How Gaza Relates to the Great Hunger in Ireland

Ray’s reflections on Justice, Gaza and his Irish heritage

Thinking further here in Athens about my motivation in joining this Beloved Community on “The Audacity of Hope,” it occurred to me that my Irish genes may also be playing a role.

During the potato famine, when my ancestors were being oppressed as the Gazans are today, how they would have wished for some sign that someone abroad actually cared about how they were being deliberately left to starve to death, while the English were exporting Irish produce for lucrative sales. How much in need of some support, if only moral support, they must have been….those of them who had not the money to get on the overfilled boats out of Kobh and Belfast, as Irish cattle and produce were being exploited by the English landowners for lucrative sales.

Sails of a different kind they must have longed to see on the horizon –sails belonging to a Justice-oriented, dare I say “Justice-obsessed,” people trying to show the emaciated, oppressed Irish people that someone from abroad CARED about their plight…..there was virtually NO expression of international solidarity then…….as now, in the case of Gaza. Israeli officials have actually bragged about “putting Gazans on a strict diet” — in other words, condemn them to a subsistence living just barely above where they would starve and perhaps subject Israel to charges of ethnic cleansing by starvation.

Thankfully, four of my greatgrandfathers survived the famine. And both my grandfathers — as well as my grandmothers — had the audacity of hope, so to speak, to leave Ireland for America.

The grandfathers found work in the U.S. Post Office — both of them. My mother’s father, Lawrence Gough, eventually became a supervisor in one of the branches in the Bronx. My father’s father, Philip McGovern, became a proud letter carrier in the central Bronx neighborhood into which my father, my five siblings, and I were eventually born — and where I spent my first 22 years.

Phil McGovern the letter carrier. It struck me that, in carrying letters of support to Gaza, I am trying to be faithful not only to a faith tradition with the inescapable mandate that we “Do Justice,” but also to the Post Office and letter-carrier tradition that I inherited from my grandfathers. As our Irish cousins like to say: “Yes, I do believe so.”

 

From Robert Naiman – Ray’s roommate on the flotilla

Written on our beautiful boat whose canopy is a giant peaceful American flag, as we sail the waters off the coast of Greece and are intercepted by the Greek coast guard.

If you think we’re not accomplishing anything sitting here in Athens, read this piece…we provoke Israeli officials to make mockery of themselves, even as we sit in coffee shops…

http://972mag.com/flotilla2962011/

 

Wednesday, June 29 2011|Noam Sheizaf
Flotilla: Even state officials say Netanyahu, IDF spread lies

According to government sources, the army doesn’t have any evidence that the flotilla activists are planning violent resistance, yet it publicly accuses them of conspiring to murder soldiers

The top story in two of Israel’s leading daily papers yesterday was a bombshell: The IDF unveiled plans by flotilla passengers to kill soldiers trying to stop the ships from getting to Gaza.

Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most widely read paper, ran a headline declaring “Flotilla activists set to kill,” which was attributed to military sources (but only in the fine print). The story declared, “Intelligence information revealed violent plans.” In the inside pages, the headline declared that this flotilla is considered to be “more violent than the previous one.” Maariv’s top story covered the same topic: “IDF intelligence reveals: Lethal acid on flotilla boats.” The free paper Israel Hayom had a smaller headline in the front page. “Fear: Flotilla activists will try to kill soldiers.” Haaretz is the only paper that didn’t give the story such prominence in its print edition, but it was the top headline on the paper’s website throughout the previous evening. The Jerusalem Post’s headline read “IDF: Some flotilla activists planning to kill soldiers.”

You can view all front pages of the Hebrew papers in this pic, taken from the media blog Velvet Underground. Yedioth and Maariv are the bottom two. [pic at link] Chemical Weapons? Against the Israel Navy Seals, Air Force and war ships? Even as a suicide mission, it sounded too fantastic. And how could this flotilla be “more violent,” when the notorious IHH, whose members were on the Mavi Marmara last year, cancelled its participation? Who exactly is going to execute the soldiers with the lethal acid, 64- year-old Alice Walker? It was the kind of propaganda no thinking person could believe, yet the entire Hebrew media – even Haaretz! – went for it.

Luckily, it didn’t take Max Blumenthal to debunk this one. The media’s tone today was entirely different. Government sources have told Maariv that the so-called “intelligence information” was a spin by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, reflecting “a Hasbara [propaganda] hysteria.”

“It’s unthinkable that in cabinet meetings we receive information according to which there are no threats of violent actions from the flotilla activists or [indication of] the presence of terror elements on the ships, and that at the same time, senior political sources, including the army, feed the media with information that is the exact opposite of what we were given.” Information that the media was only to eager to swallow, one should add. A day too late, Yedioth Ahronoth’s military correspondent was the voice of reason in his paper:

“There isn’t a shred of evidence that extreme elements will initiate resistance against IDF soldiers. There is no knowledge of the existence of firearms on the ships.”

The damage, however, was done. The reports of the murderous intentions of the flotilla activists traveled around the country and across the world. Not for the first time, a group of unarmed European and American activists traveling on old yachts was presented as a threat to the security of the region’s superpower. The only question is: for how long will the world continue to buy these kind of stories? Maariv’s story today offers a comment from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office, claiming the information that was passed to the media came from IDF spokesperson unit. In response to my question today, the IDF spokesperson’s office made it clear they stand behind the information that was released yesterday.

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman@justforeignpolicy.org

 

From Readers of Ray’s “Great Hunger” article

Dear Ray,

Thank you for your fine article in Counterpunch. Please persevere in your invaluable work on behalf of all of us who believe in justice for the ‘little people’ of this world (which includes almost all of us).

In friendship and solidarity,
Brian Victoria
Professor of Japanese Studies
Antioch University

 

Dear Ray McGovern,

Just in relation to your article on the Irish Famine/Gaza in Counterpunch (Kobh is incidentally spelt Cobh, and a nice place to visit if you are able to make it to Ireland).

The Famine is a bit more complex than nasty English and poor Irish. Irish Catholic merchants in my home city of Cork played an active role in the exporting of food stuffs for the benefit of the British Empire, they also engaged in price fixing and the hoarding of grain in particular, one storehouse was broken into when a mini-riot broke out on one of the city quays (not far from where I grew up). In West Cork, Protestant Ministers ran soup kitchens in a desperate attempt to feed the starving, so there were people on all sides. I have come to appreciate, history is not so black and white as we were taught growing up.

One fact that I always find interesting about Gorta Mor (Gaelic for the ‘Great Hunger’) was the response of one native American Indian tribe, amazingly the Choctaw people heard of the suffering Irish and sent $710 dollars at the height of the Famine in 1847 (just 16 years after they had experienced the trail of tears). It was an enormous sum of money at the time. Years later in June 1995, Irish President Mary Robinson visited the Choctaw and on behalf of the Irish people thanked them for their assistance, it was an amazing moment. She said the following:

“My coming here today goes back to an event of almost 150 years ago. I am here to thank the Choctaw Nation for their extraordinary generosity and thoughtfulness when they learned in 1847 about the plight of poor Irish famine victims,” said President Robinson. Thousands of miles away, in no way linked to the Choctaw Nation until then, the only link being a common humanity, a common sense of another people suffering as the Choctaw Nation had suffered when being removed from their tribal land. She continued, “At an assembly (in 1847) $710 was raised and sent to Memphis to be used for the relief of Irish famine victims. I am glad, as President of that same Irish Nation, to come here and thank the Choctaw people and also to learn from your act of generosity.”

Interestingly, the great orator and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, visited Ireland in 1845 and said the conditions of the impoverished Irish in Dublin were worse than those he had seen as a slave, a rather remarkable statement by any stretch of the imagination.

It was a British (mainly English) administration in the ‘Castle’ in Dublin as well as the government in London who a) didn’t have a system in place to deal with the Famine b) didn’t believe the reports coming in and c) some of them must have thought that a famine would solve a lot of socio-economic problems, regarding the latter tenant farmers out of sheer desperation were forced to give up their holdings to the benefit of the English landlords (a lot of them were absentee landlords living it up in London from their ill gotten gains in Ireland). Remarkably, even after independence some of these people were left in place, today the Duke of Devonshire still has massive land holdings in Ireland and controls the fisihing rights to Youghal harbour (located in East Cork).

http://www.youghalonline.com/2011/03/05/duke-urged-to-return-fishing-rights-to-youghal/

Simon Schama covers the Irish Famine and the thinking of the British establishment (with their early devotion to ‘free market ideology’ which had such damaging consequences both then and now) what is also worth noting from his programme (see link below) is the appalling famines that took place in India, resulting in many millions of dead, something that rarely mentioned but which Schama to his credit covers in detail:

The Empire of Good Intentions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHDPjso5FKE

Feel free to come back on the issues above if you wish.

Reagrds,
Gerard Horgan, Ireland
BA (History, cum laude)
MA (International Relations, summa cum laude)

 

ger-

my most sincere thanks; thanks to you and others, I keep learning; you are, of course, quite right; nothing is black and white…..or tan.

thanks again
ray

 

Ray,

My grandfather fought the British in the Irish war of independence (his house was raided by the British in 1920), he fought the Black and Tans in Cork and saw the city burned down in 1921 but he also saw the last British soldiers leave in 1938 when the Treay Ports were handed to the Irish Free State. My late uncle told me that he and and my grandfather travelled to Cobh and watched the last British soliders row their boats out to their ships bringing hundreds of years of brutal occupation to an end, apparently there was much cheering and weeping.

My great-grand uncle perished in the trenches in Northern France on the 16 July 1916 (anniversary coming up), I have his medals to keep the memory alive for future generations and to highlight the futility of war, he mistakenly thought he was fighting for Home Rule for Ireland, something that was never delivered. Maybe you can get to Ireland sometime, when here you will get a real grasp of the issues on the ground.

All the best,

Ger

 

Thank you, Ray McGovern (and you too Robert Parry) for “Gaza and thoughts of a starving Ireland”

We can only guess how God feels as he watches disinterestedly from afar as the “Little People” are pushed around.

Have you considered how God’s wife, the Goddess, views this ongoing worldwide travesty of Justice?

After all, she knows that in Ireland (and outside it too) in the Homeland of the Little People, the Eternal Light of Justice

has never been extinguished – despite 800 years of unremitting colonial intrusion.

Calm seas to you on your most consequential voyage to a spiritually starving Israel.

 

A letter from a heretofore unknown Irish “cousin”

Dear Mr. McGovern,

I’m contacting you from Cork city in the Republic of Ireland having just read your article on the Gaza TV news website ‘Gaza and thoughts of a starving Ireland’. This is not something I would normally do but I’m so infuriated by news of the sabotage on the Irish aid ship to Gaza-the MV Saoirse- that I felt I had to contact you when I saw your email address.\

You and the others like you who are battling to get this much needed help to Gaza deserve all the support and encouragement you can get as you are faced with these outrageous attempts to deter you from your peaceful mission. I just wanted you and your fellow activists to know that there are a lot of people like me in Ireland and around the world who are watching these events closely and are hoping and praying with you.

If any of you are feeling disheartened by Israel’s latest blatant disregard for the law and if any of you are afraid that you’re fighting a losing battle, please know that the normal citizens of the world are outraged along with you. I do not belong to any groups or organisations, I’m not a religious or highly politically minded person. I am simply human, a normal human being who cannot abide the suffering of another human being. I have a keen awareness and appreciation of my country’s long and turbulent history and so, naturally,

I feel that Ireland should be very sympathetic to the plight of Palestine. The daily injustice and suffering faced by the people of Palestine so closely mirrors that of my ancestors (and yours) I can’t help but feel that the ‘leaders’ of this country have short memories as they, like so many other governments, are failing miserably to do anything that will help to ease the suffering of Palestine.

The work that you and the others like you are doing cannot be praised highly enough. I hope that ‘The Audacity of Hope’ and its fellow aid convoys will be allowed to continue your mission unthreatened and unharmed, and that the messages of love support and solidarity from around the world may reach Palestine.

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat a chara,
Ciara

 

From Ray – How Gaza Relates to the Great Hunger in Ireland

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/world/middleeast/26gaza.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast

“Building Boom in Gaza’ Ruins Belies Misery That Remains” (sic)
By Ethan Bronner, June 26, 2011

Here is the New York Times’ Mid-East Bureau Chief, Ethan Bronner, whose son has been serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) providing his slant on Gaza. Seldom have I seen such transparent propaganda.

Read the headline carefully; is it not a piece of work? What does it mean to convey? And the opening sentence: “Two Luxury hotels are opening in Gaza this month…..”. And so it goes.

This particular Bronner story reminded me of the outrage exhibited by my Russian professor at Fordham. There was a text, “Simplified Russian Grammar” by Fayer, Pressman and Pressman, and it was — how to say — not fully objective. When we came to the chapter that had the kolkhozniki washing their cars on weekends, our Russian teacher blew her stack.

We sort of knew that your normal garden-variety kolkhoznik probably did not have a car to wash — and perhaps not even a hose to wash it with. But our professor used the occasion to give us a full hour of instruction on propaganda…and not only Russian propaganda.

I began to wonder: If you can’t believe Fayer, Pressman and Pressman, well, could it be that, on occasion you might think twice before believing the New York Times either? (Those without a bit of gray in their hair need to understand that, at the time, the NY Times enjoyed the same sacrosanct status equivalent to a college text on Russian grammar. The Times has come a long way.)