Taking a stand

By Gerry Adams (for Leargas)

The decision by Uachtarán Shinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald and Leas Uachtarán Michelle O’Neill not to attend the St. Patrick’s Day events in the White House and the Speakers lunch on Capitol Hill, will undoubtedly upset some of our friends across Irish America. This is very understandable.

Sinn Féin’s access to successive US administrations was won after decades of very hard work by many people across North America. Understandably they do not want to jeopardise or lose that influence. It is worth noting that in the past Sinn Féin has always attended White House events when invited, including during President Trump’s first term in office.

So the Sinn Féin decision was taken after much deliberation. The catalyst for this was the recent statements from President Trump in which he calls for the expulsion of over two million Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip, his refusal to countenance their return and his proposal that the United States of America will take over the region. The decision would have been the same had a democratic President called for the expulsion of two million Palestinians.

International law and successive United Nations resolutions and international agreements have long accepted the need for a two state solution and the right of the people of Palestine to self-determination. President Trump has torn these up in the interests of an Israeli apartheid state engaged in genocide and of those multi-national company’s eager to exploit the billions available in the off-shore gas and oil fields off the coast of Gaza.

The Irish peace process, the imperative of defending the Good Friday Agreement as well as the need for constitutional change and economic investment have always topped Sinn Féin’s political agenda in all our visits to the USA. Successive US administrations have played a positive and important role in building and sustaining the peace. The historic connections between Ireland and the USA are important to us.

We acknowledge this each time we visit America and Sinn Féin leaders who will be travelling again to the USA in March will do so again. They will actively and positively engage with political leaders, Irish America, the trade union movement and US business. As Mary Lou McDonald says Irish America and the USA is an “important partner for peace” and “St. Patrick’s Day, each year, is an important moment to re-enforce all of those connections.”

Irish republicans are also internationalists. We have a responsibility to use the opportunities available to us to raise our concerns about international issues where we believe the US administration is wrong. We do so with the Irish and British governments and in the EU and other international forums. We do so respectfully but firmly. Until now our criticisms have been ignored by former President Joe Biden and now President Trump.

From the first time I met President Clinton thirty years ago and thereafter with subsequent US Presidents I always took the opportunity to raise my concerns about US foreign policy about the embargo on Cuba, the plight of the people of Palestine, the efforts to advance peace in the Basque country, freedom for Leonard Peltier and of other issues of concern for Irish people and others. I travelled to Cuba and also Gaza. Undoubtedly this caused difficulties at the time for some of our friends in the USA. But like us their commitment to Ireland allowed us and them to overcome these differences of opinion.

Sometimes a stand has to be taken and friends can agree to disagree because our main common ground is unity for Ireland as set out in the Good Friday Agreement. What Mary Lou and Michelle are doing is taking a stand against what President Trump is proposing for the people of Palestine. To be silent or to acquiesce to the expulsion of a people from their homeland is be complicit in it. It demands, as Mary Lou says, “serious dissent and objection.”

So too does the use of USA armaments in Gaza and the West Bank and the White House endorsement of multiple breaches of International law by the Government of Israel.

The stance taken by the Trump administration is tantamount to throwing petrol on a fire. It is storing up a depth of division and anger that has never been witnessed before in the Middle East and it makes any prospect for a peace process problematic for years to come.

Urgent Appeal