In an Irish memorial, I see echoes of Palestine

The figures by the River Liffey in Dublin are more clothes than flesh.

- Andy Young

The Famine Memorial, created by Rowan Gillespie, holds in bronze a moment of suffering, the settling in of the Great Hunger, which would cut Ireland’s population by more than a quarter, the gone either dead or emigrated.

Up close, the faces of Famine are shockingly realistic in not only their emaciation but their expressiveness: some staring down, several registering a kind of shock, almost wonder, that they could be in the state they are in. One man’s all shadow and veins, the mud-andrust colours of the metal, combined with the moody Dublin sky, making him more shade than substance, but the dead child draped over his shoulders like a lamb puts him in clearer relief.

Palestine. That's where my mind goes as I look at them. I have seen these same faces in Gaza for nearly two years now. We have all seen them, if we have been willing to look.

Travelling in Ireland this summer has put in sharp focus the question of who chooses to see whom. Of who is commemorated and who is erased.

Solidarity with Palestine is everywhere in Dublin: at pubs where the Palestinian flag is nearly as common as the Irish one, as the given in political conversations, on clothing (I bought a “Saoirse Don Phalaistin” T-shirt/"Freedom for Palestine” in Ireland’s native language). I don’t worry about wearing my keffiyeh, as I do in most places in the US, where I live. Notwithstanding a small but chilling wave of right-wing anti-immigrant violence in the north, it’s generally understood that the country gives implicit support for Palestine.

This differs from the stance of most of Europe over the last few years. But the rest

of Europe does not have Ireland’s history. Ireland was the oldest English colony and endured 800 years of its chokehold. It recognises the patterns it is seeing.