Mamdani Rips ‘Genocide’ in Palestine During St. Patrick’s Day Event

EXCERPT:

MAMDAANI: "I say this as over the past few years, as we’ve witnessed a genocide unfold before our eyes, there has been deafening silence from so many. For those who have long cared about universal human rights and the extension of them to Palestinians, silence, however, is nothing new for Palestinians are so often left to weep alone. Yet, former President Robinson has never been silent. Not when she was president, not when she was high commissioner for human rights, and not in the decades since. As she once said, 'Commemoration is a moral act.' Her solidarity is many things; unwavering, sincere, and chief among them, Irish. Irish solidarity is no coincidence. Who can better understand those who weep than those who have been made to weep for so long? The story of the Irish, both in Ireland and in New York City, is at one time a story of oppression, of subjugation, and of discrimination. As we know, it was on Irish soil that the British Empire developed their colonial project. So much of the exploitation later imposed elsewhere across the world was first honed in the plantations of Ireland. And yet, when I think of the Irish, I do not think first of oppression. I think of resistance. I think of unity. I think of corn beef and 96-minute Troy Parrot goals and the Poges Fairy Tale of New York. Above all, I think of that solidarity.”