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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Viewpoint: Do you know your Fundamental Rights?

The 10th anniversary of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights was marked on 1 December, writes Brian Byrne. What does that have to do with Kilcullen? Nothing, on the face of it, and yet, everything.

The Charter encompasses the ideals underpinning the EU — the universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity, which have created an area of freedom, security and justice for people based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law.

Its roots go back to 1950 when the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was adopted. But the Charter of today came into effect with the Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009. It is legally binding in every EU member state.

The Charter comprises 54 articles that ensure the rights of EU citizens in the areas of dignity, freedoms, equality, solidarity, citizens' rights and justice. Recent inclusions are rights on data protection, guarantees on bioethics, and the requirement for transparent administration. An example of rules so generated is the General Data Protection Regulation. Upcoming additions include EU protection of whistleblowers who report breaches of EU law, which will enter into force in 2021.

MEPs approved measures to promote free and fair elections in March 2019, introducing sanctions to European political parties if they misuse people's data during an election campaign.

The European Commission also agreed a code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online, with Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Youtube and other digital companies.

Bottom line, while the Charter is about all of the above, fundamentally it is about you and me, our community and our country. Which does indeed make that 10th anniversary relevant to Kilcullen.

And, while it might seem that all this can be left to our elected representatives to deal with, the Charter only works if we, the people it is designed to protect, make sure they're doing it. For that, we need to know at least the basics.

You can learn more here.

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Des Travers talk on Palestine investigations to Maynooth Law

Kilcullen's Colonel Des Travers will provide his reflections on military and legal perspectives on the Gaza Strip in a talk at Maynooth University on Monday evening, 23 March, writes Brian Byrne.

The talk coincides with the presentation of a report to the UN Human Rights Council by an independent Commission of Inquiry on the Gaza Conflict set up to investigate violations of international and humanitarian human rights law following last summer's 'Operation Protective Edge' by Israel against the Palestinian community, in which more than 2,100 people died, mostly civilian inhabitants of Gaza. Some 11,000 Gazans were also injured by Israeli bombing and shelling.

Des Travers, who has been interviewed on his experiences several times here on the Diary, served with various UN peacekeeping missions in the Middle East and the Balkans. He is now a director of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations in the Hague, where he trains and supports teams involved in the investigation and prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Colonel Travers was a member of the Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict that was deployed by the United Nations in 2009, following Israel’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in the Gaza Strip.

The talk is in the Renehan Hall, South Campus, Maynooth University. Attendance is free and all are welcome; please email law@nuim.ie to register. The event is organised by Maynooth University Department of Law.

Gaza: When will we ever learn?

Des Travers examines an unexploded bomb in South Lebanon in 2006.

With what can only be described as the inhuman atrocity of the current situation in Gaza, we should remember that we have been here before, writes Brian Byrne. Israel has previously conducted obscene warfare in the region, as this story published on the Diary in 2006 records.

Des Travers investigating for Amnesty in South Lebanon in 2006.

It's from an interview with our own Des Travers, after his investigations in South Lebanon on behalf of Amnesty, where he found 'abundant evidence of the targeting of undefended civilians by all available military means'.

And in 2009 he was part of a UN Human Rights Council investigation sent to interview people affected by the three week war in Gaza, which took place at the beginning of that year, after which Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights groups reported that more than 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, including more than 700 civilians.

The UN team was led by former South African judge Richard Goldstone. He said they had found that there was strong evidence to establish that numerous serious violations of international law, both humanitarian law and human rights law, were committed by Israel during the military operations in Gaza.

As it goes in a line of the anti-war song Where have all the Flowers gone?, 'when will we ever learn?'