In Ireland, we swap principles for power

Ciaran Tierney
7 min readJan 24, 2025

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A poignant display in Galway in solidarity with the children of Gaza. Photo: Colin Stanley.

by Ciaran Tierney

Principles? Don’t be so naïve.

It is hard to beat Irish political leaders when it comes to speaking out of both sides of their mouths.

Election promises disintegrate as soon as the counts are concluded. And yet they try to fool us again and again and again.

Human rights are hugely important unless standing up for them angers our wonderful friends in Washington DC and Brussels.

Sharing the shamrock with the most powerful politician on earth trumps our concerns for other people who have been colonised.

And it’s never been clearer than in the new or current Irish Government’s attitude to Palestine.

They did it in 2020 and they are doing it again. Five years ago, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party included the Occupied Territories Bill in their General Election manifestos. In theory, there was nothing controversial about it — it was about refusing to trade with goods or services from settlements which are illegal according to international law.

But they abandoned the bill in exchange for going into Government with the right-wing Fine Gael.

And then Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem all produced reports which found that Israel was an Apartheid State.

And the Gaza Genocide happened. And they saw 80,000 to 100,000 Irish people converge on the streets of Dublin every month to show solidarity with the people of Palestine. As the election loomed on the horizon, our enlightened leaders suddenly showed interest in the bill again. A bill they had managed to ignore for four and a half years. Promises, promises, at least until the election was out of the way.

But, whatever about the people, that’s the true face of the Irish political class when it comes to showing solidarity to those who are experiencing oppression.

We champion them, we condemn the murders of innocent civilians, and talk about solidarity and justice, but at the end of the day when it comes to taking action, we are far more concerned about pleasing our ‘masters’ in the European Union and the United States than actually doing anything to halt a genocide.

Our new government, which is really just a continuation of the last one, has barely taken office and already they are showing that they are more than willing to trade principles for power.

As soon as the November 2024 election was over, the Occupied Territories Bill was either being watered down or abandoned altogether by those in power. Principles are well and good, but we cannot displease our betters in Boston or Berlin.

Not only is the Occupied Territories Bill being abandoned, a bill which would give a tiny bit of hope to our friends in the occupied territories of Palestine, our new Government have managed to sneak in an anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism which looks set to have a chilling effect on critics of Israel in Ireland.

Attending a vigil in solidarity with the people of Palestine in Galway. Photo: Colin Stanley.

If I ask why my friend’s grandmother in Gaza has no right to return to her home village just 20 minutes up the road, while people in Boston or Brooklyn can fly into Tel Aviv and become “instant citizens”, I’m in danger of being in breach of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

Don’t get me wrong. Antisemitism is a scourge. But weaponizing it by trying to silence those who speak out against the murders of thousands upon thousands of children in Gaza is simply wrong. The wording of the IHRA definition is so problematic that it has been opposed by opposed by human rights organisations around the world, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

And yet it is being “sneaked” in by our new government without any consultation with human rights organisations or, indeed, even being included in the manifestos of the two parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, who lead the new administration and have effectively controlled Irish politics since the foundation of the state.

Did you ever wonder what was the point of it all?

What was the point of surviving centuries of colonisation, the near-death of our national language, the literal deaths of a million people in a man-made famine, the forced displacement of ‘To Hell or to Connacht’ and the coffin ships to America, if we cannot raise our voices in the face of injustice?

Did we really survive ethnic cleansing, cultural genocide, and being treated as second class citizens in our own land only to turn a blind eye when it happens to others?

In Ireland, we seem to elect people who have little regard for our history or what it really means to have survived forced starvation, deaths on coffin ships, and the haemorrhaging of a huge chunk of our population.

Our politicians love taking their place on the world stage.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin was happy to pose by a damaged roof in an Israeli building while no European journalists were allowed to witness the slaughter just a few minutes down the road in besieged Gaza.

Hell, his party even invited the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland to their annual Ard Fheis at the outset of the 15-month onslaught in Gaza, at a time when Israeli political leaders were openly proclaiming their intent to wipe out every man, woman, and child in the tiny strip of land, which is home to 2.3 million people.

“A good foreign policy has to reconcile values with interests,” wrote former Irish Ambassador to the USA Daniel Mulhall in The Irish Times last week.

Who needs principles when we have thousands of people working for Google, Facebook, Microsoft and X?

Last year’s visit by An Taoiseach to the White House generated huge controversery at the height of the slaughter in Gaza. Cartoon courtesy of Carols Latuff.

Sharing shamrocks with the most powerful man on earth at the White House, persuading the poorest countries on earth that lovely little Ireland deserves a place on the UN Security Council — because we, as a formerly oppressed people, can show solidarity with those who are suffering now — or voting right wing Germans into the highest offices in the European Union. For the politicians, it’s all a game.

When it comes to solidarity with oppressed people, it seems that safeguarding the Irish economy is far more important than taking measures to oppose the forced displacement of families, the annexation of land, the building of settlements, or the bombing of thousands of children in makeshift tents.

No wonder our new Government are happy to “water down” the Occupied Territories Bill before they take office, despite having promised to enact it just before the General Election.

Because safeguarding Irish jobs is more important than showing that we have the courage and conviction to stand up for justice, equality, and international law.

Let’s leave it to the Europeans, they say. The same Europeans who stand with Israel and light up buildings in the Israeli colours while remaining strangely silent about the murders of 18,000 children in a place half the size of Co. Louth.

The same European leaders who describe Russian attacks on Ukraine, rightly, as “acts of pure terror” while providing the funds and the arms for the pure terror of Israeli bombardments in occupied Palestine.

Never mind that 59% of those murdered in Gaza over the past 15 months were women, children, and people aged over 65.

The onslaught in Gaza has shown the complete failure of international law. How can we condemn war crimes in some countries while funding them in others?

Thanks to brave local journalists, people all over the world have witnessed the bombings of hospitals, schools, universities, and crowded apartment blocks in one of the most crowded places on earth.

Month after month, people from all over Ireland have travelled to Dublin to join 80,000 to 100,000 people at rallies which call for an end to the Gaza slaughter. They will be back on the streets of Dublin tomorrow to highlight how little action our political leaders are prepared to take to back up their words of condemnation.

But, apparently, standing up against colonisation, ethnic cleansing, and occupation is “damaging our reputation” on both sides of the Atlantic.

Drummers lead a march for Palestine in Galway. Photo: Brian Murray.

Last week I met a woman whose husband and child were murdered as they made their way along the “safe passage” after they were ordered out of their home in Gaza City. I cannot imagine the trauma she has gone through.

I told her I was ashamed to be Irish.

Because, whatever about the ordinary people, the people who are in power in Ireland are just shameless sleeveens. Who needs principles when even our own Government now believes legitimate criticism of a racist, settler-colonial state is now beyond the Pale?

Why would we dare to speak out about the massacres of children in Gaza or the illegal seizure of land in the West Bank when we need to fawn over Donald Trump and Ursula Von Der Leyen in order to protect Irish jobs?

When it comes to pre-election promises, they just take us for fools.

* A digital journalist and Irish language planner based in Galway, Ireland, Ciaran Tierney has travelled extensively in the Middle East. He won the Irish Current Affairs and Politics Blog of the Year award. Find him on Facebook or Twitter here.

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Ciaran Tierney
Ciaran Tierney

Written by Ciaran Tierney

A former newspaper journalist, with an interest in human rights, travel, and current affairs, Ciaran won the 2018 Irish Current Affairs Blog of The Year award.

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