President Michael D Higgins says he has “no intention” of remaining silent while the bombardment of Gaza continues.
Mr Higgins signalled that he does not plan to go quietly into retirement ahead of his second and final term in Áras an Uachtaráin ending in November.
He said he believed there was “no point in what is left of my own life, and all of the rest of it, pretending it is just an ordinary period of time”.
“It is a dangerous period of time when democracy itself is under threat,” he said.
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Mr Higgins was applauded for his remarks which he made to a crowd of some 500 people who gathered in the grounds of the Áras on Sunday to mark Bloomsday, a celebration of James Joyce. He said the Ulysses author lived through two World Wars and was anti-war.
The President urged the world not to forget the fate of the people of Gaza even while attention turned to the conflict between Israel and Iran.
“Why has it taken so long to bring food and medicine and water to do those who need it?” he asked regarding the situation in Gaza. “It was a great human failure. I will have opportunities to address those subjects again.”
Mr Higgins’s commentary on Gaza has previously drawn the ire of the Israeli government, but he has repeatedly said criticising Israel’s actions is not anti-Semitism and to suggest otherwise is a “disgrace and a slander”.
The President also criticised the “dangerous authoritarianism” that has impacted American academia since at Trump administration took charge.
“What that authoritarianism promises us is a life without the arts, without the contribution of artists, limited public opportunities for sharing cultural experiences and of never being lifted to transcendence by performance in its many forms,” he said.
“Such a life will constitute a much diminished existence, an unfulfilling encounter with life, one devoid of beauty, creativity and human expression. It must be called out for that which it others.”
Mr Higgins said his most pleasant days in the Áras involved being surrounded by musicians and other performers.
Straw boaters, strawberries and even a smattering of sunshine marked his final celebration of Bloomsday, marking June 16th, 1904, the day that Joyce met Nora Barnacle and immortalised in Ulysses.
Regarding Joyce, Mr Higgins said he hoped his term in office would “repair, or at least gently redress, the often strained relationship between Ireland and one of its most brilliant – and most exiled – sons”.
In the course of 14 years as President, he had seen Joyce’s grandson Stephen’s final wish fulfilled. The Joyce poem A Flower Given to My Daughter was inscribed on the family grave in Fluntern cemetery in Zurich, Switzerland, in honour of the author’s daughter Lucia Joyce.
Mr Higgins visited Joyce’s grave in Zurich in 2018 and in January of last year he unveiled a plaque in Galway’s Rahoon cemetery marking the grave of Michael ‘Sonny’ Bodkin and its connection to Barnacle, Joyce and his masterpiece The Dead.
He also awarded the Presidential Distinguished Service Award to Dr Fritz Senn and Prof Enrico Terrinoni for their contributions to Joycean scholarship. Prof Terrinoni brought Ulysses to new life for Italian readers with his translation of the work in 2021.
The garden party featured a play, Ulysses aWake, from a Blackrock-based street theatre group written by Nastaise Leddy and Iris Park. Singer Noel O’Grady sang three songs, one of which he dedicated to the singer Johnny Duhan, who tragically drowned last November.
