My youngest daughter, just as we did before her, is currently studying the poets of the First World War at school: Sassoon; Ledwidge; Wilfred Owens’s searing ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. The latter’s telling of the horrors of war: the dead, the horrendously wounded, the nightmares which re-live the injured soldier whose blood came “gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues” is as raw and brutal and shocking as it was when we read it at our desks thirty years ago.
Owen believed that if we could just see the horror, war might no longer be the default option: the reality of what was unleashed might stay man’s hand. They are powerful lines, but time has not proved them to be true.
We now watch war in real-time or catch up with the action on our social media feeds, and it seems not to give us pause. We have become accustomed, fast, to seeing destruction and death up close. Some seem to relish the opportunities that can provide. Throats are slit onscreen as perverse click bait. Soldiers share videos of artillery launches and drone hits as if those being killed or facing destruction are characters in a violent video game rather than human beings.
But the proliferation of smart-phones has achieved at least one thing: we can continue to look away but we cannot pretend we do not know.
And so, on October 7th, the barbarity of Hamas’s violent attack was shared to a horrified world. The terrified screams of those massacred at the Supernova festival, the summary executions, the burned bodies, the bloodied captives brutally dragged away to gloating cheers and celebratory gunfire. It is easy to understand why Israel wanted revenge.
But that revenge has also been live streamed, and 14 months later the endless, pitiless death and destruction is sickening. It’s more than a year since I wrote that “just as we witnessed the terror of the Hamas incursion, the suffering of the people of Gaza is visible to us all”.
And for every bombing of a church hall or a UN school or a field hospital the same justification is offered: the insistence that these were Hamas control centres or that Hamas leaders were the target. When a UN school providing shelter is bombed, Israel says Hamas was the target. It seems more and more like a convenient cover or a callous disregard for the innocents that will be blown to pieces.
My opinion, of course, is not of any importance to the Israeli authorities. As long as they continue to have the backing of the United States, they more or less have had carte blanché to continue to raze Gaza. Much like with Ukraine, we all become numb to it: the broken, bleeding bodies, the shattered lives, the traumatised children, the whole families wiped out, the hundreds of thousands facing starvation and disease.
The relentless bombardment has been well documented – and excused. Witnessing the devastation before our eyes may have prompted marches and calls for peace but it has not brought a cease to the bombing. But even after seeing a thousand images of the horror of war, sometimes words stop you in your tracks.
I recently listened to Dr Nabeel Rana, a vascular surgeon who had recently completed a month-long MedGlobal volunteer mission in Gaza in hospitals in Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah. Like other doctors who have spoken about Gaza, he spoke about bombs being dropped on schools; about children who had been brought to the hospital being “littered across the floor of the ER, some of them in diapers”.
He also said that an article he and 64 other medical workers had contributed to for the New York Times described how they had witnessed children being brought to hospitals in Gaza with bullets in their heads: “direct shots to the head, single shots”. One of the children was a four-year old girl, he said. Supporters of Israel denied the claims made by the medics, but the NYT sais it had “rigorously edited” and verified the piece.
Doctors in Gaza have previously testified that they were forced to operate on patients, including children, without anesthetic because of the Israeli blockade. One told ABC news that “the only thing worse than the screams of a patient undergoing surgery without enough anesthesia are the terror-stricken faces of those awaiting their turn”.
What’s happening is unspeakable. The human suffering involved is unimaginable.
And that’s the real point, isn’t it, of Israel’s attempts to bully and publicly punish Ireland this week – and to threaten us with financial ruin via the United States because we dared to criticise what is happening in Gaza.
The point being made is that you will pay a price for condemning the bombardment that is raining down on Palestinians even when that criticism is offered by rational people who also express support for Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, and who also condemn Hamas and a call for the return of those taken hostage. Those pointing at the fringe left as evidence to the contrary know they represent almost no-one.
Israel was closing its embassy, the world was told, because the Irish government has “extreme anti-Israel policies” and crossed “all red lines” towards Israel. The Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich, said the stance taken by Ireland has “crossed the line” and it is “not criticism, but this is pure hatred and obsession that is now also directed to Israelis and the Jewish community”.
The claims grew even shriller: Simon Harris was accused of “anti-Semitism” by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar. While I despise many of the polices of the outgoing Taoiseach, the charge is absurd. Across social media and in Israeli media the insults continued, ratcheting up the antagonism and anger, even as, of course, the bombs continued to rain down on Gaza.
“Why the Irish hate the Jews”, was the headline in one piece in The Times of Israel. One reason given by the author was that “Christianity is inherently antisemitic”. Another was that “the sectarian warfare between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland has resulted in the societal retardation of their culture when it comes to religion.”
She continued: “I can’t make any predictions about what will happen with the Irish over time. The whole embracing of the Arab propaganda against Israel might stick them even further into the mire of barbaric hatred”.
Similar bigoted drivel could be seen across social media platforms, a gigantic tantrum being thrown because a small country in Western Europe dared to disagree with the tactics of a country at war which has left tens of thousands of civilians dead including women and children.
That’s the whole point of this petty exercise though isn’t it? Ireland is being held up as an example because Israel isn’t just closing an embassy, it’s calling in its ally, its real muscle, the United States. The oblique warnings have now become an open threat: that the U.S. has indicated Ireland will face serious heavy economic consequences if it takes a stance against the actions Israel is taking, not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank.
According to economist Dan O’Brien: “America has given an indication that there will be consequences if Ireland sanctions Israel – that is very serious.
“It poses huge risks to Ireland’s trade and investment with the US, which risks big costs to the Irish economy.”
But what is the alternative: that we are cowed and whipped into silence, crouching as Donagh McDonagh said “under the lash of arid censure” for fear that we will be punished for calling for an end to the unspeakable horrors that are happening daily in Gaza?
Retreating into silence in the face of the international storm Israel has whipped up would not just be cowardly and a betrayal of our sovereignty, it would allow Ireland to be used as an example of how Israel can use its allies to force his critics to back down
Much of Israel’s charges of anti-Semitism in general are, in fact, a distraction – a strategy that is played out across media platforms every day in the past 14 months as Gaza is reduced to rubble. As former Attorney-General, Michael McDowell, writes today in the Irish Times: “Israel has accused Irish politicians of anti-Semitism before. It has never been true”.
The accusation was a grossly defamatory slur on decent people, he said. McDowell pointed out that the “exact same charge” was levelled the exact same charge against him and other members of the Seanad who supported the Occupied Territories Bill which seeks “to make it illegal to import goods, services and resources into Ireland originating in settlement enterprises established in lands unlawfully seized by occupying powers, as defined by international law”.
Opposing the unlawful and violent land grab in the West Bank is not anti-Semitic. Neither is opposing carpet bombing terrified people in refugee camps . This is a tactic that has worn very thin.
Does Israel believe that if any country in the Middle East seized control of Israel’s territory or had bombed Tel Aviv’s hospitals and schools that Ireland would not be loud in condemnation of that breach of international law? The moves against Ireland this week are in fact the demands of a bully who will brook no opposition, no criticism, however justified – and, yes, Ireland is justified in criticising a war which has taken so many lives so cruelly, just as it is justified in condemning the savagery of Hamas’s actions.
Wilfred Owen was right in this regard: seeing the horror of war should move us to think again about the blind support that exists too often for those who can use their might, power and influence to bully others into silence.