COLUMN: Search the planes, not the women

In the early hours of Monday morning, a week ago yesterday, a group of women named Mothers Against Genocide were nearing the end of an overnight vigil outside the gates of Leinster House to commemorate the children of Gaza massacred by the Israel Defence Forces. With children of their own, they were of all ages, some Irish, some Palestinian. They had planned to read and deliver a letter, and had, according to Justine McCarthy in the Irish Times, informed a garda the night prior that they intended to move from the gates by 7.30am to make room for staff arriving for work. The Dáil does not sit on Mondays.

But before dawn, gardai arrived, and amidst cries of indignation, started dismantling the shrine of photos. The women sat in front of the gates in response, and reinforcements arrived. The display was destroyed, trampled upon. Protesters were aggressively dragged away. Eleven men and three women were arrested and taken to various garda stations in Dublin. Some of the women report having been strip-searched, with one claiming she had been 'touched in her sensitive parts'. The same woman, from Palestine, claims her hijab was confiscated. The gardai have denied a cavity search took place but have not denied the strip searching.

Monday, for this writer, marked a watershed. On Friday evenings in my hometown, a group gathers on the bridge to remind people how many days of genocide the Palestinian people have endured, and to let the Palestinian people know that while the Irish government fails to take meaningful action to back up its words of condemnation, the ordinary people of Ireland have not forgotten them. This week marks the first time that is has ever occurred to me that participating in a peaceful protest may no longer be safe for me as a woman in my own country.

This brings with it great fear, and great shame. I cannot fathom how, in any civilised country, the use of strip searching of women engaged in a peaceful protest could be considered appropriate, and the woman’s claim of being inappropriately touched would amount to nothing less than state-sanctioned sexual assault. Without exaggerating any of the events above, I cannot tell you as a woman just how terrifying that is. It also presents quite the quandary for Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan, given that both An Garda Siochána, and CUAN, the new statutory agency dedicated to tackling and reducing domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, operate under the remit of the Department of Justice.

It also strikes me as quite extraordinary that such a peaceful protest was so violently disbanded, while all around the country, we have watched gardai treat disruptive far-right protesters who aim to frighten and intimidate immigrants and communities, with kid gloves. This disparity, disproportionality and cherry-picking what constitutes public order or disorder suggests that double standards are in operation in in our policing and undermines public faith in an already beleaguered profession. I am certain, too, that there are gardai who are equally disgusted with the way some of their colleagues behaved last week towards these women.

The immediate response of our Taoiseach and government TDs was to try to justify the actions of the gardai, once again reminding women where our place is, and how hard it is when we are violated to simply to be heard and believed.

This government has already reneged on its pre-election promise to prioritise the enactment of the Occupied Territories Bill. Given that our Taoiseach has taken it upon himself to endorse the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, a definition which has been discredited by several human rights groups, among them Jewish groups, and which places peaceful protests such as ours, at risk. The use of Irish airspace to transport weapons to Israel continues to be sanctioned by our government, and while innocent women are stripped in cells, planes remain unsearched.

The silence of Garda Commissioner Drew Harris on this has been deafening, but the women online will not be silenced. And as Israel continues to slaughter the Palestinian population, while men in suits around the world wring their hands, turn a blind eye or worse still endorse this barbaric regime of ethnic cleansing, it is the ordinary men and women of countries like ours who will continue to hold courage and into the moral void, shout stop.