The Electronic Intifada Podcast 27 May 2025
When I messaged an Irish friend later about what I’d seen, he replied, “They do this most mornings to start people’s day with thinking about Palestine. Many beep to show their support.”
I was one of those who honked the horn and cheered. That capped an emotional and uplifting week, where I’d attended the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s National March for Palestine in Dublin on 17 May – coinciding with the annual commemoration of the Great Famine.
It was among dozens of actions in cities and towns all over the country that are going on every day.
The sense of love and support was unparalleled as people from all over Ireland recognized us in the street, greeting me and Abubaker Abed and expressing appreciation for the work of The Electronic Intifada team.We truly felt welcome.
It was moving and mesmerizing to listen to Eman Alhaj Ali and Abubaker speaking passionately to a crowd of thousands from the rally stage. “I never thought that this would be my story in my 20s, but here I am, like many other Palestinians, asking questions that have no clear answers,” Eman said.“Will we live to see the day when Gaza is free? Will we be even more than survivors? We are demanding our rights, we are not asking for miracles. And despite everything, hope is still there.”
On 22 May, Abubaker and I sat down together in Dublin to talk to The Electronic Intifada Livestream – something that felt impossible just weeks ago. And it was my first time as a guest on the Livestream, rather than a co-host.
Abubaker spoke about his difficult but necessary decision to leave Gaza.And we talked about the growing popular pressure in Ireland to finally pass the Occupied Territories Bill and take other concrete measures to halt Israel’s genocide (more on that below!).
“It was absolutely overwhelming and it felt like home,” Abubaker said of being at the rally. The solidarity, support and awareness of the situation in Gaza that he has witnessed justified calling Ireland the “Palestine of Europe.”
I spoke about how Palestinians can find great hope not just in the present-day solidarity movement, but also in Ireland’s own struggle against British colonialism and occupation.Sites I saw commemorating Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising against brutal British rule reminded me that that heroic rebellion was savagely crushed by the colonizers and its leaders cruelly executed.
But the Easter Rising nonetheless marked the beginning of the end of British rule in most of the country that would come just a few years later.
You can watch the entire Livestream for 22 May at the top of this article.
EU “reviews” trade deal with Israel
The program started with the news from associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman as Israel’s horrific massacres ceaselessly escalate.
In his resistance report, contributing editor Jon Elmer analyzed a complex ambush in Gaza’s Shujaiya neighborhood, as Yemeni forces expanded their missile attacks on Israel to include the port of Haifa. And the program, co-hosted by Nora and associate editor Asa Winstanley, featured an interview with London-based Irish lawyer Franck Magennis to talk about – as he put it – “the crisis of Zionism and some of the ways we’re confronting it in and beyond English courtrooms.” Also discussed was last week’s European Union announcement that it is reviewing its Association Agreement with Israel, a pact that gives Tel Aviv enormous trade and other benefits.The long overdue measure is widely seen as too little too late, yet it is still a sign that the status quo cannot hold as Israel perpetrates in Gaza what many are now openly calling a holocaust.
Safe in Ireland
Both Eman Alhaj Ali and Abubaker Abed have been regular contributors to The Electronic Intifada throughout the genocide.
They are among a group of students who received scholarships in Ireland, and close relatives of Irish citizens – about two dozen people in all – that the Dublin government was able to evacuate from Gaza in April.
I had the opportunity to meet privately with many of the students and hear their stories during my visit.
They have a long road ahead coming to terms with the genocide they have survived, a task made even more difficult given that Israel’s slaughter is only escalating and there isn’t a moment when they are free from desperate worry about their families still in Gaza.
But I came away with relief that they at least are safe and feel welcome in a country where they will have an opportunity to complete their studies.
Irish people demand action, not words
One thing you’ll often hear is that when it comes to Palestine, the Irish government is better than most.
And rhetorically – at least among European Union countries – that is unarguably true.
But almost everyone I spoke to in Dublin expressed a sense of frustration that the government is using words as a palliative, to avoid taking concrete action to hold Israel accountable.
At the march on Saturday, I met two longtime activists, Catherine Daly and Dee O’Shea.
O’Shea launched a petition – currently with more than 53,000 signatures – calling on the Irish government to enact the Occupied Territories Bill.
The legislation, sponsored by Senator Frances Black, would ban any trade in goods or services with Israel’s illegal colonial settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.
It easily passed its first stages in both houses of Oireachtas, Ireland’s parliament, six years ago.
“At this stage in the genocide it is unbelievable that Ireland has a powerful bill, that could help the people of Palestine, waiting in the wings to be enacted since 2018,” the petition states.
“It took immense effort from many political, academic and legal minds to get the bill to its present position in the legislative process. There is no legal excuse for stalling it any longer.”
Since its initial passage, successive Irish governments have found excuses not to advance the bill.
Ministers have asserted – dishonestly, according to experts – that it would violate EU law.
Irish government “stalling”
O’Shea told me that the latest government tactic is trying to remove services from the scope of the ban on settlement trade, limiting the Occupied Territories Bill only to trade in tangible goods.
That would create a giant loophole that would gut it of much of its effect.
Simon Harris, Ireland’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, is however feeling the public pressure.
Last week, he told Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE that he’s trying to move the bill forward.
“I have no policy disagreement with those who want services included in the legislation, none whatsoever. What I do have, though, is a view that legally it isn’t possible to do the services,” he asserted.
But Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman, who served as a minister in Ireland’s previous government until January, has disputed this.
“The attorney general provided, last July, a very detailed assessment of Senator Frances Black’s bill,” O’Gorman told RTE earlier this month, but stressed, “there was no reference to an issue around services in his very detailed legal advice.”
The current government is using the issue as another stalling tactic, according to O’Gorman and other observers.
Harris also would not commit to moving the legislation through its final phases before the Irish parliament’s summer recess – a lack of urgency that horrifies citizens watching Israel’s atrocities escalating by the day.
Dee O’Shea is not relying on Harris’ highly qualified commitments to advance the Occupied Territories Bill.
“Ireland cannot afford to relax now when it comes to the bill,” she wrote me by email. “We are so close and the inclusion of services is essential.”
“Simon Harris is also now saying it won’t be enacted until after the summer recess, which means autumn at the earliest if at all,” O’Shea added.
“That is unacceptable. The movement views these issues as a dilution of its potential impact and a continuation of stalling.”
O’Shea is urging people in Ireland to keep demanding that both goods and services are included and that Harris steers it through parliament before the summer recess in July.
Ireland recognizes Gaza atrocities as “genocidal”
Perhaps most significantly, Harris referred in his RTE interview to Israel’s actions against Palestinians in Gaza as “genocidal.”
That term carries legal weight because as a party to the Genocide Convention, Ireland has undertaken to “prevent and to punish” the crime of genocide, including the “attempt to commit genocide” and “complicity in genocide.”
Having uttered that word, Harris can never claim the Irish state did not know that was is taking place in Gaza is genocide, and that it is obligated to act to the full extent of its capacity to stop the slaughter.
Activists in Ireland are under no illusion that their country alone can halt Israel’s genocide. But many told me they believe that by acting decisively, Ireland will break the ice and set an example for other countries to quickly follow.
The potential is enormous and the stakes could not be higher.
You can watch the program on YouTube, Rumble or Twitter/X, or you can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.
Tamara Nassar produced and directed the program. Michael F. Brown contributed pre-production assistance and Eli Gerzon contributed post-production assistance.
Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada livestream can be viewed on our YouTube channel.
Add new comment