Irish Examiner view: The world is watching the Middle East — and our response to events there
'I told the people gathered there that American doctors were reporting from Gaza that Israeli soldiers were shooting small children in the head.' 'Irish Examiner' contributor Maeve Higgins is led away by police after speaking out at an event in a New York church.
There is a moment in the new Alex Garland film — wherein an unlikely secessionist alliance of California and Texas battles with the other states — which may come to define 2024.
An unnamed paramilitary sporting combat fatigues and, in a bizarre but menacing touch, red sunglasses and hefting an assault rifle interrogates a motley group of people he has intercepted.
The character, played by Jesse Plemons, asks: “What kind of American are you?” To some extent it is the same question being posed by our contributor Maeve Higgins, a Cobh émigré, when she described her attempts to challenge political representatives and neighbours in Brooklyn over their attitudes to the conflict in Gaza.
In the she wrote of her emotional paralysis which was “compounded by the fact that, as a US taxpayer, I was directly involved. Israel was doing the killing, but the US was paying for it.”
One of the responses for protestors has been to take to the streets. Pro-Palestine demonstrations have been taking place in various countries around the world since October. In Ireland they have been regular and peaceful. In the UK’s main cities, with London as the focus, they have been held more or less weekly with sporadic indications that the situation could become messy.
France, home to large Muslim and Jewish communities, has been much less permissive with frequent bans on public gatherings. Germany is also restrictive with regular arrests. According to Al Jazeera Berlin police have confirmed that using the phrase “from the river to the sea” is currently considered a crime. It is associated with Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation, and because Federal authorities interpret it as a call to destroy Israel.
If the pattern is mixed in Europe, within the United States tensions are rising, and with them the political stakes, as we enter six months of high voltage campaigning between Republicans and Democrats.
Most, but not all, of the opposition to Israel’s behaviour which is being taken to the sidewalks, and especially the campuses, comes from people who would normally be supporters of Joe Biden. Hundreds have been arrested at more than 20 universities.
But these times are not normal, and the question vexing party managers is who has most to lose from the increasingly febrile confrontations between volatile crowds and riot police being aired nightly on network news.
A trenchant warning comes from David Axelrod, the commentator and strategist who was once adviser to former president Barack Obama. He said:
“The whole Republican message is, ‘The world is out of control and Biden is not in command’,” he said. “They will exploit any images of disorder to abet and support it.” For the Democrats their national convention this year will take place during August in a location which is indelibly associated with turmoil and street clashes between thousands of anti-Vietnam war activists and police who took a vigorous approach to civil unrest.
The battles in Chicago in 1968 were part of a shocking year in which the incumbent president Lyndon Johnson declined to seek re-election. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. American cities rioted. The North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive which made many question whether the war would ever end. Thousands of American servicemen were killed and wounded every month.
The disturbances in Chicago destroyed the Democrat campaign. There has only been one convention held there since, when Bill Clinton was in his pomp.
The key phrase recalled from 1968 was the chant of angry crowds: “The whole world is watching.” It will be watching again, and wondering what the answer will be to that film quote which has generated a proliferation of internet memes: “What kind of American are you?”
It is interesting to wonder what Seán Lemass would have made of the current predilections for weekly public protest over matters domestic and international had they taken place during his days as taoiseach.
We have some inkling because his views on democracy were highlighted by our political team as part of the selection for our regular On the Plinth newsletter this week.
Our correspondents highlighted an edition of the Cork Examiner from April 29, 1966, which reported on a speech Mr Lemass delivered to the Irish Countrywomen’s Association at the Mansion House, Dublin.
“The practice of publicising some complaint or forwarding some agitation,” he told his audience, was “fundamentally an attack on democratic government itself.” It was, he added, a step on a road “which led either to anarchy or dictatorship”.
There were examples of disruption to which Mr Lemass could have pointed, but he possessed the diplomatic skills not to do so.
On the same page were reports of the arrest of nearly 200 members of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association for a mass picket of Leinster House and Government Buildings.
Protestors were seeking a fourpence per gallon increase on milk supplied to creameries but were failing to make headway with the agriculture minister, Charles Haughey, the Taoiseach’s son-in-law.
The arrests were carried out under the Offences Against The State Act, a law which was originally created for use against the IRA.
Times, and methods of policing protests, have changed, and in some ways have become more softly-softly in response to public commentary. But there is a case for wondering why some demonstrations of the kind we have witnessed in the past 12 months face less rigour than a few farmers, seeking a fair price for their milk, experienced nearly 60 years ago.
The dance of the seven veils over Ireland’s housing targets is not so much a matter of planning permissions, cash flow, the availability of bricklayers and JCB drivers or even agreeing the optimum mix of private and social development.
At this level it is about politics and the fact there is an election on the horizon. And providing homes is one of the touchstones for gathering voter support.
The publication of revised targets have been pushed back from the first quarter of this year to “autumn”. As we have seen with government promises over its covid inquiry, commitment to meeting deadlines can be a moveable feast so it may still be premature to place bets on what the headline figure, covering social, affordable, private rental and private ownership homes, will be when it arrives.
Darragh O’Brien, the housing minister, said there is a target of building 34,500 homes this year. And that this will be exceeded.
At the Fine Gael ard fheis, Taoiseach Simon Harris committed to 250,000 homes being built between 2025 and 2030, although he eschewed any suggestion there could be a regular annual target of 50,000 homes.
“It’s roughly around where I expect the landing zone to be,” he said.
It is noticeable that those who are charged with meeting the goals are more cautious, citing the need to grow capacity in the construction sector where 25,000 more people are employed than they were pre-covid.
But what can be deduced is that any government pledge at the end of 2024 which falls short of the 250,000/five-year benchmark is likely to be given a very loud raspberry by voters.
If our political leaders know this, they must also have considered whether there is scope for being more expansive by year’s end.
Mr Harris said “not lifting” the scale of ambition would be “very underwhelming” for young people “and the parents who have the son or daughter in the box room”. Ambitions will have to go above an average of 50,000 homes per year to make a lasting difference given projections of population growth.
France added 320,000 homes to its supply in 2022. The UK added 234,000 despite doing its best “sick economy of Europe” impersonation since the 1970s. We need to do more, and the party that finds the right levers to pull will win the next election.
