28.11.25 -334 - Bear witness: Saoirse don Falastin

Yesterday, after school which was very full on as usual, I went to St Comgall's centre and watched the film about how Irish voices advocate for the Palestinians. It made me think of how fucked the world is now. How with the Gazan war, the Israelis have created two kinds of people - the one kind are the kind who think that bombing hospitals, schools, universities and raping prisoners to death is horrific. And the other kind, the kind which the Obamas and the Clintons and the van der Leyens and the Musks and the Theils - how they they that this is ok. The eggs that need to be broken. Who are even these people? 

The red lines have all been crossed like they have never before. I do not think - maybe we have to go back as far as the Romans and Greeks to have barbarity which the Israelis have visited upon the Gazans - and the world looks on and splits into two. If in your mind, somehow, you have managed to justify the horrors which they have come with, then you are unwell. Your humanity is seriously compromised and now amount of education and money will ever help you recover. That's it though, isn't it? That's it. That humanity is not for sale. And in fact, the wealthier and more educated you are the better you get at kidding yourself. Because you are now part of that class and you either grow a pair and stand up to that class OR you end up just capitulating because you are too lazy to do anything about it. Or to cowardly. The thing though is that you could be next. The winds will shift and you will be next. And you will have done nothing to stop it when you should have.

I said to Emma after that, going to that just makes me so terrified. How do these people do it? How? To bear witness. I couldn't do it. The sheer levels of helplessness. But someone has to do it. Someone has to make it possible. To tell the story. 

The importance of watching the film on the Falls road is not lost to me. The same levels of violence and brutality were visited on the Irish. They didn't drop bombs, but they did starve them eventually. But the Irish, after 800 years, they still fought back. They fought back with everything they had. Even their language. As a political entity, Ireland is still colonised. No more colonised than say the rest of the world is colonised by neo-liberalism. But the fight still goes on. For me the fight at school is the fight I put up with. I am giving the children all the tools they could have to fight on.

How to think. How to deconstruct. And we do it with geometry. We discuss philosophy using geometry... We are back with Plato now.

I don't know what else to say... It breaks my heart, all the time... but this the world we are in now and we are going to continue. We hold the flame of humanity and we will strive on.