Blood Sacrifice
Someone not so long ago posted a cover version of The Foggy Dew. An Irish rebel song penned to commemorate the militarily unsuccessful 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. Coincidently I was thinking about The Easter Rising today and the song it inspired in relation to the recent events in The Middle East.
The main architect of the rising was Patrick Pearse. Pearse was captured, tried in a military court and summarily executed along with the other leaders of the rising days after the doomed rebellion ended.
Inspired by nineteenth-century Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi Pearse believed in the idea of a “blood sacrifice”, the nationalistic sentiment of rejuvenation and or redemption of ones cause or country through the spilling of blood, primarily your own in heroic self-sacrifice on the battlefield.
Pearse’s idea of blood sacrifice was prophetic. The British Army’s heavy-handed approach in the weeks and months after the rising caused public sentiment to shift from outright hostility to the rebels to one where they became esteemed as martyrs for the cause of Irish independence.
His and his fellow rebels ‘blood sacrifice’ rejuvenated Irish Nationalism so much that the Irish populace’s opinion shifted so much that in five short years, most of the island won its independence from The British Empire after the Anglo-Irish War.
There is no doubt that those in Hamas knew that they would be killed (a blood sacrifice). Furthermore, they would have known that Israel's response would be ruthless. Perhaps Hamas's hopes are that the longer Israel's reprisal lasts and the severity of which it is inflicted, international opinion swing from one of sympathy for Israel to one of hostility, especially when civilian causalities on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank spiral.
The main architect of the rising was Patrick Pearse. Pearse was captured, tried in a military court and summarily executed along with the other leaders of the rising days after the doomed rebellion ended.
Inspired by nineteenth-century Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi Pearse believed in the idea of a “blood sacrifice”, the nationalistic sentiment of rejuvenation and or redemption of ones cause or country through the spilling of blood, primarily your own in heroic self-sacrifice on the battlefield.
Pearse’s idea of blood sacrifice was prophetic. The British Army’s heavy-handed approach in the weeks and months after the rising caused public sentiment to shift from outright hostility to the rebels to one where they became esteemed as martyrs for the cause of Irish independence.
His and his fellow rebels ‘blood sacrifice’ rejuvenated Irish Nationalism so much that the Irish populace’s opinion shifted so much that in five short years, most of the island won its independence from The British Empire after the Anglo-Irish War.
There is no doubt that those in Hamas knew that they would be killed (a blood sacrifice). Furthermore, they would have known that Israel's response would be ruthless. Perhaps Hamas's hopes are that the longer Israel's reprisal lasts and the severity of which it is inflicted, international opinion swing from one of sympathy for Israel to one of hostility, especially when civilian causalities on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank spiral.
