Irish playwright and actor Donal O’Kelly writes in the Irish Times “Why we need to remember the Gaza dead.” In the opinion piece he may try to give the impression that he cares about Palestinians, but by leaving out the facts he reveals that, in reality, he is simply anti-Israel.
Writing about Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas, he makes no mention of the terror organization at all, and complains that “it was presented on most of the media as a conflict between two sides.” In his mind, or at least the way that he portrays it, there is no Hamas, and Israel kills innocent Palestinians for no reason. Irish Artists in Support of Palestine was started then to counter that and “resist with image,” because “This would be done again unless we acted.”
O’Kelly promotes the ‘PalFest Ireland’ arts festival which is held to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinians, and mentions that last year it hosted Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian surgeon of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. HonestReporting and others have previously exposed Gilbert as a radical anti-Israel propagandist who has expressed support for terrorism and aided and promoted Hamas lies, including by denying that Hamas used the Gazan hospital as a military base, despite evidence to the contrary.
By ignoring Hamas’s role in the conflict, O’Kelly, like many anti-Israel activists and others who don’t understand the reality, is actually emboldening and enabling Hamas to continue its tactics, pushing the false narrative of indiscriminate Israeli attacks, and leaving Hamas free to continue its regime of terrorism and corruption. They ignore Hamas terror attacks on innocent Israeli civilians, and that it is Hamas that provokes wars with Israel, that incites and brings up children to do the same, steals the money and materials meant for its own people in Gaza to be used for terror tunnels and weapons instead, and during conflict does everything possible to ensure the maximum number of Palestinian civilians will be killed.
O’Kelly is right that we need to remember the Gaza dead. We also need to remember that Hamas is responsible for the casualties. We need to remember this, so that if and when Hamas next decides it wants to start a war, it is held accountable. The Palestinians are suffering greatly under Hamas, and can’t even speak out against it because of the fear of repercussions. If O’Kelly really cared about Gazans, he would be campaigning against the root cause of their suffering and exposing Hamas. If he really cared about Gazan children, he would be protesting this child abuse:
O’Kelly portrays the BDS campaign as a victim “under attack,” and says “In Ireland we intend to keep the beacon of boycott lit. We do it through art.” A beacon is not quite the word you would usually associate with a bigoted movement that seeks the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state. But it is to Donal O’Kelly, who it seems prioritizes his hatred for Israel over any concern about Hamas’s abuse and brainwashing of Palestinian children.
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9 Comments
It’s high time that the Irish, Catholic or Protestant, stop projecting their conflict onto the Jews and Arabs to fight a proxy war. This is not a football game where you cheer for the side you support. This is life and death. These are people here. By all means press for Peace but look at who is making the true moves toward that goal.
Most Irish brain left Ireland for the USA in the big migration of the 19th century.
Unfortunately they haven’t recovered yet.
Jew haters have no bounds,they will not let the facts get in the way.
Could it be that behind much of the hostility directed at Israel by Ireland is the fact that Israel rid itself of the Brits in a relatively short time whilst Ireland still struggles with this issue?
This is no big surprise since the IRA helped arafat train his minions in the art of terrorism many years ago. Same old, same old!!! I am surprised when I read about irish people supporting Israel…and there are some!
This is no big surprise since the IRA helped arafat train his minions in the art of terrorism many years ago. Same old, same old!!! I am surprised when I read about irish people supporting Israel…and there are some!
To sum up the situation in one phrase “they do not understand the reality” – because no one is telling them the reality . It’s not because they’re anti Israel or anti jewish they’ve simply not been given the full facts by the media – and most would struggle to believe it because no Irishman or woman would stay in a home they knew was about to be bombed with their kids just because Enda Kenny told them to , so they find it utterly unbelievable that anyone would have obeyed Hamas orders to stay put or die anyway. They can’t believe that the brigades actually used their children as human shields when firing rockets or shooting in the street – even when they see the video because even with our own history – it is just so utterly alien to Irish life and even war and Irish terrorism. Just like the rest of europe, they’ll hear about ‘palestinian homes’ being bulldozed in area C – but won’t be told about the UN diirective to do so or the jewish homes being bulldozed so to most Irish, they’re being shown a mirror of the injustice their ancestors suffered for hundreds of years at the hands of british landowners. Irish and european media is not covering the bombs and countless mass stabbing attacks at all. They know nothing of the indoctrination of hate in the schools and pre schools or the cowardice of parents who will send their own kids off to commit murder just so they’ll gain the respect of the leadersand an extra income. They believe every lie and cry of injustice thrown up by the media so readily because for a long time that kind of injustice actually was a part of Irelands history. They see the palestinian as a persecuted and deliberately impoverished people because that is the lie they have been sold by all the media for over twenty years – true investigative journalism has been all but extinguished in europe for a long time. The Irish aren’t anti semetic – hundreds of thousands left Ireland after almost being decimated themselves by the succession of WW1, a civil war and the subsequent famines that followed them in the 20s and 30’s to fight in foreign armies simply because they knew what hitler was doing not to europe, but to the Jews in particular, had to be stopped at all costs. De Valera was a friend to Israel and has a tree in his name because of that friendship during the war years. The anti semitism in posts online is a direct result of a completely innefective media and an internet that is bombarding the nations youth with lies and memes that deliberately paint Israel as the modern day nazi … when the reality is that hamas is the true nazi and far worse and more brutal to its own children than any other regime on the planet.
The posted video was not appropriate for this article, because this play was put on by the terror group Islamic Jihad. Islamic Jihad and Hamas vacilate between intense rivalry and close cooperation.