LAST week, two horrific events happened within twenty-four hours of each other.
On Friday, Flight 2283 took off from Cascavel in Brazil shortly before noon, headed for Sao Paulo Guarulhos International Airport. At 1.22 pm it lost radio contact and crashed 50 miles from Sao Paulo city. All 62 passengers and crew died. The Brazilian President has called for a national day of mourning.
On Friday also, in a Gaza school displaced people were gathered for morning prayer. As they prayed, perhaps to be kept safe from destruction, Israeli missiles struck the school and killed over 100 Palestinians. There have now been some 490 schools in Gaza targeted since last October.
You probably saw the horrific pictures of the Brazilian plane spinning helplessly before hitting the ground and exploding into flames and smoke. You’re less likely to have seen the horrific pictures within the Gaza school, and even if you did, we’ve all grown calloused in our response to the daily slaughter in Gaza.
The difference between the two events is that the Brazilian tragedy came from some mechanical failure in the plane; after their day of mourning the Brazilian authorities will look for the source of the crash and put in place safety measures to see it doesn’t happen again.
The Gaza school strike? There will be no inquiry. Israeli authorities tell us the school was harbouring members of Hamas and for that reason over 100 innocent people were killed.
The death toll in Gaza is nudging past 40,000 now. These people were killed by Israeli armed forces, who are totally unapologetic. There were Hamas people in the school, they claim, so of course they targeted it, even though they knew it would mean the death of many innocent Gaza people.
When the Brazil plane crashed into the ground and ignited in a fireball of smoke, the wheels of the plane didn’t apologise for what happened, the wings didn’t weep over the terrible loss of life. Equally, although made of flesh and blood rather than unfeeling plane components, the Israeli state did not rend its garments over the terrible loss of life. Rather, the Israeli state explained that there were Hamas people sheltering in the school, and…well... and nothing. To them, that was sufficient reason: Hamas was using the school as a shield against attack. And so they destroyed it.
It's as if the bank robber in an old movie was to emerge from the bank, holding a helpless woman as a shield. “Don’t fire or I’ll kill her!” he cries. Imagine if the police had opened fire anyway, killing the woman being used as a shield and in the same moment shooting the bank robber dead.
You probably noticed that Russia was blocked from participation in the Olympic Games because of its attack on Ukraine. In contrast, Israel sent its athletes and no-one complained.
Irish people felt euphoric about the performance of Irish athletes at the Games. But was Ireland prepared to withdraw from the Games in protest at the hell which Israel has turned Gaza into? Nah- that’d be too big a sacrifice.
You may think Israel’s mass slaughter would have produced some expression of disgust from the West, including Ireland. Taoiseach Simon Harris has declared “Ireland condemns outright such awful and wholesale loss of civilian life... We have been horrified by the many undoubted war crimes that have been committed in Gaza. There can be no impunity.”
Strong words by Simon. And yet he hasn’t expelled the Israeli Ambassador. He hasn’t called for the arrest of the war criminal, Benjamin Netenyahu. He hasn’t called for a boycott of all Israeli products. He has stood on the sidelines, wringing his hands.
Mother Ireland, you’re rearing them still.
