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I
have heard many speakers over the years, most of them
instantly forgettable. Their long winded assertions
invariably peppered with self-serving bollix and falsehoods
never fails to inspire me to run away from them.
Caoimhe Butterly is something else. She holds you
in your chair. Subconsciously, you want to nail your
feet to the floor in case time is called and you have
to leave. Brought up in a culture of liberation theology,
in which the intellectual influence of the murdered
archbishop Oscar Romero was pronounced, she has dedicated
her life to campaigning for human rights.
Since
listening to her last Monday night as she provided
the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Belfast
with an account of life under Israeli occupation,
her words have been etched deeply in my mind. Since
then, I have listened to her twice, once at Queen‘s
University and then at the Culturlann in West Belfast.
On each occasion the venue was full and some of those
who had gathered to listen to her sat on the floor
or along the walls. The effect is always the same
- she electrifies her audience. Her command of language
is superb - her knowledge of the subject matter makes
her discourse anything but rhetorical. This woman
answers on the spot, seemingly never pausing for reflection.
A cross examination of some point produces the same
response. Unfaltering, crafting layer after layer
of incisive intellectual coordinates, she quickly
weaves these into an devastatingly comprehensible
map which conveys a horror about the terror that Israel
wields over the lives of Palestinians who go about
their daily lives, two-thirds of whom live below the
poverty level of $2 a day.
That
she is only 23 is one thought that immediately springs
to mind. Physically, she fits the bill but intellectually
this woman towers over people twice her age, armed
as they may be with PhDs and degrees from a variety
of academic institutions. Experience, they say is
a great teacher. In my experience few have been taught
nor teach as well as Caoimhe Butterly. Yet she is
so reticent about being viewed in terms other than
ordinary. No shrinking violet in front of Israeli
tanks she is ‘camera phobic’ preferring
to melt into the crowd than to be set apart from it
on some podium. Her most relaxed posture was attained
when she sprawled on the floor, back to a settee drinking
coffee in the West Belfast home of an IPSC activist.
She
fits in over here but in Palestine it is different.
There her presence while loved by the Palestinians
is a source of defiance to the armed might of the
Israeli state. Her physical bravery in placing herself
between the soldiers of that state and the children
they seek to kill and maim is as provocative to it
as her ability to articulate the grievances of those
Palestinians subject to its brutal rule. And the attitude
of that state to the children of Palestine was encapsulated
in the praise showered on the pilot of an Israeli
F-16 by Ariel Sharon after he had murdered nine children
in Gaza.
Caoimhe
has already been shot for her stance. If they hope
to deter her and keep her away, they may forget about
it. This woman has the same strength of purpose as
those who died on the 1981 hunger strike. There is
no deterring people of that make up. In her own words
‘I'm in this for the long haul. I think that
as a human being of conscience it is not good enough
for me to stay where I am comfortable. I'm going nowhere.
I am staying until this occupation ends. I have the
right to be here, a responsibility to be here. So
does anyone who knows what is going on here.’
An
insight into the daily routine of Caoimhe was provided
first hand by Katie Barlow who met her in Jenin as
part of a film she was making:
A
disabled Palestinian boy had been shot off his bicycle
by an IDF sniper. Caoimhe ran straight towards him,
despite the continuing fire, and covered the gaping
wound in his back. Within minutes, the Red Crescent
ambulance arrived at the scene, and amid continuing
gunfire, the paramedics got the boy into the vehicle.
The snipers managed to shoot through the ambulance
window, shattering glass all over the boy and nearly
killing the local cameraman who was filming a report.
At the hospital, we were told that the boy was going
to survive but would be paralysed from the waist
down. This, said Caoimhe, is everyday life in Jenin.
And
she was catapulted to international prominence in
April of last year when she got herself into Yasser
Arafat's Ramallah compound to help a wounded Palestinian
friend shot in the leg by Israeli troops.
Thanks
to Caoimhe Butterly and people of her standing the
major war crime that took place in Jenin has been
thrust in the faces of the massacre deniers. According
to Edward Said this crime was not properly investigated
because cowardly international bureaucrats such as
Kofi Annan back down when Israel threatens. Khader
Shkirat, a director of LAW, The Palestinian Society
for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment
has argued that 'part of an overall settlement must
now also include an end to impunity: that requires
the prosecution of war criminals'. Without the testimony
of Caoimhe Butterly such impunity will continue unalloyed.
And if it does crimes against humanity will continue
and we may never learn of:
burnt,
broken body parts, a plait of a little girl, and
the foot of a baby. I picked up what remained of
a head. I saw the body of a little girl who was
curled up with her teddy bear. She had suffocated
when her house was demolished.
And
we who might otherwise do something will be permitted
to wallow in conscienceless silence.
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