Réiteach ag Iosrael 16 Bealtaine 2004

Publication Instance Details #1724

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	No	No	No	Yes

Details

Human Rights Issues	War HR & Colonisation/Colonial Legacies HR & Weapons of Mass Destruction (incl. nuclear)
War / Genocide Referenced	War: Second Intifada
Languages	Irish
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Collection
Notes	This poem appears to refer to a specific event: Operation Rainbow, an Israeli effort to quash attacks from Palestinian fighters, and to widen the buffer zone between Egypt and Israel by demolishing houses in Rafah, a small city in the area. Houses were bulldozed under an Israeli siege, and the area was locked off from the rest of the Gaza strip. The specific event on the date of the title, 16 May 2004, could refer to the Israeli Supreme Court's decision to lift a temporary ban on the demolition of Palestinian homes in a Gaza refugee camp. The speaker of the poem describes in detail the results of Israel's tactics: demolished houses, dead children, people left without livelihoods. There are three media references in the poem, with the speaker each time seeming dismissive of the Westerners watching the destructive actions of the Israelis - it is couched as 'entertainment'.