OPINION: Ireland on the right side of history on Palestine as isolated US and UK position indefensible

Amid the sickening scenes emanating from Rafah over recent days, there is one I can’t get out of my mind – the father of a 14-year-old girl decapitated during the Israeli strike last weekend breaking down as the blue carrier bag containing her head is untied and he identifies what remains of his daughter’s face.

The girl is among the almost 8,000 children who have been killed in Gaza since October 7; the scene just one scene in a litany of horrors, death and destruction visited on defenceless, innocent people.

But her death and the thousands of others was not enough. When asked by a commendable journalist how many charred bodies it would take before Biden’s ‘red lines’ would be crossed this week, a spokesman for the White House gave yet another weak, fumbled excuse for not withdrawing military assistance to Israel.

Israel it seems is still allowed to investigate and excuse itself as far as the US is concerned.

The ICJ rulings have not been enough. The arrest warrants for war crimes were not enough. The ongoing genocide case against Israel is not enough. The barring and destruction of aid entering Gaza was not enough. The killing of aid workers not enough. The mounting death toll and the global outrage is not enough. So we shouldn’t be surprised. It seems the blood red lines of the US and the other apologists for these massacres – nations that have consistently opposed UN resolutions and global calls for a ceasefire- didn’t exist after all.

There is no blow too low and no court high enough for the US administration and indeed the UK to join the rest the of the world in taking an unequivocal stand against the killing.

The same nations that readily and rightly condemned the atrocities visited on innocent people in Israel on October 7 cannot bring themselves to do the same for the innocent people of Palestine. And the world will never forget that.

The one chink of light over recent days has been the recognition of Palestine by Ireland, Spain and Norway. Along with the ongoing mass protests, that may force the hand of a European Union that has itself been found wanting and at odds with the opinion of the majority of its citizens into imposing sanctions on an administration that has exposed itself as a rogue state, albeit one with powerful friends who have already lost the argument and their credibility in the process.