Protests against war in Gaza continue in Cork

Hundreds of people turned out on Saturday to protest Israel’s war in Gaza, where the death toll is approaching 62,000 and the United Nations has repeatedly warned that famine is gripping the besieged enclave.

Cork has seen a city centre march for Palestine every Saturday afternoon since the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas-led militants, which saw 1,200 Israelis killed and 250 hostages taken.

Since then, the death toll in Gaza has risen to 61,897 people, with 155,600 others wounded, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry on Saturday.

The UN World Food Programme has said a third of Gaza’s Palestinian population is going days without food, with half a million people on the brink of starvation.

Saturday’s rally was the 97th such weekly march in Cork, and it coincided with vigils held across the world to protest the rising death toll in Gaza and the killing of journalists by Israeli Defence Forces.

Targeted

Last week, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif (28) was among six journalists killed in a targeted Israeli air strike. According to the UN, the number of journalists killed in the conflict now stands at 242.

On Patrick Street on Saturday, hundreds of people marched in silence to a drum beat, some wearing vests reading ‘press’, although some in the crowd complained about “mainstream media bias”.

Citing research from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs in the US, activist Martina Stack told the rally that more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the US war in Afghanistan combined.

“Now with the last journalists in Gaza city dead and buried, Israel hopes they can carry out their plans with total impunity, hidden from the eyes of the world,” she claimed.

Will

She read the will of Mr al-Sharif, in which he said: “I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland.”

Ahmad, a dentist from Gaza who is now living in Cork, said he had watched a recent 10-minute aerial video of Gaza.

“Seeing that video made me come to tears, the place I will always call home was no more,” he said. “I believe that was their plan to begin with, to make Gaza uninhabitable, to encourage people to seek a way out and to ethically cleanse the population.”