A Palestinian flag is currently fluttering from the top of the Spire, Dublin’s tallest landmark, looking down on the Irish flag which flies from the historic General Post Office a few metres away. Pro-Palestinian fanatics dropped the flag – emblazoned with the words ‘Stop Genocide in Gaza’ – onto the Spire from a drone hovering 120 metres above ground, in defiance of aviation laws, in September. More than three months on, the authorities seem powerless to remove it.
The Spire, newly adorned with the now familiar green, red, and black Palestinian colours, stands on the same site in O’Connell Street where before Admiral Horatio Nelson had overlooked the street with his one good eye since 1809. As historians tell it, Nelson’s Pillar – similar to the one which still stands in London’s Trafalgar Square – may have saved the lives of a few Irish rebels during the course of the 1916 rising. The statue stood atop an imposing granite column with a doorway that provided cover for protestors under fire from the British army.
The column stood until 8 March 1966 when a republican bomb brought Lord Nelson crashing to the ground. What was left of the pillar was demolished by the Irish army a week later. The controlled demolition succeeded in breaking quite a few windows in O’Connell Street, leading to jokes that explosives were best left in the hands of professionals.
The flag has become a tattered symbol of a fanatical ideology and official impotence
The site remained derelict until 2003 when city bureaucrats got around to transforming it with the Spire, a brutalist, stainless-steel structure resembling a giant needle, standing 120 metres high with a red aviation warning light on top. The light repeatedly malfunctioned and proved difficult to repair because of internal access to the mechanism and problems using a crane in the busy city-centre location.
Officially named the ‘Monument of Light’, it was supposed to represent a brave, shiny new cosmopolitan city. Dublin wags were quick to name the new landmark ‘Stiletto in the Ghetto’, ‘Stiffy by the Liffey’ and – my favourite description – a ‘badly designed phallic symbol of Irish hubris’. It was voted Europe’s fifth ugliest landmark in a 2021 Euronews poll, but by and large the Spire just stands, unremarked upon, in jarring contrast with the remaining early 19th-century architecture in a once proud and beautiful street.
That was until last autumn when pro-Palestine protestors flew a drone over the top of the Spire and dropped the flag anchored by a yellow hoop over the top of it. The keffiyeh crew were cock-a -hoop (no pun intended) at this daring feat. One NGO trilled:
There’s a Palestinian flag flying high on the Spire today! As well as being great solidarity, this is some feat of acrobatics, or ingenuity, or both. The streets are with Palestine!
What fun. What bravery.
It is an offence under the Irish Aviation Authority regulations to fly drones at such a height over public spaces and restricted areas. But aviation safety or that of people on the ground matters little to those hell-bent on forcing their ideology on the rest of us and damn the consequences.
When Dublin City Council became aware of the flag three months ago, the city fathers went into a huddle to consider their options to safely remove it. As of late December, they would only say they were reviewing their options. But internal correspondence released under freedom of information legislation shows there is ‘no current methodology for removing objects this high up the Spire.’ A council engineer suggested ‘engaging the services of a rope access company for an external climb’ but warned that someone would only repeat it. As indeed they would. The engineer then wondered: ‘Can the Irish Aviation Authority make this a red zone for drones, and would that have any impact?’
Not one whit. These morons who put aircraft safety at risk are of the same ilk as the fanatics who endangered 70,000 spectators at a US college football game at Dublin’s Aviva stadium by dropping a drone with a Palestinian flag into the crowd. Footage of the incident at the Florida State versus Georgia Tech game in August 2024 shows the drone circling the stadium at speed before it came crashing down onto some of the seats. Cheerleaders had been sitting there seconds before they took to the pitch to perform.
The gardai investigated the incident as one of ‘endangerment’, an offence punishable by up to seven years imprisonment. Officers began raiding properties (they clearly had suspects in mind from the start). They seized a ‘significant number’ of electronic devices, but no one was arrested, much less charged. The investigation is ongoing, they say. Seriously?
No doubt the Pro-Palestine crowd celebrated this stunt as another stunning act of derring-do. After all, what does the safety of a few young American cheerleaders matter when the freedom of Palestine is at stake?
Back on O’Connell Street, the Palestinian flag is still flying high on the Spire. A tattered symbol of a fanatical ideology and official impotence on top of a poorly conceived monument to hubris.
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