Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Palestinian flags, keffiyehs of various types, Palestine solidarity and denunciation of genocide banners and placards filled Dublin city centre on a Saturday afternoon near the 3^rd anniversary of the ongoing accelerated Zionist genocide of Palestinians.

According to press reports, over 10,000 marched in Dublin on the third anniversary of the accelerated genocide since 7 October 2026 on the same day as more did across a number of European cities, including among others London and Berlin.

The Dublin march was organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Recent reports listed 75,600 Palestinians confirmed killed by the IOF¹ though many more remain under the rubble of bombed buildings and more than 100,000 injured.² Gaza has the highest number of amputee children in any known conflict and the IOF killed more than 20,000.³

By February last year, 25,000 wounded children had lost both parents.⁴ Approximately 70% of Palestinians killed around residential buildings and camps are women and children. On average, the IOF (and increasingly now, also ‘illegal’ settlers⁵) kills seven Palestinians daily.

This is despite a claimed ‘ceasefire’ by the Israeli Occupation Force and no armed actions by any Palestinian Resistance organisations since 10^th October 2025, over a year ago.

The Israeli State is permitting only 11.5% of the food, medicine, fuel and equipment to which it committed itself in that same ‘ceasefire’ agreement.⁶ Loaded trucks line up outside the border, prevented from entering, while food and medicines deteriorate.

Medical equipment and energy generators break down and cease working for lack of spare parts, even when there is sufficient fuel. Solar panels and desalination plants are destroyed by the IOF as are the sewage treatment plants, with raw sewage contaminating the sea and groundwater.

The IOF has killed 1,700 Palestinian medical workers and over 270 media journalists and technicians; destroyed more than 80% of Gaza’s medical centres and 95% of its schools and universities, killing 22,000 of their staff and students.

The IOF and ‘illegal’ settlers have destroyed wells and water storage tanks. Displaced 1.7 to 2 million people live in tents or among the ruins of bombed buildings,⁷ which have been known to collapse and kill people sheltering there.

Amidst the horror it is committing, the Zionist state continues to be supported politically, economically and military by the Western imperialist bloc, not least by the Irish state which is the biggest single importer of Israeli goods next to the USA.

COMMENT

The solidarity marches do not noticeably impact upon the Irish ruling class or its government. They impose no cost upon it or at least none that it cannot easily sustain, as three years of accelerated genocide have demonstrated.

The Irish State is the biggest importer of Israeli goods in the European Union, the Presidency of which it currently holds. Leaders of both Irish coalition government parties⁸ have admitted that what the Zionist state is doing is genocide but continue to collude with it.

This is despite the well-established and recognised majority feeling of the Irish people against the genocide and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The Government is clearly in breach of the Genocide Convention, to which Ireland is a signatory, which requires its signatories to take effective action to prevent acts of genocide, punish those carrying out such actions, prosecute and extradite them.⁹

The representative of the Irish ruling class, its government, does not restrict its collusion to lack of action on imports from Israel but permits US military planes to regularly refuel at Shannon airport and allows military equipment bound for Israel to be flown through Irish airspace.

The Irish state’s refusal to implement a boycott on Israel leaves the door open to individual athletes and Irish teams to ‘sportswash’ the genocide, performing against Israeli teams, to the extent that the Irish soccer team has played the Israelis in two foreign European countries this year.

Meanwhile the biggest amateur community sport association in Ireland (and incidentally in Europe), the Gaelic Athletic Association, is insured by a German insurance company that insured Nazi extermination camps and currently holds big investments in Israel.

Currently the Irish Wheelchair Association has confirmed its intention to compete against Israel, despite not only the ongoing genocide but the fact that Israeli military action has created the largest group of child amputees in history — and refuses to allow wheelchairs into Gaza.

Attendance at national marches of the IPSC has become a ritual. Hundreds leave Molesworth Street immediately after their arrival, without listening to speeches or performances. Many more stay only a while, to greet and chat to friends and acquaintances.

Many organisations do not even bother to attend and there were at least two separate events of a revolutionary or direct Palestine solidarity kind held in Dublin contemporaneously with the march. Yet the occasion could be employed to raise important issues among the marchers.

In the past, for example, anti-imperialist or revolutionary blocs have participated in such marches with slogans and banners outlining the need for a revolutionary response. Street corner meetings could be held in Molesworth street to engage those leaving the end rally but are not attempted.

The IPSC has over the years of its existence helped to create a widespread and deep national awareness throughout Ireland of the crimes of the Zionist state. It has not however prevented the ongoing genocide, which might be agreed is beyond its capacity so to do.

But is the complicity of the Irish State beyond the reach of Palestine solidarity in Ireland? Are the distribution centres of Israeli imports? Is the handling of Israeli goods at airports, docks, transport and sales services? Can Palestine solidarity organisations influence trade union direct action?

Aside from an occasional period of action targeting a supermarket, usually only in the city centre, the IPSC leads no action in those areas. It might argue that its structure and history is unsuited for such but it could facilitate or at least support direct actions by others.

However, the IPSC generally chooses not only to decline support for direct action but rather to discourage people from for example organising sit-ins/ occupations in commercial or government department buildings, or even from supporting organisations with such orientation.

The organisation does not call for court support for those arrested on demonstrations, pickets or in direct disruptive action at Shannon Airport. Such calls would not compromise the organisation legally but might cause it problems with some of its political allies.

Negotiating active Palestine solidarity while steering to the conservative ‘middle’ ground may be justified if by doing so the organisation retains effective influence among the political class. But when that influence produces no tangible result?

People were happy that the demonstration on the 3^rd anniversary of accelerated genocide was large but also aware that it had changed nothing – mainly relieved, perhaps, that visible Palestine solidarity had not declined. Of course.

But meanwhile, the genocide continues, as does Irish state collusion.

End.

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FOOTNOTES

1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war

2Ibid.

3https://theconversation.com/a-un-report-details-the-overwhelming-scale-of-children-killed-in-gaza-it-raises-grave-legal-questions-286327

4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_the_Gaza_war

5https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/10/23/israel-palestinians-west-bank-olive-harvest-explainer/a0614e46-ceed-11f1-ac04-9f58578a68b4_story.html In reality of course, since Israel is a Zionist Settler project upon Palestine, ALL Israeli settlers are illegal or, at least, immoral.

6https://theglobalobservatory.org/2026/09/gaza-crossings/ and https://www.nrc.no/news/2026/gaza-israeli-restrictions-mean-entry-of-winter-shelter-materials-will-take-over-seven-months

7https://gisha.org/en/pr-when-home-is-a-tent-eng/

8Mícheál Martin, leader of Fianna Fáil party, currently Taoiseach (equivalent to Prime Minister), Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Defence, along with Simon Harris, leader of the Fine Gael party, currently Tánaiste (equivalent to Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Finance.

9Obligation to Prevent Genocide (Article I): States must take proactive, reasonable measures to prevent genocide from happening when they are aware, or should be aware, of a serious risk of it occurring—an obligation that can apply both within their own borders and extraterritorially. [1, 2, 3]

Obligation to Punish Genocide (Article I & IV): States must investigate, prosecute, and punish individuals who commit genocide or related crimes, holding perpetrators accountable regardless of whether they are private citizens, public officials, or heads of state. [1, 2, 3]

Enactment of Domestic Legislation (Article V): States must pass the necessary internal laws to give effect to the Convention and ensure effective criminal penalties are established in their national legal systems. [1, 2]

Prosecution in Competent Tribunals (Article VI): States must try individuals charged with genocide either in a domestic court of the state where the act took place or before an international penal tribunal with jurisdiction. [1, 2]

Extradition Cooperation (Article VII): States must treat genocide offenses as extraditable crimes under their domestic laws and existing treaties, rather than shielding offenders as political crimes. [1, 2]

SOURCES