President criticises UK arms investment and US's ‘monstrous attacks' on universities
President Michael D Higgins has called on the United Nations General Assembly to use 'exceptional powers' to 'move past' the impasse at the organisation's Security Council to enable the flow of aid to Gaza.
Mr Higgins also criticised a £1.5 billion arms investment, announced earlier this week by UK prime minister Keir Starmer. Mr Higgins claimed the move will 'make drones 10 times more lethal'.
He was speaking at the University of Galway to mark the donation of his presidential archive and collection of books to the college.
Speaking in the newly renamed Michael D Higgins Auditorium, the President criticised the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli and US-backed organisation, which has distributed a limited amount of aid in southern Gaza this week. The GHF has been heavily criticised by world figures for politicising the distribution of aid.
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Aid distribution at GHF centres was paused earlier this week following a number of incidents where Israeli soldiers are reported to have fired on people seeking food.
'The entity that is in place [the GHF], and has been described as one that will distribute aid to the people of Gaza, is not acceptable to any of the United Nations agencies,' Mr Higgins said.
He said it is 'essential' that food is distributed through non-militarised means.
'What is most important now, is that next week when the General Assembly [of the UN] meets, it uses the exceptional powers that it has to actually act. It has the power to move past the Security Council,' he said.
Turning to the UK's arms investment announcement, he said it is 'not moral to be silent' in the current political climate. UK defence secretary John Healey told MPs on Monday that the £1.5 billion investment would make the British army '10 times more lethal'.
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'The prime minister next door [Keir Starmer] says: 'We are going to produce drones that are 10 times more lethal.' Think of the morality of that statement,' said Mr Higgins.
'It is necessary to say that we are not going to retreat from new versions of ecological responsibility, social justice and equality,' he said.
The president said 'monstrous attacks' are being made against third-level institutions, especially in the United States.
He said we are living in the 'worst period' for 'ignorant, ill-informed bullying', with universities put 'under the greatest pressure internationally, but in particular in the United States where they have had monstrous attacks on them', he said.
Mr Higgins is a former lecturer and president of the students' union at the University of Galway. He confirmed he intends to return to living in Galway when his presidential term ends.
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RTÉ News
an hour ago
- RTÉ News
US-backed Gaza group suspends aid for a day over threats
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Irish Examiner
2 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Famine in Gaza is hardening rhetoric in Israel
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Irish Times
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Written in stone: 'Thou Shalt Not Kill'. Carved into tablets for eternity: 'Thou Shalt Not Steal'. With the passage of time, it's apparent that writing into rock does not ensure an enduring message. These basic commandments are reflected in similar guidelines in my own Buddhist tradition; and they, too, often go ignored. Stealing and killing doesn't get any bigger than colonial expansion. Theft on a grand scale is the grabbing of Ukrainian territory by Russia. It is Israel 'seizing territory' and 'dividing up' Gaza. It is the US trying to take Greenland to rob it of its natural resources. When Donald Trump says 'Gaza is ours', he is acting like Sykes and Picot, the British and French colonial overloads who divided up the Middle East like a cake in 1916, fuelling the conflict and tragedy we are still living with today. READ MORE This colonialism is nothing short of stealing what does not belong to you. 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In 2025, some democratic states are willing to jettison basic human rights in support of the Israeli state. It's staggering that academic staff are losing jobs and funding in North America for speaking out. A classic witch hunt is in progress. Such examples of authoritarian heavy-handedness and the curtailing of free speech go on and on. What emerges is a pattern of systematic oppression. Speaking out for the oppressed is a demand of the Christian call to witness. In these times, the call is urgent, like never before. In that spirit, what is not true and right must be called out. Unfortunately, today, that's quite a long list. It is not true that children are terrorists. It is true that a genocide is happening in Palestine right now. It is true that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine. It is not right to arrest peaceful protesters and to intimidate and abuse them. It is not right that Ireland facilitates Israel by allowing Israeli-bound armaments to pass through its ports, on the way to their civilian targets. It is not true that people who condemn the killing in Palestine are Hamas supporters and anti-Semites. It is true that we are late into a climate emergency. It is true that truth itself is under threat with the emergence of artificial intelligence and the fake 'reality' of ever-powerful social media platforms. This Christian idea of 'bearing witness' is vital and important now. But so, too, is an understanding of the Buddhist teaching of Karma, which shows us that actions conform to the principle of causality – in short, actions have consequences. The lesson that security comes with the open hand of friendship and not the closed fist of violence seems to have gone unlearned The mass killing and theft that Israel and the US are engaged in will have consequences for many generations to come. The hatred planted deep in the hearts of brutalised Ukrainians will echo for more than a century. A whole new generation of fighters will be created through this brutality. The lesson that security comes with the open hand of friendship and not the closed fist of violence seems to have gone unlearned. To achieve peace in our time, we need to see 'the other' as an equal human being. This was the great lesson of the Belfast Agreement. We need to stop feeding the endless cycle of violence, perpetrating the cycle with more violence. As the Buddha taught, 'Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law'. Even when international justice is corrupted, some laws are eternal and never change. Rev Myozan Ian Kilroy is a Zen Buddhist priest and abbot at the Dublin Zen Centre. His new book, Do Not Try to Become a Buddha, is out now from Wisdom Publications
