Palestinian Support in Ireland: An Interview with the IPSC
By News Editor David Twomey
Above: Brian Ó Éigeartaigh, Media Officer for the IPSC
Ireland’s public opinion on Palestinian rights has always been a rather unique bastion of support in Europe. During the initial months of the ongoing conflict, Israel’s heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu stated that Palestinians should ‘go to Ireland or the desert’. Although subsequently disowned by the Israeli Government, the statement reflects the perception of Ireland refraining from the European status quo of Israeli support. In recent polling by Ireland Thinks, an Irish sample representative of census demographics showed that 71 per cent of the Irish public agree that ‘Palestinian people live under a system of apartheid implemented against them by Israel’. This sentiment has also been actively expressed by the Irish public; over the past few months, an estimated 80,000-100,000 people have marched in Cork and Dublin in support of Palestinian rights, with these marches being organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC). With many growing opposition parties, such as Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats, present and voicing their recommendation for Ireland to join South Africa’s International Court of Justice’s case regarding genocide in Israel, the Government of Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael and the Green Party’s wary response to the current conflict has been in stark contrast to the vocal Irish voters and opposition. The University Express interviewed Brian Ó Éigeartaigh, Media Officer of the IPSC, to discuss the group’s current organisation of Palestinian solidarity, the Government’s recent track record of inaction, and the Irish public’s support for Palestinian rights.
What is the IPSC?
The IPSC exists ‘to mobilize people in Ireland to support the political, civil and human rights of all Palestinians, and to work for their national and democratic rights including the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.’ Founded in 2001, its objectives encompass promoting Irish political engagement in support of the issue, raising awareness in the Irish public, and promoting Palestinian culture. Another key objective is to support the Palestinian right to self-determination: international plans of establishing one or two state solutions, or recent drives in establishing a Palestinian Authority in Gaza, are firmly not endorsed by the IPSC, with Ó Éigeartaigh stating that ‘externally imposing the Palestinian Government of their choice in Gaza is absolutely horrible and completely undemocratic, and the normalisation of those kinds of utterances by politicians is deplorable.’
The IPSC and related movements have seen strategic success in recent years, not only from huge increases in public support, but in changes made in business and Government. The IPSC promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, led by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, which calls ‘to impose boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era’. The student unions of Trinity College Dublin, UCD, UCC and the Union of Students in Ireland have endorsed the BDS campaign.
The BDS successfully campaigned Ireland’s largest MNC CRH plc to divest its 25 per cent equity stake in the Israeli cement market in 2015 due to their supplying for the illegal separation walls in the West Bank. Last month, Cork County Council declared its support for the BDS campaign, agreeing ‘not to purchase goods or services produced or provided, in whole or in part (as practicable) by Israeli companies, or companies that support the Israeli State.’
The disparity between public sentiment and Government action
A notable outcome of the aforementioned Ireland Thinks poll is the differences within party supporters: supporters in all parties had a majority agreement of defining the treatment of Palestinians of Apartheid. 86 per cent of Social Democrats, 80 per cent of Sinn Féin and 71 per cent of Fine Fáil agreed, but the lowest majority was in supporters of Varadkar’s Fianna Gael, with 56 per cent. Appeasement of more differentiated supporter base may be another factor in Varadkar’s statements, but Fianna Fáil leader and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin’s support of Israel (including a recent visit organised by the state of Israel) has faced criticism from opposition TDs such as Paul Murphy, alongside many of his potential voting base. Ó Éigeartaigh stated that ‘the government's response to all of this has been absolutely shameful.’
So why is Ireland’s current Government, who’s opposition are already gaining position to the elections next year, not supporting the widely held public opinion? In regards to maintaining international relations, this highly contentious and publicised topic is a difficult position to define, and Taoiseach Varadkar has been coy in his public responses to the ongoing war. In publicly defining a position, Varadkar has argued that policy multilateralism with the EU is essential, and thus the EU must act in cooperation if changing their stance; thus, it would be the wrong decision for Ireland to independently step out in calls for defining Israeli policies by the International Criminal Court’s 1998 Rome Statute definition and legislating accordingly. Ó Éigeartaigh, however, denotes this standing as a ‘red herring’ of diplomacy: with Germany almost guaranteed to veto any opposition action against the current stance with Israel, this multilateral movement proposed by Varadkar is in practice nearly impossible.
Varadkar’s stance on the issue (along with many European leaders, notably France’s Macron) have begun to change. Initially when asked by RTE whether Ireland would be joining or supporting the ICJ case of potential genocide, the Taoiseach firmly rejected the idea. Recently, he has stated that Ireland would ‘consider’ joining any continuance of the case. According to Ó Éigeartaigh, ‘The reason he travelled from one extreme to the other was because of public pressure because of all the opposition parties were united in condemning the genocide and in demanding that the Irish government took action.’
Ireland’s Unique Public Position & The Lack of Media Coverage
A common critique of opposition towards Israeli occupation and territorial expansion is that it’s motivated by antisemitism. However, in the last year of fully published official data by An Garda Síochána (2019), Ireland has very low rate of incidents regarding antisemitism compared to much of Europe (albeit different data definitions makes it difficult to aggregate the data).
Source: European Union Agency for Human Rights: Antisemestism in 2022 Report (2023)
Ó Éigeartaigh was critical of the movement’s portrayal in some Irish media outlets, including opinions in the Irish Times, which he said ‘has recently published pieces which were almost slanderous of the wider movement… portraying widespread pro-Palestinian sentiments were in the context of anti-Semetism in Ireland, which was absolutely appalling’. Ó Éigeartaigh rebutted that on multiple occasions, members of the IPSC responded with letters and Op Eds which were not published in the newspaper, commenting that this ‘basically falsely allowed a particular person a monopoly in what Jewish people in Ireland would think’. An independent organisation, Jews for Palestine Ireland, have partaken in many of the organised demonstrations.
The underrepresentation of this topic in the mainstream news cycle is incumbent of the whole movement, argues Ó Éigeartaigh. The IPSC’s media campaign has seen regular press conferences, notably recently which all opposition parties attended. In this, opposition continued to publicly to declare its support for Ireland to follow UN Human Right distinctions for Israel being an apartheid state and that current Israeli military action met the 1948 Genocide Convention definition, a highly important story for Irish politics. However, no major news outlets attended, ‘basically silencing the media event of the week’ according to Ó Éigeartaigh. To supporters of Palestinian rights in Ireland, he stated ‘don’t stop talking about Palestine is all that I would say: over the last number of months we’ve seen the Irish media trying to move this off the news cycle.’ The IPSC’s press conferences and demonstrations, despite arguably low coverage, are continuing to draw large numbers of public supporters. With Sinn Féin currently strong leaders in the polls, next year’s election could have substantial implications for Irish foreign policy.
Possibility for change?
What are the next steps for the IPSC? Ó Éigeartaigh says pushing the Government to pass the Occupied Territories Bill and the Illegal Israeli Divestment Bill are a first priority: ‘These two things are just doing the decent thing. They’re not signed, they’re not proactive sanctions per say, but that will create a ripple effect, and certain countries will follow us.’ With opposition parties continuing to gain support, the Government’s enactment of such bills, if not done solely on ‘moral grounds’, may be an important change of policy to potentially retain support of the Irish public.
‘I have strong hopes that the next government will do the right thing.’
The IPSC continues supporting the Palestinian BDS National Committee’s movement to ban the imports of Israeli goods, as well as boycotting companies working in Israel such as AXA. With Cork County Council now following their recommendations, Ó Éigeartaigh states that public support of BDS campaigns is the most important opportunity for change in the Israeli state. These changes would push Ireland to be an exception to European foreign policy. Notably however, such an outlying stance has important historical precedence in Ireland: it was the first country in the West to support an import ban of South African apartheid-era produce. ‘That was also at the time against the advice of the Attorney General. They were forced to think again.’ This was a three-year strike by Irish workers (initially in Dunnes Stores) in handling South African produce during the apartheid regime, which ended in 1987 when the Government introduced a ban on all imported goods from South Africa. And with 71 per cent of the Irish public believing that Israel is an apartheid state, Ó Éigeartaigh hopes that the IPSCs rapidly growing support and Government pressure may push Ireland to continue to be an outlier in the West.
