Oisín Coghlan
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
the protests that will occur inside and outside the stadium will let those who think Ireland is anti-Semitic be even more strong in that case.
And the other thing to say is that US public opinion is turning significantly against Israel.
The latest polls say 60% are now concerned about the US relationship with Israel, 80% among Democrats.
So we need to stand on our principles and not be terrified of what rogue states, whether that's the US or others, will think about our behaviour.
And what Sarah just said means that if there's a perception of anti-Semitism, it's a chilling effect on what we can say.
Just on the question of Ireland, the public's position, and are we obsessed with Israel?
I think there is an affinity with the Palestinian cause, dating back to the fact that after the First World War, we managed to disentangle ourselves from the British Empire,
and have independence, whereas Palestine got dragged into that.
100 years later, we're celebrating 100 years of independence.
They are seeing their chances of statehood being systematically destroyed by their neighbouring country.
And so I'm not surprised that we have some affinity with that.
As to why we focus on that as opposed to other places, I think some of that is just people can't, people have a limited bandwidth.
And of course, because of Trump in particular and the media,
The world's focus is on Israel and the Middle East.
So people respond to what, despite the fact of all information is available to us on the Internet, people respond to what's put in front of them.
And as a light of that, they've been acting in solidarity and acting in response to the horrendous crimes against humanity that they're seeing in the Middle East.
And on the actual headline in Eanna Malley's piece about EU action, I actually think, you know, all we can do is put our grains of sand Can we reflect as well that Hamas also committed horrendous crimes against humanity?
I'm not suggesting it does in any way.
And Trump's Board of Peace, we haven't seen that recently, where's all that money gone?