Two Irish politicians say they will boycott this year’s St. Patrick’s Day events at the White House in protest of US President Donald Trump’s statements on Gaza.
Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of the Sinn Fein party and the leader of the opposition, and her deputy, First Minister Michelle O’Neill, say they will not attend the celebrations after Trump called for the permanent displacement of Gazans from the Strip.
“The US president’s comments on forced expulsion of the Palestinian people of Gaza cannot be ignored,” says O’Neill in a statement. “In the future, when our children and grandchildren ask us what we did while the Palestinian people endured unimaginable suffering, I will say I stood firmly on the side of humanity.”
McDonald says that despite US-Irish ties, “there is also an onus on us to speak honestly and to act when we believe a US administration is wrong, catastrophically so in the case of Palestine,” and therefore made the “principled stance” not to attend.
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