I genuinely cannot think of one tangible thing the Irish government has done for Palestine. Not one action that has cost them anything, that has applied real pressure or has matched the scale of what’s happening in Gaza. The government is consistently, pitifully, unwilling to take meaningful action and that is our problem. The government is our responsibility. They are the ones representing us on the world stage. They are failing us, and failing the Palestinian people, by refusing to turn our empathy into actual leverage.

This is not a particularly comfortable article to write. I am Irish.

I’d like to see that attitude displayed by my own compatriots.

And I’m sorry for your illness. Do doctors ever talk to you about feeding good gut bacteria and starving the overgrowth of others?