Okay, I Want to Talk About Ireland: Irish Musicians and Palestinian Solidarity
By Kelly Darroch
A few months ago, I was scrolling on Instagram when I saw a repost of a tweet that read as follows: “Bisexual girls are starting to talk about Ireland in the way that white straight dudes talk about Japan.” It was the funniest and most absurd thing I read that week. With my mouth gaping open, I sent it to about 3 people who I knew would resonate with it, A) because it pointed a finger at them, and B) they will always appreciate a good jab at white boy Asian fetishizers.
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Now, that tweet might have a layer of truth — I permit you to laugh. There is something to be said about the centering of Irish men, but the lack of Irish women in popular media, especially in film and television. Let me guess, you thought to yourself, “Saoirse Ronan.” Okay, now name another! And no, Ayo Edebiri is not actually Irish. It might be a bit hard, and that is nothing to beat yourself up over. Irish men are shoved in our faces relentlessly: Colin Farrell, Andrew Scott (it’ll pass), Cillian Murphy, Barry Keoghan — you get it.
But I must make a feeble attempt to rationalize and defend my girls who derive an unnatural amount of sheer joy from the prospect of splitting the G. I can promise that at least for some, it extends beyond an attraction to Paul Mescal in Normal People. Yes, that is likely a contributing factor, but that’s besides the point.
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Irish pride is something unique to itself, and it’s difficult to suppress admiration for it. They have endured a deeply tragic history, even outside the imperialist actions performed by the British Empire. Just Google the 20th-century prison-like institutions for “fallen women,” referred to as Magdalene Laundries, especially post-independence; you will want to stare at your feet for a few hours and potentially avoid any setting with too many nuns. The Irish are not perfect, but they are resilient and possess an agency and deep love of their land that cannot be replicated because it is such an irrevocable Irish love. How can you not respect the outspoken Irish revolutionaries of the past and present who cannot ignore the pain and genocide inflicted on their own or any other lands?
I am sure you have seen multiple times in the media, Irish bands like Kneecap standing firm in their condemnation of the colonialist forces of Israel in Gaza, despite the intense backlash they have received as a result.
Ireland’s support for a free Palestine is not a new phenomenon but one rooted in decades of drawn parallels. This shared history of colonization through land confiscation, anti-civilian violence, often through religious justification, is an experience that both Ireland and Palestine have lived. With the North still under British occupation, many are still forced to live through it in the hopes of a United Ireland. Many in the South have adopted a pro-Palestine mindset, while reporting that much of the youth have a sort of disconnect from their history in a post-colonialist world. Thousands may chant, “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians,” but the Irish government’s actions do not necessarily reflect these words. One action is the blocking of the Occupied Territories Bill (OTB) since 2018, which would result in a complete ban on the import of goods and services produced in illegal settlements.
In a conversation hosted by Al Jazeera English, Cliodhna Bhreatnach of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, reflected on said actions and mindset of the government, “The Irish government and media, to a large extent, identify psychologically with the American and liberal politician class; they don’t like to see themselves as coming from a colonized nation or having that legacy of anti-colonial resistance,” she said. “They very much identify with big imperial powers of the West, EU, and of course NATO members, which is going to be trouble for our neutrality down the line…to put it simply, it’s Ireland’s very close relationship with the United States of America and US dollars.”
What is more punk than an Irish band that embodies the concept of actions speaking louder than words? Kneecap has been at the center of controversy for its criticism of Israel and the United States. They have repeatedly incorporated direct political messaging in their performances at large-scale festivals such as Coachella, Wide Awake Festival, Glastonbury, and more. Messages like “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people” and “It is being enabled by the US government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes,” can be found blasted across the festival screens in capital letters. This is after member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh was charged with a terror offense by the Metropolitan police for allegedly holding up a Hezbollah flag at a London performance in November 2024. This is an offense that the group from Belfast has publicly denied, and described as “politically policing” and “a carnival of distraction,” according to the BBC. Kneecap’s persistence has garnered support from around the globe. Thousands rushed out to show their support for Kneecap at Glastonbury Festival after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for their removal from the lineup. An investigation was launched into comments made on stage by the rap trio, but the investigation was recently dropped after there was insufficient evidence to convict them. Despite numerous attempts to censor their speech, Kneecap has stood firm in their stance, proclaiming, “Onwards and upwards, Free Palestine.”
Kneecap. Photo Credits: Luke Lebihan
Another cherished Irish band that has demonstrated solidarity with the Palestinian cause is Fontaines D.C.. It’s no surprise that a band whose most popular song with a ridiculously catchy bridge uttering, “Selling genocide and half-cut pride, I understand, I had to be there from the start, I had to be the f*cking man,” would align themselves with its fellow pro-Palestine Irish musicians. Their solidarity is evident beyond their lyricism—in 2023, they collaborated with Massive Attack and Young Fathers on a limited edition 12” single where 100% of the proceeds were donated to Doctors Without Borders to support emergency operations in Gaza and the West Bank. More recently, you can see visual messaging and chants during their sets, similar to Kneecap, such as “Israel is committing genocide – use your voice,” alongside the Palestinian flag. They have also cancelled previous gigs in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Fontaines D.C. at Finsbury Park. Photo Credits: Georgina Hurdsfield
If you are familiar with the recent TikTok trend to the song “Take a Sexy Picture of Me” with the lyrics “I did the butcher, I did the baker, I did the home and the family maker…” you may be pleased to know that the artist behind the song, CMAT, or Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson is an Irish artist who ended her Glastonbury set chanting “Free Palestine” with the massive crowd.
Post-punk group The Murder Capital regularly displays the Palestinian flag on stage during their sets, which led to the cancellation of two German shows back in May after they refused to comply with the Berlin venue Gretchen’s rejection of the flag or a banner that read “Free Palestine” on stage. “To us, this isn’t just a political statement, it’s a humanitarian statement,” said the band outside the venue in a statement uploaded to Instagram.
In the previous year, 2024, a handful of Irish and non-Irish bands and artists withdrew from the annual SXSW festival to boycott the festival's involvement with the U.S. Army and weapons companies. The bands Cardinals, Enola Gay, Gurriers, Sprints, and NewDad announced in a joint social media post, “To be clear, we, as ‘Music From Ireland’ bands, will not be partaking in any official SXSW shows. We stand in complete solidarity with Palestine and others who have spoke out against, and boycotted SXSW.” They instead gathered downtown at Austin’s Velveeta Room to create a musical performance in a space they were proud of and comfortable in. Pierce Callaghan of Gurriers condemned the festival’s sponsorship by defense contractors in a speech, stating, “We as Irish people have a lot of solidarity with the people of Palestine as we share a history of occupation and oppression by colonialist countries.”
The musical history of Palestinian solidarity does not begin in the last two years, as Sinéad O'Connor also voiced and displayed support for Palestine over a decade ago. O'Connor, who was once deemed a pariah by the public for ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II live on SNL in protest of the Catholic Church’s handling of child sexual abuse allegations, was unafraid to be forthright in her opinions and morals. Her most recognized criticisms are of the Catholic Church’s influence over Ireland, something she described as a “theocracy.” The public has since recognized the veiled horrors of the Catholic Church in the years since O’Connor’s “whistleblowing” in 1992, but the church is not where O’Connor’s criticisms have ceased. In 2014, she pulled out of performing in Israel with the following statement: “Nobody with any sanity would have anything but sympathy for the Palestinian plight. There’s not a sane person on Earth who in any way sanctions what the f*ck the Israeli authorities are doing.”
Sinéad O'Connor. Image Sourced through Pinterest.
So no, girls aren’t talking about Ireland in the same way that white boys talk about Japan. The motivation behind this intrigue or surge of attention (which I digress, has taken a turn in a few odd or surface level ways by a handful of people) is rather an appreciation for the Irish who have pride and have not forgotten why — those who remember who fought for their nation, where they came from and what is fundamentally right. They remember the old Irish, the emigrant Irish, their ancestors, and they proceed accordingly. The deeply resonant, recent, and ongoing trauma of their families rings an urgent sound of remembrance and exhorts direction.
In Irish poet W.B. Yeats’ famous poem “Easter, 1916,” he questions the worthiness of sacrifice: “And what if excess of love / Bewildered them till they died?” It is a valid thing to question, and I suppose it can never be definitively measured. I will say that it is extremely evident in Yeats’ work that he was never capable of being both an activist and an artist. He wrote beautifully painful words of observation, some of my favorite and most memorable words, I must add, but at the end of the day, he was just a poet.
This new age of Irish artists and musicians is attempting to bridge the gap between artist and revolutionary — and it is nearly impossible to look away.
Who is to say how this will all culminate in one year, a decade, or a few decades, but we all ought to learn a lesson or two from the aged public perception of Sinead O’Connor. These Irish artists are just a fraction of the people attempting to make sense of the world right now, and they are a fraction of the voices that are probably worth listening to.
