Country Living with Francis Farragher

IT’S probably a ‘cop-out’ that most of us are guilty of – namely that of distancing ourselves from some of the horrible things that are happening around the world . . . and seemingly getting more horrendous with each passing day.

There is that feeling of helplessness and that ordinary Seán Citizen can do very little about this and that’s probably true too, while for our own mental health and wellbeing, the need is there too not to slip into a state of depression and despair over the mass murders that are being perpetrated  across the world, often with the backing of a state military machine.

But despite this protective veil that we all try and wear for most of the time, there was something particularly shocking when reading last week about the fate of 15 paramedics and aid workers in southern Gaza who were shot dead by Israeli forces, before then being bulldozed into a mass grave along with their vehicles.

The Guardian newspaper reported last week how the UK Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, had described Gaza as the deadliest place on Earth for aid and humanitarian workers. He called for those responsible for the deaths of the aid workers to be ‘held accountable’. An aspiration though, rather than a realistic hope.

The bodies of the 15 murdered aid workers were exhumed and post-mortem examinations carried out which showed that many of them were shot from close range, multiple times, in what had all the hallmarks of an execution type operation. Incredibly, there was one survivor from the massacre, A Red Crescent volunteer by the name of Munther Abed.

In a way, it reminded me of one of the truly horror stories from the Irish Civil when on March 7, 1923, nine anti-Treaty prisoners were tied around a mine in Ballyseedy just outside Tralee in County Kerry, before the device was detonated. Incredibly, one of the nine – a man by the name of Stephen Fuller [later to be a Fianna Fáil TD] – was thrown into a ditch and lived to tell the tale. Munther Abed was the Stephen Fuller of the March 23, 2025, Israeli atrocity.

There is a savagery and real evil that always seems to find its way into conflict situations and what’s happening in Gaza is the 2025 version of what Adolf Hitler did to the Jews during the Second World War, the latter albeit on a far greater scale. Yet, the figures for Gaza, even allowing for propaganda claims and counter-claims, are truly horrendous.

Pictured: Children of Gaza: What will arrive next? Food or a missile strike?