On Monday the 22nd of April, Nancy Pelosi was invited to University College Dublin (UCD) to receive an honorary doctorate of law. The ceremony was small, invitation-only, and heavily policed by the Gardaí. In attendance was the president of the Students’ Union, Martha Ní Riada, who stood up to protest about the event before being violently thrown out of the event by plainclothes Gardaí.
Later that day, the Sutherland School of Law in UCD awarded Pelosi the ‘Sutherland Award’, the most prestigious award the university has to offer. Past recipients of the award include Bill Clinton and Ursula Von Der Leyen. Students and other opponents of Nancy Pelosi’s Zionist politics gathered outside, decrying her support for the Israeli regime and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. They also decried UCD’s attempts to not only normalise but glorify relations with US imperialists and Israeli institutions.
As protestors gathered around the building at all entrances, more Gardaí arrived. Three Public Order Unit vans and dozens of guards armed with batons lingered around the building to defend the right of Irish elites to dine with American warmongers and millionaires. Among the tuxedo-clad guests – who paid upwards of €400 each for a ticket to the gala dinner – were politicians from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, business people and the like. Bertie Ahern, a deeply corrupt man who drove the Irish economy to ruin and ushered in a decade of EU- imposed austerity, was heckled by protesters. Enda Kenny, Regina Doherty, and Jack Chambers also attended the dinner.
Last week, Nancy Pelosi voted ‘yes’ to sending $26.38 billion in ‘humanitarian aid’ to Israel (source), with $13 billion of that going to the US Defence Department to fund the Iron Dome and other weapons systems, and $3.6 billion directly to Israel for ‘security’ purposes’.
This week, while people in Gaza uncover a mass grave in a hospital in Khan Younis, Nancy Pelosi dines with Irish elites.
In the heart of the Western imperialist core, the US, students, and faculty staff have begun mass protest encampments in solidarity with Palestine in several locations – Yale, Columbia, and New York University (NYU) among them. These protesters have been met with mass arrests, pepper spray, violence, intimidation by police, and even suspension by university management. Despite the attempts to criminalise and slander principled opposition to Zionism, they continue to fight for the liberation of Palestine.
People Before Profit condemns the brutalisation and criminalisation of protests against genocide and imperialism, in Ireland, the US, Germany, Palestine, everywhere. We stand firmly in solidarity with those students and staff who demand an end to the Zionist occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and an end to Western complicity.
A video of Martha being manhandled can be seen here.