St. Patrick's Day & Palestinians Eating Grass in Gaza

Like Irish targets of Britain during the Great Famine, Palestinians are resorting to desperate measures as starvation takes hold from Israel's genocide

“Irish Famine 4” — Most people who celebrate St. Patrick's Day by eating food dyed green are unaware of the origins. Christine Kinealy, a scholar of the Irish Famine, notes that "Irish folk memory refers to the Famine dead as having ‘mouths stained green’ — because their last meal was often grass."

Kathy Kelly writes in The Progressive:

In a work entitled “Irish Famine 4,” Palestinian-American journalist and artist Sam Husseini combined grass and paint to commemorate a bitter time in Irish history when starving people died with their mouths stained green because, according to historian Christine Kinealy, their last meal was grass. Shamefully, British occupiers profited from exporting out of Ireland the food crops so desperately needed. During a seven-year period beginning in 1845, one million Irish people died from starvation and related diseases. It was a deliberate mass killing, employing one of the most horrific means of execution imaginable—an excruciating descent of weeks’ duration into despair, delirium, and bodily immobility while one’s attention, one’s character, is gradually reduced to little more than appetite and pain. …

Now, in the occupied Gaza Strip, as weapons dealers benefit from increasing military shipments to Israel, Palestinians have resorted to eating mixtures of grass and animal feed. …

Each year, the organizers of Action for Ireland’s famine walk focus on a place in the world where famine afflicts people today. “This year’s famine walk will focus on the unspeakable horrors being visited on the population of Gaza,” says AFRI’s coordinator, Joe Murray, “with ‘Irish’ President Biden forgetting his history and playing the part of a ‘Black and Tan’ in providing the means to obliterate an entire population.” …

I had a bittersweet conversation with Kathy hosted by Dennis Bernstein on “Flashpoints” in the second half of Friday’s show.

A group of Irish scholars recently urged: “We ask Irish Americans in their capacity as citizens, as members of cultural and benevolent societies, as political leaders, to use their influence to avert a Famine as severe as the one faced by their ancestors. To do this it is necessary that the United States ceases arming Israel; that it puts pressure on Israel to halt its military action and lifts its blockade on Gaza; that it refrains from using its veto at the UN security council in relation to Palestine…”

NPR (not my favorite media outlet) actually had a decent report on the Irish Famine ten years ago: “The dark history of eating green on St. Patrick's Day” which noted:

Green food may mean party time in America, where St. Patrick's Day has long been an excuse to break out the food dye. But historian Christine Kinealy says there's a bitter history to eating green that harks back to Ireland's darkest chapter.

During the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, mass starvation forced many Irish to flee their homeland in search of better times in America and elsewhere. Kinealy says those who stayed behind turned to desperate measures.

"People were so deprived of food that they resorted to eating grass," Kinealy tells The Salt. "In Irish folk memory, they talk about people's mouths being green as they died."

At least 1 million Irish died in the span of six years, says Kinealy, the founding director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. Which is why for Kinealy, an Irishwoman who hails from Dublin and County Mayo, the sight of green-tinged edibles intended as a joyous nod to Irish history can be jolting, she says.

"Before I came to America, I'd never seen a green bagel," she says. "For Irish-Americans, they think of dyeing food green, they think everything is happy. But really, in terms of the famine, this is very sad imagery."

That's not to say that the sight of green-dyed food is offensive to the Irish. …

Report from Action Aid via Palestine Chronicle:

“People are now so desperate that they’re eating grass in a last attempt to stave off hunger,” explained Riham Jafari, advocacy and communications coordinator at ActionAid Palestine.

“Every single person in Gaza is now hungry, and people have just 1.5 to 2 liters of unsafe water per day to meet all their needs,” the aid group added. 

Without enough to eat and without adequate clothing for the cold and rainy weather, people are more susceptible to the diseases and infections which are rapidly spreading through the population, ActionAid said.

“We are deeply concerned by reports of a potential ground invasion in Rafah and increased air strikes on the area. Let us be absolutely clear: any intensification of hostilities in Rafah, where more than 1.4 million people are sheltering, would be absolutely disastrous… Where on earth is Gaza’s exhausted and starving population supposed to go?” Jafari asked.

Kelly reports on a group of people occupying the congressional office of Representative Jim McGovern and writes: “Yes, these are desperate times. People in the United States ought to occupy the local offices of every elected official, denouncing all forms of violence and insisting on an immediate end to any support for Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza.”