Mothers Against Genocide: Holding Space in a Frozen State

On Mother’s Day, at the Mothers Against Genocide vigil outside Leinster House, my view of tiny plastic candles flickering above a laminated photo of 17-day-old Ayat Firwana is blurred by tears I don’t yet know I’m crying. Ayat and her entire family were killed by an Israeli airstrike.

Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are instinctive trauma responses the body and mind activate when faced with perceived danger—by confronting it, escaping it, shutting down, or appeasing to stay safe (Cannon, 1929; Walker, 2013). Faced with my perceived powerlessness to stop the genocide—and a political establishment committed to mediocrity at all costs—I feel ashamed to admit I have been in a freeze response.

At the vigil, I express my admiration and curiosity about Mothers Against Genocide. Activism is a challenging space—ego can flow in and out of balance, burnout is common, and chaos often ensues. But as the evening wears on, I find myself full of admiration and gratitude for the lack of chaos, the thoughtful and kind energy, and the well-held space being provided by the organisers.

I’m in a WhatsApp group where an activist posts every time a warplane lands at Shannon. It’s like a birdwatching group, but for suspected bombs—Schrödinger’s bombs—that will never be inspected. As I watch an older woman place a white rose dipped in red paint on Ayat’s laminated face, I wonder about the origin story of the bombs that killed her family.

I go to sleep feeling grateful that the people of Gaza are back in my dreams, that the vigil created a safe space where I could come out of freeze and cry. Because that’s always the first step toward becoming useful again.

At 7 a.m, on my phone, I see Ayat's photo being ripped up from the ground without reverence or respect as Gardaí dismantle the shrine. Mothers Against Genocide are sitting peacefully against the railings, holding white muslin bundles shaped like dead Palestinian babies. In 2011, I was too intimidated to join Occupy Dame Street, but I walked by it every day for six months. Now I watch two Gardaí lift each woman, one at a time, placing them in a van under arrest. The images become kaleidoscopic—each woman maintaining dignity and poise, holding her "baby" as she’s taken away.

I overlay these images with scenes I’ve witnessed my entire life—women in Gaza being assaulted by Israeli soldiers. The contrast is palpable. This action gives us space to see. I am curious: what was so harmful, so offensive, that these women weren’t even granted six minutes’ grace to peacefully occupy a public street? Their presence didn’t block or obstruct any businesses. There are multiple entrances to the Dáil for cars and pedestrians.

We have to ask: why were activists in 2011 given six months to build a fully functioning encampment—complete with a communiversity—while women holding white cloth meant to represent murdered babies were arrested before they could deliver a modest letter asking our government to act?

Later that day, I read a post on instagram which reads: ‏I was stripped completely naked and was asked to remove my underwear. When I questioned the necessity of this, I was told that I would be forced violently if I didn’t comply and that they didn’t want any trouble. After removing my underwear, they looked inside my private areas and touched all my sensitive parts.

It sparks a connection in my memory to watching the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday, hearing the tape of General Sir Michael Jackson saying, “we must teach one of them a lesson.” We have to ask - who ordered this?

Michael Martin has said in the Dail that the words “complicit in genocide” make a great slogan, on Tuesday he said that its a myth that war planes fly through Shannon, and that the Garda deny cavity searches of peaceful protestors. Denial goes hand in hand with the freeze response as the mind scrambles to make sense of an unnatural position that it needs to hold to feel safe.

The political establishment in this country has been in a freeze response since the Civil War. They didn’t close the Mother and Baby Homes, they stayed in gentlemens clubs in Dublin debating when the North was on Fire. I think about the personal sacrifice of the women arrested on Mother’s day. I think about the mothers who lived through generations of occupation, apartheid and oppression, their childrens limbs lost from each other through acres of rubble and tiny pieces of bombs that might have recently visited Ireland, I think of the effort it would take, for Michael Martin to pick up the phone and end the use of Shannon Airport. I wonder if he himself is in a freeze response, and what I could do as an artist, to provide a safe container, just as Mothers Against Genocide did for me, for him to cry, to become embodied, because when you are connected to reality, and you hold power, the only response is to act.