Gaza students shame the Irish authorities

After a summer in which the dreams of dozens of the best and the brightest young people in Palestine seemed to be shattered by the Irish authorities, it was fitting that three survivors of the Gaza genocide managed to shame the Irish Government thanks to the brilliance of their artwork this past weekend.

At the end of the academic year, Masters students who have completed the MA in Creative Practice at the Atlantic Technological University (ATU) in Galway are invited to take part in a joint exhibition which showcases the power of their work and some of the projects they have worked on over the past year.

At a time when up to 40 of the most gifted young people in Gaza are facing acute disappointment, after being turned down visas by the Irish Department of Justice, it seemed fitting and even poignant that three scholarship students from Gaza stole the show.

Their 2026–27 counterparts were notified that their visas had been denied in recent weeks even though they had obtained fully funded scholarships to study in Ireland.

The ‘From One Breadth to the Next’ exhibition showcases the works of all of the Masters students who completed their studies at the School of Creative Industries this year, but it was impossible not to be moved in particular by the work of the three artists from Gaza who were evacuated to Ireland during the genocide.

ATU poster

The exhibition, which opened on Friday night, features multimedia work by journalist and film-maker Abdelrahman Ismail, poet and designer Fatena Abu Mostafa, and visual artist Mohammed Al Madhoun, all of whom won scholarships to study at the ATU and had to be evacuated from Gaza this time last year.

Abdelrahman’s powerful 13-minute film, Borders in Sand, looks at how Gaza children use their imaginations to continue playing games amid the wreckage of Israel’s onslaught in his home city of Deir Al Balah. As the children invent a game on sand, with the tents of dispossessed families in the background, it is impossible not to be moved by the shadows which the on-going siege and conflict cast over their young lives. He filmed the entire documentary on his mobile phone and edited it in Galway.

Abdelrahman films the children at play with the mastery of a veteran film-maker, allowing the terrible backdrop of what has been happening to their people emerge through the innocent conversations of youngsters who are determined to have fun, even in the context of ethnic cleansing, regular aerial bombardments, and an innate understanding of the terrible injustice experienced by the people of Palestine.

His visual pieces are equally stunning. He juxtaposes images he took himself from the Gaza Genocide onto landscapes in the West of Ireland, to chilling effect at times. As we see dispossessed Palestinian families travel through deserted West of Ireland valleys, it is impossible for Irish people not to relate his images to the Irish Famine (1845–1852), when a million people died of starvation and another million emigrated when Ireland was under the iron fist of the British Empire.

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There were no cameras to capture or witness the ethnic cleansing of the West of Ireland in the 1840s, when starving people walked through these same valleys in search of food, only to be turned away by the landlord class or left to die on the side of rural roads.

The fact that his images are juxtaposed onto the West of Ireland landscape, the poorest region on the island of Ireland which was most devastated by the Irish famine, makes them even more poignant and more breath-taking for a Galway audience, in one of the few regions of Ireland where the Irish language survived centuries of repression and discrimination.

Oliver Cromwell’s forces used to proclaim “To Hell or to Connacht” when they ran Irish families out of the better land to the east of the country in the 17th century. It is hard not to relate that mass migration to the Nakba of 1948, when 80 percent of the families now trapped into Gaza were ethnically cleansed from their homes and villages in what is now Israel.

Fatena, who is best known as a poet, wrote a long poem in English about her experience of returning to her family home after it had been destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. She accompanies it with a stunning three-dimensional image of a lone suitcase she found standing in the rubble.

Abdelrahman shows one of his stunning visual images to a family member back in Gaza.

A press vest in the sand is at the heart of Abdelrahman Ismail’s exhibition in Galway.

Abdelrahman Ismail from Gaza at his end of year exhibition in Galway, Ireland.

And Mohammad’s poignant paintings reminded me of powerful works of art I witnessed when I visited the Tuol Sleng concentration camp in Cambodia, now a museum, many years after the Cambodian Genocide. Mohammad uses the same powerful and bright colours, the same kind of gaunt lifeless figures, as the brave Cambodian artists who depicted the horrors of the Khmer Rouge during Pol Pot’s agrarian genocide, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million to three million people.

While the three Palestinian artists share the exhibition space with a number of Irish and international artists, it was the way in which these three young survivors from Gaza in their 20s were impacted by the genocide around them which provided the main talking point from the opening night.

All three have shown amazing talent and their multimedia work shows how much they have developed as artists and as people during a year of post-graduate study in Ireland.

In recent weeks, dozens of young people like them – talented university graduates from Gaza – have gone from elation to acute disappointment after being offered scholarships to study in Irish universities only to have their visas turned down by the Irish Government.

Abubaker Abed, another scholarship student from Deir Al Balah, reported last month that this is the first time in a decade that the Irish Department of Justice has refused more Palestinian visa applications than it has granted.

Some of the students were told they had “gaps in their education” after the universities they attended in Gaza were bombed to bits during the first two years of the Israeli onslaught on the tiny strip, which is half the size of Co. Louth, Ireland’s smallest county.

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Apparently, having your place of study destroyed in airstrikes is now viewed as no excuse for not attending lectures in the eyes of the Irish immigration authorities.

They were told they had insufficient proof of funding, even though Irish universities have offered them fully funded scholarships, including accommodation, for the current academic year.

Those who had their visas rejected were told they could only appeal in writing, and “not by email or fax” according to Abubaker’s report in The Electronic Intifada. Given that Gaza’s entire postal system has been annihilated, it is pretty difficult for a young student in the strip to post an appeal to the Irish authorities.

Over the past two years, the Lajee Dancers, a group of dakbe dancers from the Aida refugee camp in the West Bank, have been refused visas to come to Ireland on one-week tours to showcase Palestinian culture.

In July of last year, a planned tour of Ireland by young Palestinian players and coaches from a Gaelic football club – which was supported by 100 Irish host families and funding from Ireland – also had to be cancelled after the Irish Department of Justice refused entry visas to the youngsters, citing documentation issues.

The denial caused controversy across Ireland, where host families from Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) clubs had been lined up to host the players and their coaches in their homes.

Irish people have expressed widespread solidarity with the plight of the Palestinians at huge marches and rallies over the past three years, but the denial of visas by the Irish authorities has enraged those who hoped that scholarships for the brightest and the most gifted students in Gaza would bring hope to, and transform, their lives.

In attempting to appear tough at a time of increasing racist sentiment across Europe, the Irish Department of Justice’s decision to deny visas to brilliant students who have survived a genocide has resulted in anger and dismay.

It was left to three of the students who managed to get to Ireland last year, at a time when their lives were endangered, to shame the Irish authorities this week thanks to the brilliance of their work and their determination that Palestinian voices need to be heard, especially at a time when the world has begun to turn away from the horrors unfolding in Palestine.

The Irish Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, should be dragged along to this exhibition in Galway and made to feel very much ashamed for destroying the dreams of dozens of similar scholarship students and their families.

They have no interest in being a burden on Irish society, over-staying their visas, or leaving their families and friends in Palestine behind forever. These are young people who have survived a horrendous onslaught, a terrible injustice, the destruction of the place they love, and they have so much to teach us about resilience and overcoming almost impossible hurdles in our lives.

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