President Michael D Higgins has said it is “outrageous” that people who are criticising the Israeli government’s policies are being labelled as anti-Semitic, adding that “many people in Israel do oppose those policies”.
It was also an “outrage” that so many in the world allowed this. “It should have been taken on from the very, very beginning,” Mr Higgins said.
The President was speaking to the media at the Irish College in Rome after the funeral of Pope Francis.
He felt it was “very significant not only who is attending today, but who is missing” at Francis’s funeral. Neither the president nor prime minister of Israel were in attendance.
It was not wrong “if you criticised a prime minister who is strengthening an army that is in breach of international humanitarian law, [and] many other aspects of international law, if there is no respect for civilian rights, in addition to women and children”.
Mr Higgins said it was a “great lie” and “absolutely untrue” to suggest criticism of the Israeli regime means support for Hamas.
He said it was very welcome that “there are so many people in the United States, we must never forget, who are as shocked as we are about the outrageous killings” being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
“Today we have had a wonderful gathering here in Rome of representatives of government and state,” Mr Higgins said.
“How could any of them remain silent then in view of actually starving people to death by blocking food, blocking medicines, blocking water itself, the basic necessities of life.
“Have we become numb? I think when you think of Francis’ own concept of ‘indifference’ that’s what he meant.”
[ Pope Francis ‘a voice for humanity and justice’, says President HigginsOpens in new window ]
Mr Higgins spoke warmly of his five meetings with Francis, his “major revision of the Church’s relationship to nature and that’s something that is very, very strong”. The President also mentioned how in dealing with migration from “very, very early on” Francis was “drawing subconsciously on his own family’s migrant background”.
Francis, Mr Higgins said, “remained more hopeful in relation to rationality and reason, than I did in terms of the fact that we were moving more and more into the consequences of what was happening in climate change”.
“It’s so serious that we were going to move beyond the point of no return.”
Mr Higgins described the funeral Mass as “a magnificent artistic success”.
