Former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday said it was imperative that the Obama administration support Ireland's call on the Israeli authorities to ensure safe passage for the Irish-flagged Rachel Corrie to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Irish Times reports. Speaking by satellite phone from on board the Rachel Corrie, Halliday called on Irish-Americans to lobby the Obama administration: "We also feel there is a role for the Irish diaspora here, in the U.S. and elsewhere to lobby politicians over this continued illegal blockade of Gaza, which is causing such hardship to the Palestinian people."
Halliday has some experience with this issue, having resigned from his position as UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq in 1998 over the impact of UN/U.S. sanctions on Iraqi civilians.
The issue of the Gaza blockade has tremendous resonance in Ireland, partly because of Ireland's high degree of engagement in international humanitarian causes -- John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, who had called on the international community to break the siege by sending ships loaded with aid, is also Irish -- but also, of course, because the Irish people have some experience with the consequences for civilians of a colonial blockade.
Between 1845 and 1850, more than a million Irish people starved to death under British rule while, as Sinead O'Connor famously noted, food was shipped out of Ireland under armed guard. A million more fled Ireland to escape starvation, many to America, including Falmouth Kearney, President Obama's great-great-great grandfather.
Many Irish people -- and Irish-Americans -- take the responsibilities of this legacy very seriously.
Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has said:
The best possible commemoration of the men and women who died in that Famine, who were cast up on other shores because of it, is to take their dispossession into the present with us, to help others who now suffer in a similar way.
That's what Halliday is trying to do. Doesn't he deserve all our support?
UPDATE:: Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois [also Irish-American] writes:
We could act to deter an Israeli attack upon MV Rachel Corrie by invoking International Criminal Court Prosecution. According to the ICC Rome Statute, Article 12 (2) provides "2. In the case of article 13, paragraph (a) or (c), the Court may exercise its jurisdiction if one or more of the following States are Parties to this Statute or have accepted the jurisdiction of the Court in accordance with paragraph 3: (a) The State on the territory of which the conduct in question occurred or, if the crime was committed on board a vessel or aircraft, the State of registration of that vessel or aircraft; ... " If one of the vessel is Irish vessel and the attack was committed against the vessel, the ICC may exercise its jurisdiction over this situation since the Ireland is a State Party to the ICC Statute. Israel's attack may constitute a crime against humanity of murder, imprisonment, torture and other inhumane acts under Article 7 of the ICC Statute.Ireland is a party to the Rome Statute. Hence if Israel were to attack the MV Rachel Corrie, the highest level Israeli officials could be prosecuted for the attack. If we got this word out internationally, it might do some good.
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Funny how after 9/11, contributions to IRA terrorism from the US dried up overnight.
Listen up Irish Americans: the UK is by far your best ally in Europe, and Israel is by far your best ally in the Middle East.
Don't be duped again. Your actions are suppporting those who danced in the streets at the sight of people jumping off the twin towers.
http://nbyslog.blogspot.com/2010/06/geopolitics-of-religion-time-for-eu-to.html
if they are too craven . . hopefully the UN will finally stand up to the US and say we are dealing with israel . . .deal with your oil spill . . . we've had enough of your hypocrisy
Ehhh, the Rachel Corrie is Cambodian-registered.
http://bit.ly/bl0qU2
So, I don't think the registration undermines Professor Boyle's underlying point: Israel would be exposed to ICC prosecution if it attacks the Rachel Corrie.
In addition, as the direct descendant of Irish immigrants, I resent your associating the Famine with Gaza. There were no international aid organization in Ireland and massive starvation was the result. The citizens in Gaza are poor, but millions are not starving. Show me a single UN report that indicates mass starvation is occurring in Gaza
Finally, the Irish showed a good deal more practicality than the Gazans. They took the counties they could, when they could. The did not wait for the Northern Counties to be obtained.
Your comparisons, are pathetic.
All and every method was to be used in this 'civilizing mission' over time. In 1305 when Piers Bermingham cut off the heads of thirty members of the O'Connor clan and sent them to Dublin he was awarded with a financial bonus. His action was also celebrated in verse. In 1317 one Irish chronicler was of the view that it was just as easy for an Englishman to kill an Irishman as he would a dog
Nevertheless, there are many similarities between the Irish and Palestinian plights, so many that the Irish indeed make a natural champion for the Palestinians. Both people have been subjected to terrible land policy, disenfranchisement, generational poverty, lack of access to education, partitioning of their country and manipulation by clerics and political figures with their own agendas. Both have been led by groups deemed terrorist organizations. The ethnic Irish in the North were the victims of gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, discriminatory housing and labor practices, road blocks and harassment by police and military.
Look at the Irish now. They are a testament to the doctrine that if given the opportunity to live as humans, to be employed and have a house and food and not be harassed on a daily basis, they will choose to live in peace.
Umm, *what* censors?! Israel is a democracy with free press and so forth -- from the free dialogue we have about the incident you can see Israel and this site is not censoring ANYTHING. You know where people do not have the freedom to speak their mind, where women are forcibly kept in the home, under lock/key/veil? That's right places like Hamas-controlled Gaza... If you look at the West Bank under more liberal Fatah, you'll see people have more freedoms. Part of the reason Gaza is under war-like conditions is because Hamas rules with an iron fist... THEY are the ones you should be worrying about being "censored" by... not Huffington Post or Israel.
Keep patting yourself on the back for your brave run at the "censors"! You should get a bravery medal like the knife wielding "Peace Activists" are getting in the Arab World.
And... so, this Gaza place, nasty and brutish is it? Well - obviously that makes it alright to blockade it and make it even nastier, doesn't it?
Also, if indeed "knifes were wielded" against an armed trained combat soldier illegally boarding your ship and shooting your fellow passengers, and this is somehow cowardly, what does that make the politicians who sent the helicopters full of armed soldiers? Brave, no?
In a similar vein, the idea that Rahm Emmanuel (the person that was THERE while this raid was planned who is Obama's mouth piece) urged restraint is laughable. Rahm doesn't do "restraint".
http://www.google.ie/images?q=gaza%20dead%20children&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi
And if the PIRA had taken control of the government of the Republic of Ireland, the British government would have declared full scale war.
And when presented with the most clear-cut moral issue of the 2oth century, independent Ireland went dark. It chose to sit out all of WWII. That "neutrality" continued even after U.S. entry and the war against the worst tyranny western Europe had ever seen had long-ceased to be arguably some "English war" patriotic Irish could not bring themselves to back.
No one would have expected 50 divisions from Ireland; but even Latin American countries broke diplomatic ties. Yet Dublin, following diplomatic convention to the point of absurd, as a "neutral" offered Nazi Germany condolences upon the reported death of its head of state - with the end of the war days away and when contriving an excuse not to do so would not have been difficult. What a slap in the face to all the Irishmen who CHOSE to go abroad and join the fight against Nazism.
Also, despite the ongoing tensions, no one in Northern Ireland has been firing (London-supplied) missiles towards Dublin whenever it suits, or dispatching suicide bombers into County Louth to try blow up people in pubs.
Participation in WWII was not "clear cut": Britain had been burning down city centres, and unleashing irregulars to in terrorise civilians in Ireland 20 years prior to that - i.e. well within living memory. I'm more than a little bit fed up with that canard being thrown in our faces - Britain's participation in WWII didn't stop the early _Israeli's_ treating them as the enemy in '48, did it?
I had Irish-American relatives fight in WWII, there was no "slap in the face" given or perceived. The problem with this line in Ireland, is that it is usually used by people who basically want to harangue us about not being pro-British enough.
BTW, there actually were two German bombing raids on Ireland - as a warning because it was selling the British food supplies. There were also a couple of "British Loyalist" bombings, that the the dogs in the street know were carried out with British Military Intelligence connivance.