‘This war has made me lose faith’
Tamar Nijim will be the keynote speaker at the second event to be held by the newly-formed North Tipperary branch of the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
The event will start at 10.30am on Saturday, May 4, in the Food Hub in the North Tipperary Green Enterprise Park (Wecreate) in Cloughjordan ecovillage (E53 VP86). There, the branch meeting will discuss progress on ongoing campaigns in the region. This will be followed by a talk by former Gaza resident now living in Limerick, Tamar Nijim. After this, there will be creative time, where people will make posters, banners, print tee shirts and do similar all-ages and all-abilities activities in an informal social setting.
The North Tipperary IPSC branch meeting will assess progress regarding the Hunger for Justice rolling 24-hour fast, initiated in Nenagh and running since mid April, and the AXA actions in support of the BDS (Boycott Divest Sanction) campaigns. These have seen pickets outside AXA offices all over Ireland and the world, including in Thurles recently.
Following this, the 25-year-old Palestinian will speak from 11.15am. Nijim left Gaza in September last year, a mere couple of weeks before October 7. A teacher in Gaza, Nijim is currently studying for a Masters in Mary Immaculate College in Limerick.
Nijim’s family have been left behind in Gaza, their house bombed, while they have moved from location to location. They now live in a tent.
FAMILY BOMBED
Indeed, the MI student has seen her own family being bombed on video calls twice. Access to all of life’s basics is increasingly expensive and difficult, while her father has suffered a heart attack in these conditions.
At the recent national rally for Palestine in Dublin, attended by tens of thousands of people, Nijim referenced how she was already “a survivor of six wars”. She spoke of how her inner child had been “killed”. “Every day feels like a century in the Gaza Strip for all of us… this war has made me lose faith in all international laws and human rights.”
Speaking to the Limerick Leader in February, she said: “They had to evacuate in 24 hours and leave. Suddenly, they have been targeted and the place around them has been erased, so they left the house running for their lives without food, clothes or anything under bombing, live shooting and phosphorus gas.”
She continued: “They had to see dead people and bodies all the way. They had to evacuate to Rafah as they assume it’s a safe place and they had to live in hard conditions in a tent sharing a small space and eating canned foods. They got sick many times with no medical treatment; they have been targeted inside Rafah where they assumed it’s safe”.
Nijim is running a gofundme to try to bring her family to Ireland - 'Help my family escape death and reunite with me'.
After Nijim, from 11.45am until lunchtime, the creative art activities take place. Here, banners, posters and more will be made by participants, which relate to the current situation in Gaza and the West Bank.