DE FACTO: Speaking out of both sides of its mouth

Ireland is still hurtling its way along the EU highway towards more involvement in war. Despite all the talk from the mouths of the joint Fine Gael/Fianna Fail leaders about Israel and the destruction of Gaza and its people, the Irish Government still speaks out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to the arms industry.

On the one hand, politicians spout about Israel, yet on the other they delay the Occupied Territories Bill, currently waiting six years to be passed. This bill would ban trade between Ireland and Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

Politicians condemn the supply of arms to Israel, yet fellow EU countries, alongside Israel and America, consistently fly arms through Irish airspace illegally.

We hear calls for the Israeli ambassador to be expelled. If we are expelling anyone then it should be the American ambassador, followed by the German, French and British ambassadors. Their countries supply arms to Israel.

What Ireland says with political forked tongues has no impact. The country is not being taken seriously because we are cosying up to the EU when it comes to the development of defence policies and relaxing our neutrality.

The EU has two strong support streams, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Several EU countries supply arms to both Ukraine and Israel. Ireland is lost in the middle, with ‘non-military’ support for Ukraine and turning a blind eye to airspace breaches for planes carrying arms to Israel.

Former MEP Clare Daly summed it up in a recent podcast with the online news service The Ditch: “There is a huge section in Irish society who are Europhiles. They’re overrepresented in the political classes, definitely in the media and in sections of academia as well. They think that anything European is automatically better than anything that comes from Ireland and being Irish and being different is somehow shameful. So the idea that we would be neutral and different is a bad thing.”

She added: “They were always embarrassed that the Irish people returned Euro-critical MEPs. They were devastated when the people of Ireland rejected Lisbon and Nice. Oh my God, the mortification, they had to go and explain to their European peers how infantile and silly the Irish public were.”

The war in Ukraine was an opportunity ‘to silence to silence that Euro-critical voice that had always been there’.

Step in the then Taoiseach Micheál Martin with his Irish neutrality consultative forum and his claim that “the discussion will not simply be a binary one… these questions must not be reduced to a simplistic binary choice.”

He’s right in one sense – we cannot accept that Ireland can automatically melt into EU, American and NATO defence mechanisms. We cannot be seen as a country that simply sides with what are effectively imperialist powers. Those who oppose the Government’s stance cannot be simply labelled or condemned as those in government see fit.

Illegal arms flights continue, even after the Israeli army (the IDF) recently trained their tanks on Irish UN positions in Lebanon. “Israeli troops have attempted to intimidate and threaten the young Irish men and women at [UN camp position] 6-52 by positioning Merkava battle tanks on the perimeter of the post, with their 120mm main armaments aimed directly at them,” Senator Tom Clonan wrote in The Guardian.

What is wrong with a declaration that Ireland will become a state guided by peace? Why can we not embrace the work of our peacekeepers and become a nation that is renowned for conflict resolution? Why do we compromise peace by bowing to the war machine in its many guises – from American business dollars to further EU ‘integration’?

What’s wrong by standing up for peace – all the time, every time, for everything? Global power is no substitute for justice, in any language. President Michael D Higgins warned against a ‘dangerous drift’ towards NATO.

Philosopher Albert Camus once noted: “And because it is easier to do one’s daily work and wait peacefully for death to come one day, people believe that they have done enough for the good of man by not killing anyone directly, and by trying to lie as little as possible.” Cue Irish political leaders.