering of the same crowd who brought their gallows to Kildare St just a few weeks ago.
As a humanitarian crisis continues to unfurl in Gaza and Israel, it therefore seems necessary to look beyond what is happening in Ireland this week.
Since the severe escalation in hostilities between Hamas, the Israeli state, and civilians living in Gaza this week, Ireland has played its own role.
The Irish government strongly rebuked the early suggestion – later revoked – that EU tack that aid to Palestine would be halted as a result of Hamas’ Saturday morning attack. Leo Varadkar has held to this stance, telling RTÉ’s Prime Time that Israel “doesn’t have a right to breach international humanitarian law” in its response to Saturday’s attack by Hamas.
Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tánaiste Micheál Martin has elsewhere said that actions taken by the Israeli government on Friday “put enormous trauma on the ordinary civilians and Gazans”.
This is in sharp contrast with certain neighbouring nations. In the UK, it has been suggested that flying a Palestininan flag could potentially be punished as a public order offence. France has banned pro-Palestine rallies outright. In the United States, Joe Biden implied he had seen intelligence photos of murdered babies before it was conceded by his Press Secretary that he had not.
It was reported by Naomi O’Leary that Ireland sought language in the EU statement to call against an escalation of hostilities by Israel, but that these efforts were shot down.
Bellicose language has not been confined to the political arena in the wake of this week’s violence, which so far has left over 1,000 people dead in Israel and Gaza respectively, many of which are civilians, and many more of which are children.
justin bieber posting “praying for israel” using a picture of a destroyed gaza is actually insane pic.twitter.com/GNcEyhNk6V
— Hurt CoPain (@SaeedDiCaprio) October 11, 2023
Celebrities, as they are often wont to do, have played a particularly grotesque role in the unfolding commentary. Justin Bieber shared an Instagram post in support of Israel – sharing a photo of rubble and destruction with the text “Praying for Israel” overlaid.
The only problem was that Bieber had accidentally shared a photo of a Gaza in ruins following an Israeli airstrike. When this was pointed out to him, instead of modifying his stance or including Palestinian victims in his post, he simply reposted the words “Praying for Israel” against a stock, blue-green Instagram background.
A similar outcome befell Jamie Lee Curtis, who shared what she appeared to believe were Israeli children cowering from an air attack, alongside the caption “Terror from the skies” and an Israeli flag. Once again, the children photographed were Palestinian, and once again, Curtis declined to include those Palestinians in her thoughts. She simply removed the post.
One statement, signed by 700 Hollywood figures, put forward the argument: “As Israel takes the necessary steps to defend its citizens in the coming days and weeks, social media will be overrun by an orchestrated misinformation campaign spearheaded by Iran.”
On Friday morning it was announced by the Israeli government that the 1.1million Palestinians living in North Gaza had 24 hours to leave – a decision described as a “death sentence” by WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestine Refugees, warned that the relocation order “will only lead to unprecedented levels of misery and further push people in Gaza into abyss”. Does this fall under the “necessary steps” referred to in the open letter, signed by the likes of Chris Pine, Mayim Bialik, Liev Schreiber, Amy Schumer, Helen Mirren and Jerry Seinfeld?
It seems this sort of careless is trickling down to the citizenry at large. It is against discursive backdrop that one widely-shared and especially callous TikTok video emerged, appearing to show an Israeli man bragging about how he still has access to running water and electricity as the Israeli government off the supply of such human rights in Gaza.
One would think that in order to minimise death on all sides, there is now more of a need than ever to address the root causes that give rise to a movement such as Hamas, rather than an indiscriminate approach of violence towards all of those living in Gaza.
That the conflict, grounded as it is in decades of bloodshed, oppression and human rights violations, is being discussed in such thoughtless fashion, should deeply concern anyone hoping for deescalation in the coming days and weeks.
As it stands, popular commentary on the crisis is leading us to the precipice of something even worse.
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