The past six months of an almost incredible level of Israeli genocide and Palestinian resistance have taught the world some valuable lessons but particularly perhaps to those of us living among the Western powers.
The Palestinians have taught us the strength and value to an occupied and oppressed people of resistance, from generation to generation, maintaining and developing culture and nurturing historical memory while the occupier tried to erase it all and make the endeavour seem hopeless.
Palestinian woman in Gaza defiant, January 8, 2009 (Photo cred: Eric Gaillard/Reuters)
Without a navy, air force, tanks, armoured vehicles or standard artillery (apart from home-made rockets and missiles), they faced what is often called the “strongest military power in the Middle east”. Despite periodic massacres they have regularly risen against the oppressor.
In truth, it was a lesson that at one time we hardly needed in Ireland, learned even earlier than the Palestinians. But we needed reminding of it.
It is also important for the morale and dignity of the resistance that it shows itself capable of striking at the enemy.
We’ve been reminded of the importance of long-term preparation. The Palestinian resistance built kilometres of tunnels underground in which they also set weapon production factories, developing their own weapons and repurposing existing weapons, including unexploded Israeli Army bombs.
In their Al Aqsa Flood attack on October 7th and fighting since, the Palestinians taught us the value of not only of daring and prior preparation but of coordination and unity, as a number of resistance organisations cooperated in struggle, some secular and some Islamic fundamentalist.1
Palestinian resistance fighters from different organisations displaying their unity in struggle in this photo (Photo sourced: Internet)
In meeting the subsequent genocidal rage of the occupier, the Palestinian resistance have taught us that all the technological might and expertise of the enemy was incapable of crushing a prepared, courageous, united and determined resistance.
The Israeli domination of the air from which it rained down genocidal bombing on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or targeted assassinations of the families of resistance fighters, was not sufficient to defend its ground troops from attack and is itself under attack from GTA missiles.2
The occupier was effective only in genocidal actions against the civilian population and civilian infrastructure for which it will forever be reviled in historical memory. It achieved neither of the objectives it declared as it unleashed its war against Gaza: the wiping out of the resistance and release of captives.
Imperialism
We been shown – if we were willing to see it – the unity of western imperialism in supporting the ‘right ‘of a European settler group to establish itself on the land of the indigenous, creating an ethnocentric and theocratic state founded with an act of ‘ethnic cleansing’.3
We have been taught the willingness of the western imperialist states to tolerate the proliferation of acts and policies which it claims go against its fundamental liberal values: oppression, apartheid, discrimination and repression, while lauding the ‘European liberal values’ of the occupier state.
Betrayal
Another lesson which we should have learned too within the necessity of unity in a broad front is that it needs to be on a principled basis and the dangers in unity without such safeguards, leading to treachery, betrayal and collusion with the occupier.
The secular left-wing Fatah4 organisation may have seemed at one time the ideal one to follow though some would have favoured the further-left People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine.5 But it was Fatah, as leading element in the PLO alliance, that signed up to the Oslo accords.6
In return for limited autonomy in a fraction of Palestinian land and without consideration of the right of return to the expelled Palestinians, the Fatah leadership with Yasser Arafat at its head agreed to this “peace process” while its officials scrambled for the gains of official corruption.
Hence the Palestinian Authority, corrupt, unrepresentative, undemocratic and repressive, working in collusion with the occupying authority. Again, our own history should have taught us that lesson but again, it is good to be reminded.
The Palestinians taught us how to deal with such a poisonous fungal growth with the Second Intifada and their last elections, those of 20067 and the carrying through of the electorate’s wishes in 2007, along with the ongoing resistance since.
Western Mass Media and alternatives
In reporting the events in Palestine over the decades but in particular over the last six months, we have learned the heavy anti-Palestinian and pro-Israeli bias of the WMM, that accepted without question the transparent lies of the Israeli regime and even questioned the massacre statistics.
Never once has the unjust claim of the occupiers to their stolen gains been questioned, never once the fundamentally just claim of the indigenous even mentioned. The Palestinian resistance has been reduced to one organisation in reporting, to be held up as a bogeyman monster.
(Image sourced: Internet)
If atrocities from across the Palestinian people were reported in the media, they were framed as of dubious provenance, while the most outlandish and illogical claims of the occupier were reported as reasonable fact.
We have, in fact, been taught not to trust the western mass media when reporting on international events and, by extension, not to trust it on domestic issues either. Conversely we have learned to rely more on alternative Internet media but also on the need to navigate those with some caution.
We have also learned that some of the most prominent alternative sources on the war between NATO/Ukraine and Russia, attacked by liberals and sections of the Left as “Russian-controlled” or “Putinistas” turned out to be the most reliable in reporting the realities of the Israeli genocide.
Internationalist solidarity
We have relearned the importance of international solidarity, both as we expressed it ourselves and saw its outpouring across the globe. We have been taught the existence of an alternative world of human solidarity in opposition to one based on expropriation, exploitation and competition.
We saw Hizbolah in Jordan and Syria come to the assistance of the Palestinians and pay the price for doing so, as did Ansar Allah (“Houthis”) in Yemen and as has also Iran — what the Electronic Intifada has called “the Axis of Resistance”.
Chilean football team players May 2021 (Photo sourced: Internet)London, January 2024 (Photo cred: PA)
And we have learned to use internationalism as a measuring stick also in evaluating institutions, political parties and politicians in our own countries. We have seen the meaning of anti-semitism twisted and employed in repression with a stifling censorship across public life – academic, political and social.
Downing Street (containing home of the UK Prime Minister) 29 December 2023 (Photo sourced: Internet)
Political parties and politicians have revealed either their complicity in and collusion with the criminal Israeli genocide or alternatively their inability to resist and effectively oppose it. That has exposed their lack of fitness to lead us in our domestic struggles too.
Teachers and others in Palestine solidarity demonstration in Dublin, March 2024 symbolically carrying infant school chairs in protest against the Palestinian children murdered by the Israeli armed forces. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
IN CONCLUSION
The need for revolutionary resistance
The Palestinian resistance has taught us important lessons, including the need of revolutionary resistance in addition to revolutionary organisation and preparation.
It remains to us to learn those hard-earned lessons, to internalise them and to apply them externally. We owe that to the Palestinians and to ourselves.
End. (Read alsoPart B – What the Israeli Zionists have taught usfollows.)
FOOTNOTES
1Hamas – Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades; Palestinian Islamic Jihad – Al-Quds Brigades; Popular Resistance Committees Al-Nasser Salah ad-Din Brigades; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command Jihad Jibril Brigades; Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) – National Resistance Brigades, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades; Palestinian Mujahideen Movement and its Mujahideen Brigades.
3The expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians and massacres such as the one in the village of Dir Yassin.
4Fatah wasfounded in 1957 and was the majority party in the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
5The PLO was founded in 1964 and the PFLP in 1967, next in size of organisation in the PLO to Fatah (Islamic organisations were excluded from the PLO; Hamas recently proposed the reconstruction of the PLO open to all resistance organisations).
6The Oslo Accords were the result of a number of conferences, overseen by the USA and was part of the second of the current“peace processes” which include Ireland, the Basque Country and Colombia.
7Hamas won the elections throughout the accepted Palestinian territories but Fatah tried to continue to keep control, being dislodged from Gaza in 2007 by Hamas, which held back from doing the same thing in the West Bank which has remained under the undemocratic, repressive and colluder control of the Palestine Authority.
Recent revelations about British intelligence services being in possession of film evidence of Martin McGuinness being a leading member of the IRA but choosing not to prosecute adds to many suspicious incidents over the years regarding this man.
Indeed this is but one additional item to add to many things that have raised suspicions over the years. He had been arrested in the Irish State in 1972 but his sentence from the Special Criminal Court was only six months; however in 1974 he received the more usual 12 months’ jail.
However, over the years in the Six Counties he received a string of convictions for assault on police and for obstruction, for which fines were his only punishment, despite the State being aware of his position within Derry’s Provisional IRA, failing even to convict him of membership in 1976.
McGuinness leaving Belfast Court 1976 after charges of IRA membership dismissed (Photo cred: Paul Lewis)
Nor was there ever an attempt on his life though he moved around openly in Derry; how he was awarded £2,000 damages for an incident with British soldiers at a checkpoint – a practically daily occurrence for nationalists in the Six Counties – and that he had made the claim!
Most damning of all was the very low level of armed resistance actions in the area over which he was commander of the Provisional IRA.
McGuinness went from crude militaristic outlook to belief in electoral politics and the pacification process without a clear track of his progress (unlike that of Adams). No evidence of gradual change or of Road to Damascus conversion though he was reported favourable to a truce in 1972.
McGuinness (furthest right) in the clip of The Secret Army (1972) filmed beside a car being loaded with a bomb which is later filmed destroying a building and killing people. MI5 had access to the film.
The suspicions about McGuinness can be added to the known cases of agents and informers in top levels of the military and political leadership of the Provisionals: Freddie Scappaticci, Denis Donaldson, Martin Gartland. Derry in particular had Raymond Gilmour and Frank Hegarty.
“Spies and informers” have been quoted by many over the years as the reason for failure thus far to achieve Irish independence; indeed these complaints go back at least as far as the United Irishmen and as recently as July 2020, Denis McFadden bugged meetings of the New IRA for his handlers.
McGuinness announcing his replacement by Michelle O’Neill as SF leader in the British colony in 2017.
THE REALLY FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
The fundamental problems in the Republican movement go far beyond the serious enough ones of faulty security permitting influx of agents and recruitment of informers. The very strategic concept of the 30 Years War was at fault which facilitated the subsequent sellout in the Pacification Process.
If one were planning a campaign to break Ireland from colonial occupation and control by the British ruling class, a major military power, why would one largely confine it to one-sixth of the nation? And worse still, one-sixth divided between nationalist and unionist communities?
One might say in its favour as the choice of main zone that the contradictions in the British colony were the most acute there, the Catholic population being discriminated against socially, politically, economically and culturally. And they were already in struggle for civil rights.
And that might be an important reason for diverting a certain amount of resources there. But the bald fact remains that logically the struggle against the British ruling class could not succeed if it were largely confined to that area.
Yet that is what the Provisionals did as they split from the organisation that then became known as “the Officials” in 1970. Nevertheless by 1972 they were proclaiming on their newspaper’s front page that Blian an Bhua, “the Year of Victory” was at hand.
In fact they appeared so sure of the impending victory that it seems they were attracted by the film company’s plans to record them – they would have a film for general release at the same time as their victory parade, star-studded (well, McGuinness-studded anyway).
What could have induced them to think that victory was imminent? Only two possible imaginary scenarios:
That the British didn’t really want to remain and by 1972 were beginning to get a good taste of what hanging on to the colony was going to cost them, or
That the Irish national ruling class were going to step in and help ease the British out in the cause of national unification.
If they believed the first, which a lot of people believe even today, they were not carrying out a historical analysis. At every possible juncture when they could have left, the British colonialists dug in deeper.1 Which is what they were doing in 1972, the bloodiest year of the War.
If the Provisionals considered the second a real possibility, they would have had to ignore the history and current reality of the Irish Gombeen2 ruling class, a totally foreign-dependent neo-colonial class.
Of course, to fight the war to win, they would have had to extend the struggle to the whole of the country and also build alliances with movements of nations within Britain and with the British working class, in particular through the mostly working-class Irish diaspora there.
Extending the struggle to the whole nation would have meant taking on the State, its social police the Catholic Church, equality for women, right to divorce, decriminalisation of contraception and pregnancy termination, of LGB, secularisation of education, full state health care …3
No. While Adams and later McGuinness recognised the fallacy of a quick victory in the occupied Six Counties, instead of extending the struggle to the whole 32 Counties, they opted instead for “the long war” – long and unwinnable (which made it ripe for a pacification process in a few decades).4
But this too had to be based on one or both of the same two presumptions:
The British didn’t really want to remain and by 1972 were beginning to get a good taste of what hanging on to the colony was going to cost them, or
The Irish national ruling class were going to step in and help ease the British out in the cause of national unification.
And those presumptions were just as fallacious for a long war as they had been for a short victorious one.
The other fundamental weakness in the Republican movement that made victory impossible in this scenario and by no means confined to the Republican movement’s leadership, is that of: “the leadership is right, they know best and only trouble-makers (or cowards) question them.”
Clearly an organisation must have discipline and at certain times decisions arrived at democratically or otherwise in emergency situations have to be carried out without a debate. But they should be open to discussion beforehand if possible and certainly to review afterwards.
That was not the style of the Provisionals and people disagreeing with the leadership’s line were labelled as “troublemakers”, censored from the letters page of their newspaper and isolated by warning others not to associate with the critics – for fear they’d be considered dissenters also.
And since the leadership was ‘always correct’ it followed that the organisation was always correct too. Critics had to shut up or face the fact of exile to the cold outside the movement. And why unite with other groups in a broad front when your leadership is the only correct one`?
All this happened in the past and the Provisionals are no more, just the SF electoral party now.
However, the majority of the current movement of ‘dissidents’, far from carrying out a critical review of past operational principles, seems to have to have learned nothing and to be happily replicating the style and content of the organisation from which many split.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Even after the 1916 Rising, the electoral massacre of their client ‘nationalist’ party in the 1918 General Elections and the War of Independence 1991-1921, the British ruling class still insisted on retaining Ireland within the Commonwealth structure and even then, just in case, retaining six counties in a direct colony.
2From “gaimbín” in the Irish language, used to describe the opportunist creditors and land-buyers during and in the aftermath of The Great Hunger, now describing an Irish foreign-dependent capitalist class.
3Provisional Sinn Féin not only did not lead those struggles but in some cases opposed them.
4A long armed resistance war entails a heavy toll on the fighters (in deaths and jailings) and their community and, as the decades go by without any sign of victory, war-weariness sets in creating fertile ground for growing a pacification process.
In Ireland, at this time small children will be in playgroups or nursery schools (if their parents can afford them), or in primary schools fearing or looking forward to assessments and turning in homework. In Palestine there are no longer any playgroups, nurseries or functioning schools.
Post-primary students in Ireland will be preparing for the Junior or Leaving Certificates, a high-stress situation for many. Palestinian children in Gaza don’t have to work about any of that, only about whether, their parents, friends, neighbours will survive the Israeli bombings and sniper attacks.
Or get enough to eat every day and dry warmth protection from the weather. There wouldn’t be much point in sitting the final post-primary exams in Gaza anyway, even if there were somewhere safe to hold them. The Israelis have demolished all their universities.
Even before last year, what would the young do with a degree in besieged enclave of Gaza? Yes, some could get out to other countries in the West or in the Arab world but, if they did, they knew there was never any guarantee of being allowed back.
Over all, there is a horrific statistic to add to all the others of Israel’s genocide in the past six months: the zionist state has killed 13,800 Palestinian children in Gaza and injured over 12,000, which is why some people carry bloodstained white bundles or empty nursery chairs on Palestine solidarity marches.
Despite how distasteful the task it is nevertheless useful to subject media reports to a truth-and-lies analysis, which what I have done to this Reuters report in Breaking News ie.
Israel’s allies demand answers after airstrike kills aid workers in Gaza.
It is true that 1) the Israeli military killed (seven) aid workers in Gaza and 2) that allies of the zionist state have been obliged to protest strongly.
But the first lie appears in the first sentence of the report: “Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu confirmed Israel mistakenly killed seven people …” How can it be a ‘mistake’ when THREE VEHICLES ARE EACH HIT, ONE AFTER THE OTHER?
And how can Reuters report “confirmed” as though it were true?
One of the aid agencies’ vehicles showing the missile penetration hole actually through part of the logo and text identifying the agency. (Photo cred: Reuters)
WCK… said its staff were travelling in two armoured cars emblazoned with the charity’s logo and another vehicle, and had coordinated their movements with the Israeli military. Not much chance of accident then, was there?
“Unfortunately, in the past day there was a tragic event in which our forces unintentionally harmed non-combatants in the Gaza Strip,”Mr Netanyahu said in a video statement. Unintentionally? See previous paragraph.
The Israeli military pledged an investigation by “an independent, professional and expert body”. What body could that possibly be? The Israeli government has refused to cooperate with the EU investigation of events on October 7th and instructed medical staff not to talk to them.
In fact Israel does not facilitate external investigations and accuses any organisation that does not agree with the conduct of the state of bias and even of ‘anti-semitism’.
At least 196 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since October, according to the United Nations, and Hamas has previously accused Israel of targeting aid distribution sites. True – but not only Hamas has accused the Israeli state of that but many aid organisations and other states.
So report the list of accusers? Nope!
And they weren’t just “killed” as though by unknown persons – they were all killed by the Israeli military. Reporting commentators have noted that when it’s victims of Israel they are reported as just ‘being killed’ while if killed by Palestinians then it’s ‘Hamas has killed’ etc.
In a call on Tuesday, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak told Mr Netanyahu that UK was appalled by the deaths, which included three Britons, and demanded a thorough and transparent independent investigation, Mr Sunak’s office said.
Again, what body could possibly carry out such an investigation in Israel? If it were truly independent and intending to be “thorough and transparent”, Israel would not cooperate with it. All its own investigations conclude with a ‘not guilty’ or at best ‘inconclusive’ verdict.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, said there was no evidence Israel deliberately targeted the aid workers but that it was outraged … etc. From any logical assessment, three strikes on three vehicles seems pretty conclusive evidence of “deliberately targeting.”
Israel has long denied accusations that it is hindering the distribution of urgently needed food aid in Gaza, which it has besieged in a war since October, saying the problem is caused by international aid groups’ inability to get it to those in need.
This would seem an appropriate spot to report on the few times the Israeli authorities allow supplies to pass from the long, long line of parked aid lorries outside the Rafah crossing gates, which Israeli protesters are impeding with no action by Israel police or army and. But no mention.
Or the times the Israeli military has opened fire on deliveries or on civilians approaching aid supplies that have gone through, or Israel’s execution of the Chief and Deputy of Gaza Police who organised a recent delivery of flour without food riots or Israeli gunfire. But no mention.
The aid convoy was hit as it was leaving its Deir al-Balah warehouse after unloading more than 100 tons of food aid brought to Gaza by sea, WCK said. So it was clearly identified by logo, by prior announcement to the Israelis and by its departure point.
“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organisations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war,” WCK’s chief executive Erin Gore said. A rare and very true statement but not by the media.
The US-based charity said it would pause its work in Gaza, and the United Arab Emirates, which has financed the seaborne food deliveries to Gaza that WCK distributed, said it was putting the shipments on hold pending safety guarantees from Israel and a full investigation.
Anera, a US-based aid group that works in part with WCK, said it too was pausing operations in Gaza because of safety concerns.
In other words, another step in the starvation of Gaza achieved by the Israeli state.
The conflict began after Hamas attacks on southern Israel on October 7th that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures.An outright lie which does not become truth no matter how often repeated by the western mass media (which it is in every single report).
The conflict began many decades before October 7th with the zionist settler program which intended and proceeded to carry out a program of ethnic cleansing and, from the moment of the creation of the State in 1948, an expansionist and genocidal program.
Nor was it just Hamas that attacked, nor were all the 1,200 killed by the Palestinians but that is a different discussion.
Conditions in Gaza remain extremely precarious with fighting going on in several areas on Tuesday and 71 people killed in Israeli strikes over the past 24 hours, according to Gaza health authorities.
Yes, the Palestinian resistance continues to resist heroically, with innovation and in principled manner (for example not targeting Israeli Army medical evacuation helicopters) and the Israel military continues to kill civilians, even in hospitals.
But you have to go to other sources to get that kind of information, never in the western mass media.
A final thought: If the victims had been seven Palestinians, would we be even reading about it in the western mass media?
Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter (2024) (Image sourced: Internet)
Beyoncé was back in the news once again for a spot of cultural appropriation. It was not her first brush with cultural Neanderthals, she has been here before for apparently “stealing” Egyptian culture by dressing as Nefertiti.
Added into the mix was a lesser-known black artist, Kaitlyn Sardin, who excels at Irish dancing and dared produce some fusion dance routines.
I have dealt with Beyoncé and Rihanna wading into the murky cesspit of the cultural appropriation debate in the past when they were accused of appropriating Egyptian culture(1) and won’t deal with it here.
This time though, the debate is clearly about music, produced by people who are still around and not the attire of long dead Egyptians with little connection to the modern country.
The fact that white country music fans are still around to complain, doesn’t make the debate any less sterile or ridiculous.
Beyoncé’s faux pas was apparently to record a country & western album titled Cowboy Carter. Apparently, some were of the view that a black artist shouldn’t record a “white” song or perform in a “white” musical genre.
Her first release from the album was a song she composed, Texas Hold ‘Em.(2) And the hounds of hell were let loose to howl and drown out the music.
Some radio stations refused to play the song, though that didn’t stop it going to No.1 in the country music charts and the debate, though debate might be too fine a word to put on it, erupted.
She is not white, she is not part of the country music scene and she should stay in her lane, is a crude but accurate summary of most of those criticising her. She is actually from Houston, Texas, not that it matters.
One person interviewed by The Guardian responded that “It doesn’t matter that you came from Texas. It matters if you’re actually living a country lifestyle. It bothers me that her song is being called country.”(3) These words might be familiar to some.
They are normally advanced by identitarians when talking about whites playing genres considered “black” and in some cases other non-whites have levelled this accusation against a whole array of non-white artists including Beyoncé.
It is reactionary rubbish with the racism, in this case, hiding just under the surface, behind a veil of cultural purity. One even went as far as to say that he would bet that Beyoncé had never been in the country saloon he was being interviewed in.
Well, many black women would steer clear of such venues, for more than obvious reasons.
Cultures are not pure, ever. None. Not now, not ever, not even going back to the stone age.
I am very sure, no stone age hunter armed with a flintstone hatchet ever shouted “You’re appropriating my culture” when he realised some other village had come up with the same invention, or even just “stole” the idea.
Country music is not pure either and to the shock and horror of many a man yearning for the days he ran around in his white bedsheets, it isn’t even that white. Blacks have made significant contributions to country music, not least the musical instrument known as the Banjo.
What would country be without the banjo? Rhiannon Giddens, the black musician has dedicated her time to reviving the banjo as a black instrument and recording some excellent music, though unsurprisingly she doesn’t quite stick to genres either.(4)
Her site describes her thus: Singer, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and impresario, Rhiannon draws from many musical traditions including blues, jazz, folk, hiphop, African, Celtic, classical, and jug band. She bridges contemporary and traditional forms, and few musicians have done more to revitalize old-time influences in current music.(5)
Rhiannon Giddens with banjo (Image sourced: Extra.ie)
She composes her own songs, covers others, even ones such as Wayfaring Stranger, recorded by many white country artists, though actually written and composed by two Germans in the 1660s.
As far removed from her as from the whites who might like to claim the song as their own (Links below to Gidden’s version,(6) Johnny Cash’s(7) the Mormon Tabernacle Choir(8) and even Ed Sheeran’s(9) very uncountry version.
I have included links to all songs and routines mentioned in this article). The song belongs to whoever wants to sing it, however they wish to, though I personally think Sheeran murders the song with a flintstone hatchet, but each to their own.
So, Beyoncé is quite entitled to record in whatever style she wants. Part of what rankles some is that she went straight to No.1 and will make a fortune from the album and this is part of the ‘stay in your lane’ slogan applied to blacks and whites.
Elvis made a fortune singing what was essentially considered, at least initially, to be a black musical form and other white artists who have done this have been criticised by a black bourgeoisie who want that slice of the cake for themselves.
Some of the whites criticising Beyoncé are undoubtedly racist, some might just be musical purists, though music is one art form that just doesn’t lend itself to purity. Others, like identitarians everywhere, think that the money is theirs. Flip sides of the same coin.
Beyoncé is not the only black artist to venture into the world of country,(10) Charley Pride and Ray Charles did so back in the 1960s at times of heightened tensions in the midst of the racial violence meted out against those demanding civil rights for blacks.
When Charley Pride released his first country album, his image was not put on the record sleeve and they initially hid the fact he was black as part of their marketing strategy. He would eventually make it to the Grand Ole Opry in 1967.
He had a total of 52 top ten hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.(11) No mean feat and not a once-off foray into country music either, he was a country artist.
Linda Martell fared worse as she never hid that she was black and though she would also perform at the Grand Ole Opry in 1970, her album Color Me Country(12) never had the same success.
Ray Charles also dipped his fingers into the pond producing Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music(13) in 1962. It was a best seller, topping the charts. So, Beyoncé is by no means the only or even the first black artist to find success in the genre.
Black artists have always ventured into genres that were not considered to be black.
Others have gone the other way and identitarians tend to criticise white artists doing “black” music, though when Gene Autry, the white country and western singer, nicknamed The Singing Cowboy recorded a blues album, nobody accused him of cultural appropriation.
Though even non-whites get accused by the black bourgeoisie closely aligned to the US Democratic Party of cultural appropriation, Jews, Asians, even Africans get in the neck.
Samuel Jackson infamously accused black British actors of stealing their jobs because they were cheaper and questioned the cultural bonafides of British-Nigerian actor David Oyelowo when he was cast as Martin Luther King in the film Selma.(14)
He never criticised the decision to cast the black Yank, Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in the film Invictus or Matt Damon as the white South African rugby captain in the same film.
Given the backlash against his comments he decided to keep his mouth shut when the British-Ugandan actor Daniel Kaluuya was chosen to play the black revolutionary leader of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton. No one is safe from the accusation.
It is a bit like the MacCarthy trials. “Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual? No, but I slept with a man who was. Have you ever appropriated a culture? No, but I hummed a tune by a man who had.”
Which brings us now to Kaitlyn Sardin, the US black Irish dancer. She has recently gone viral, though not for the first time, with her dance routines and not being as powerful as Beyoncé has come in for some vile racist abuse.(15)
She produced a new video which is what is now termed fusion i.e. Irish dance with some developments.
This is now quite common and there is a host of Irish groups producing fusion. My favourite is a routine called Freedom with the voice of Charles Chaplin and images from Belfast in the early seventies.(16)
Though the first person to do this was Michael Flatley with River Dance which not only broke many of the “rules” of Irish dancing, it even went as far as to incorporate the Lambeg War Drums in a much more positive sense than the annual announcement of Protestant supremacy for which they are used every July 12th.
Of course, Flatley, unlike Sardin is white and of Irish descent.
Kaitlyn Sardin (Image sourced: Internet)
As I said there are many fusion groups in Ireland, the one I previously mentioned and even one which is danced to classical music titled Fusion Fighters Perform Fusion Orchestra.(17) Again, all as white as the driven snow in Siberia.
There is even an all-female Fusion Fighters group from the USA that does a tap dance routine to William Tell.(18)
The particular group started off with Irish dance and moved into other styles over time, so much so that even their website acknowledges it has less to do with Irish dance than they used to.(19) It is what happens with culture. It evolves, all the time.
Again, they are white and no one said fusion is not Irish dancing and no one said anything about not being Irish, even though their Irish connections may be as tenuous as Darby O’Gill.
The term fusion is one of those designed to assuage musical purists more than racists. In reality there is no such thing as fusion music. ALL music and dance are fusion till it becomes accepted as the standard, when new deviations or fusions arrive.
Though dancing has existed in Ireland for centuries it has not been immune to outside influences such as French Quadrilles in the 1800s or other forms.
The clues are in the names, hornpipes and polkas for example are two types of music that you will find in other parts of Europe and indeed in the case of polkas they clearly originated in Eastern Europe, though most forms including reels and jigs are not exclusively Irish either.
All cultures borrow.
Most instruments used in Irish music are not Irish in origin. Some, like the flute have arisen in most cultures around the world and archaeological remains have thrown up examples everywhere of flutes and whistles made from everything, including animal bones.
Fiddles arose over a long process around the world and it is a bit difficult to pinpoint them to one country. Uillean pipes are Irish, though they too were part of a wider process in Europe with different types of pipes arising.
Though Scottish bag pipes are perhaps the most famous type of pipe, there are in fact lots of pipes throughout Europe and parts of Africa, Iran, Azerbaijan and even India.
Other instruments such as the banjo are African in origin, though the modern banjo has developed over time since it was first brought to the western world by slaves.
The piano accordion is a relatively recent European invention from the mid 1800s, a further development of the accordion, which was also a European instrument.
If we rejected all outside influences and demanded purity, we would have little in the way of Irish music or dance, were we to have any at all.
So, Kaitlyn Sardin should be celebrated. She is from the US, is black and more importantly is very good at what she does: dancing. The fact that she is not Irish or she recently produced a fusion routine is neither here nor there.
Any liberal who got lost on the internet and accidentally read this article will probably have nodded most of the way down: until now. The ridiculous statements made about Beyoncé and Sardin are generally rejected by liberals.
But when the cultural capitalists hiding behind identity politics make similar claims against white artists or indeed between other non-white artists this rubbish is taken seriously.
Culture does not belong to anyone, you don’t have to be white, black, Asian or Latin to perform in a particular style. Culture is a gently flowing river you bathe in, swimming ashore where you please along its route or letting it sweep you out into the sea.
It has always been thus and always will be, despite the attempts of cultural capitalists to appropriate culture for their own grubby money-making ends, or racists imagining some non-existent purity. It doesn’t mean that some of the commercial outings by Beyoncé and other artists do it well.
They don’t.
Beyoncé was criticised for her depiction of India as a white paradise and other artists such as Gwen Stefani, Nicki Minaj and Iggy Azalea have been accused of engaging in crass portrayals of the cultures they seek to borrow from(20) and in Ireland we know a thing or two about how crass Hollywood can be when it comes to depicting Irish music.
But that is another matter, many artists in particular genres have come up with really crass portrayals of their own cultures. The point is whether culture is pure, has lanes and you stick to them due to an accident or birth.
The legendary US folk singer Pete Seeger would joke that plagiarism was the basis of all culture and he was a wonderful plagiarist who introduced musical forms from around the world to a US audience at a time when there was no internet and it was not an easy feat.
He introduced the song Wimoweh to the world, which has gone through multiple adaptations,(21) some of them very good and others absolutely dire, such as that recorded by the English pop group Tight Fit in the 1980s.(22)
The original song however was quite different in style and written and recorded by the South African musician Solomon Linda(23) who was swindled out of the royalties on the song.
Had Seeger stayed in his lane, most of us would never have ever heard of Linda or the story behind his song.
Demands for cultural purity are inherently reactionary, as are demands to ‘stay in your lane’, be they levelled by whites, blacks or Asians. Culture is to be celebrated and expanded.
The accusation of appropriation would only make sense if someone like Seeger had said he wrote Wimoweh, that would be straightforward dishonesty, something he could never be accused of in his multiple adaptations of songs from Ireland, Japan, China, Indonesia, Scotland, Chile, Nicaragua amongst other places.
Beyoncé’s foray into country is perfectly fine, though personally, I don’t like her music, including her country. But that is my personal taste and has nothing to do with appropriation or other rubbish from cultural capitalists.
The Irish radio on Saturdays used to broadcast an Irish music show from the musical company Walton’s. It always finished off saying “If you do feel like singing a song, do sing an Irish one.” The exhortation was for all, not some; the point was to celebrate and enjoy music.
Let’s leave the cultural capitalists, purists, identitarians and racists to the handful of songs they mistakenly believe to be pure.
There is a belief around that the reason that Israel is being supported by the US and getting away with genocide as far as the Western powers are concerned, is because the Palestinians are dark-skinned and that it wouldn’t happen to ‘whites’.
Those who believe that are mistaken: it would and it did. It is only marginally about skin colour but rather about where the Palestinians are.
Palestine sits in a strategic spot in the heart of the Middle East, with borders to Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, with the Red Sea to the South-east and a Mediterranean coastline to the west, connecting by sea to Europe, Africa and Asia. That made it important to old and to new empires.
The historic land known as “Palestine” in the 19th and early 20th Century was that which up until 1917 was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, now occupied by the zionist Israeli State and those areas recognised as Palestinian by international law including Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem.
After WWI, during which the Ottoman Empire, along with Germany had been on the losing side, in the divvying up of the colonial spoils, Palestine (occupied by the British since 1917) was given by the League of Nations in 1922 to one of the War’s victors, the UK.
The UK began to invite Ashkenazi Jews to settle there as part of a European colonial and partly anti-semitic1 project. Of course in those days “semitic” was understood to apply to the Arabs as well as to the Jews and the latter were often referred to by Europeans as “oriental”.
The British, as is the wont of colonisers in general and of them in particular, played the settlers off against the Arab majority.
And of course broke promises about restricting the number of settlers. But after WWII, a high influx of Holocaust survivors organised by Zionists began to head for Palestine and the British, fearing the destabilisation of their colony, tried to prevent unapproved Jews from landing.
The zionist terrorist militias (Irgun, Haganah, Stern Gang) began to attack the British colonial forces and Arab villages. In July 1946, Zionist group Irgun killed 91 people and injured 46 in an explosion at the King David Hotel, location of the British administrative and occupation army HQ.
Damage to the King David Hotel after bomb planted by Zionist terrorist group Irgun in 1946. (Photo sourced: Wikipedia)
The British pulled out in 1947, reneging on all their promises to the native Palestinians. The Zionists began their genocidal settler project with threats to and massacres of Palestinians and the expulsion of 700,000, mostly Muslims — and declared a Jewish State in 1948.
Thereafter the Israeli State began a program of repression and oppression of Palestinians and of colonial expansion. Naturally, this project required ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinians and aggression against Israel’s neighbours.
The USA and the USSR quickly recognised the Zionist State, the USA increasingly funding the state and supplying it with weapons while the USSR permitted its Ashkenazi Jewish citizens to emigrate to the settler colony.
In October 1956, eight years after the founding of the Zionist state, in response to Egyptian nationalisation of the Suez Canal, the Israeli air force attacked Egyptian airfields without warning while British and French Army and Naval forces invaded the country.
The invaders were forced to retreat and the USA admonished France and the UK for, in effect, not realising that the USA and not the old European colonial powers was now the boss of most of the world.
The zionist lobby (both Jewish and Christian) in the USA is often blamed for that imperialist state’s continual support for Israel’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinians.
But the US imperialists have their own reasons for supporting the only state in the Middle East that is susceptible to neither internal national liberation struggle or muslim fundamentalist uprising. It gives the US a safe foothold and also a guard dog to watch the neighbours (e.g Syria and Iran).
RACISM
The Nazis had a racist view of the Ashkenazi Jews, who were mostly fair-skinned. But they also considered the Slavic people (the majority European and light-skinned) as “untermenschen” (i.e ‘subhuman’). It’s estimated they killed at least 1.9 million Polish non-Jewish civilians.2
The Nazis also murdered millions of Russian non-Jewish civilians in genocidal ethnic cleansing of territory, in labour concentration camps, near sensitive battle formations and in reprisals for partisan resistance.
Fair-skinned and even blonde children victims of Nazi racism and genocide. (Source: New Zealand Holocaust Centre “Button project”)
The South African settler racist regime discriminated against all non-European people, in their official categories of “Native”, “Coloured” (mixed race) and “Asian” (mostly from the Indian sub-continent). Nevertheless, they also made some groups “honorary whites”.3
Racism isn’t primarily about skin colour anyway: It is a discriminatory social ideology based on ethnicity and the marker for ‘difference’ can be ‘racial’, national or religious. The Anglo-Norman invaders of Ireland in the mid-12th Century racialised the Irish, who were generally fair-skinned.4
The rational reason behind the racism is to unite in opposition to the targeted groups, whether in order to wage war against them or so as to repress their resistance as slaves or as occupied people. The racists colonise their own minds and attempt to colonise the minds of their targets also.
Not quite two centuries after the initial invasion and part-occupation of Ireland, the British-based Anglo-Normans, now describing themselves as “English”, criticised most of their people settled in Ireland for ‘going native’ and passed laws against their social acclimatisation.
The Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366 attempted to prevent “the degenerate English” from speaking Irish, adopting Irish customs and laws, dressing in Irish style, patronising Irish cultural performance, intermarrying with the Irish and becoming “more Irish than the Irish themselves.”
The main purpose for the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland had been occupation by feudal lords to gather rents from the natives but it soon became a question of replacing the natives with settlers. This was not always successful since the Irish people and many clan chiefs resisted.
The cities became fortified centres of colonial occupation, administration and garrison, the colonial city of Dublin known as “the Pale” in reference to the original earthworks surmounted by a palisade; hence “beyond the Pale” signified the native Irish and barbarism to the colonists.
The earlier occupation settlements were in or around fortified constructions, castles and ‘keeps’. Later, town and villages were established with a central square or diamond, i.e in a good defensive shape and entry by natives forbidden. Settler churches were also built as defensive structures5.
Pseudo-scientific racism from white Anglo-Saxon Harper’s Weekly magazine 1899 in the USA. (Sourced: Nothing But the Same Old Story, Liz Curtis).
With the creation of Irish Republican Brotherhood (or the ‘Fenians’) in the 19th Century and their activities in Ireland, the USA and in Britain, the British elite combined anti-Irish racism with pseudo-evolutionary ‘science’ representing the Irish as not quite human or childlike – but violent.
Cartoons in some British popular periodicals, in particular Punch, Fun, Judy(and Puck in the USA) represented the Fenians as monsters, in particular ape-like creatures and racist jibes and ‘humour’ were popularised, a practice which sprouted new variants during the recent 30 Years War.
Updated British anti-Irish racism by cartoonist Cummings, Daily Express, London, 12 August 1970, depicting the colonial British Army as “keeping the peace” between the colonised Catholic/ Nationalist population and the British Loyalists. (Sourced: CAIN)
ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE
All European settler projects imply ethnic cleansing accompanied by genocide to one degree or another: in Africa, Latin America, North America, Australia, New Zealand … but this was practiced by a European power against a European nation also: Ireland.
The British elite used atrocity stories from the 1641 uprising of the Irish to justify and encourage the genocide by Oliver Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland in 1649. Through ethnic cleansing, battle and starvation, Cromwell killed nearing 40% of the Irish population.6
British atrocity propaganda image about the Irish uprising of 1641 to justify Cromwell’s campaign of ethnic cleansing, genocide and enslavement. (Sourced: online).
These figures do not include those he had sent to British colonies in the Americas as slaves.7
The Great Hunger (1845-1848) wiped out, through starvation, well over 2 million of the Irish population of around 8 million and during that and the following decade, probably another 2 million emigrated (many of those too dying on the way or on arrival8).
Monument on the Liffey quays in Dublin to the Great Hunger (1845-1852) genocide of the Irish by the British ruling class. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
DOES IT MATTER WHETHER IT’S DRIVEN BY RACISM OR BY COLONIAL EXPANSION?
Yes, it does. The difference between the two does not change the situation of the Palestinians but it does affect how the genocide may be understood and what the targets of our actions may be.
Liberals would probably prefer the issue to be primarily of racism. If that were the source of the problem we could still be pushing for economic and isolation pressure as was the focus with the anti-apartheid campaign against the South African racist regime.
That is being done now and that’s fine. But the assumption would be that with enough pressure, Israel would be obliged to change its ways and the US leaders would feel pressured to advise it to end its racist discrimination (as they did in the case of white South Africa).
But if the project is colonial expansion, presupposing ethnic clearing and genocide, it is a different situation completely.
No arguing with Israeli zionists, boycott or isolation culturally and in sport is going to change that or get ‘liberal’ Zionism to act against their Right; as Finkelstein recently pointed out, the Nakba and all the settler expansions were carried out under ruling periods of the ‘Left’ side of zionism.
Also, if this settler expansion (or supporting such at least) is part of a US imperialism project, then no amount of campaigning to expose the behaviour of the Zionists is going to be effective in persuading the ruling class of the USA to apply corrective pressure to the zionist regime.
The fact that the basic source of the problem is zionist settler expansion means that genocide and ethnic cleansing will continue as long as the Israeli zionist state exists. And US and Western imperialism will continue to support that as long as they believe it benefits their regional interests.
This makes it clear that the long-term solutions can only consist of ending the zionist project or the ending of imperialism which supports it. The former is of course a smaller objective but at the moment western imperialism is energetically defending the zionists.
A whole neighbourhood in Gaza wiped out by Israeli bombardment months ago (Photo cred: WAFA agency)
It is doings so politically and culturally, with armaments, also with propaganda from its mass media, by repression of its own populations where these are protesting in solidarity with the Palestinians – and in the course of that it is endangering all its facades of justice and objectivity.
In the longer term that is probably a good thing, helping to create the subjective conditions for the overthrow of imperialism and monopoly capitalism.
But we need to help that process along in our own struggles while also making their continued support for zionist genocide of Palestinians as costly for them as we possibly can. While we act in solidarity with the Palestinians we are acting also against our own immediate enemies.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1This may surprise some but the British ruling class was deeply anti-semitic even before Shakespeare wrote his Merchant of Venice script. Not only that, but Balfour, infamous for his eponymous Declaration that Palestine was suitable for Jewish settlement, was personally strongly anti-semitic (I am thankful to Ali Abunimah for pointing that out in one of the youtube discussions of the Electronic Intifada)
4I keep telling people struggling against colonialism and imperialism that they should study Irish history. It’s practically all there: racism, invasion, division, settlers, plantations and ethnic cleansing, recruitment of native enforcers, undermining of native culture, religious oppression, genocide (twice), partition, recruitment of sections of the elite and nationalist political parties.
5Though this also had a history in medieval Europe. The administrators of the Ulster Plantation at the start of the 17th Century allocating grants of land specified that those who got parcels of land had to be English-speaking, be Protestant, build defensive structures and not employ Catholics.
7This has become something of a controversy, with racists of Irish diaspora background claiming parity with the slavery experience of Africans in the southern USA and some anti-racists denying it, saying the Irish were indentured servants. Both are mistaken: Irish were sent in slavery by Cromwell but subsequent Irish were sent in indentured servitude which, bad as it is, is not chattel slavery and the historical slavery period of the Irish in the USA was nowhere near as long as it was for the Africans.
8Over 3,000 are buried on Grosse Isle alone, an island in the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada.
Numbers approaching 100 thousand marched in Palestine solidarity in Dublin on Saturday as the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign held its 5th national march since October, attended by people from Donegal to Cork and from the 6-County British colony.
It took place in a week in which the genocidal zionist settler state exercised its “right to defence” by its fourth attack on the Al-Shifa Hospital, massacring over 170 unarmed civilians including women and children and using others as human shields.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)(Photo: D.Breatnach)
In addition the zionists executed the Chief of the Gaza police and a Deputy (along with the latter’s family), claiming them to be guerrillas but apparently in retaliation for their successful organisation of a recent flour delivery without riots or any civilians murdered by the Occupation Forces.
Meanwhile, the response of the colonial and zionist collaborator, the Palestine Authority, was to continue its repression of Palestinians in parts of the West Bank and to open fire on the funeral of three martyrs1 of the heroic latest battle of Jenin, a scene of many past battles.
The front of the march begins to enter Dublin’s main street, O’Connell Street (Photo:D.Breatnach)
The official figure for Palestinians killed in this latest genocide on screens and before the eyes of the world is now nearing 33,000 dead with well over 74,000 injured and an estimated 8,000 buried under rubble from Israeli bombing in the zionist state’s “right to defence”.
None of the leaders of the Western imperialist states seem to ask themselves whether, if this is truly the necessary cost to Israel’s ‘defence’, does that state deserve to exist at all?
“Nakba never ended” placard seen in this section of the march in O’Connell Street (Photo: D.Breatnach)
MARCH AND ZIONIST PROVOCATION
The march began as has become customary at the Garden of Remembrance2 in the north side of the capital city from where it eventually began to make its way down through the city’s main street, its end taking nearly half an hour to pass through and to cross the river to the south side.
From there, chanting slogans that have since become well-known in solidarity of the Palestinians and their right to self-determination, in outrage at the actions of the zionist state and its imperialist supporters, the marchers made their way to rally outside the Department of Foreign Affairs.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Here many listened to speeches and performances but significant numbers shortly peeled away to make their ways back home or to relax in the city’s cafes and restaurants (after all, what were they going to hear that they had not heard and read before?).
Irish Republican organisations were not noticeably present, even those few that had been visibly present on recent demonstrations; difficult to guess at the reason, even with preparations for 1916 commemorations no doubt being undergone for next weekend and afterwards.
As usual on large demonstrations, the marchers had not experienced the insults and bizarre shouts of “Traitors!”3 by far-Rightists and racists to which smaller solidarity pickets are often subjected but, as part of the march neared Cuffe Street, a man with a large Israeli flag passed them.
From near me shouts of “Zionist! Baby-killers!” arose but he passed. Later he was seen being escorted by a Garda from the rally with his Zionist flag but also a Palestinian flag which people speculated he had taken from a demonstrator.4 Some more Gardaí gathered around the Zionist.
Shortly thereafter, he was permitted/ encouraged to leave the area with at least his flag pole5. Many commented that the outcome would have been very different if it had been a case of a Palestinian supporter provoking a Zionist rally and, indeed, I have witnessed such some years ago.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
When I lived in London I regularly saw Zionists provoking Palestinian supporters and dancing Israeli dances near them. Whenever outraged demonstrators drew near to challenge them, the Palestine supporters were attacked by the London Metropolitan Police.
At a parallel Palestine solidarity march on Saturday in London, a small group of Zionists waved Israeli and Union Jack flags but were soon swamped by Palestinian and Irish – yes Irish! – flags. In London at least there have been Irish flags on every Palestinian solidarity march since October 8th.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
TRADE UNIONS
Banners and flags of Irish-based trade unions were well-represented on the march but with at most a couple of dozen marching behind them. Specific worker groups such as “Health Workers for Palestine” replied to my enquiry that they had organised the group without support from their unions.
Banners of INTO, the largest teaching union in Ireland (primary level in the state and primary and post levels in the colony) precedes some flags of the UNITE union. (Photo: D.Breatnach)(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Where are the militant actions by the trade union brothers and sisters of murdered Palestinian medical staff including paramedics, journalists (for which job Palestine is the most dangerous place in the world), food distribution workers, poets and writers?
It is well past the time when it was sufficient for Irish trade unions to bring banners and flags on to the street every couple of weeks with a dozen members or so marching behind them. In October they should have been leading their members to the marches in at least their hundreds.
By November last year at least, the trade unions should have been planning actions to take in physical solidarity, moving beyond marches and pickets to sit-downs and other kinds of solidarity action. How do Israeli goods come into Ireland and how are they sold?
(Photo: D.Breatnach)(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Clearly they are handled and administered by workers and some of those at least6 are unionised. Union-backed boycott actions would put pressure not only on the Israeli economy but also on other companies colluding with them, as with the supermarkets who stock their products.
Pressure on the latter would translate into pressure not only on the Israeli state but on the political management of the economic bases of states and also on the political management of the countries where they are operating, for example in Ireland.
Who knows, the unions might even boost their recruitment with such action, in a country where once most would not dream of crossing a picket line but where now many youth do not even comprehend the nature or purpose of a trade union.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
REPRESSION
Meanwhile, those who ARE taking action in solidarity with Palestine are experiencing repression, not yet to the extent that is occurring in the French and German states, but repression nevertheless. Some marchers on Saturday carried a banner protesting the criminalisation of solidarity.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
In recent months a number of people have experienced dawn house raids by the police, in addition to arrests in the course of demonstrations or pickets. Defence of people victimised for solidarity actions has always been an important part of solidarity movements.
Most of the political parties nor the IPSC will be organising or even calling for such defence and it is up to the ordinary people in the solidarity movement to mobilise to attend and protest the court cases and attend pickets in solidarity with victimised activists.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
In the months ahead, those victimised up to now and quite possibly more still will be attending court on separate dates as their cases are scheduled to be heard. It is also important as a general principle that activists refuse to agree to refrain from solidarity actions as a condition of bail.
A number of Palestine solidarity activists recently had a private meeting with officials of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and the organisation also held a recent day of sessions and workshops on civil rights for protesters.
Campaigning organisation for housing and against evictions (Photo: D.Breatnach)
SHAMEFUL SHAMROCKS
Saturday’s march took place a week after St. Patrick’s Day when to the disgust of many people in Ireland, representatives of the Irish Government and even of a number of Opposition political parties attended in Washington to celebrate the day with President Biden and others.
As a result, no doubt, the presence of the Sinn Féin party on the march was small and muted and the flags of the Social Democrats absent, a party recently prominent in pressure on the Irish Government to join the ICJ case against the Israeli State and even to expel their Ambassador.
One supposes that those who are in a queue to manage the Gombeen state have to show their fitness for doing so by bowing before the leader of western imperialism; whatever their private feelings may be, they need to show that they have the stomach to do what the system requires of its servants.
“No shamrocks for Genocide Joe” placard in this section of the march (Photo: D.Breatnach)
LESS SLOGANS and LESS IRISH?
It seemed to me that there were in general less slogans being chanted on this demonstration and that that their range was less than usual. Possibly this reflects a feeling that the demonstrations are becoming more routine and less capable of stirring emotion.
Possibly too, the sheer daily weight of zionist atrocities is oppressing people and wearing down their capacity for outrage. In either case it would seem that in addition to giant demonstrations, other actions are needed to release the latent emotional energy of the people.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
On this demonstration there was much less Irish language seen in placards, flags or banners than has been the case recently and which had been growing over the months, as I’ve been commenting upon in previous reports. This is regrettable and hopefully will be remedied.
The Irish language NGO Connradh na Gaeilge had a group and banner on the march as has been the case for months, shouting among other slogans “Saoirse don Phalaistín!” A small group also had a banner in Irish declaring that they were Múinteoirí (teachers) ar son na Palestíne.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
ART AGAINST GENOCIDE
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
The lines of baby romper suits or baby-grows made their appearance on the march again as did the bloody butcher image of Prime Minister Netanyahu, with a diabolical Biden on the reverse of the placard. A large ‘puppet’ of Biden with bloody hands was carried riding above the march.
Tail end of Mothers Against Genocide followed by puppet of bloody-hands US President Joe Biden (Photo: D.Breatnach)LGBT section denounces Israeli state’s attempt to paint itself as liberal through decriminalising the LGBT community (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The A2-size beautiful coloured image of Palestinian resistance solidarity was seen again but however overall the variety and ingenuity of home-made placards seen previously had diminished.
The Mothers Against Genocide group carried their white bundles depicting the slaughter of Palestinian children and sang sentences in Arabic and Irish from Róisín Elsafty and Sharon Shannon’s song “An Phalaistín”, effectively interspersed with slogans.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
The sight that brought a hush over all witnessing it was the section carrying many yellow infant school chairs, a grim reminder of the huge daily ongoing Zionist genocide inflicted on the Palestinian children in Gaza.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Mohammed Al-Fayed, Ahmed Barakat, Mahmoud Al-Fayeed (Resistance News Network on Telegram, 20/3/’24)
2Originally dedicated to those who fought for Irish freedom since the first Republican uprising in 1798 it has since been recognised as commemorating all those who gave their lives in the nation’s struggle for self-determination (though certainly officialdom would disagree with honouring those who fought that struggle since the founding of the current Irish state in 1921).
3These elements claim it is ‘treason’ for Irish people to support any other struggle than the Irish national one, which they conceive of as attacking immigrants and LBGT people. Their concept of “national struggle” has never included struggling against foreign occupation, supporting Republican prisoners, opposing multinationals’ exploitation of national resources and infrastructure or fighting for universal affordable housing.
4He might also have carried it concealed all along, with the intention of destroying it in front of the marchers; how it came into his possession is unknown to me at this point. He may have departed carrying both flags in his coat etc.
5It did not seem from a distance that the Gardaí had confiscated his Israeli flag but more likely he had been told to remove it from the pole while leaving the area.
6Despite the huge drop in the percentage of unionised workers in Ireland over recent decades.
Original Latuff cartoon. West Belfast mural. Mural blacked out.
Once upon a time, Belfast was famed for its murals, so much so that even now a part of the tourist industry depends on a plastic paddy tour of the current murals on display in nationalist areas of Belfast.
It was the 1981 hunger strike and its aftermath that saw an explosion in political murals in nationalist areas. As the 1980s went on, the technical and artistic quality of them improved dramatically and the politics they sought to represent expanded.
Some of them were very militaristic, others much more political in content. On international issues, murals sprang up on South Africa, Palestine and figures from revolutionary struggles around the world were to be found on gable ends all over the city and indeed in other cities throughout the North.
Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, Camilo Torres, Che amongst others looked down at the wandering revolutionary tourists who would come over in August. The message was clear: Ireland was part of an international struggle against imperialism.(1)
After the peace process the quality continued to improve, but the politics went for a walk. Twee Celtic murals abounded, young girls dancing a jig displaced images of women holding an armalite aloft for International Women’s Day.
about Imperialism were softened, when not blunted entirely or removed. So, it comes as no surprise to see what has happened to recent murals.
Sinn Féin supporters recently unveiled murals in solidarity with Palestine. They are of good quality and try to capture the suffering of the Palestinians through the images and poignant quotes.
However, they say nothing about who is causing the suffering: the US and Israel, though there are silhouette ghostly like images of soldiers standing over dead children.
There was once a mural on the White Rock Road which pictured a US Indian superimposed over a US flag saying Your struggle, Our struggle. No references are to be made now to the US role in exterminating a people. That is strictly Verboten.
However, someone decided to reproduce a cartoon from the artist Carlos Latuff in mural form in Belfast. It depicts Joe Biden, standing with bloodied hands in front of Mary Lou, who is clearly identifiable in the image, and the leaders of FG and FF, who can be identified from the initials FG and FF on their backs.
The British Army and the RUC used to deface republican murals, not any more. Very quickly, Sinn Féin, officially or unofficially (no pun intended, though it is apt) painted over the mural. It was quickly restored by others, who the artist Latuff described as real republicans.(2)
Sinn Féin are clearly uncomfortable about the issue in the run up their fest in Washington with Biden and not only are they content to throw Palestinians out of public meetings, they will now supress any public artistic attempts to draw people’s attention to the Slaughter Soirée they will have in the White House.
Many Palestinian voices such as the Electronic Intifada have called on Sinn Féin not to go to Washington, the calls in Ireland have been much more muted and tamer on the issue. However, it is a clear issue, what is colloquially called a no-brainer.
You don’t have to think very deeply to understand that Sinn Féin shouldn’t go to Washington DC, that they should tell Genocide Joe they don’t want to meet him. They will go and they will say nothing about Palestine.
Their erasure of a mural criticising them, tells you everything you need to know about their real attitude to Palestine.
Whatever you say, say nothing used to be a catchphrase about loose talk and informers, now it means never to mention Joe Biden and the Palestinians in the same breath, unless you are green washing genocide.
Meanwhile Sinn Féin does its part, emulating the British army and vandalising political murals.
Notes
(1) A selection of images can be seen on Bill Rolston’s website. Rolston has chronicled and photographed murals going right back to the 1970s. See https://billrolston.weebly.com
A large number of people gathered in Dublin on 2nd March in what was advertised as a “Stand Together” march for “Homes, Health & Rights for All”; “Against Racism, Hate & War”; to “Share Wealth and End Inequality”.
A large part of the context in which the event was organised is a high number of arson attacks on properties intended (or thought to be) for housing refugees and asylum seekers, along with an increase in mobilisations of people by the far-Right and outright fascists.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
In that context, the advertising poster for the march was insipid in colouring, using pastel shades reminiscent of a certain type of sweets. On some versions the clenched fist appeared but it was missing from many others shared on social media.
Le Chéile, the main organising or coordinating body, was formed some years ago at a time when the Far-Right was becoming increasingly visible in street events they organised and on occasion countering progressive events and a number of clashes had taken place.
The main organisers not only had been absent from most of those confrontations but deliberately chose to exclude from the founding of Le Chéile the majority of those among Irish Republicans, Socialists, Anarchists etc who had already been counter-protesting the far-Right.
Banners of CATU and Drogheda For All on the march soon after starting in Parnell Square (Photo: D.Breatnach)On the march soon after starting in Parnell Square (Photo: D.Breatnach)
This may account for the absence of most Irish Republican organisations from the march (if so I understand but disagree with the decision). Dublin Communities Against Racism however contain some veteran antifascists and were present as were a group of Italian antifascists.
There was a big turnout of Traveller groups which would be welcome any time, in particular as the longest-racialised minority in Ireland, but more welcome in recent years when the far-Right have been making efforts to recruit some from that community against migrants.
Banners of Irish Traveller organisations on the march soon after starting in Parnell Square (Photo: D.Breatnach)(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Given the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli Zionist state, many Palestine flags were naturally enough seen on the march — and not only within the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s contingent.
Groups of marchers from a number of trade unions were good to see too, though the numbers were not great and the spread of unions small. One might expect trade unions to be to the fore in combating the harmful divisiveness of racism but their record is poor even on straight pay issues.
Flags of Palestinian solidarity, Unite the union (Photo: D.Breatnach)
A number of political parties were present too: People Before Profit, Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, as were a couple of faith-based groups.
Banners of religious groups and coming up behind, some trade union banners Banners of CATU and Drogheda For All on the march soon after starting in Parnell Square (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Anti-fascist fans of Dublin soccer team Shamrock Rovers marched behind their banner with their green-and-white flags and at one point a green smoke flare was set off in their midst. The colours of some of the 134 Gaelic Athletic Clubs based in Dublin would have been good to see there also.
The earlier announced route of the march, to end at Custom House Quay, was changed for some reason and without announcement, at least from O’Connell Street and eventually ended up in north Merrion Square, with a stage set up across the street at the eastern end.
Banner of fans of Shamrock Rovers FC on the march (Photo: D.Breatnach)On stage at the rally (Photo: D.Breatnach)Poet performer at the rally (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The MC of the event on the stage, a man of colour, greeted participants in English and Irish but shocked antifascists present by advising any who felt unsafe to approach a steward or a Garda (!). There are few more likely to make people feel unsafe than that members of that very force.
Speakers from both indigenous and migrant backgrounds addressed the crowd and the cultural performances were by people from both backgrounds.
The MC at one point drew in the war in Ukraine in parallel with the Israeli genocide, which was inappropriate even if one were a supporter of US/NATO’s proxy war against Russia using the puppet Ukrainian state (which I am not).
One of the participants reads the List Of Some Migrants and Sons of Migrants who contributed to Ireland. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Also the PBP know that their view on this is hotly refuted through much of the Left and a great many of those on the march.
In the time I was there, though speakers attacked the divisiveness of racists and fascists and on occasion pointed to the real culprits in manufacturing a housing crisis, none pointed to the capitalist class need for dividing the working class and particularly so when their system is in difficulty.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)A noble call but the organisation whose placard this is did not do so and furthermore when a certain organisation, Revolutionary Housing League were actually doing so, neither this nor other organisations mobilised in support. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Not to speak of how we might organise to “Share the Wealth”, which means socialist revolution, surely, unless it refers to some liberal pipe-dream? The far-Right have risen to prominence in Ireland is because most of those who claim socialist policies have failed to fight for them.
Fighting for socialist policies means actually fighting which means going into all the battlegrounds and organising the people, providing revolutionary education and example and inevitably will mean suffering because the ruling class will not just sit back and watch.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
While some benefit can be obtained from representation in the parliaments and local authority councils, they can never be the main battleground. Street demonstrations are an improvement but nor can they be the main area for revolutionary effort.
In the clear context of general elections widely speculated to take place later this year, a speaker asked the crowd not to vote for anti-immigration candidates. Since the likelihood of anyone there doing so was nil, the inference was clearly to encourage voting for the current parliamentary parties.
In conclusion it is hard to imagine this organisation or any similar kind of coordination providing strong organisation or leadership to counter fascism and racism effectively.
This is not the kind of organisation that would have fought the Blueshirts in the 1930s or even prevented the Islamophobic Pegida founding a branch in Dublin, which a militant antifascist mobilisation succeeded in doing in February 2016.
Section of the march viewed from the Parnell Monument southward (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Anti-NATO Picket Rescues Palestine Flag from Fascist Provocateur
A more militant antifascist attitude was seen in Dublin a few hours later when a fascist grabbed a Palestine flag from a participant in an anti-NATO picket outside the GPO, the iconic building housing the headquarters staff of the 1916 Rising.
The picketers were standing peacefully with banners and flags, including Palestinian and Irish Starry Plough, distributing leaflets and engaging passers-by in conversation. The incident occurred some time into the event, the man shouting in an Irish accent, grabbing the flag and running.
Anti-NATO picket organised by the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation outside the GPO in Dublin’s main street. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The surge forward in response might have caught him by surprise but, though the flag was rapidly retrieved, he continued to be aggressive in words and, as is described in slang, “throwing shapes”, behaviour that ended with his sitting in the road.
Though the population of Ireland is overwhelmingly in sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians and many in solidarity with their struggle, many in the far-Right here object to displays of that solidarity and call the solidarity activists “traitors” and demand they act for Ireland only.
Ironically, many of those same people acting in Palestine solidarity have also over the years agitated for affordable housing, against social provision cuts and British colonial occupation, in support of Irish political prisoners – while the far-Right’s only ‘contribution’ is to agitate against migrants.
Fascists in Ireland also collude with Loyalists and with British fascists; it is they who are the traitors, to the nation and to the working class, hiding behind flags the meaning of which their leaders secretly despise and which some of their lumpen followers do not understand.
End.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)List of some migrants and sons of migrants who have contribute to Ireland (including fighting and in some cases dying for her freedom) (Photo: O.Dunne)
Almost immediately after the Al Aqsa Flood breach of the Israeli military wall and subsequent raid, the Israeli state’s stories of alleged atrocities by Hamas1 were being widely repeated in the western mass media.
The accounts, always levelled at Hamas, included burning alive and mutilation of adults, rape, beheading of babies and even ripping of a baby from the womb of a pregnant woman, most of the allegations quickly proven untrue.
The rape story however continues to run. So far there has been not one piece of forensic evidence, not one certifiable victim and not only have the journalistic standards been flawed but the backgrounds of the original reporters are deeply suspect.
Or “Mass media and atrocity”?Or “Mass media atrocity”? (Image sourced: Internet)
“Beheaded babies”
Since according to Israeli statistics one baby alone died during the Al Aqsa Flood operation and was neither headless nor premature, all the allegations about atrocities towards babies or pregnant women have been disproven and the “witnesses” discredited.
The latter were reported in the media as serving Israeli military and some civilians but were quoted at length and no attempt was made to question the accused, Hamas, nor to interrogate the logic (which we’ll come to later). President Biden quoted the “beheaded babies” as fact.2
“Mutilation” allegation
Despite the frequent allegations of mutilations of bodies of babies and women no forensic examples have been provided by the Israeli authorities, who had full access to all sites of the Al Aqsa Flood raid within hours of the operation.
“Burning people alive” allegation
There is certainly much evidence of the immolation of buildings and cars (the latter with occupants) – but by whom? There is no evidence that the Palestinian military possess flamethrowers or carried any inflammable devices. In the course of a battle of course some buildings can catch fire.
But deliberately burning people alive when the objective is to take live prisoners? Certainly not logical. However, we have known almost since the date of the operation that Israeli fighters were firing Hellfire missiles at cars on the ground without being able to identify their occupants.3
There is also eyewitness testimony from an Israeli survivor that an Israeli tank fired a shell into a house in which Palestinian fighters were holding Israeli prisoners known to her, killing everyone including a child.
First “Mass rapes” allegation
In an article titled “Scream without words” on 28th December, this allegation was published in the New York Times, a US periodical that considers itself ‘a newspaper of record’, i.e one with high standards of checking and the reports of which therefore can be relied upon.
Though Pulitzer-Prizewinner Jeffrey Gettleman was the article’s main author, Anat Shwartz and Adam Sella were researchers on this story with Shwartz in the lead.
The two-month investigation produced no forensic evidence and no named alleged victims except one, Gal Abdush. According to Gal’s sister the allegation of rape was concealed from the family by the NYT; she does not believe her sister was raped and they know of no forensic tests performed.
… at 7:00 a.m., Nagi Abdush called his brother Nissim to say Gal was shot and dying. The Times never explains how Gal could be captured, raped, fatally shot, and burned to death in nine minutes while Nagi messaged his family and never mentioned any physical contact with Hamas forces.4
The team claimed interviewing “150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors … identified at least seven locations” where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated. Yet not a single named individual (other than Gal).
During this period, the team published an article rehashing Israeli propaganda claims of Palestinian atrocities but containing false assertions. Under pressure the NYT had to publish a correction on December 8th stating that the Israeli police had no forensic or autopsy evidence for the claims.
Among the few “witnesses” identified by Shwartz are an Israeli Army paramedic, a special forces soldier and members of the ZAKA group. The latter claims to be a philanthropic organisation but is mired in claims of inventing horror stories,5 with some of its leaders on trial for sexual abuse.
The military paramedic changed the location of victims of rape from one kibbutz to another and, though his story coincides perfectly with that of the special forces soldier, it is flatly contradicted by family and kibbutz members regarding rape and the location and status of the bodies.6
The person who filmed the original video of Gal Abdush’s body, Eden Wesley says that at first she did not understand the importance of the image but that Shwartz and Sella kept pressurising her for the footage and telling her it would be valuable ‘hasbara’ (Israeli State propaganda) material.7
It emerged after the article’s publication that Schwarz had previously “liked” a number of rabid anti-Palestinian posts on Twitter/X, including one with the false story of “beheaded babies” and another about the need to equate Hamas with ISIS in the narrative for propaganda purposes.
Sella is Shwartz’s nephew and neither he nor his aunt had a history of covering stories of this size or of working with or for the NYT and it is curious how in November 2024 Schwartz came to be an investigative reporter for the prestigious newspaper on alleged atrocities by the Al Aqsa Flood.
Though the NYT has yet to admit the story is basically faulty it has criticised Shwartz for ‘liking’ zionist posts and is carrying out an investigation, declaring such to be violating its standards.
It may be that in time the NYT will sacrifice the reporters to save its reputation. But the newspaper needs to answer why it employed them in the first place and ran a story of such serious allegations (and consequences) under Gettleman without a shred of actual evidence.
Debunked – but the allegations run on
The latest version of these allegations is by UN Envoy Pramila Patten who, once again, admits to being able to name no victims and to having no forensic evidence. But even so she is able to suggest that female Israeli prisoners may be experiencing “ongoing” sexual assault in captivity!8
The report of her delegation, which had not been sent in an investigative capacity, claimed finding in various locations, “that several fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down were recovered – mostly women – with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head”.
Although of course captives would have their hands tied, I don’t recall this detail of partial nakedness and shooting of Israeli captives being reported before and its emergence five months after the military operation must give rise to extreme suspicion.
Anti-German military WWI poster (Image sourced: Internet)
Control of the investigation, control of the discourse
As with a number of other war propaganda allegations in various parts of the world, the Israeli State insisted it will not permit any independent international agency investigation and also declined to carry out its own investigations “until after the war” (while forensic evidence is compromised).
That does not prevent the western mass media from giving credence to Israeli State stories.
LOGIC?
Let’s set aside all horror or distaste for a moment and apply some logic to the situation. The short-term objectives of the Palestinian military raid were to
Coordinate rocket bombardment of Israeli settlements with six simultaneous infantry assaults
Knock out local Israeli Wall automatic guns and military communications
Get through or over the Israeli Wall
Overcome the Israeli garrison at the Wall
Take Israelis prisoners to exchange for the release of Palestinians prisoners of the Israeli state
It is worth noting that the Palestinian operation achieved all of its short-term objectives, No. 5 only partially since we now know that many Palestinian fighters were killed by Israeli fire along with their captives.
In addition to the short-term we can assume longer-term objectives
strike back at the oppressor
destroy the occupier’s sense of invulnerability
keep the Israeli prisoners taken safe
negotiate for the exchange of prisoners and
probably to force the rulers of Israel to negotiate with the elected representatives of the Palestinians.9
How logical would carrying out atrocities be with regard to any of those objectives, bearing in mind that the Palestinian resistance wants its justifications acknowledged and supported domestically and internationally? And to be able to negotiate with the Israeli State’s leaders?
Would the short-term mission directives be compatible with “mass rape”? The mission directive is to knock out communications, kill any resistance necessary, grab prisoners and – get out quickly! Speed was essential for the success of the operation and the survival of its personnel.
To knock aside any evaluation on the basis of logic we are encouraged to regard the Palestinians as irrational, violent and sub-human – in fact the very kind of propaganda used for centuries by the British-based colonisers against the Irish, both in text and cartoons.10
The joint Palestinian limited military operation was represented in the media as “a rampage” “slaughtering”, “massacring” while a number of Israeli politicians described Palestinians as “animals”, openly calling for genocide.
Part of the British propaganda depicting slaughter of men, women and children settlers by the Irish in 1641, which helped to gain recruits and funds for Cromwell’s genocide and plantation campaign in Ireland in 1649. (Source of image: Article in Guardian)
WAR PROPAGANDA
Propaganda has always been a part of preparing the combatants and their society for war and, once war begins, sustaining it. The English-based invaders racialised the Irish as uncouth, barbarians, dishonest (but then had to pass laws to prevent the integration of their own colonists!).11
In the 1800s the Irish were described for British society as lazy, violent, drunkard, dirty and treacherous while a number of cartoons depicted them as brutish and ape-like, drawing on literature from Shakespeare, Mary Anne Shelley and evolutionary theory for its caricatures.
Much more recently, the leaders of the USA and of the UK, in order to justify their invasion of Iraq, falsified the reports of their intelligence agencies to accuse Saddam Hussein of being somehow responsible for the Twin Towers atrocity and of having weapons of mass destruction.12
A poster to boost recruitment for the USA’s troops in WWI – note the common theme of a murdered child and atrocity (crucifixion) towards a woman with perhaps suggestion of sexual violation also. (Image sourced: Internet)
ACTUAL RAPE & SEXUAL ASSAULT
Sexual assault and rape of Palestinian female prisoners
A UN body of seven sexual violence experts reported on 19th February that there is credible evidence of Palestinian females being shot and female prisoners being subjected to sexual assault, humiliation and even rape by Israeli military officers.13
To contrast this situation with that of alleged victims of “mass rapes” of Israeli women by Al Aqsa Flood on October 7th, with no actual victims yet produced, at least two female Palestinian prisoners have alleged being raped and others of sexual assault and humiliation.
Furthermore, the taking of Palestinian prisoners and their detention is no hurried military operation with severe time constraints, unlike that of the Al Aqsa Flood operation.
Thirdly, while any Israeli victim of rape cannot ordinarily expect retribution for testifying to such an experience but rather the opposite, Palestinians in Israeli jail and ex-prisoners anywhere in Palestine are always vulnerable to Israeli retribution and eight have died in jail since October 8th.
Another difference is that while Palestinians have to think about how their actions will be perceived not only internally but also externally, this is not the case with the Israeli State and its armed forces, who boast about their human rights violations in official videos and on soldiers’ social media.
Victims of rape and sexual assault by Palestinians in Palestinian society
There are sadly bound to be such victims but we know nothing about them because of the siege and genocidal war conditions to which Palestinian society is subjected. Such a situation conditions complicity in silence due to feelings of solidarity and fear of seeming to help the enemy.
We know this from our own history in Ireland in the Republican movement during the 30 Years War in the occupied Six Counties, some accusations of sexual abuse within Republican families only emerging to the public eye only after the end of the War.
Victims of rape and sexual assault by Israelis in Israeli society
However, there are substantial statistics on complaints of rape and sexual assault in Israeli society, which are according to one source, 40% higher there than the average in OECD countries. Furthermore they have been on the increase (which may mean greater occurrence or of reporting).
In 2013, 40,000 calls were received by the Israeli rape crisis centres, a rise of 12% from previously but only 15% were reported to the police. Even more disturbingly, 31% of callers reporting assault were under the age of 12 and 33% of callers reporting assault were between 13-18 years of age.14
The Association of Rape Crises Centres in Israeli reports that one in three women in Israel is sexually assaulted during her lifetime, with one in seven raped during her lifetime.15
Gang rapes seem to be on the increase and the risk of punishment for rapists and sexual assaulters seems statistically low as a study found that 90% of cases are closed without charges.16
Some of the allegations of sexual assault and rape of Israeli personnel within the Israeli military
In 2013 there were 561 reports of sexual assault in the IDF that were of military circumstances, with 396 reports not of military circumstances. 91% of reports were of assault against women, 49% were of physical assault but in 61% of cases a complaint was not submitted.17
There have been two notorious cases of alleged gang rapes by Israeli men but in Cyprus, a common holiday destination for Israelis.18 One, of a woman in 2019 was dismissed due to police incompetence and the other, of a UK woman, is currently being tried. 19
In Conclusion
During the many hours of Israeli military missing after the Wall breaches, other Palestinians entered and could possibly have robbed, assaulted, raped or killed a small number of Israelis. However forensic, victim or credible witness evidence of rape remains absent to date.
The mass rape allegations against the Palestinian resistance in the course of their Al Aqsa Flood operation originate in Israeli propaganda, are not credible logically, have provided neither victims nor forensic evidence and the track record of the “investigators” is tainted by zionist sympathies.
Despite debunking by statistics and investigation, the “mass rapes” and other allegations such as the numbers killed by the Palestinian resistance continue to be repeated in the western mass media or to be allowed to resurface after the allegations and/or the sources have been discredited.
Sadly even liberal anti-Zionist reporters appear at times to allow themselves to believe the propaganda while at the same time criticising the Israeli State’s actions or their extent.20
The original source is Israeli war propaganda and those who ignore that fact and the number of investigation results refuting the allegations but rather give them some kind of credence and currency in reporting are deeply complicit in the ongoing zionist genocide of the Palestinian people.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1In order to deny that the target of operations by the Israeli State is the Palestinian people, the propaganda always talks about “Hamas” alone. It is rarely admitted but well-known by the authorities that the Al Aqsa Flood operation was a joint one including not only the military wings of Hamas but also of Islamic Jihad, the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Resistance Committees and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
8The U.N. envoy focusing on sexual violence in conflict says there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape, “sexualized torture,” and other cruel and inhuman treatment of women during its surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
There are also “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing,” said Pramila Patten, who visited Israel and the West Bank from Jan. 29 to Feb. 14 with a nine-member team. (Washington Post – see Sources). Contrast this claim with the accounts of female prisoners of the Palestinian resistance released to date.
9The elected representation of the Palestinian people since the 2006 elections has been Hamas (no 5-yearly elections have been held since by the PA which is under Fatah control). The Fatah political structure in power in Gaza refused to respect the electorate’s decision and in 2007 Hamas was obliged to remove them by force (which they decided not to do in the West Bank). The Israeli ruling class likewise refused to accept the decision of the Palestinian electorate and besieged Gaza. The rulers of the western states followed suit in not recognising Hamas either, though UN aid organisations and NGOs had to deal with Hamas in Gaza.
10“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could’ve risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime,” said the President of the Israel State, Herzog.
11For example, the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1666 by the British-Norman rulers of England were series of 35 Acts aimed at preventing the British-Norman settlers (also described as Norman-Irish) from continuing to be “the degenerate English” who had “become more Irish than the Irish themselves” by adopting traditional Irish customs, culture, language and even law.
12The ironical truth is that while the UK and the USA are some of the few powers that do indeed posses weapons of mass destruction, Iraq had none; also the Twin Towers atrocity had been carried out by Al Qaeda, an Islamicist organisation originating in jihadists supported and supplied by the USA in order to overthrow the Russian-supported Afghanistan regime of 1979-1988. Furthermore Al Qaeda was a known opponent of the Saddam Hussein regime.
13Though reported in some western mass media, neither as often nor nowhere nearly as much as the Israeli story of “mass rapes by Hamas”.
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