There is so much I want to say. So much I have felt incapable of expressing. So much that is being distorted and misrepresented and manipulated in order to allow powerful people to retain power. At the expense of so many innocent lives.
It is hard not to feel overwhelmed when every day there is something else.
Another bombing.
Another lot of lies.
Another disappointing response from elected officials who are meant to represent us.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to feel powerless. Because that is the intention.
Thankfully, I am reminded of Toni Morrison’s words:
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Toni Morrison, The Marginalian
So we write. We speak. We put words to these horrific atrocities, because silence allows them to continue. Our silence is not only deemed compliance and approval, but it also censors others from speaking up.
South Africa has given us all hope, by taking Israel to the International Court of Justice, to hopefully stop the endless attacks on the Palestinian people that have so far resulted in at least 23,469 people being killed, mostly children and women, and more than 59,604 wounded since October 7.
Their legal team includes an Irish woman, Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, who gave a powerful, cathartic closing statement on the first day of the case:
And another Irish woman, Clare Daly MEP, who has long been championing freedom for the Palestinian people, has thankfully called out our Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, for his misleading and incorrect statements:
These women are writing, are speaking, are taking action and using their positions of power to express our collective frustration, fear and overwhelm.
Even the Yemeni people cannot be silenced, coming out in protest against the US & UK’s attempts to bomb them into submission!
Let this be an inspiration and a lesson to us all – if we can physically show up, let us be there tomorrow – either in Dublin, elsewhere around Ireland, or wherever you are in the world!
And, if we can take a moment or two to use our own positions of power to write and speak up for the people of Palestine and all people under oppression and occupation, you can take one of the many actions listed on this helpful file to email/call/use your voice:
Petitions/emails and phone actions you can take in Ireland
Know that you did something, anything at all, to not only protect the people of Palestine, but protect ourselves from letting people in power wield it without consequences. We should all be afraid, but we should not be silent.
Siobhán Kangataran 