Cork people undertaking three day fast to highlight Gaza plight

MEMBERS of the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign have begun a 72-hour fast and sit-out in front of Cork City Hall.

The fast started at 9am on Monday and will continue until 9am tomorrow, with activists sleeping out and fasting for the three-day period.

Eve O’Riordan, a Cork mother who is one of the fast participants, said their intention is to draw attention to the current situation in Gaza.

“Children are now dying of starvation in Gaza while UN aid trucks only a few miles away from them are being turned away, blocked from delivering their life-saving cargo by Israeli forces,” she said. “The preventability of these deaths is just horrific.”

She added that they are also fasting to call on the Government “to take concrete action to hold Israel and its allies like the United States to account”, such as placing economic sanctions on Israel, passing the Occupied Territories Bill, expelling the Israeli ambassador, and stopping the US military from using Shannon Airport.

Ms O’Riordan said: “At the moment, I feel deeply uncomfortable with the way Micheál Martin and the Irish Government is representing the Irish people.

“I want them to take a much more robust and effective stance against the injustices faced by Palestinians.

“So many Irish people were heartbroken as they watched Irish shamrock being presented to the leader of the country that is arming Israel to the teeth with the bombs and bullets that have killed over 32,000 Palestinians in less than six months.”

Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign is also holding other events as part of Israeli Apartheid Week, a global campaign encouraging people to boycott Israel and end business with companies that organisers say are “complicit” in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands.

In Cork, pickets took place outside McDonald’s yesterday, and another will take place from 2pm to 4pm tomorrow at the Axa Insurance office on South Mall.

On Friday, Saleh Hijazi from the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement national committee will speak at the Imperial Hotel at 7pm. On Saturday, the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s 25th weekly rally will take place in the city centre from 1pm.