Crowds gathered in London on Tuesday and a solidarity picket with the Australian whistleblower was held in Dublin on Monday night as Julian Assange and his legal team fight their last chance in UK law to prevent his extradition to the USA.
On Wednesday the crowds in attendance inside and outside of the High Court and watching from around the world had to be content with awaiting the decision of the judges to be given at a later date.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Julian Assange has been hounded since he exposed murders and other murky secrets of the USA through the Wikleaks website he set up, posting items sent to him by former serving US Marine Chelsea Manning (who served military prison time but was pardoned by Obama) and others.
The CIA planned to assassinate Assange physically and then tried to assassinate his character by setting up a false rape allegation in Sweden and when all that failed, applied for his extradition from the UK under USA espionage legislation — though Wikileaks posting was entirely public.
Shamefully the UK colluded with the USA and, not trusting UK ‘justice’, he skipped bail from extradition hearings, sought and was granted asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. There a Spanish agency spied on confidential conversations between him and his legal team.
Assange lived in the Embassy under siege from 2012 to 2019, when the Ecuadorian State abrogated his asylum and allowed British police to enter what is legally Ecuadorian sovereign territory and remove him, since when he has been nearly seven years in high-security Belmarsh jail.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
The Premier of Australia has now called for his release after the Parliament passed a motion valuing Wikileaks exposure of US wrongdoing and calling for dropping the case1 but for years governments of the ex-British colony, now much more under USA influence, did not do so.
As an indication of what Assange can face in the US system, the Guardian reports that “Earlier this month, in a separate case, Joshua Schulte, a former CIA officer, was imprisoned for 40 years for passing classified material to WikiLeaks.”
The small size of the picket in Dublin was in my view less a reflection of the level of concern in Ireland but about the organisation of his support being on occasion taken over and undermined and in earlier times depended on high-profile individuals rather than collective organisation.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
The western mass media for which Assange provided a huge amount of column inches and many headlines through the Wikileaks exposés hardly fought for him. The Guardian spoke out for him recently but also took part in his character assassination years ago.
Even though it had been the main British benefactor of his news items. And the media is still getting footage viewing his travail, being drawn behind the cart on his way to – his execution?
The Irish Times recently spoke out for him and so did the Irish branch of the National Union of Journalists but the latter had no presence on the picket or on any other public protest at this time of which I’m aware.
Scene from very wet and windy day outside the High Court in London (note Irish Tricolour and Palestine joint flags in background). (Photo cred: Kin Cheung/ AP)
However, the Irish Tricolour flew near the Australian flag in London outside the High Court building. Our people have been executed in that city too and we’ve had their executioners here in Ireland as well.
What we are witnessing is years of mental torture and attempt to silence permanently a man whose “crime” is to expose the sins of the world superpower and some of its allies and clients. The chief criminal of the world is hunting down a whistleblower to shut him up about its crimes.
And the ruling class of the UK, a world-class criminal also but in this case the accomplice of Mr. Big, is assisting him. The writers and editors in the mass media should be outraged and campaigning as Victor Hugo did in the Dreyfus case.
But they know who buys their bread and on which side it is buttered, as their ‘reporting’ on the genocidal Israeli campaign in Palestine has shown every day – and on the war in Ukraine before that.
My father was a journalist who had been made somewhat cynical about “the free press” by his experiences but even so he would be thoroughly sickened were he alive today.
End.
US Liberty satirised outside the High Court in London (Photo cred: Alastair Grant/ AP)
Diarmuid Breatnach: originally published in 2017, republished February 2024.
(Reading time:4 mins.)
The Wikileaks/ Assange persecution saga should teach us some important lessons.
In the first place chronologically, it should teach us the lengths to which allegedly democratic countries such as the United States will go to dominate weaker countries and attack movements of resistance.
Where the USA feels its imperial interests are threatened, i.e where anyone may attempt to loosen its grip on the markets, natural resources and strategic emplacements, or to prevent its grip from clawing further than it has already.
Wikileaks also exposed some of the extent to which the US will interfere in the internal or foreign policy matters of even its allies, including the European powers.
Possibly most instructive of all was the determination of the USA to hunt down the chief executive of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, flying in the face of US Constitutional principles and law, as well as international law, with politician statements confirming that determination.
Statements even from Presidents, senior politicians and Government appointees, such as former US Secretary of State and the Democratic Party’s candidate for the US Presidency last year.1
In the course of hunting him down, the USA turned to Sweden, subverting the country’s laws and criminal investigative procedures, then to the UK government (which, as a junior partner in many of the US crimes exposed by Wikileaks, was probably only too keen to assist).
Swedish Prosecutor Marianne Ny, who commenced an investigation after another Prosecutor had already investigated and decided there was no case for Assange to answer (Photo source: Internet).
Australia was brought to assist under threat and France turned away from Assange’s plight and his plea for asylum there. “No hiding place from the World Policeman,” seemed to be the message.
Eventually, however, he did find refuge (if not a hiding place) from Ecuador, a tiny power on the world political, economic and political stage.
In the midst of this, how did the mass media perform, that which we are often assured is the guardian of democracy, even more than the vaunted parliament? Badly, in a word.
Investigative journalism, intelligent evaluation, if they had been evident before, all went into the rubbish bin as print, radio and TV media joined in the lynch mob to a greater or lesser degree, including the British newspaper The Guardian.
The newspaper that had been given exclusive first use on the Wikileaks stories, “the greatest scoop in 30 years”, according to its Editor, not only refused to assist him but allowed its pages to be occupied by witch hunters and made money out of publishing a book about the affair.2
“Anti-journalism”, is what Australian film-maker and renowned journalist (Britain’s Journalist of the Year Award-winner in 1967 and 1978), John Pilger called it.
Assange learned some personal lessons too which should not be lost on us.
Sometime lovers manipulated by police, Prosecutor and media; a close working colleague denouncing him and flinging allegations against him (unsubstantiated but that did not prevent the media from publishing them).
Julian Assange on the balcony of his asylum quarters, the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, after receiving news of the dropping of the Swedish ‘investigation’ of allegations of ‘rape’ against Assange and the voiding of the International Arrest Warrant. (Photo source: Internet)
LESSONS FOR US SPECIFICALLY
Suppose for a moment that one did not take to Assange’s character. Suppose one even objected to his work. Still, he was entitled to fair due process. That he did not receive it from so many is obvious. Did he receive it from us?
That community of people who would lay claim to having an alternative view, to be opposed to the status quo and, most of all, to be for Justice?
Injustice meted out by those in power often needs collusion and the more independent of the power the colluders are, the more justified the witch-hunt is made to seem.
The media whipped up a passionate hue and cry against Assange, who had not even been charged and had cooperated to all extents reasonable with the investigation of allegations against him.
That hysteria sought to drown Assange but also to catch in its flood any, no matter how puny or how mildly, calling for justice and due process. The cry of the mob must be “Hang him!” and no dissenting voices must be heard.
The hysteria generated in some sectors, even among people who would normally insist on justice and who opposed the status quo, reached a very high pitch.
For the crime of suggesting on Facebook at the time that the case against him seemed “dodgy” and that besides he was in any case entitled to due process, a person called me a “rape apologist” in public while people I had considered comrades (and had thought one even a friend) remained silent.
Shortly after that, a clutch of FB friends (which I made FB ex-friends quickly) backed up the allegation.
That taught me a valuable lesson about comrades and solidarity but it pales beside the severity of the lesson Assange has been taught, the mark of which he may carry for the rest of his life.
But the function of such a process goes far beyond the personal; it is intended to make dissent very uncomfortable and even painful.
We may face the attacks of our declared enemies with courage or at least resolve and commitment but it is a different matter when we are attacked, politically and personally, by those we take to be broadly on our side against the oppressive powers.
Most people would say they are for justice. It is usually easy to say so.
But unless we can stand up for it whether we like the victim or not, whether we approve of his work or not and, even in the midst of the hysteria calling for a hanging, we are prepared to cry instead for justice, our declarations are worth nothing.
There are many lessons in the saga for us to learn — but will we?
end
Footnotes
1“Can’t we just drone this guy?” Hillary Clinton, quoted in the Pilger summary article.
Recently then-Minister for Home Affairs of the UK Suella Braverman claimed the common Palestinian solidarity slogan, From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free! to be antisemitic, genocidal in effect and looked set to try to have it banned.
In some other western institutions, for example Columbia University USA, it HAS been banned and a Palestine solidarity student group has had its rights within the University revoked despite, reportedly, the opposition of the majority of students to that sanction.
Suella Braverman, MP, former UK Minister for Home Affairs. (Photo sourced: Internet)
How can a basic solidarity slogan be claimed to be genocidal?
Definition of a genocidal act: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group …1
Obviously there can be such a thing as a genocidal slogan and, in fact, there are many examples in history: “The only good Indian (sic) is a dead Indian”2; “Juden raus”3; “To Hell or to Connaught”4; “Nits make lice”5; “Kill the cockroaches”6; “There are no Kurds, only mountain Turks”.7
Anti-Jewish racist and genocidal slogan in German with the Nazi Swastika symbol on wall in Florence, Italy.
But really, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”? Genocidal? For the Palestinian people to be free and in control of their own land, there has to be genocide?
Would “Scotland Free from Dunnet Head to Tweed” be considered a genocidal slogan? Or for example slogans such as “Ireland free from Donegal to Cork” or “A 32-County socialist Republic” be thought genocidal?
“Oh, but the Palestinian one means Palestine for the Arabs only, no Jews!” Really? And you know this how? Before the British started driving Jews into Palestine the maximum size of the Jewish population there was 6% but there was no attempt by the mostly Arab people to drive them out.
Could the slogan not equally or even more likely be a call for a free, equal, democratic state across the whole of the original Palestine? Such as the stated objective of a number of Palestinian resistance organisations, the PFLP for example?
The nationalist slogans for Ireland and Scotland could be interpreted to mean clearing out all non-Scottish and non-Irish respectively but for the vast majority they not mean that nor are they generally thought to do so. So why suspect genocidal intention of the Palestinians?
The opposition to the slogan is not at all based on fear of genocide but in fact on support for it: the Zionist genocide against the Palestinians! It is based on denying the right to self-determination of the indigenous Palestinian people, of which a huge majority are Arab.
To deny the right of the Palestinians to self-determination is to support the right of the Zionists to colonise, a project entailing expulsion or massacre of the ethnically Arab Palestinian majority that existed in Palestine even up until 1948.
That Zionist project has continued with a constant ethnic cleansing pressure and genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people.
And the same people who oppose the slogan “From the River to the sea” etc support such slogans as “Israel has a right to self-defence” and “The Jewish people have a right to their own state”, which ARE racist and genocidal statements based on Zionist and European colonial ideology.
If Israel has a right to self-defence, what that means is that those who occupy a territory, steal the land and resources, colonise it and attack the indigenous people … have the right to defend themselves against the legitimate resistance of the people.
It gives the settlers the right to defend their occupation and repress the resistance, which naturally is given no rights at all. The robber has the right to the loot.
If the Jewish people have a right to their own state, where is that to be? Where will a land be found without people in it for them to take as their own?
And if such an empty land does not exist – which it does not – then what gives Jews or anyone else the right to occupy and settle a land, removing the rights of the indigenous people? An alleged promise by a being of religious belief? Or the backing of imperialist colonial powers?
The defence of the solidarity slogan’s content and the right to use it across the world are important democratic standards in the peoples’ struggles for justice and to express and build internationalist solidarity across the world.
The realisation of the slogan will be an important contribution to peace and justice in the world.
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Article II, UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
2Whether correctly attributed to General Phillip Sheridan of the US Army or not it was certainly a popular saying in the white US colonial wars against the Indigenous native people.
4Attributed to Oliver Cromwell in his mid-17th Century genocidal and ethnic cleansing campaign against the Irish Catholics.
5Horrific slogan justifying the killing of children because they will grow up to be the hated/ feared people. This slogan or saying has probably been heard at one time or another in most parts of the world but certainly against Native Americans in the USA; among Nazis against Jews, Slavs and Gypsies; in Israel against Palestinians.
6One of the slogans of the Hutu against the Tutsi in the 1994 ethnic cleansing and massacres in Rwanda.
7Remark attributed to the Turkish nationalist Kemal Ataturk with regard to the very large ethnically distinct Kurdish people in Turkey.
As the sixth march or rally in Dublin in three weeks concludes, with a large one also in Armagh and others take place around the world but Israel’s genocide intensifies, we need to reflect on what is our impact with these.
We are not stopping the genocide or even slowing it down, nor are we really hurting the Israeli state, nor even stopping their Dublin Embassy churning out lies, twice criticising the President of the state for relatively mild statements and accusing Ireland of helping Hamas build tunnels.1
Long view section of Saturday’s march ahead along Nassau Street, Dublin (Photo: D.Breatnach)View of tail end section of Saturday’s march as the rest stretched along Nassau Street, Dublinand further (Photo: D.Breatnach)
This failure is not the fault of the people in what is probably the most pro-Palestinian state in Europe or indeed in the Western world. There are limited options here – but are we exploring them all?
The Irish Government, given its limitations as a neo-colonial Gombeen administration, cannot be expected to do more than flog the false and failed two-state solution and push for an immediate ceasefire, in which – though ineffective — it is going further than many another EU state.
It could send a clear message, if not of Palestinian solidarity, at least of condemnation of the genocide being carried out during these last three weeks. That might start something going around the world but this Government would have to answer for it to the British, the USA and the EU.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
No, not going to happen, not from a neo-colonial ruling class. But what if the pressure to expel the Israeli Ambassador were huge? Then they could at least whine to their masters about how difficult it had become for them to hold the line – so maybe Israel should ease off the genocide?
But no, they are not under so great a pressure there either. And why is that?
On the march on Saturday, whenever the call went out to expel the Israeli Ambassador, it was enthusiastically supported. But in most places along the march, that call could not be heard, nor was it given any space in many sections.
And a major reason is that the organisation which called that demonstration and most of the demonstrations and rallies over these three weeks, not only in Dublin but in a number of other towns and cities across Ireland, is refraining from calling for the Ambassador’s expulsion.
Giant banner carried alternately by two young women bearing the legend: “The root of violence is oppression”. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
That organisation is the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) which has been the main organisation for many years organising Palestine solidarity marches, rallies, pickets, public meetings, leafleting, information tables, film showings, quizzes, postering and lobbying.
Why is the IPSC not calling for the expulsion of the Zionist Ambassador? It can hardly be for any reason of liking her or what she stands for! Nor can it be for anything like bribery or fear. And in fact we know that at least some of the leadership do want the Ambassador expelled.
Collection of placards and a banner seen near the back of the rally near the US Embassy on Saturday. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The reason for holding back on that demand is, sad to say, political opportunism of the social-democratic, reformist kind. To maintain a broad front and not scare off the allies. And what allies might they be so worried about losing or scaring off? Sinn Féin, it seems.
What — Sinn Féin? — one may ask with disbelief. Sure didn’t they themselves call for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador? Yes, 10 years ago, Gerry Adams called for that and probably since then a couple of times party spokespersons have done so. But that was then and this is now.
The “now” that is relevant to this is that the party has been remodelling itself to fit into the governing circles of this Gombeen neo-colony and demonstrating again and again that Sinn Féin is a safe pair of hands in which to leave the management of the Irish State.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
In two municipal meetings very recently, Sinn Féin councillors abstained from voting on a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire and the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador.
In Derry, the motion was passed despite that abstention but according to reports SF councillors abstained also on a similar motion in Mid Ulster District Council on Thursday which failed to pass.2
In the Leinster House debate this week, SF put some amendments forward but none called for the expulsion of the Ambassador and they didn’t support the PBP amendment that did; in the end SF voted for the Government motion (not even abstaining).3
The IPSC leaders probably expect, as seems very likely, that Sinn Féin will be part of the next government and don’t want to embarrass them before that, in the mistaken belief that the party will then deliver all – or at least much – of what is needed when they are in that government.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
But the leaders of the IPSC should be doing the exact opposite – they should be putting SF and its presence in the next government under pressure now and afterwards, calling all the time for the expulsion of that representative of genocide, racism, apartheid and colonisation.
But not only is the leadership of the IPSC (despite their own feelings no doubt) not calling publicly for the expulsion of the Ambassador, it seems that they are actually now also asking featured speakers not to voice that call!
It is bad enough that SF has changed from being an anti-imperialist revolutionary organisation to being a party of colonial collusion (in the 6 Counties) and neo-colonial (in the Irish state) – but now other organisations feel the need to reduce their own demands in concert!
The intelligent tactic, contrary to watering down the demands is to put those in power under greater pressure to deliver gains. That happens to be the revolutionary path also.
Solidarity demonstrator carries a giant key mock-up, signifying the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland. Somewhat ironically, Sephardic Jews also have this symbolism in respect of their expulsion, along with Moorish Muslims, from the Spanish Kingdom at the end of the 15th Century. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Speaking at Saturday’s rally near the US Embassy, Bríd Smith4 of the People Before Profit party did indeed call for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador and also denounced the ruling class and government drift towards NATO and PESCO (the EU’s military intervention force).
Smith said, in reference to Ireland’s struggle for independence – and well might she speak of it, coming as she does from a Republican family – that “we are standing on the shoulders of giants … who fought for our independence.”
A long and wide Palestinian flag carried by solidarity marchers (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Sadly she spoiled that by also claiming that they won independence for us.5 Hopefully that was an unfortunate slip of the tongue but one could not be certain of that. Over the years it has been far from clear that the PBP (SWM previously) and the SP support Irish national liberation.
At least Bríd Smith and other PBP speakers have publicly stated that Palestinians have the right to resist and this presumably means armed resistance, as explicitly stated by the Socialist Party in their leaflet distributed on the march6 and that is the position of the electoral left.
As for the rest of the Left, the International Marxist Tendency was also calling for “intifada revolution” on the march, as were the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation (AIA) on last week’s demonstration.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Presumably that is the position also of other Republican organisations7 but difficult to confirm as their participation as groups in these demonstrations is minimal, despite their long traditions of Palestinian solidarity.
The question of the right to resist and to do so in arms is a sharp dividing line between revolutionary internationalist solidarity on the one hand and liberal/ social-democratic solidarity, on the other, which seeks ‘peace’ (i.e return to status quo) rather than victory for the oppressed.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
However, stating the right to resist in arms is not always what it seems; for example the SP’s leaflet condemns Hamas but does not propose any alternative armed resistance group to support, unlike the AIA for example, which clearly promotes the PFLP8 and without condemning any other group.
THE MARCH
On Saturday’s demonstration, thousands marched from the Spire in O’Connell Street across O’Connell Bridge and around Trinity College, along Nassau Street and then South Merrion Square. The march was heading for the US Embassy but along as many minor roads as possible.
The usual Palestinian solidarity slogans were being shouted but less of the Irish language was to be heard than was the case last week and certainly many less placards in Irish were to be seen.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
“Israeli Ambassador – Out, out, out!” was audible in some sections and got good support in those but it was missing from most of the march (and no room given for it some sections), although when the demand was voiced by Bríd Smith speaking at the rally, it gathered a roar of approval.
Throughout these weeks the horrific genocidal bombing of Gaza by Israel has continued, along with a blockade of food, water, electric power and medicine.
Three days ago the number of Palestinian dead to the Israeli bombing since October 7th passed 7,000 of which nearly half were children. That does not included those killed since then, nor Palestinians killed in the West Bank, nor bodies still to be found under rubble.9
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
The latest attack has been the imposed social media, news and electronic communication blackout as Israeli troops tested the ground for their attempt to wipe out Gazan resistance.
This is not just a blanket drawn over the abattoir which Netanyahu’s butchers have made of Gaza but also a massive interference with calls to emergency services – yet another war crime — and also for people to speak with their distraught relatives outside Gaza.
In our weak position with limited capabilities, putting pressure on all concerned to demand the expulsion of the Zionist Ambassador is one of the most effective things we can do and we should insist on support for that demand from all who claim to support the Palestinians.
End.
The crowd at the rally at end of the march. The stage is in the distance near the US Embassy, which is cordoned off by the Gardaí from demonstrators (Photo: D.Breatnach)
FOOTNOTES
1https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-41253880.html Also since the Zionist Ambassador’s initial criticism of the President’s description of what her state was doing as war crimes, she returned to criticise him on public media yet again. In a number of countries around the world, recently for example in Spain and in Colombia, this has been the arrogant behaviour of Israeli Ambassadors, unused to having their dominant discourse challenged.
2I heard about this from two different sources but failed to get any information by a news search or by using Mid-Ulster District Council’s own website.
4Bríd Smith is a TD (member of the Irish parliament) but reportedly not going to stand in the next general elections.
5Apart from the Irish state being a neo-colonial one, i.e nominally independent but actually a client of foreign imperialism, one-sixth of Ireland’s territory is under armed occupation by the EU.
6I did not see a PBP leaflet distributed on the march.
7In which, as a result of fundamental changes from Republican positions of the party in recent years, I am clearly not including Sinn Féin.
8Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular revolutionary Palestinian Marxist-Leninist organization founded in 1967
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