Antrim | Six Months of Hell

Up Antrim! 24 years ago  I wrote a short piece for Antrim 2000. I discovered it this week when I was clearingout three decades of accumulated books, newspaper clippings and assorted  pamphlets. The 2000 reflection on Gaelic games is reproduced below. Since then much has changed in the  Gaeldom. The most important change is probably the growth of womens football. Until recent times women were confined to Camogie. Now Ladies Football is the fastest growing Gaelic game. The Glory Of Gaelic 2000.“My first love is hurling. That includes Camogie. Although there are those who will argue that the camógs play a different game. I think they play a better game. Then comes football which is mainly a kind of sport to keep hurlers fit. Handball is much under-rated and I am too out of condition now to even think of competing, though I know some aged Belfast men who are still up to championship standard.Lá Breithe Shona Duit  Abdullah ÓcalanThe Good Friday Agreement was 26 years old on Wednesday, 10 April. For almost all of that time Abdullah Öcalan, a founder of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, has been in prison in Turkey. There is a mural to Abdullah on the international wall in Northumberland St. April 4 was his 75th birthday.Six months of HellThis week marks six months from the attack by Hamas on southern Israel and Israel’s vengeful genocidal response to that. October 7 was wrong but it didn’t happen in a vacuum.Since 1948 when Palestine was forcibly partitioned and three quarters of a million Palestinians were forced to flee their homes, the Israeli state has further occupied the west Bank, for a time the Gaza Strip, built illegal settlements on Palestinian land and imposed a brutal apartheid regime.