Overcoming The Silence

Anthony McIntyre ☠ I missed last week's vigil.

I got the chance of a ticket for an AC Milan against Leeds United game in the Aviva and availed of it. Bobby McCormack will understand the lure, being an avid soccer fan himself. Still, when I miss a vigil, whatever the reason, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth, something similar I imagine to making the discovery that I had just purchased an item in a shop which had its origins in genocidal Israel. Although it would be dropped immediately as if I had just picked up dog poop, the figurative odour would linger. Life goes on but when it does the conscience still gets pricked at life being enjoyed while others can only endure it as is the case for so many Palestinians facing the murderous daily onslaught from Israel savagery.

And yet there are so many consciences particularly amongst the Western political class, that seem untroubled. Take Keir Starmer, a prick whose conscience is prick free. Quite the argument for the Descartian concept of dualism. Not only has he openly endorsed war crimes against the civilian population of Gaza, recently he has taken to accusing our fellow people of conscience of terrorism for no reason other than belonging to Palestine Action.

As people gathered in Newry yesterday to protest genocide the Pig Service of Northern Ireland warned them that they will be arrested if they wore Palestine Action T-Shirts. Independent councillors Alan Lawes and Cieran Perry crossed the border and defied the PSNI by wearing the T Shirts. What would the same Pig Service do to any counter demonstrators had they turned up wearing IDF T-shirts? Nothing, which is as the much anti-human rights lawyer in 10 Downing Street has done to bring a halt to genocide.

It will be heartening to again join the vigil in West Street at noon today. To simply stand shoulder to shoulder with so many people whom I had never met prior to the Genocide, is uplifting. It means, amongst other things, I can tell my adult children that there is still hope that when people pull together as a collective more can be achieved than is possible through individual action on its own no matter how heroic; that succumbing to the Lily Tomlin observation of 'remember, we are all in this alone' is more a recipe for inertia than it is for initiative.

That collective action was also on display Monday last when the National Union of Journalists, a body I belong to, called for a protest rally at the Spire in Dublin. What was being protested was the Israeli massacre of Palestinian journalists in a targeted attack on their tent. Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous anti-Nazi sentiment, reworked, conveys what seems to be the true meaning behind such calculated and premeditated murder:

First they murdered the children

Then they murdered their parents

Then they murdered their doctors

Then they murdered their teachers

Then they murdered the witnesses to the murders of everybody else they had murdered in the hope that no one else would come to bear witness to genocide.

A report in yesterday's Guardian, referenced:

A special unit in Israel's military was tasked with identifying reporters it could smear as undercover Hamas fighters, to target them and to blunt international outrage over the killing of media workers.

Being of an age where a free travel pass helps give life to the words from an Ella Fitzgerald classic that the living is easy, I hopped on the train to Dublin to take part in the NUJ protest. The area immediately surrounding the Spire was as congested as Connolly Station had been the previous Saturday with fans making their way to the Aviva. People of all ages had turned out at very short notice to vent their opposition to the massacre and listen to a Palestinian journalist make a deeply impassioned speech.

That vigil, very much like our own each Saturday, or yesterdays in Newry, helps puncture the silence which Israel and the Western elites wish to impose.

Now, back to where this pieces started - the question of soccer. In Gaza a player known as the Palestinian Pele, Suleiman al-Obeid, was murdered by Israel as joined the queue to get food from the death traps set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Farce hubs. UEFA, soccer's governing body, paid tribute to the dead man. But for all it said, he could have died from natural causes or in a road traffic accident. Not happy with this cultural elite's coupling of soccer with silence the Liverpool player, Mo Salah, asked: "Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?"

Every time we gather in West Street we do the same thing - we are not the sound of silence but the sound of noise that Israel and the Western elites want drowned out by drones.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.