Two dozen people gathered outside the US embassy in Dublin on Friday morning to read out the names of thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been killed in Gaza since October 7th.
Organised by Galway-based artist Ríonach Ní Neill and friends, the group gathered from 7.30am outside the embassy with a list of the names of the 8,796 civilians in Gaza who have been confirmed killed in Israeli attacks.
The names were released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health on Friday and translated by volunteers around the world.
“We’re having this vigil opposite the American embassy because they’re the biggest funder of the bombs, and because Joe Biden had the inhumanity to question whether these people were killed or not,” Ms Ní Neill said.
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“This is first and foremost an act of remembrance and respect for the dead. We’re naming everybody and reading out their names and their ages because it used to be that people were just numbers in war, and now they’re not even getting the recognition of a number, their death has been questioned and denied.”
The vigil was organised by “a group of ordinary people, not any organisation, who are just shocked, appalled and overwhelmed by what we’re seeing from Gaza”, she said.
Ms Ní Neill said she had a colleague in Gaza, Sohail Salem, who is a visual artist, whose apartment was bombed on the second day of the war.
“Himself and his family were made homeless. I’ve only heard from him twice since then, and now I haven’t heard from him in eight days,” she said.
Each of the volunteers planned to read the names of the dead aloud for a period of 30 minutes, at which rate they expected the vigil would take about 12 hours to complete, running from 7.30am to 7.30pm.
“My background is in dance and climate arts. I’ve never done anything like this before. We just borrowed a mic off one friend and an amp from another and off we went,” Ms Ní Neill said.
“The embassy isn’t going to respond to us but they can’t ignore it. All we can do as ordinary people is to keep reiterating that we’re all humans. I had to read out the names of babies under the age of one this morning - is that what we have to do to remind our politicians to protect human life?”
The vigil was intended to be “gentle, quiet and mournful,” Ms Ní Neill said, adding that members of the public passing by the embassy on Friday morning had been stopping to listen, photograph, and give words of support.
“I think every decent person is in shock. If we had the full list of names we’d be here until tomorrow morning. Our message is to demand not just a ceasefire, but an end to the genocide, and an end to the occupation,” she said.
Israel says Hamas killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 240 hostages in the attacks on October 7th, the deadliest day of its 75-year-old history.
