A Mayo View: The boycott we urgently need is one directed at Israel
by Dr. Richard Martin
A few weeks ago, I painted the front of my house with my friend Eamonn Dunne.
The division of labour was simple. I stood at the foot of the ladder and he painted. My house is on Castle Street, Castlebar.
In times past it was a butcher shop and the home of the Kilcoyne family. Today it is my home.
The weather was good and the street was busy with pedestrians and traffic. I was needed at the foot of the ladder.
I noticed a peculiar thing holding the ladder and watching the flow of people on the footpath.
No-one and I mean no-one walked under the ladder. Every single person walked around me onto the street itself which was busy with traffic.
It didn’t make any sense. It was far more dangerous to walk onto the road than simply stay walking on the footpath.
Are people really that superstitious? That walking under a ladder will lead to eternal damnation, misery and despair?
Watching the street and day dreaming I started thinking about chance and fate. I had decided to paint the house in the Palestinian colours. Red door and windows. White. Black and Green.
I had debated long and hard about what to call the house. I was betwixt and between calling it ‘Kilcoyne’s’ or ‘Palestine House’. I went eventually for the latter.
The horror that is unfolding daily on the Gaza Strip is nothing more or less than the slaughter of innocents. Mass starvation.
Every day Palestinians are being massacred, journalists are being murdered and hospitals are being bombed.
It’s clear now that 20 months into this genocide that Israel have no intention of letting up.
They are determined to destroy and murder the Palestinian people and annex the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
How is their campaign in the Gaza Strip any different to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Holocaust or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia?
The children murdered on the Gaza Strip by American, German and Italian weapons never had a chance.
The only conceivable way that this genocide will be brought to a halt is if international pressure is brought to bear on the evil Israeli terror state.
An international boycott akin to the boycott of South Africa during the apartheid era. If the international community keeps selling arms to Israel, Israel will continue to murder innocents.
That much is a certainty. They must be shunned by the international community until they conform to the rigours of international law.
The only solution is an international boycott where Israel is isolated and made a pariah state.
The term boycott originated in Mayo in the 1880’s. Locals shunned the cruel land agent Captain Boycott and eventually this form of passive resistance won the day and he returned to London chastened and defeated.
Recently, a modern day boycott of Holiday Home owners in the county was proposed by Tom Gilligan (a member of the Mayo County Council executive). An email he wrote was leaked to the press.
In it he urged the boycott of holiday home owners. He reasoned that a boycott would be “potential remedy for bringing holiday homes back into use for long-term sustainable housing’ and listed a four-point plan whereby the local community would enact the proposed boycott.
Of course, the whole thing is madness and would never succeed. If a shop keeper in Mulranny refused to sell milk and bread to a holiday home owner, the holiday home owner could just drive to Tesco’s or Lidl in Westport.
I can’t see Lidl going along with the boycott. A German company resides in Ireland for one reason and one reason only. Profit.
Mayo is a major tourist destination. We need tourists who spend money in pubs, restaurants and shops. They inject money and wealth into our local economy.
Holiday home owners who build a house pay contractors, plumbers, electricians, tilers, roofers, and plasterers. They are investing in our county.
The proposed boycott of holiday owners was always an unworkable bad idea.
There was a special meeting of Mayo GAA board in Westport on May 27. The President of the GAA Jarlath Burns was in attendance alongside the association director general Tom Ryan.
There has been considerable disquiet at grassroots level about the state of Mayo GAA’s finances.
Much of this has been fomented on social media and in my opinion this meeting was long overdue.
People wanted to know the facts. What is the story with the debt incurred with the building of the stand in McHale Park? How much is owed and what are the loan repayments?
The questions were asked and the questions have been answered satisfactorily about Mayo GAA’s finances. €7.8 million is still outstanding and Mayo GAA make repayments of €25,000 a month to Croke Park.
Aside from the detailed and transparent view into the finances of Mayo GAA, the revelations of the scale of abuse being directed at board officials was shocking and disturbing.
A series of emails were shown to all in attendance. Twelve in total. Each one in the same vein. Toxic. Bullying and harassment.
Where is this all going?
The GAA is a voluntary movement.
The delegates and board members in Mayo GAA are volunteers and in return for their time, energy and efforts they are being targeted, harassed and abused relentlessly. It has to stop and the gardai need to get involved and take proactive steps.
The Mayo GAA brand is being dragged through the gutter and is doing untold damage to our county’s image. The big issue should be resolving the debt.
Mayo GAA can’t move forward until that sum of €7.8 million is repaid in full. I don’t think it’s feasible or practical to discuss a Centre of Excellence until the debt has been repaid in full.
The focus should be on positivity and imaginative fundraising efforts which could clear the debt. Could we host a major concert in McHale Park?
They can do in Pearse Stadium and Nowlan Park. McHale Park is a far superior ground.
Aside from that, the people who are behind this campaign of harassment and toxicity should be boycotted by all decent Mayo GAA fans.
You’re not wanted in Mayo GAA. We don’t need you. If we are to move forward we must make positive purposeful steps.
In this situation we make our luck.
The Galway teams of 56, 64, 65, 66, 98 and 01 were all built in St. Jarlaths. St. Jarlaths was the common thread in all those teams. The way forward is our youth.
If we develop and coach our underage teams properly we will win Sam Maguire. And win it a few times. No if’s no buts.
Superstitions, ladders and luck don’t win football matches, footballers win football matches.