Mayo protestors seek ‘end to Gaza genocide’
Members of the Mayo branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign outside Aras an Chontae last Friday morning with Sinn Féin Cllr Gerry Murray
Members of the Mayo branch of Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) carried their message seeking an end to the genocide in Gaza into the chamber of Mayo County Council last Friday.
A group gathered in the public gallery during the council's annual general meeting, holding placards and white bundles of cloth, which have become a representative symbol of the deaths inflicted upon ordinary men, women, children and babies in Gaza.
Mayo IPSC chairperson Debbie McCole, a native of Ballina, told the more about the symbolism behind these items, known as shrouds.
“They are props to represent babies in shrouds. They are an estimated 400,000 people dead in Gaza. Even Donald Trump has acknowledged there was a huge decrease in the Gaza population from 2.3 million to 1.8 million, over half of which are children,” she said.
“As mother, teacher and a human being, I cry every day about children who are starving, who are being sniped, who are being killed and blown up.”
Ms McCole said the group attended the meeting as there were several things they expected from the council that have not been done.
“Mayo County Council hasn’t done much in relation to Palestine. They did one motion last November calling for a ceasefire but we are looking for full support of an undiluted version of the Occupied Territories Bill,” she said.
“We want the council to call for an end to the use of Shannon Airport by US military planes and to support calls for the Irish Central Bank to no longer facilitate the sale of Israeli war bonds,” she said.
Later that day, Ms McCole, members of the IPSC and other members of the public gathered on the Ham Bridge in Ballina for their weekly ‘Bridgil’, a weekly protest calling for an end to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which Ms McCole describes as a “full scale Holocaust of historic proportions".
“I will go to the grave shouting about it. We don’t want our county to be the one that looked away, we don’t want our town to be the one that kept the Biden mural up, even though it is still there,” she said.
“We don’t want Ballina to go down in the annals of history as a town who enabled genocide through silence - silence is complicit.”
The presence of the protestors at the AGM was acknowledged and supported by several councillors.
