From Ireland to Gaza, starvation has been normalised

 

Almost two centuries separate the famines, but the atrocity inflicted on the Irish people in the 1800s is echoed today in the denial of aid to Palestinians

It is 1847 in Ireland, and the country is in the grip of a famine that will go on to kill more than one million people and force another two million to leave the soil of their birth. 

Dozens of carts loaded with food and supplies are making their way through the countryside, guarded by 25 British soldiers and several armed police officers. 

“Bullets, bayonets and cavalry swords” are at the ready as the convoy passes through villages where people are starving, according to the account of an eyewitness journalist. 

Such scenes were common as food, much of it for export, wound its way through towns and hamlets that chroniclers of the time described as filled with “skeletal” people. 

The Irish, though often conveniently portrayed in Britain as stoically accepting their starvation, were ready to take matters into their own hands to feed themselves.

“Food riots” had become common leading up to the 1847 peak of An Gorta Mor - the Great Hunger - with mills, bakeries and meal shops raided, livestock stolen, and carts and cargo boats hijacked. 

Those who were caught were subject to the absurd charge of “plundering provisions”, though there were some lenient judges who recognised the difference between criminal activity and hungry people forced to take matters into their own hands in what was not only a legitimate form of protest and resistance, but a matter of necessity.

Today, nearly two centuries later, the cavalry swords and bayonets are gone. But far from Ireland, in Gaza, food is being kept from people with sniper rifles, drones and a ring of steel.  (more...)

From Ireland to Gaza, starvation has been normalised