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LAST UPDATE | 24 Apr
JOHN MILTON’S PHRASE, “Eyeless in Gaza”, from his poem Samson Agonistes, refers to the biblical story of Samson, forced to work in Gaza after his eyes had been burned out by the Philistines.
Faced by daily footage of the unbearable horrors being inflicted on Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military, there can be a tendency, and perhaps a temptation, for humanity to look away. To become “eyeless in Gaza”. There are profound reasons for us to resist that temptation.
Several factors may incline us towards avert our eyes. The relentless brutality being visited by the Netanyahu Government on the general Palestinian population is so grotesque that it is increasingly difficult to watch. In a spectacular inversion of the other biblical story of David and Goliath, today it is Israel that is a giant with overwhelming military firepower, entirely unconstrained, it seems, either by moral concerns or by its only serious ally, America’s President Trump, who broadly encourages the havoc.
After so many months of witnessing the mass killing, maiming and starvation of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, we risk becoming increasingly inured to it. Shakespeare warns us that, when “blood and destruction shall be so in use/And dreadful objects so familiar”, we risk all sense of pity being “choked” from us.
Our limited attention span is also understandably drawn to conflicts and chaos elsewhere in the world, including the madness and mayhem of Trump’s tariffs, and Putin’s ongoing war in Ukraine, with its echoes of Israel’s land grab and brutal targeting of civilians.
Moreover, relentless false accusations of antisemitism against anyone who criticises the Netanyahu Government’s policy towards the Palestinians are designed to intimidate and silence critics.
Even those who unreservedly criticise Hamas and their horrific attacks in October 2023, and the ongoing imprisonment of Israeli hostages, are badmouthed by the Israeli Government and its supporters, who consider that Israel’s behaviour should be beyond any criticism.
It is difficult these days to be optimistic about practical action. The United States will veto any balanced approach, including at the UN. The European Union must take into account how global issues are intertwined, including the need to cajole Trump into maintaining support for Ukraine, likewise a moral issue.
The US tariffs are, for the moment, occupying the bandwidth of global focus. Ireland, while continuing to be principled, must also be prudent and realistic. However, despite the distractions and the limited scope for action, the world should maintain its interest in Palestine.
Our starting point should be to recognise and assert that all innocent lives are of equal value. Israel, of all countries, ought to share that recognition. It is a principle that lies at the heart of the Irish Government’s approach and is, in essence, the ultimate reason that the Netanyahu Government has criticised Ireland so strongly.
Moreover, the world community should reaffirm at every opportunity that the Palestinian people have a right, equal to that of the Israeli people, to their own dignity, security, land and nation. The pulverising of Gaza and the relentless seizure of Palestinian land in the West Bank, a process started long before the Hamas attack in 2023, underline the overwhelming moral case for the recognition of Palestine.
To postpone such recognition until the country and its people have been eradicated from the map makes no sense. It seems increasingly clear that the Trump/Netanyahu axis is determined to take over Gaza and displace its people. To call such displacement “voluntary” is perhaps Trump’s most preposterous corruption of language in an increasingly crowded field of untruths.
The recent killing in Gaza of 15 paramedics and aid workers by the Israeli military was, in one sense, merely a continuation of a policy that treats the Hamas enemy and entirely innocent civilians as largely one and the same thing, a strategy that includes targeting hospitals, ambulances and journalists.
A majority of the unconscionable number of Palestinian dead and injured have been civilians. The only thing different about the recent killings is that they were filmed and witnessed. It is self-evident that the Israeli military would have stuck with their original false account of the incident had there been no hard evidence to contradict them. It is a reminder of how far we can trust their accounts of so many other incidents in which they claim terrorists to have been amongst the civilian dead, or to have attached importance to the protection of civilians.
Netanyahu claims two contradictory things about his country’s army. It is, he proclaims, both the most moral army in the world and the most efficient. Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. Either it is a moral army that does everything to avoid civilian casualties but is spectacularly inefficient in achieving that aim; or it is an efficient army that deliberately delivers unrelenting civilian devastation, collateral or otherwise, in which case Israel’s claim to be defender of important values is not pitched on any high moral ground, but is rather buried along with the ambulances of the aid workers it so recently killed.
John Milton is responsible for the phrase “every cloud has a silver lining”. It is hard to discern any light in the darkness being inflicted on the Palestinian people. However, the undaunted aid workers in Gaza, who risk their lives to assist the innocent and vulnerable, and the heroic journalists who bring it to the world’s attention, represent a bright light that is worth saluting.
Bobby McDonagh is a former Irish Ambassador to the EU, UK and Italy. He is an executive coach and commentator on subjects around EU and Brexit.
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