Patrick Murphy: If Ireland doesn’t want Israel attacking its peacekeepers, it needs to stop US military planes using Shannon

The Irish government’s plan to abandon neutrality is compromising the safety of its own troops. That’s the inevitable conclusion from Ireland’s reaction to Israeli threats, which have been directed at Irish peacekeeping forces serving with the United Nations in Lebanon.

Ireland has refused to call on the US to stop arming Israel. Taoiseach Simon Harris and tánaiste Micheál Martin have criticised Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon, but they have refused to comment on those who supply Israel with its weapons of war.

Simon Harris recently praised what he called Ireland’s “unique and special” relationship with the US. That’s the same US which between 2019 and 2023 accounted for over two-thirds of all arms sold to Israel from abroad. Germany, the dominant force in the EU, was the second biggest supplier at 30%.

Since August, the US has approved the sale of almost $30 billion in arms to Israel.

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Those arms are now being used to threaten the UN peacekeeping force of 10,000 soldiers, including 360 from Ireland. Joe Biden says he is “absolutely, positively” urging Israel to stop firing at UN peacekeepers. If he stopped supplying arms, he would not have to urge them to do anything.

Israel has killed 43,000 in Gaza, including 17,000 children. Over 10,000 people are still listed as missing there. In Lebanon they have killed over 2,000 people, with another 10,000 injured.

Israel has the right to defend itself. However, is Israel trying to tell us that they have had to kill 17,000 children to defend itself? The UN’s special rapporteur on food, Michael Fakhri, says that Israel is also using starvation as a weapon of war.

America’s response has been to send troops to support Israel. That’s the same response the English had to the Irish famine, when an extra 14,000 troops arrived here between 1843 and 1849. Mr Biden (wrongly) claims that famine forced his ancestors to leave Ireland, but he now stands on the side of Israeli-led starvation.

Joe Biden says he is “absolutely, positively” urging Israel to stop firing at UN peacekeepers. If he stopped supplying arms, he would not have to urge them to do anything

The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s attacks on Gaza may be genocide. The 1948 Genocide Convention requires states and individuals to refrain from complicity in genocide.

The US is obviously complicit in Israel’s military activity and by allowing US military to transit through Irish air space and land at Shannon airport, the Irish Government might be considered in that same category.

So how has supposedly neutral Ireland finished up on the wrong side of history? The answer lies in the Dublin government’s move to abandon Irish neutrality and side with the US, the EU and Britain. Current government policy is that Ireland cannot go to war without the approval of the United Nations, the Cabinet and the Dáil. This is known as the triple lock.

The Irish government now wants to abandon UN approval. Micheál Martin has accused Israel of undermining the United Nations. That’s the same UN which Mr Martin wishes to undermine as a safeguard to Irish neutrality.

When Irish voters rejected the EU’s 2001 Nice Treaty, Gerry Adams said it was because the treaty would create an EU superstate with its own army. The Irish government held the referendum a second time and won by promising that the triple lock would never be abandoned.

Now it is trying to break that promise and Sinn Féin and the SDLP are currently ardent EU supporters. The EU is edging Ireland away from neutrality. Of course, like the British army, the EU army will have an “Irish” regiment.

Irish MEP, Luke Ming Flanagan, said recently in the European Parliament that if Ireland wanted to help Palestine, they would not allow Israeli military planes in Irish air space or permit US planes to land at Shannon.

The speaker told him, “That is not the type of language we want.” This reflects president Ursula von der Leyen’s creation of a tightly centralised EU in support of US foreign policy.

The EU now speaks for Ireland in saying that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was wrong, but Israel’s invasion of Gaza and Lebanon is understandable - even though Israel’s actions threaten the safety of Irish peacekeeping forces.

The Irish army exists to defend the state. It is now time for the state to defend the army. They could begin by calling on the US to stop arming Israel and they could put some muscle in that call by preventing US military planes from landing at Shannon.

They are unlikely to do so - and who in the Dáil has the credibility to hold them to account?