President calls for action on Palestine crisis in final Ploughing address

By Rebekah O'Reilly

President Michael D. Higgins used his final visit to the National Ploughing Championships to deliver a powerful address on the urgent need for international action on the crisis in Palestine.

Speaking from the Grand Stand on Tuesday, September 16, the President reflected on the history of food production and its role in shaping societies.

“When you’re looking back at the history of the world, the production of food was so important in the beginning in the Mesopotamian valley, and as people produced a surplus, how they handled that surplus,” he said.

He highlighted Ireland’s long tradition of hospitality, adding that food has always been more than a commodity.

“In all of the cultures of the world, including Ireland, there was a great emphasis on hospitality. And it was that which meant that there was a nutrition of sharing what we had, so that no one was left exceptionally scarce.

“It is important to remember that you can never totally regard what happens in relation to the production of food as something that is a commodity just simply defined by market conditions. People need to know not just the production of food, but the remuneration from that production and the distribution of it.”

The President also noted the responsibility of governments to protect farmers from exploitation within the retail sector.

Turning his focus to global hunger and the crisis in Palestine, President Higgins raised the staggering numbers of innocent people dying from starvation in the country.

“I have used the word food a few times now in speaking to you. But how do you think I feel when I look on all those children dying of malnutrition because of the conscious deprivation of what they need? Is that 6,000?

“My predecessor Mary Robinson stood at the crossing in Rafah and she spoke to the lorry owners. And when you do have 6,000 trucks loaded with what is necessary, and they are being blocked from going to the people who are starving, and of the people who died today and yesterday, half were women and children.”

he recalled his own time in Somalia during a famine, he added the world cannot stand and wait while children continue to die at a rate of more than five per day.

“This is a famine that should have stopped long ago. We cannot hesitate, even a day, waiting for the United Nations in late September. How morally acceptable is it to say we’re seeking to influence those responsible for this?"

President Higgins called for those responsible to be excluded from international organisations, insisting that respect for international law and moral principles must be upheld.

“There is a deep inequality at the cause of all this. Palestine was not an empty space. It had Palestinians who were working in it, farming it, and living in it. Yet during the British Mandate they would not say the word Palestinians. They said eight million people are of Jewish faith, and the rest are non-Jewish.

“There is a Palestine, there was a Palestine, and there will be a Palestine again in the future.”