Realities of the Gaza tragedy

Event organiser Emily Barrett with Mohammed Jendia.

Three different perspectives of the same story backgrounded the showing in Kilcullen's Town Hall last night of Israelism, writes Brian Byrne. There was a full house for the screening of the documentary, which takes the theme of how the traditional America-Israel relationship can fall apart at individual level when reality is confronted. But there were also people there with direct knowledge of the impact on ordinary people by the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Their stories? An escape to Ireland by an young Gazan with his sister's two little children — the mother had been killed by Israeli bombing. The sadness of a woman who wrote about Palestine two decades ago that nothing has changed since ... except that it has all gotten worse. The anguish of an Irish pro-Palestine Jewish activist over genocidal actions by the state of Israel.

Mohammed Jendia, a 23-year-old software coder, told the Diary about living under the initial bombing of Gaza City after the October Hamas attack. His father is unwell and when Gazans were told to go to the 'safe' south of the enclave, Mohammed stayed with him while his mother, and his sister and her two children — aged four and one — went south. Later they heard his sister and children had been injured in bombing, and they decided to go to them. "We had to walk, we weren't allowed use a car. I carried my father's bag as well as my own, as he couldn't do so." When they finally reached their family, his sister had died from her injuries, Mohammed and his father not getting the chance to day goodbye.

"My sister's husband lives in Ireland and he arranged for visas for me to bring his children to him," Mohammed says. "I set out with them, knowing nothing about caring for small children — my mother had to show me how to change the baby's nappy. When we got to the crossing to Egypt, we were sent back because our names were not on the crossing list." The 4-year-old, Ali, was asking for his mother, but Mohammed couldn't bring himself to reveal their mother, his sister, had died. "We'll be with your Daddy soon," he kept saying. After a number of days they were allowed through and travelled on to Ireland. Mohammed is now living here, with no home or work to go back to, and last night's screening of Israelism was raising funds to try and bring out the remainder of his family still trapped in Gaza.

Felicity Heathcote and her husband Dr Niall Holohan.

Felicity Heathcote's The Resting Place of the Moon was first published in 2007, based on her experience of the West Bank and Gaza where she and her diplomat husband Dr Niall Holohan lived from 2002 while he was Ireland's representative to the Palestinian Authority. During that time, Felicity and her daughter Clare worked with UN agencies, among other things training local psychologists to help people deal with the mental difficulties brought by the ongoing conflicts. Her premise in The Resting Place of the Moon is a Conference of Birds, where birds bring from different areas of the Holy Land the stories of tragedy, brutality and, occasionally, inspiration. "Rather naively at the time, I thought that if I could bring these stories to the attention of the world, something could be done," she told the Diary last evening. "Twenty years later, everything has got steadily worse, and still nobody speaks out against it." In addition to a re-print and updating of The Resting Place of the Moon, Felicity has recently published a second book, A Gaza Diary, a record of some of the terrible sufferings of the people of Gaza over decades. "Nothing has really changed since the winter of 2008/9 other than the scale of the death and destruction," she says sadly. Proceeds from both books go to helping the people of Palestine.

Jacob Woolf.

A third speaker last night, Jacob Woolf, is an Irish activist with the Jews for Palestine group. Jacob says he is representative of a 'significant and growing' cohort of Jewish people in many countries who are against their identity and tragic history being used to "justify and whitewash what is the genocide currently taking place, as well as the legitimacy of what Israel has done." Born and raised in Ireland, Jacob's Jewish roots go back through generations of rabbis, originally to Ukraine.

The screening of Israelism may have brought to a Kilcullen audience new knowledge about the influence of the American Jewish support for Israel since 1948, as it follows two American Jews through their own recent journeys to an understanding of the reality. In the US and Canada, a strong online campaign describing the documentary as anti-semitic tried to have screenings cancelled in a number of venues, notably universities. In many cases those cancellations were reversed following the intervention of academics.

For last night, it was very clear that those present were already supporters of the Palestine cause. Perhaps a preaching to the converted, and not garnering the potentially dodgy media traction that noisy protest marches bring. This tragedy will not be resolved soon. But if the story continues to be told, word by word may, slowly but inevitably, trump chaos with reason.

ED NOTE: We'll be telling the stories of the three speakers in more detail later.

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