President Michael D Higgins launched a barely veiled attack on Israel last weekend during an address at a Great Hunger commemoration event in Glasnevin Cemetery. Given the history of evictions in this country, he said, no people were better placed to understand the terrible damage it does when you are displaced from your home.
He referred to states that “are violating the basic laws that are the tools of internationally recognised protection against illegal eviction”. The president didn’t actually name Israel, but we all knew who he meant.
This isn’t the first time that Higgins has weighed in on the issue. In 2017 he warmly greeted Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, at an Irish Congress of Trade Unions