Letterkenny vigil marking one year of genocide in Gaza to focus on children

A vigil will be held outside An Grianan Theatre to mark the passing of one year of what the UN Special Rapporteur has declared to be genocide. 

The event - on Friday, October 11 from 1pm to 3pm - will focus on the 17,000 children who have been slaughtered by the Israeli military in the past year. This represents 40% of all those killed by Israel in its ongoing bombardment of the civilian population. 

The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine.

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Local artist Bernadette Hopkins will be leading a performative arts process using charcoal and involving the names of the names of the children who have been slaughtered since the beginning of the invasion.

“I have artist friends in Gaza who have to make their own charcoal to draw with because they have no other materials to draw with,” she said. “They are also using wild flowers to make paint with and to give the children some sense of normality.”

The civil society organisations in Ireland, including the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, have been calling on Ireland to take immediate and concrete action to pressure Israel to comply with international law and the International Court of Justice, which has ordered them to cease its acts of genocide and to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. 

They want the Irish government to enact the Occupied Territories Bill which has been passed by the Oireachtas and would place sanctions on Israel.