The times we live in require extraordinary courage of every citizen, but especially of political leaders.
It sometimes feels like heroism is a thing of the past. Researching a speech for the Kennedy Summer School in New Ross, Co Wexford, two weeks ago, I read John F Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1956 book, Profiles in Courage.
In her introduction to the book, Kennedy’s daughter Caroline told how the small, motorised Patrol Torpedo boat commanded by Lt Kennedy in the Pacific during the second World War exploded after it was rammed one night by a Japanese destroyer. Two sailors were killed. A third was so badly wounded that he could not swim. Clenching the strap of the man’s life jacket in his teeth, Kennedy – who was himself wounded – swam three miles in darkness to the nearest island where he and surviving crew members hid from the Japanese. On subsequent nights, the future US president swam through shark-infested waters until he secured rescue by Australian forces.
A new biopic about Gen Charles de Gaulle was the surprise hit in French cinemas this summer. How many contemporary politicians would be capable of the moral clarity and determination demonstrated by de Gaulle during the second World War? The film depicts how de Gaulle was twice abandoned by Winston Churchill, his sole supporter, because Franklin D Roosevelt insisted he be replaced by a more pliant ally. “I embody everything the Americans hate,” de Gaulle says in the film. “I am weak, and yet I stand up to them.”
Like today’s Ukrainian armed forces, the French Resistance experienced the despair of fighting a brutal and tyrannical invading army with inadequate weapons. Like de Gaulle, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been forced to plead for weapons from capricious allies.
The political courage of Kennedy and de Gaulle was commensurate with their physical daring. While police attacked civil rights protesters in the US south with dogs and fire hoses in 1963, president Kennedy deployed the National Guard to ensure that two black students could attend the University of Alabama.
Contrast that with the behaviour of the Irish Government, which has refused student visas to 97 Palestinian students, according to Trinity’s University Times. 52 are from the Gaza Strip, as Irish academic Emma Stokes wrote here recently. It took immense courage for those students to continue studying, to obtain admission and scholarships to Irish universities as Israel destroyed the Gaza Strip around them.
While barring qualified Palestinian students from entry, the Irish Government will on Saturday welcome a convicted felon who has been found civilly liable for fraud and sexual abuse.
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Irish Government policy regarding the Russian-owned Aughinish Alumina factory in the Shannon estuary has been characterised by wilful ignorance and evasion. Swedish tax authorities concluded that “Putin’s favourite oligarch” Oleg Deripaska, a staunch supporter of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, retains control of the Aughinish parent company Rusal.
The Irish Government has repeatedly cited “commercial sensitivities” in refusing to divulge information about Aughinish. It is protecting a Russian company which provides raw materials to companies which supply Russian weapons manufacturers, rather than protecting the Ukrainians it pledged to support “for as long as it takes”.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee summoned Russia’s ambassador, Yury Filatov, to protest the foiled Russian drone attack on Leipzig airport last month. Has it not occurred to the Irish Government that the drones used in Leipzig, or those which flew over Dublin Bay last December, could have been built with aluminium that originated in Co Limerick? The prediction attributed to Lenin that the West would sell the Soviets the rope by which to hang them has never rung truer.
Ukrainians are being killed every day by Russian drones and missiles which are made from aluminium. Aughinish Alumina now exports an average of 70,412 tonnes of alumina, from which aluminium is extracted, to Russia every month, up from 64,665 tonnes last year.
Aughinish Alumina has threatened job losses and diminished gas and electricity supplies in Ireland if EU sanctions are imposed. Ireland is succumbing to blackmail and excusing it with the claim that it does not know what happens to the metal once it reaches Russia.
Courage implies uncertainty, risk and often solitude. Canada’s brave prime minister Mark Carney has risked his country’s entire economy – not just 475 jobs in an alumina plant – to reject Donald Trump’s attack on Canada’s economic sovereignty.
The audience at the Kennedy Summer School applauded criticism of Government policy on visas for Gazan students and Aughinish Alumina. I hadn’t realised how strongly Irish people feel about these issues. There is a sense, at home and abroad, that this Government has lost its moral compass. The Italian MEP Pina Picierno, who is vice-president of the European Parliament, wrote to the EU Commission saying it was “unacceptable … that a Russian-owned company operates undisturbed within a member state, supplying the Kremlin’s military industry”.
Organisers of a planned conference on Palestine at Maynooth University next month decided to postpone after academics withdrew in protest at Government policy. Earlier sessions took place at the University of California, Princeton, Cape Town and the Western Cape. “A policy of visa denial in the midst of genocide is both immoral and cruel and will be an enduring cause of shame to the Government and the individuals that impose it,” said a letter of protest signed by international academics.