President Higgins backs Palestinian state as he opens Ploughing

IN remarks which prompted applause and cheers when he opened the National Ploughing, President Michael D Higgins condemned the famine in Gaza and predicted the emergence of a Palestinian state.

President Higgins has attended all of the annual National Ploughing Championships since he was first elected 14 years ago and this year's is his last because his second term in the Aras is coming to a close.

In a speech delivered to a large crowd at the Ploughing site in Screggan, the President touched on themes which have become familiar to those who have heard him previously.

He spoke of the importance of fair remuneration for food producers, how impressed he has been with Ireland's young people, and his commitment to fairness at home and abroad.

“I see young people and they're moving with such energy, dressed in their own way, they have their own version of what is rural Ireland,” he said.

“It has confirmed my belief that there is a very profound ethical sense among our young people, interested in science, interested in science being applied in the right way.”

He noted that he is aged 84 and praised another elderly woman, the “extraordinary Anna May McHugh” who makes the Ploughing possible and who had given great leadership for 50 years.

As he and his wife Sabina leave the Aras, he said they will leave behind a beautiful sculpture of the plough and the stars.

“We are so pleased it will be there as a continual reminder,” he said.

He spoke of the symbolism of horse ploughing and how it points to the connection with nature.

“There is a huge difference between owning a farm and feeling the earth of it between your fingers. In all of the years I've come I've stressed how important rural society is and the plough is a reminder of that.”

Farming is different from owning farms as part of a portfolio, he stated. “I think that one of the things that we should always be supporting are farm families and if we support farm families we have to support the families that make up rural Ireland.”

He indicated he was sad that a regional imbalance persisted in Ireland: “One of my disappointments at my age is that we made such a bad fist of regionalism, because I have been long convinced that it was the best way forward in relation to managing what was necessary in ensuring a balanced population and a balanced lifestyle.”

The President moved to the specific issue of food and in the first comment which drew a reaction from the crowd, mentioned children dying from malnutrition because of “conscious depravation”.

He spoke of how his predecessor Mary Robinson had seen 6,000 trucks being blocked from going to the aid of starving people, all while the world waited for talks to take place between those in power.

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“This is a famine that should have stopped long ago. But as well as that we cannot hesitate, even a day, waiting for the United Nations, now or in late September.”

He went on: “Children are dying at the rate of five a day at the moment, how many will have died by the time the meetings take place? How realistic, how morally acceptable is it to say 'We're seeking to influence those who are responsible for this'. Those who are responsible must be stopped and they must be excluded from international organisations where international law has to be respected and where there are basic moral principles.

“The young people I have great faith in... I say to them, learn to treat each other with respect. Because that is what is happening, there is a deep inequality that's the cause of all this.”

Without using the word Israel, he traced the current conflict back to the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the British mandate which followed it.

He said Palestine was not an empty space at the time. “It had Palestinians who were working in it, farming in it and living in it.”

“But during the time of the British mandate, they wouldn't say they were Palestinians, they said 'Eight million people are of Jewish faith and the rest are non Jewish',” he said.

He then declared: “There is a Palestine, there was a Palestine and there will be a Palestine again in the future.”

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Turning to the global question of the environment, he said “the hearts of the world rose” with the Paris agreement but the issues around it must be discussed at every level with all people seeing each other as partners.

He slammed the richest people on the planet, saying they were giving lectures to those who believe in democracy, even to the point of considering fighting each other in a cage.

“Such people are the most dangerous people on our planet. They are in favour of expanding the realms of non accountability and it should be faced.”

He added: “We have to stand together in opposition to the destruction of our moral world by large corporations that have no responsibility. I say to them, 'Are you not ashamed to come on television, simply because you own television? You can say anything you like and you can wreck humanity'.”

The President did concluded on an optimistic note, saying that version of unlimited greed would be swept away.

“New forms of democracy will emerge and as well as that, international law will be redefined but it will be redefined by all of the people on the planet.”