Geri Halliwell, Gaza, and why it matters when it started.

While listening to the Irish Times Inside Politics podcast, I was struck by an exchange between Pat Leahy and Hugh Linehan.

After a long discussion naming the actions of Netanyahu’s Government as war crimes Pat interjects with the following statement:

“I think it’s always to correct to mention at this point that this was started by a Hamas attack on Israeli citizens on October 7th 2023—”

In 2022, Amnesty International released a l report declaring that Israel is perpetrating the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, describing it as a “cruel system of domination” enforced through segregation, land seizures, movement restrictions, and violent repression.

The roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are traced by some to the violent displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba, when the state of Israel was established on land where Palestinians had lived for generations. Israel’s repeated military assaults on Gaza — in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, and 2021 — killed thousands of civilians with impunity. Between 2008 and October 2023, over 6,400 Palestinians and around 300 Israelis were killed, the vast majority of Palestinian deaths being civilians.

In any conflict, from two toddlers fighting over a toy, to entire nations enduring years of war, when it started, and who started it, is important to those who are in it, so I was shocked to hear a journalist saying it started in 2023.

I’m curious about who this framing benefits. It would take a few extra seconds to remind listeners of the context — you don’t even need to go back as far as 1948, or 1917 when the Brits first stole Palestine. You could mention very quickly the fatal attacks by Israel in living memory, or even just the ones you yourself reported on.

The words “terrorist” and “terrorism” trace from the French Revolution, an act celebrated by most nations around the world. Violence is used in most conflicts, from those between children and those between ‘legitimate’ nations, but it was Margaret Thatcher who reframed terrorism to mean those ordinary people who resist occupation and apartheid through violent means.

The lexic trick is to make us see the distinction between terrorists and warmongers as those who target civilians… but her own British Army murdered civilians all the time. She just began a framing war about who gets to get away with murder.

It follows that only colonial power can harm any group of people and only armies deemed legitimate by nation states can respond.

It’s a colonisation of who has access to violence.

Mo Chara from Kneecap is being prosecuted for holding up the flag of a group labelled as terrorists. But you might also do a thought experiment: Ginger Spice could have been equally prosecuted for wearing the Union Jack dress — a red and blue rag of rage to the civilians victimised by it the world over and the terrorised families of many innocent people who were shot dead by its soldiers on our own soil.

The difference is the coloniser, the occupier, the nation state has bought the frame, either by owning the people who write the language we all use to have the conversation or by creating a threat of legal action against well meaning journalists that forces them to tell a lie (It started on October 7th) if they have been on air for too long telling the truth (Israel is committing war crimes).

It’s also true that a mother might say to her children, “it doesn’t matter who started it! Just stop it now” — the timeline of history sometimes won’t matter when the starvation of babies is what’s at stake.

But unfortunately, what history tells us is that if the root causes of conflict are bypassed, you might save the baby only for it to be murdered as a toddler.

We owe the ability to record podcasts to a violent uprising on our island. We have come through an unsolvable conflict and enjoyed relative peace while Palestinians lived under Apartheid.

It would be useful if journalists explored why our government are not offering to lead by using our experience to bring about a lasting peace. But given the conservative media managed to ignore the conflict in the north of the island while reporting on the price of beef, I don’t hold much hope.

“And of course it’s correct to say Israel is occupying Palestine” can be said in 2 seconds.