THURSDAY of last week marked the 26th anniversary of the bomb in Omagh. My home town, as it happens: Ten yards from the epicentre of the explosion I got my fortnightly hair cut, ten yards the other way I had my first date.
It was a horrific event: 29 people and two unborn babies were slaughtered, 220 others wounded. The bomb didn’t discriminate. Protestants and Catholics, teenagers, children, men, women, Spanish tourists, day-trippers from the South – the bomb consumed all.
Last week also saw contemporary slaughter. A school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza was targeted by the Israeli military and over 100 innocent people were killed. That’s more than three times the number killed in Omagh.
It has been alleged that British, Irish and US intelligence agencies had information which could have prevented the bombing in Omagh, because of double agents working within the Real IRA. It is not a claim but a fact that the US government could have prevented last week’s attack and many others. How? By closing down the supply-line which the US has been using for decades to feed weapons of all kinds to Israel.
The Omagh bomb shocked the world. Leaders from around the globe joined in sympathy; a monument was created to remember the victims.The school bombing by Israel? Despite involving three times as many casualties, it is fated to blend into the larger horror that Israel has visited on Palestinians. Over 40,000 defenceless people have now been killed by the IDF, Israel’s ‘defence’ force. In time, another atrocity will eclipse this one.
How can these horrors be ended? Most people would say that here in NEI the horrors have already ended. But remember John Caldwell? He was a prominent member of the PSNI in Omagh and he was shot and very nearly killed as he ended a football training session for young people.
Such killings will only end when the source of the enmity is identified and the will to remove that source proves strong enough. In the Middle East we have long known the source of the enmity – the actions of the state of Israel. The contempt of Israelis for Palestinian lives did not begin in October 2023, in response to the slaughter of 1200 Israelis by Hamas. It began with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the brutal domination of Palestinians from that time on.
If you treat people as sub-human for long enough, you’ll either break their spirit or sow grievance that will ultimately emerge in the form of revenge. Israel, it would appear, is intent on breaking the spirit of the Palestinians. It is a calculation they have made, supported by the US. It is in fact a miscalculation. Dragon’s teeth are being sown today in Gaza, and they will emerge with a vengeance in the future.
“But can nothing be done?” you say. “Both sides loath each other.”
That’s true, but change is possible.
Down the centuries England has done terrible things in Ireland. The hundreds of thousands who died in the Great Hunger were just one instance of England’s cruelty which Irish people cannot forget. And yet today I suggest you’d struggle to find an Irish person who hates English people. Britain is as keen to end its colonial presence in Ireland as Irish people are to see them gone. A coming border poll can bring to an end centuries of oppression.
Will a similar concession of sovereignty be made by Israel to the Palestinian people? It seems unlikely; Israelis have been taught to see their neighbours as sub-human. But despite that, throughout the world there are Jewish people who feel shamed by Israel’s slaughter and are working for a two-state solution. Even as the bodies of Palestinians pile higher and higher, hope remains alive.
