Of Irish Hunger-Strikers and
Iraqi Suicide Bombers
by Hajja Romi Elnagar
THE ANCIENT IRISH had a custom called troscad. When someone felt he or she
had been wronged, they would go to the house of the person who given them
injury, and would fast there until the guilty party made amends, or even until
death by starvation. One writer says,
The practice of hunger-strike has deep roots in Irish culture. The Celts
would use self-inflicted starvation as a means of discrediting someone who had
done them wrong, as would unpaid poets or tradespeople who would camp outside
the home of an uncaring patron and begin a hunger striking ritual until their
wrongs were righted or their debts paid.
(http://dedanaan.com/2005/11/29/ancient-customs-the-ritual-of-the-hunger-strike/)
That source also tells us that the practice was called troscad or cealcha,
which had the meaning of "fasting on or against a person" and "achieving
justice by starvation.
In ancient times, the troscad was one of the most effective means of someone
of lesser social position to compel justice from someone of higher social
position. Thus Druids could fast against a King, or even a man or woman in one
of the lower orders of society could fast against a Chieftain. To refuse to
submit to fasting was considered indelibly disgraceful, and was one of the
things which legally degraded a man by reducing or destroying his honor-price.
I think something like that is going on today in Iraq. Instead of fasting,
the aggrieved parties are blowing themselves up, but really, the principle is
the same. Someone has been wronged, and the aggrieved parties are seeking
justice by, in effect, fasting and flagellating themselves.
In ancient Ireland, though, people had consciences, or perhaps the collective
conscience of society was strong enough to bring pressure on the party that had
committed the wrong. Sadly, however, for the victimized Iraqis, their American
occupiers seem to have no such conscience and ignore international outcry
against their behavior with impunity. Although the losses of our own troops are
carefully counted, American politicians and generals really don't care how many
Iraqi bodies get pulled daily from the rubble of their once-magnificent
infrastructure.
Americans don't know how they have destroyed Iraqi society by eliminating the
means by which it formerly maintained social order. Nor do they know or care
how badly their use of uranium weapons will wreak havoc on that tragic land, or
the entire Middle East. For--have no doubts about it--uranium weapons and
armor are turning the entire Middle East into a "Life-Free Zone," where in
another few years, no human will be alive to trouble its conquerors with truck
bombs or any other form of protest.
This is because, like other radioactive weapons, uranium weapons cause
cancers and other diseases that take years, in some cases, to manifest
themselves. However, from the moment that someone is contaminated with the
radiation from uranium weapons, that person is under an irrevocable death
sentence. For the simple fact is that there is no known cure or means of
alleviating radiation sickness, despite any and all claims to the contrary.
So, over time, we can expect that the populations of the lands where Western
civilization first thrived--Mesopotamia and Persia--will be reduced to misery
and slow extinction by cancer, birth defects and a host of other diseases
having their origin in the destruction of those countries by America's
radioactive weaponry.
Surely, against such an egregious wrong and so monstrous a harm, countless
Irish would have fasted unto death at our doorstep.
***********************************************************
NOTE: If you would like to use this article as a letter to the editor of
your local paper, please contact me. I have edited it, and reduced the word
count to make it suitable for that purpose.
Hajja Romi
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