The Great Famine, Gaza, and Never Again

Musings from a stroll along Galway Bay

When you walk along the water on the southern edge of Galway, from the jolly pubs of Quay Street to the boardwalk vibes of Salthill Promenade — as my wife and I did a couple weeks ago — you find yourself facing three stone slabs overlooking the bay.

As with many installations you come across in Ireland, it is a memorial to the Great Famine. This is Celia Griffin Park, named for a child who died of starvation on the streets of Galway in 1847. The central, largest slab of the group draws one’s attention to nearby Mutton Island, about a kilometer offshore from where the reader stands. The side stelae are inscribed with the names of ships that carried desperate emigrants across the ocean. The glow from the Mutton Island Lighthouse, the plaque reads, would be the passengers’ last memory of their homeland as they journeyed to their new lives in America.

It was a fittingly gloomy day to visit such a place. The rain was light but persistent and ubiquitous. The wind was a dull roar that blew in your face no matter where you were looking. But what I remember most about the view were the clouds. Sprawled out beyond the pylons, they seemed to extend even farther into the horizon than the water.

At the head of the trail stands a newer marker, erected in 2022 by the Irish Forum for International Agricultural Development and Self Help Africa. The text includes a list of “the 10 worst famines ever in our world,” on which the Potato Famine comes in at number ten: the tragedy to which this very memorial is dedicated is described as less deadly than (at least) nine others in eastern Europe, southern Asia, and China, where the estimated death tolls reached as high as 45 million.

Documented by internet user Zuko

The middle of the placard connects the past to the present with a list of current (as of 2022) food emergencies. The contemporary famines mentioned include Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Syria, plus about a dozen more crises that are less interesting to Western media. “To achieve Zero Hunger and Thirst, money is not enough,” it reads. “Without a firm political commitment … the main drivers of hunger and thirst will continue unabated.”

Two weeks after visiting Celia Griffin Park, I remain moved by the moral clarity of this dedication. The Great Famine was one of the most-significant events in Irish history, one that still looms large over the country, culture, and diaspora. Especially at the site of such a memorial, you could understand focusing on only one specific tragedy. Instead, the inscription looks outward, recognizing that the collective deprivation of an oppressed people is neither unique among nor to history. Out of the grief emerges a feeling of universality with all those who face similar afflictions.

If the placard were being designed today, there would be (at least) one notable addition to the list of current famines: Gaza.

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To be Jewish is to exist in open defiance of the hateful regimes that have persecuted us for millennia. The Holocaust, which killed six million of our people, is part of our living memory — both in that hundreds of thousands of survivors remain with us, and that our global population is still recovering from last century’s mass slaughter. You may forgive us for our sensitivity to commonplace anti-Semitic slights, let alone for being traumatized by the events of October 7, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust itself. For this reason I have always believed that Judaism also instills compassion for oppressed peoples, no matter who they are or what they believe.

Not in My Name

Most of the Jews I talk to, particularly of my generation, are aghast at the destruction being propagated in our name in Gaza. At last count, around 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in this five-month war — roughly one out of every 64 people in Gaza — including over 13,000 children. These numbers are presumably significant underestimates, as countless more victims are trapped under the rubble or dead from preventable starvation and disease. The Israeli government has attacked hospitals, deployed white phosphorous, and openly proclaimed a goal of mass collective punishment. “Starvation is used as a weapon of war,” the EU’s High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy declared this week. “Israel is provoking famine.” From Capitol Hill to the Oscars, such unconscionable actions have inspired Jews to join the forefront of the antiwar protest movement.

Still, I recognize that many of my fellow American Jews feel differently about the conflict. I know people who have called the citizens of Gaza subhuman and argued that any fate they meet is fair game, echoing the language the Nazis used about us. I have seen Jews post photos from a rally where a keynote speaker had proclaimed that “God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land,” strange bedfellows in their mutual support for Zionism. I have lost count of how many times I have heard or read that Netanyahu is out of control and that after the war there must be a path to Palestinian self-determination, but that until then any actions are justifiable: The best and only deterrent against another Holocaust is for Israel to be able to defend itself — by whatever means necessary.

We all understand our identity in different ways. Yet I wonder what those in our community who believe such things, or their gentile allies who advance the anti-Semitic lie that they speak for all Jews, would say if they stopped to read the signage in Celia Griffin Park. Would they think the citizens of Galway foolish for drawing parallels between their and other cultures’ historical traumas? Would they attempt to rationalize or question the accuracy of the other death tolls? Would they deflect modern calls to action on the insistence that these countries should have made different political choices decades ago? Would they advise the Irish to stop worrying about global hunger and hoard their own food supplies lest another famine strike?

Dear Well-Meaning Gentiles

There are open questions and practical complexities of moving forward for which I do not have the answers. The constant fear that other peoples seek our destruction is real and well-founded. But “never again” means never again. There is no consideration more urgent than the need for a ceasefire and massive humanitarian aid. The lessons of our past call to us from behind, like the glow of the Mutton Island watchtower over the Atlantic tides. We must not turn our backs on that light.