PRESIDENT MARY McAleese yesterday called apparent attempts to make mortar bombs by dissident republicans who were apprehended by gardaí at the weekend “the final sting in the tail of a culture of conflict” and said they did not endanger the peace process.
“I am absolutely sure the peace process is absolutely rock solid,” Mrs McAleese said, mainly because “the whole community – Protestants, Catholics, unionists, nationalists – people who had in the past been wedded to violence” stand “shoulder to shoulder in solidarity”.
The President’s four-day trip to New York ended with a commemoration at the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park, on the same day the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul reported that increasing numbers of Irish people are asking for help to buy food.
People are suffering in Ireland, Mrs McAleese said. “How could it not be the case, with so many jobs lost, so many people living with negative equity?”
She called on those Irish who still have money in their pockets to respond with social solidarity and responsibility because “they’re our kith. They’re our kin. They’re our problem.”
Earlier, Mrs McAleese went to the Shearith Israel Synagogue on New York’s upper west side, to thank the congregation for an act of kindness in 1847, the worst year of the Famine. The Synagogue raised the equivalent of $80,000 (€63,000) for Ireland.
The male members of the Irish delegation, including Dr Martin McAleese, the Irish ambassador and consul general, donned yarmulkes inside the synagogue. Members of the Jewish congregation wore Tricolour sashes.
Haunting laments, sung in Irish by Susan McKeown and Iarla Ó Lionáird, resembled a Hebrew prayer sung by the Jewish cantor.
Janice Shorenstein, the president of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, said Jews and Irish people share “the centrality of family, respect for tradition and dogged perseverance”.
She wasn’t surprised “that 153 years later the President of Ireland would be moved to express her gratitude, given that Jews and the Irish have very long memories”.
Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York, said that Jews, like Irish people, “have a tendency to answer every question with a question” and show “resilience in the face of hardship”.
Mrs McAleese compared the scattering of the Irish to the Jewish diaspora. The Jewish people were “our elder brothers and sisters in civilisation and faith”, she said. “I am among kith and kin. We are not strangers.”
Rabbi Hayyim Angel said the universality of kindness to humanity was a very core Jewish value and “the state of Israel is always on the frontline to give know-how and aid and relief” to the suffering. He mentioned the Asian tsunami and the earthquake in Haiti.
Throughout her visit, Mrs McAleese stressed the relevance of the Famine to hunger and injustice in today’s world. Not once did anyone mention the suffering of the Lebanese in 2006 or the Gaza Strip in 2009. The continuing deprivation of 1.6 million Palestinians under siege in the Gaza Strip was forgotten amid the warm commemoration of the synagogue’s 153-year-old act of kindness.
It was fitting, Rabbi Angel said, that the ceremony with Mrs McAleese occurred on the same day as the Salute to Israel Parade.
I walked through the procession of New Yorkers wearing blue and white T-shirts emblazoned with the Star of David a couple of hours later, near St Patrick’s Cathedral.
The Irish delegation had just attended Mass, where Archbishop Timothy Dolan prayed for the souls of the Irish who perished in the Famine.
Ireland now observes national commemoration days for the Irish Famine and for the Jewish Holocaust. Irish officials write Famine with a capital F, just as Jews demand that Holocaust be written with a capital H. “They too, like us, insist quite rightly that the world does not forget . . . not just because (these things) happened by human hand and because of the extent of them, but because unfortunately, human hands are still capable of exactly the same misery and cruelty,” Mrs McAleese said.
Mrs McAleese’s second term will end in November 2011. There have been reports of a possible meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House later this year. “I’ll be back, with God’s help,” she said.
* The online version of this article was amended on May 25th, 2010