Slán Leo: The Heartbreak of it All: Major International Conference on Moore St

 

S lán Leo

Leo Varadkar’s resignation from the office of An Taoiseach and as leader of Fine Gael caught observers by surprise. On reflection however it is very much inkeeping with his personality. A bit petulant. Awkward. Impulsive.  Hehad done his best by his own lights. And his best had not been good enough, byhis own admission. So in fairness he probably did the right thing. Better toget out on his own terms. 

Most  people will have very little sympathy for seniorpoliticians and the wear and tear they and their families endure asa  result of the long hours, relentlesspressure,  the  grinding nature of parliamentary work andongoing public scrutiny. You have to believe in what you are doing. Especiallywhen things are not going well. So I think Leo just got a sickner of it all,particularly after the recent referendum results. He was cheesed off andseems not to have the stomach for  continuing in a government whichis just going through the motions and serving out its time.  

 

He was facing into internal turbulence. The Fine Gael Ard Fheis waslikely to be troubled.  Elevenof his TDs have said they will not be standing in the next election. 

 

So why hang about?  His  resignation statementwas very honest. “I am no longer the best person for the job.”he said. 

That was certainly the case on  the North though his instinctsare better than Micheál Martin’s. The amount ofthe  Irish Government’s moneyforCasement was probably Leo’s initiative. His refusal to go for a CitizensAssembly to discuss and plan for unity is a mistake.  He and MicheálMartin are not advocates for a new constitutional future. They are deeplywedded to their own political dispensation. They are not SNQ. Sound on theNational Question. Neither is Simon Harris. 

Labour !eader Ivana Bacik call for a dedicated department to look at thedetailed work for unity planning is important. And welcome. Not least becauseit is recognition of increased and increasing public interest on the need forplanning for constitutional change. Maybe if Leo had applied himself to that hewouldn't be out off a job. Ach well. Slán Leo. 

 

The Heartbreak of it All

The million and a half Palestinianstrapped in southern Gaza city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, are undersustained and ruthless attack by Israeli forces. Hundreds of women, childrenand men are being killed or severely wounded each day. Hospitals crammed fullof desperate human beings continue to be the target of bomb and tank and sniperattack. 

At the same time tens of thousands are facing starvation while relieftrucks carrying desperately needed food, water and medicine are beensystematically blocked by the Israel state. On Sunday it told the UN thatit will no longer allow food convoys into north Gaza where 70 percent of peopleface the highest level of food scarcity. Speaking at the Rafah crossinglast Friday UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “Here fromthis crossing, we see the heartbreak and heartlessness of it all. A long lineof blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates, the long shadow ofstarvation on the other. That is more than tragic. It is a moraloutrage."

It is also a war crime. The Romestatute of the International Criminal Court is very clear on this. It definesthe deliberate starving of civilians as a crime if the intention is to deprive“them of objects indispensable to their survival.” This includes “willfullyimpeding relief supplies.” 

Israeli Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu and his war cabinet are immune to all of this. He plans to launch aground offensive against Rafah. Netanyahu insists that this will take placeshortly. His stated aim is the defeat and destruction of Hamas. Common sensetells us that this is unachievable. 

Our own experience of colonialismproves this. For centuries English governments sought to defeat the desire ofthe Irish people for freedom and self-determination. Every conceivable weaponof oppression was used: from mass executions and deportations, to coercion actsand special powers, to the impoverishment and dehumanisation of the Irishpeople, to the denial of basis rights and a cultural war against our language,music and art. These were all part of English policy. So too was starvation.

In his book ‘Ireland Since theFamine’ F. S. Lyons writing about the impact of An Gorta Mór – the Great Hunger– wrote: “…it may well be that the most profound impact on Irishhistory lay in its ultimate psychological legacy. Expressed in its simplestterms this legacy was that the long standing and deep rooted hatred of theEnglish connection was given not only a new intensity, but also a newdimension… this hatred, this bitterness, this resentment were carried overseas,and especially to America by nearly four million Irish men and women andchildren who left their homeland, decade by decade and year by year in the halfcentury after the Famine.”

In our own time and place the statedaim of successive unionist and British governments was the defeat of Irishrepublicanism. Collusion, special laws, torture, sectarian discrimination in employment,military occupation of communities, were all part of government policy. OneBritish Secretary of State was so gung-ho that he spoke of squeezingrepublicans like a tube of toothpaste! None of it worked. 

What worked was a peace process,slowly and painfully built. 

The lesson for the Israeli state isobvious. Occupation, genocide, repression, the theft of Palestinian land andnatural resources will not work. The mass slaughter of innocents will not work.The criminalisation and dehumanisation of the Palestinian people will not work.On the contrary the Israeli massacre of 32,000 in the Gaza Strip and the WestBank is storing up a legacy of bitterness that will ensure that resistanceto Israeli colonialism will continue.

Regrettably, I don’t see Netanyahuhaving any interest in a peace process.  Pulitzer Prize-winning New YorkTimes columnist Thomas Friedman told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Sunday: "Ithink this is the worst government Israel has ever had. And I think Netanyahuwill go down in history as the worst leader in Jewish history, not just inIsraeli history,"

But there is now a discernible changewithin the international community’s approach to Israel’s genocidal strategy.Some allies of the Israeli state are now taking up publicly more criticalpositions. At the weekend it was reported that French President EmmanuelMacron in a phone call told Netanyahu the forced transfer of people from Rafahwould constitute “a war crime” 

It is long-past time for the USA,Britain and others providing war materials to Israel to stop. They cannot fundand arm the genocide while decrying its awful effect on Palestinians. Stop thewar. No funds or arms for Netanyahu. 

 

Major International Conference onMoore St

Uachtarán Shinn Féin Mary LouMcDonald TD, in association with the Moore St. Preservation Trust, will hold amajor international conference next month to discuss the future development ofthe Moore St. 1916 Battlefield site. The main focus of the conference will beon the alternative plan prepared by the Trust to that of the proposals from theprivate developer Hammerson.

Moore St. – as regular readers ofthis column know – is a hugely important part of the story of Easter 1916 andis the heart of the 1916 Battlefield site. It is where the GPO Garrisonretreated when the building caught fire and it was in 16 MooreSt. that five of the seven signatories to the Proclamation met and tookthe decision to order the surrender.

The Moore St. Trust has produced aformidable, alternative plan to that of the developer – who is supported by thegovernment. The plan aims to preserve the site and to sensitively develop it asa historical and cultural quarter that can play a significant role in theregeneration of that part of our Capital City.

The conference will take place in theGPO on 24 April, the date of the Easter Rising in 1916, and it will bringtogether leading experts in the fields of tourism, planning, academia, retailand the arts. Among those taking part will be Professor Terry Stevens a TourismAdvisor to the United Nations, Michael Murphy, architect of the nationallynching memorial Legacy Museum in Alabama, USA, Seán Antoin Ó Muirí architectof the alternative plan and well known historian Liz Gillis. Relatives of the1916 leaders and others will participate. It’s shaping up to be an informativeand crucial conference around the ongoing effort to Save Moore St.