Blanket Of Remembrance

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Last Sunday we gathered in this very spot.

Routinely, it is Saturday that sees the members of Drogheda Stands For Palestine come together for half an hour to stand in solidarity with the victims of Israeli genocide. It is something we have done from the unleashing of the Israeli final solution in Gaza back in October 2023.

Last Saturday we did not break with that tradition, turning up as normal to maintain our weekly vigil. What made last week different was that on Sunday we returned to the same location at the steps of the local cathedral to participate in a powerfully symbolic protest directed against the murder of children in Gaza. The Irish Independent while managing to get the backstory of last Sunday's event incorrect, at least used the term 'murder' to describe Israel's war on children.

Concealed behind the mask of ceasefire, Palestinian children are still being killed by Israeli bombs. As one meme graphically captured it, for Israel, ceasefire means you cease, we fire.

Behind each statistic lies a human story, behind each square of the Blanket of Remembrance, ten such stories, Just this morning I read the harrowing account of Somaya Nassar about her two year old daughter, Noor, who last September was bombed by the IDF in an area the Israelis had designated a safe zone. Of course it was a trap. Noor's mother takes up the story:

Then a violent explosion shook the entire place.
I didn’t look for anything except Noor.
I screamed her name again and again.
Then I suddenly heard her father yelling: “Help! Noor – quick!”
We found her lying on the ground.
She had fallen from the third floor all the way down to the lower level when the upper floor was bombed.
Still. Unmoving. No trace of blood.
I screamed.
After 12 long days in the ICU, my beloved girl finally emerged from the critical stage and was moved to the pediatric ward.
She survived.
But at what cost?
. . .
The head injury, and what doctors said was bleeding in her brain, caused Noor to lose her sight and her ability to move.
She lay in the hospital bed, conscious.
She ate and slept.
Nothing more.
Her eyes had lost their light.
Her little hands no longer reached out like they used to.
Her tiny body told the story of a childhood stolen before it even began, a story of innocence crushed by war.
When the ceasefire was announced on 10 October, I was in the hospital with Noor.

Noor

Stark. There is no ceasefire for Noor, now left blind and paralysed. This is what makes the Blanket of Remembrance so poignantly potent. It is not just a blanket that remembers dead children, it is a call to prevent more dead children, a demand that children like Noor are not targets for barbarism and savagery.

The Blanket of Remembrance is made up of single squares, each denoting ten Palestinian children who have died at the hands of the murderous IDF in the Occupied Territories, approximately 29, 000 and still counting. Fifty metres in length, it was carried through the town by a phalanx of citizens abhorred by infanticide. The starting point was the cathedral Steps, from there proceeding to Laurence's Gate, where the assembled participants stood chanting as the media took photographs, before making the return journey back to the steps of the cathedral, raising awareness with every step and through every carefully crocheted square.

The noise of car horns blaring in approval was a most welcome sound. Normally, the blast of a car horn is the result of an impatient driver urging pedestrians to get out of the way. On this occasion it was an expression of impatience with the international community which has allowed the genocide to continue and also a gesture of solidarity with the people carrying the blanket and what it symbolised.

The Blanket of Remembrance is a huge undertaking for the women who make up Craftism For Palestine. The resolve, stamina, tenacity, empathy combine to give expression in an audible and visual manner to the horror of Israeli genocide in Gaza. I share the view expressed by Ann McVeigh on Facebook when she said she was:

Incredibly humbled to play a small part in carrying the Blanket of Remembrance by Craftism for Palestine today.

On a personal note, the event had added significance for me, a blanket of a different sort at one time playing a huge part in my life. As a young republican prisoner in the H Blocks of Long Kesh during the North's violent political conflict, my only clothing for a period of over three years was a blanket. Three hundred republican prisoners were on the blanket protest in defiance of the British state's attempt to deny its own terroristic role in Ireland. Just as the same government tried to label Palestine Action as criminals and terrorists they likewise used the same labelling tactic against republicans. It took years of wearing the blanket and ten dead hungers strikers to break the resolve of Margaret Thatcher and her government gang.

During that protest one way of warding off the soul destroying tedium was to tell stories in the evening out the cell door or have political discussions. Frequently enough, Palestinian resistance to Israel would feature in either our stories or discussions. Led by people like Bobby Sands and Brendan Hughes, solidarity with Palestine ran strong through the protesting wings of the H Blocks.

So, it was indeed humbling to find myself almost half a century on from the commencement of the blanket protest, to once again find myself carrying a blanket, that symbol of resistance, this time through the streets of Drogheda. Last Sunday the blanket was an unequivocal expression of solidarity with those who fall under the Frantz Fanon typology the wretched of the earth, whose existence is made wretched by the wicked of the earth.

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