Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
On May 21st, a woman in Galway commenced a hunger strike in protest over a) food not being let into Gaza (?) and b) the Irish government's failure to pass the Occupied Territories Bill, which would "ban trade with and economic suport for illegal settlements in territories deemed occupied under international law". In other words, it's a Boycott, Divest and Sanction bill, which would criminalise economic actors from doing business with Israeli companies. Last I checked she was on day 6 of her strike - she should now be on day 9, assuming she hasn't given up or been hospitalised yet.
Now, obviously a hunger strike isn't quite as dramatic as setting yourself on fire, but same ballpark. And I have to ask - what is it about this issue that seems to attract so many histrionic, mentally ill people? If you take them at their word, the Free Palestine people believe that, if left to their own devices, Israel will exterminate the entire population of Palestine (~5.5 million people), while the Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion think that, unless we acquiesce to their demands, literally everyone on the planet will die in a matter of decades. Given the respective stakes, you would logically expect the latter group to engage in more dramatic forms of protest than the former - 1,470 times as dramatic, to be precise. But instead it's the reverse: it's the Free Palestine people who are going on hunger strike and setting themselves alight, while the worst the Extinction Rebellion people can muster is hurling soup at paintings and gluing their palms to tarmac.
Apparently now ended.
I'm glad she didn't starve herself to death. And yet, is it terrible that I read this and immediately think to myself "do a flip faggot"?
There's something so contemptibly safetyist about voluntarily signing up for a task which is dangerous by nature - then refusing to do it, because of how dangerous it is. It induces the same feeling of disgust in me as those photos of Secret Service agents cowering behind Trump while he was being shot at. What the hell did you think being a Secret Service agent entailed? Vibes? Papers? Essays?
It's the "how do you like being a firefighter" joke all over again.
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