Israeli flag display by Limerick student triggers uproar and ends in physical ejection from event

A LIMERICK student’s display of the Israeli flag at a pro-Palestinian event has sparked international controversy and resulted in the student being physically ejected from the venue.

The incident has attracted attention across the world and even a condemnation from a member of Israel's government.

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Jamie O'Mahony, a Dublin City University (DCU) student from Limerick, attended a ticketed talk over the weekend featuring a pro-Palestinian historian.

The 21-year-old, pictured below, said he went to the event on Saturday afternoon with two friends to "protest and challenge" its keynote speaker, historian and poltical scientist Prof Ilan Pappe.

He said he waited "respectfully and quietly" through his 40-minute speech, before "calmly and peacefully" offering his opinions which he said led into a question.

He asked: "Why have you, over the years, used the benefits of speech, freedom to criticise etc, in order to demomise and delegitimise and ultimately bring about the destruction of the only country in the Middle East where you can get away with that, and any other country in the Middle East, you'd have presumably died in a dungeon like we see in Syria, or Saudi or elsewhere?"

The line of questioning drew an intervention from the meeting's chair Zoe Lawlor of the event organisers, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC).

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His questions saw members of the audience booing, at which point Mr O'Mahony responded "boo all ye like," and began to unfurl the Israeli flag.

At this point, a male member of the audience rose from his seat and confronted him. The video shows the two parties being restrained from one another.

Ms Lawlor chairs the IPSC, which organises weekly marches around the country in protest against the Middle Eastern war.

She told Limerick Live that many members of Saturday's audience were from Palestine, resettled in Ireland. One of the people had only arrived on these shores from Gaza in recent days, she added.

"Clearly raising the Israeli flag was done as a provocation," she said.

Footage seen by Limerick Live, and shared widely across the internet, shows the move to raise the flag sparked anger among many of those in attendance at the event at The Gaff at Lord Edward Street in Limerick city centre.

"At this stage, a man attempted to tear my flag from my arms, which I stopped him from doing," Mr O'Mahony told Limerick Live this Monday afternoon, before adding that it "turned into a group dragging me out of the room and putting their arms around my neck."

Earlier this year Mr O'Mahony was kicked out of DCU's debating society after he set up a pro-Israel movement on campus.

The person who ripped the flag from Mr O'Mahony's hands has been identified as Dr Ger Downes, a University of Limerick (UL) employee.

"A flag is a very symbolic item. They mean so much within the world. I wasn't going to tolerate him trying to take something out of my hand. I pulled back from it. It developed into a scuffle. We were face-to-face shouting at each other," Mr O'Mahony, a DCU French and business student added.

The footage shows expletives were exhanged between the pair, prior to Mr O'Mahony's ejection from the venue by what he has described as "a big group of five guys".

"Obviously, it was planned," Ms Lawlor said. "He said in an online statement that he went there to protest against Ilan Pappe. They were allowed in [the venue] in good faith," Ms Lawlor added.

She said that Mr O'Mahoney was the first person to seek to ask a question of the historian in a question-and-answer session at the end of his speech.

"I asked him to ask a question, and he made a speech. The time we had was very limited," she said, pointing to the fact Prof Pappe was racing straight from the event to Shannon Airport.

Ms Lawlor described the commentator's talk as "really inspirational, very important, very powerful."

"That should be the story. But this is all to distract from what is going on in Palestine, what Israel is doing. We have seen this with Kneecap at Glastonbury. Anything but what is going on is the story. Instead of people talking about what Prof Pappe said on Saturday, we end up talking about this," she concluded.

Following his exit from the venue, the Limerick man said he visited Henry Street garda station, where he made a statement, but declined to press criminal charges.

He said he approached gardai to offer his side of the story, amid concern he would be "painted as the aggressor" by others.
A video of the incident was posted on the Instagram feed of the Qatari news channel Al Jazeera, which has more than six million followers.

And Israel's Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Anti-semitism, Amichai Chikli also weighed in with criticism of the episode, according to quotes from the Jewish News Syndicate website.

Dr Downes did not return a request for comment from Limerick Live. An Garda Siochana did not respond to a query logged about the incident.

UL declined to comment.

Prof Pappe, an Israel-born Jewish political scientist, is known to hold views which run contrary to the Government of his homeland.

He has spoken at length about the decades-long conflict between Israel and Palestine, which exploded into the current war following an attack by Hamas which left 1,195 people dead on October 7, 2023. At least 57,323 Palestinians in Gaza have lost their lives in the atrocities.

He said that he felt that Mr O'Mahony was not seeking an answer to his comments, but instead came to disrupt the meeting, adding: "This was provocation for the sake of provocation and not a wish to dialogue or even challenge."

"I welcome any question or comment from whomever, but that was not the purpose of the provocation; he came to wave the Israeli flag. Can you imagine what would have happened if a person would wave the Palestinian flag in a Zionist meeting? No doubt the police would have been called and the person in question would be arrested. The incident was dealt with promptly, it was over in a minute, and nobody was hurt," he said.

Prof Pappe was in Ireland as part of a three-day tour, also giving talks in Dublin and Cork.