Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

In an anti-imperialist struggle, if we don’t support the Resistance, what are we doing?

Among the Left – and even among many liberals — the importance of internationalist solidarity is generally accepted as taken for granted. However, as with many principles, it is in its application that we find substantial disparity.

After the October 7^th breakout from the Zionist siege of Gaza the leading elements of the western world rushed to condemn the Palestinian resistance led by the Hamas group. Atrocity propaganda created by the Zionists abounded.¹

Hamas² and Islamic Jihad³ had planned and carried out the breakout operation in which they knocked out the Zionist surveillance and automatic firing defences, damaged communications, went through and over the apartheid wall and overran the Golani Brigade⁴ forces.⁵

The Resistance killed many of the IOF⁶ and captured others. In addition, the Resistance captured a number of civilians in order to exchange them for the huge number of Palestinian political prisoners held by the Zionist authorities.

Some Left groups joined the anti-Resistance chorus immediately while others took a little longer but then did so too. In Ireland, for example, leading figures in People Before Profit and the Socialist Party condemned Hamas, seen as the leading Palestinian element in the operation.

So too did the leadership of the formerly revolutionary Irish Republican political party Sinn Féin.⁷

Of the Left Zionists in ‘Israel’ (in so far as they can be called ‘Left’), they too joined the chorus. The Israeli state’s presidency has had representation from the Labour Party without interruption from 1948 to 1977 and most of the settlement expansions took place under a Labour government.⁸

CIVILIANS

Some of the western ‘Left’ organisations stated that it was not the armed breakout of the Palestinians to which they objected but instead the killing of civilians. The liberals and media also made much of the issue of ‘civilians’ – to an extent never accorded to Palestinian civilians.

It is important to note that the adult civilians in the ‘Israeli’ state are, apart from tourists, settlers. They are colonising land from which the indigenous Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed. In addition military service is required of all ‘citizens’⁹ and a great many are armed anyway.

This is similar to what the Indigenous people of the Americas and Antipodes faced from European settlers from the 18^th to the 20^th Centuries or the Irish during the various plantations from the 17^th Century onwards and the Land War during the 19^th.

One baby was killed on October 7^th quite likely by excessive heat in a burning building and another 13 children were killed, according to ‘Israeli’ social services. But by whom? By Palestinians or by indiscriminate Hellfire missiles from IOF helicopters and at least one tank firing into a building?¹⁰

Civilians may have been deliberately killed knowing they were civilians or by crossfire or by Israeli counterattack. Certainly there was at least one teenager taken captive, the daughter of the Irishman settler who infamously said he would rather his daughter were dead than captured by Hamas.

We’d like to know, of course, which case and how many. But in terms of solidarity principle, it’s beside the point: While we are not required by internationalist solidarity basic principles to approve of every one of its actions, we ARE required to be in solidarity with the Resistance.

BUT, ISLAMIST…!

Many in western society are secular in their politics, many of agnostic or atheist position. So, that is our choice. Others belong quite strongly to one religious belief or another. What is different about Islamists (or fundamentalist Christians) is that they aspire to a society run in accordance with their religious beliefs.

We may not agree with that objective. We should not agree with the subordinate social and political status accorded to women in some religious cultures nor to the outlawing of LGBT sexuality. But even so, we should support the Resistance, Islamist or otherwise, in resisting repression.

Basque society was largely conservative Catholic while resisting Spanish State fascism up to the 1970s; Welsh mining society was often conservative Methodist in the struggles of the miners in the 1930s. The Irish Republican movement was permeated by Catholic symbolism and ideology.

We could have been, should have been capable of supporting the resistance in each of those cases while not supporting the religious conservative, reactionary or fundamentalist beliefs or conduct of participants or leaders in those struggles.

For revolutionaries, the general principles or internationalist solidarity are not of the kind from which one can pick and choose, while rejecting others. We are however entitled to accord ‘favoured status’ to an organisation the ideology and practice of which we most approve.

We may for example prefer a secular or even socialist resistance organisation (e.g the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine). We may carry its flags, promote its statements, share its social media postings. But we do so while also expressing solidarity with the Resistance as a whole.

That is reasonable and honourable. It is neither to participate in attempts to break up whatever unity exists among the organisations of the resistance.

During the 30 Years War in Ireland, there were those in Britain who participated in those activities – people who colluded for example with SF refusing to share a platform with the IRSP¹¹ on Hunger Strike commemorations, threatening refusal to attend if their wishes were not acceded to.

No doubt that seemed justified to the Provisionals in their promotion of their organisation above any other choice but that activity split commemoration committees, disheartened activists and killed some solidarity events on the annual calendar.¹²

HOW BEST TO DO IT … AND IN PUBLIC

We often hear people ask a speaker from the resistance movement what we should do in solidarity. This is in general incorrect behaviour because we have our own revolutionary program and we best know our own circumstances and capabilities.

It is a different thing to ask what are the things that the resistance movement needs: medicines, weapons, representation, contacts, publicity etc. But we still have to decide how well to fit the effort of obtaining those within our capabilities or even whether the objective is worth the energy expanded.¹³

The Resistance can tell us what they need but the decision on which solidarity actions to take is ours. However whether to express solidarity is not a choice for revolutionaries – it is an obligation.

As revolutionaries we have a public position and part of that should be public solidarity with the Resistance. It is not unknown for some to claim to support a resistance organisation but to decline to do so publicly.

An African National Congress speaker in London years ago told me privately that they supported the Palestinian and Irish resistance but would not do so publicly as it might undermine support they were receiving from UK and other western bourgeois organisations.

I argued with him against this.¹⁴ Relating the discussion to a senior SF activist later I was astounded at the response that they would do the same if required.

Solidarity with the Resistance means also solidarity with those incarcerated during the struggle, the resistance in the jails. Again, though an organisation may think differently, we are not required to support the specific organisation to which the prisoners owe allegiance.

Nor does any Resistance organisation have the right to dictate to us whether we may or may not express solidarity with political prisoners who are aligned with that organisation. Over the years, the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign has faced down attempted coercion along those lines.

So also did the Irish Political Status Committee in London. And both groups remained independent. Unfortunately the Troops Out Movement of the day was unable to do so and after a brief period of asserting independence, eventually succumbed to domination by Provisional Sinn Féin.¹⁵

Supporting political prisoners is an act of necessary solidarity with the resistance and also one of self-defence in the longer term but it does not necessarily mean expressing support with the actions or organisation of the prisoners before or indeed after they were jailed.

SUMMARY

We are entitled if we wish to prioritise support for a specific organisation or its program but not obliged to do so, nor to accept their advice on how to conduct our solidarity work. Nor is it required of us to condone every action of the Resistance in general.

But we are required to publicly support the Resistance in general and not to join in public condemnations. And that’s the minimum to do if we are going to claim being in solidarity with a struggle.

For any revolutionary struggle, internationalist solidarity is an important factor, in encouragement to the Resistance, in de-legitimising the repression and in practical terms of supplies to the resistance, also in hampering the repression through blockades, boycotts or industrial action.

If we don’t support the Resistance, how can we claim to be in solidarity with Palestinians? Charity is not the same as solidarity. Pity is not the same as support. Outrage at the crimes of the oppressor is not the same as solidarity with the Resistance.

Furthermore, why should we expect solidarity with our struggles, now and in the future, if we cannot express that solidarity with the struggles of others?

End.

POSTCRIPT

Some will have searched in vain for a reference from Lenin, Mao, Trotsky, Luxemburg – or Connolly or even a famous Irish Republican leader – to justify the principles I have discussed here. At the end of the day, people should stand by principles because they have been tried and tested and are aligned with revolutionary experience but should also test them on their own experience in struggle.

In presenting some credentials towards giving these principles some consideration I can only say that I have thought about them and sought to practise them over decades of activism in Britain and Ireland.

Among the areas of Resistance and of political prisoners which have claimed my activity have been Ireland, Palestine, S. and SW Africa, Vietnam, Housing struggle, US Indigenous and African American people, organised Workers, Anti-Fascism & Anti-Racism, Kurdistan, the Basque Country, Syria, Haiti, Western Sahara, Catalunya, the Donbas …

FOOTNOTES

1All since thoroughly debunked though still repeated on occasion: “‘Israeli’ babies beheaded, torn from a womb and stabbed, women raped, people and houses burned.” These fake atrocity stories were repeated in the western media and by some politicians, including Biden and helped create an atmosphere assisting genocide by the ‘Israeli’state.

2Hamas began as an Islamist community organisation which then became a political party and developed an armed wing (like most Palestinian political groups, in response to the armed Zionist State and its settlers). In 2006 the party won the Palestinian legislative elections but the defeated Fatah (widely acknowledged as corrupt) administration in Gaza refused to give way and, in a short conflict, the Fatah armed group was defeated by that of Hamas. They chose not to do the same in the West Bank, presumably to avoid civil war from which the ‘Israeli’ state would benefit but from that moment onwards the Zionist State blockaded Gaza and the organisation was labelled a “terrorist” group in the west and financial support went instead to the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (which has refused to run new elections in two decades).

3Palestinian Islamic Jihad was formed in 1981. The armed wing of PIJ is Al-Quds Brigades (also known as “Saraya”), also formed in 1981, which is active in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with its main strongholds in the West Bank being the cities of Hebron and Jenin. In addition to this organisation and Hamas there exist a number of other resistance factions, some of which are secular, all working together as a broad armed resistance front with organisational autonomy but ofen in joint operations also.

4The Golani Brigade of the Gaza Division is the most highly decorated IOF Brigade, having taken part in all of the state’s major ethnic cleansing and genocidal operations. On October 7^th hey were overrun in minutes and 72 killed with an unknown number captured (‘unknown’ because many, along with their Palestinian fighter captors were burned to death in their cars by ‘Israeli’ Apache helicopter Hellfire missiles).

5 The Palestinian operation went deep, passing Golani’s 3^rd defensive line.

6‘Israeli’ Occupation Forces, aka the official but misnomer IDF (“Israeli Defence Forces”).

7The current iteration of Sinn Féin abandoned its revolutionary anti-colonial and anti-imperialist path in embracing the pacification process in1999. It stood down its armed wing, the IRA and largely dissolved it, also having their weapons decommissioned, since when it has participated in the administration of the colony and in recruitment of the colonial police force.

8Yet for years the Socialist Party have opposed boycotting the Zionist State, calling instead for unity with the “Israeli Left”.

9With the exception of most ‘Israeli’ Palestinians and all ultra-Orthodox ‘Israelis’ but for the latter is in the process of change https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/11/israels-knesset-advances-contentious-ultra-orthodox-conscription-law

10Documented by military and survivor sources on ‘Israeli’ media.

11The Irish Republican Socialist Party with an armed wing up to the 1990s, the Irish National Liberation Army, which contributed three Volunteers to the 10 martyrs who died on hunger strike in 1981.

12And what, in the end, did the Provisionals achieve with the supremacy gained?

13The Resistance organisation may ask us to arrange meeting for them to address our state’s parliament, or for interviews with the media … Or even to restrict our propaganda from solidarity to self-interest for people, as Sinn Féin did in England in the 1980s when they were promoting Time To Go: “Push the issue of the expenditure on troops, better spent on the health and social services.@

14If to do so incurred a legal penalty would have been a different situation, of course.

15And from that moment onwards became a less broad and less effective, eventually ceasing to exist as a solidarity organisation.

SOURCES

Including a discussion on the importance of solidarity with the Resistance: https://youtu.be/yj9hQaqeeio?si=z1oSOAYGX8z-Ney8

Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign: https://www.facebook.com/p/Ireland-Anti-Internment-Campaign-100063166633467/