Category: Current Affairs Comment

POLICING THE PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

Demonstrations, like many organised activities, require a certain discipline: time and place set, conduct along the way, speakers and time allocated, dispersing afterwards. But just as discipline helps avoid dangers, its imposition also bring dangers.

I’ve been one of the organisers, or a steward on a number of public events over the years but more often a participant without any particular role.

Once, in London as a steward I was called “a State agent” as I moved to prevent a couple of people leading others out of an Irish demonstration to attack some British fascists and Loyalists who were chanting against us.

For us, the main objective was to hold an Irish solidarity demonstration in London from its start to its finish without giving the London Metropolitan Police and Special Branch the opportunity to disrupt it.1 Attacking fascist jeerers was secondary to our objective on that occasion.

And if those guys really wanted to attack fascists, they should have been travelling parallel to the march (as the Red Action group often did, for example) instead of inside the march body. Then they could have attacked the fascists without any disruption of the march.

I have also been a party on a broad antifascist mobilisation to a refusal to organisers’ direction to march away from the fascists, instead heading towards them with others.2 In those cases the organisers were, in effect, colluding with the State.

PALESTINE SOLIDARITY IN IRELAND

The main organisation for Palestine solidarity in Ireland for decades has been and continues to be the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Its steering group or executive committee is entirely unpaid and works with energy and determination over the years and at times more intensively.

Those intensive times have been with us again since last month in the horrific genocidal Zionist bombing of Gaza and the murderous ground attacks in the West Bank and the IPSC activists have organised large – sometimes huge – marches of solidarity in Dublin every week.

These have been combined with other events such as rallies, concerts and public meetings in the city and marches, rallies and pickets elsewhere to the south, the west and the north of the country.

No organisation however is perfect or right all the time and there are a number of areas and occasions that deserve constructive criticism for improvement.

I do believe that the cancelation of a Palestine solidarity march scheduled for 25th November was a serious error tactically and strategically.

Section of a midweek demonstration in persistent rain organised by the IPSC outside Leinster House, seat of the parliament of the Irish State in October. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

In terms of strategy we must strive as far as is possible not to give ground in the public arena to fascists and other racists since as we vacate ground, they step forward to occupy it. To move the rallying point from the Garden of Remembrance3 made sense but the cancellation not at all.

Tactically, the absence of a Palestine solidarity march that weekend broke the momentum of large public Palestinian solidarity events occurring at least weekly throughout the capital city.4

WHICH SLOGAN?

The IPSC now calls for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador but earlier on in October it refrained from doing so. That was a mistake but what was worse was the attempt to influence others also not to do so, for example with regard to speakers from their platform.

During that period the presence of non-stop chant-leaders shouting the approved slogans, one after another, particularly near groups who might chant for the expulsion of the Ambassador seemed more than a coincidence.

It is good to hear now the ubiquitous “Israeli Ambassador – Out, out, out!” from the IPSC slogan-callers and, though perhaps not the IPSC’s choice, may the one stating that “There is only one solution – Intifada revolution!” be accepted in toleration.

WHICH FLAGS?

At the recent much-diminished Palestine solidarity march in Dublin5 – the first since the cancellation – I witnessed a man and woman acting for the IPSC organisers, they said, approaching a person with a PLFP6 flag, to ask not to fly any flag other than the Palestinian national one.

They were polite and not in any way intimidating; their manner was not the problem but the content of their message was.

Palestinians participate in a rally marking the 52nd anniversary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in Gaza City, December 7, 2019. (Photo cred: Hatem Moussa/ AP)

There are issues where the IPSC should be giving a lead and are of course doing so but just as there are some where they should but are not, this is one where they seem to be attempting to impose a discipline and uniformity that is both unnecessary and unhealthy.

There are organisations that send sacks of their group’s flags and placards to demonstrations to be carried by random participants, swamping the event to make it appear as though their organisation is bigger and more prevalent than is the case, a practice I detest.

It is not as though people are flooding the demonstration with PFLP flags or, indeed, Irish Tricolours and Starry Ploughs, though it seemed that they were not as worried about the latter two.

There are people who support different organisations in Palestine and why should it be a problem for them to fly the flag of the organisation of their choice?

Why should it be a problem for people to realise that there are many Palestinian organisations of struggle in opposition to the one of collusion?

In a demonstration for Irish independence would we demand that only the Tricolour7 could be flown? Or for Catalan independence, only accepting the display of the Senyera?8

WHAT KIND OF PALESTINIAN STATE?

The IPSC is formally neutral on the issue of what kind of Palestinian state to which to aspire, which in some respects is fair enough since that is a matter for the people there to choose. But it is not OK to be neutral on whether the ‘two-state solution’ (sic) is acceptable, never mind viable.

Yes, we know that the imperialists of the EU, USA and UK support that ‘solution’. We know that their allies do, including the Irish Government. We also know that the collaborationist Palestinian organisation9 and most Arab states’ leaders also support that arrangement.

BUT

The two-state solution is one where the settler-occupier gets to keep what he robbed and murdered to get while the indigenous receives less than 40% of her original land and the worst of it, with the least water and, furthermore, under the constant guns of the robbers and murderers.

The diminished part of Palestine being offered to Palestinians under “the 2-state solution” (Image sourced: Internet)

MOST PALESTINIANS POLLED IN PALESTINE REJECT IT.10 And you can guarantee, without polling, that the vast majority of the exiled Palestinian refugees reject it too, since it would close for ever any hope for a return to Palestine for most of them.

The IPSC supports the slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” This is, one might say, an implicit rejection of the two-state proposal since it must mean a free Palestine from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean and Red Seas. But how many understand that?

In a world where imperialism is the main support of the European Zionist colonial (and genocidal) project, it is essential that the mass of people understand for what it is that the Palestinians are fighting and what we support, as distinct from what the imperialists want to foist upon them.

PALESTINIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS

In the struggle for independence and for social justice, right across the world, many people are taken by those in power and put in jail. Solidarity with those prisoners, objections to their conditions and demands for their release have been an important part of those struggles.

This has been well-illustrated in Irish history too and in Britain, the First International (Workingmen’s Association) founded by Marx, Engels and others campaigned in solidarity with the Fenians incarcerated in English jails.

The “blanket protests” and in particular the hunger strikes in colonial jails in Ireland a little over 40 years ago drew huge attention and wide support not only in Ireland but across the world.

All the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are there as a result of the European Zionist occupation of Palestine and the natural resistance of the indigenous people.

When Hamas recently obtained the release of 180 prisoners from Israeli jails, most were women and children. Furthermore, many had not even been convicted in the Israeli military courts but were held in “administrative detention”, in effect, interned without trial.

Palestinian prisoner solidarity protest in Nablus 17 April 2023 (Photo credit: Jaafar Ashtiyeh /AFP)

Though the IPSC has highlighted the number of children in Israeli jails and those in administrative detention, it does not have a position of overall solidarity with the rest of the 100,000 Palestinian prisoners nor in calling for their blanket release.

The organisation has however covered the release of prisoners in the recent exchange and shared reports of the brutality inflicted upon many, particularly after the Hamas offensive on 7th October. One must hope that this process will be extended to solidarity with all the Palestinian prisoners.

Solidarity with political prisoners does not necessarily imply support for their previous actions or for their organisations; what it does is to recognise that all liberation struggles produce martyrs and prisoners due to the repression of resistance to colonialism and occupation.

The existence of the prisoners is a direct result of the colonial occupation and if we oppose that occupation we should stand in solidarity with the prisoners, agitate around their conditions and demand their freedom, along with the departure of the colonists.

IN CONCLUSION

All organisations and movements need to instil some discipline around their activities. All also commit errors from time to time and it is crucial to learn from those in order to improve their effectiveness and to bring nearer the objectives for which they strive.

In their attempt to mediate between the different pressures upon them it is necessary to distinguish between what the dominant system wants or would like and what the movement’s supporters wish, between what is most welcome and what is most necessary.

Rally after large IPSC march 10 October 2023 (Photo sourced: Internet)

The IPSC is an important and valuable organisation in Ireland doing crucial work in the area of solidarity with the Palestinians and, in doing so, contributing to an atmosphere of internationalist solidarity which is essential for the advance of humanity.

While I have not for some years been part of its Dublin organisation I will of course continue to support its marches, rallies and pickets as I have been doing for decades, both in promotion and in attendance.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1The police used attacks by fascists and resistance to them on Irish solidarity marches as opportunities to disrupt the march and to arrest march participants.

2The Communist Party of Great Britain despite the history of many of its members in the 1930s, did not wish to physically attack fascists from the late 1960s and tried to steer demonstrations away from direct confrontation, often leading them away from where the fascists were gathered.

3That place is less than 100 metres from the scene of the attack on the children and the march began there the participants would have to pass by the site.

4It also left exposed to attack any small group that went ahead with Palestine solidarity or anti-racism pickets, as some did, in the city centre.

52nd December 2023.

6Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

7There is nothing wrong with the Tricolour but some Republicans and socialists prefer the Starry Plough, signifying a more socialist republicanism and also a separation from the State, which has appropriated the Tricolour.

8The original flag of Catalan independence, red stripes on a yellow field — but on Catalan demonstrations the Estelada Blava, including a blue triangle surrounding a white star, for left Republicans, is much more common and the Vermella, with a red star on yellow instead of the white one on blue is quite common also, especially among revolutionary socialists.

9The Al Fatah-dominated PLO from which a number of Palestinian resistance organisations are excluded. They also dominate the Palestinian Authority which has not held elections since Hamas won them in 2008.

10https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/new-polling-and-legacy-oslo-accords

SOURCES

Cancellation of march: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41276554.html

Polls on two-state ‘solution’: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/new-polling-and-legacy-oslo-accords

Israeli Palestinian prisoners: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/24/who-were-the-palestinian-prisoners-israel-released-on-friday

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/29/middleeast/palestinian-prisoners-israeli-judicial-system-west-bank-mime-intl/index.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/21/number-of-palestinian-prisoners-in-israel-doubles-to-10000-in-two-weeks

GENOCIDAL SLOGANS?

On By rebelbreezeIn Censorship & Witch-hunting, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Recently then-Minister for Home Affairs of the UK Suella Braverman claimed the common Palestinian solidarity slogan, From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free! to be antisemitic, genocidal in effect and looked set to try to have it banned.

In some other western institutions, for example Columbia University USA, it HAS been banned and a Palestine solidarity student group has had its rights within the University revoked despite, reportedly, the opposition of the majority of students to that sanction.

Suella Braverman, MP, former UK Minister for Home Affairs. (Photo sourced: Internet)

How can a basic solidarity slogan be claimed to be genocidal?

Definition of a genocidal act: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group …1

Obviously there can be such a thing as a genocidal slogan and, in fact, there are many examples in history: “The only good Indian (sic) is a dead Indian”2; “Juden raus”3; “To Hell or to Connaught”4; “Nits make lice”5; “Kill the cockroaches”6; “There are no Kurds, only mountain Turks”.7

Anti-Jewish racist and genocidal slogan in German with the Nazi Swastika symbol on wall in Florence, Italy.

But really, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”? Genocidal? For the Palestinian people to be free and in control of their own land, there has to be genocide?

Would “Scotland Free from Dunnet Head to Tweed” be considered a genocidal slogan? Or for example slogans such as “Ireland free from Donegal to Cork” or “A 32-County socialist Republic” be thought genocidal?

“Oh, but the Palestinian one means Palestine for the Arabs only, no Jews!” Really? And you know this how? Before the British started driving Jews into Palestine the maximum size of the Jewish population there was 6% but there was no attempt by the mostly Arab people to drive them out.

Could the slogan not equally or even more likely be a call for a free, equal, democratic state across the whole of the original Palestine? Such as the stated objective of a number of Palestinian resistance organisations, the PFLP for example?

The nationalist slogans for Ireland and Scotland could be interpreted to mean clearing out all non-Scottish and non-Irish respectively but for the vast majority they not mean that nor are they generally thought to do so. So why suspect genocidal intention of the Palestinians?

The opposition to the slogan is not at all based on fear of genocide but in fact on support for it: the Zionist genocide against the Palestinians! It is based on denying the right to self-determination of the indigenous Palestinian people, of which a huge majority are Arab.

To deny the right of the Palestinians to self-determination is to support the right of the Zionists to colonise, a project entailing expulsion or massacre of the ethnically Arab Palestinian majority that existed in Palestine even up until 1948.

That Zionist project has continued with a constant ethnic cleansing pressure and genocidal attacks on the Palestinian people.

And the same people who oppose the slogan “From the River to the sea” etc support such slogans as “Israel has a right to self-defence” and “The Jewish people have a right to their own state”, which ARE racist and genocidal statements based on Zionist and European colonial ideology.

If Israel has a right to self-defence, what that means is that those who occupy a territory, steal the land and resources, colonise it and attack the indigenous people … have the right to defend themselves against the legitimate resistance of the people.

It gives the settlers the right to defend their occupation and repress the resistance, which naturally is given no rights at all. The robber has the right to the loot.

If the Jewish people have a right to their own state, where is that to be? Where will a land be found without people in it for them to take as their own?

And if such an empty land does not exist – which it does not – then what gives Jews or anyone else the right to occupy and settle a land, removing the rights of the indigenous people? An alleged promise by a being of religious belief? Or the backing of imperialist colonial powers?

The defence of the solidarity slogan’s content and the right to use it across the world are important democratic standards in the peoples’ struggles for justice and to express and build internationalist solidarity across the world.

The realisation of the slogan will be an important contribution to peace and justice in the world.

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Article II, UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

2Whether correctly attributed to General Phillip Sheridan of the US Army or not it was certainly a popular saying in the white US colonial wars against the Indigenous native people.

3Nazi slogan, literally “Jews out!”

4Attributed to Oliver Cromwell in his mid-17th Century genocidal and ethnic cleansing campaign against the Irish Catholics.

5Horrific slogan justifying the killing of children because they will grow up to be the hated/ feared people. This slogan or saying has probably been heard at one time or another in most parts of the world but certainly against Native Americans in the USA; among Nazis against Jews, Slavs and Gypsies; in Israel against Palestinians.

6One of the slogans of the Hutu against the Tutsi in the 1994 ethnic cleansing and massacres in Rwanda.

7Remark attributed to the Turkish nationalist Kemal Ataturk with regard to the very large ethnically distinct Kurdish people in Turkey.

SOURCES

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/16/suella-braverman-rows-anti-israel-chant/

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

DON’T CALL FOR A CEASEFIRE IF YOU SUPPORT THE PALESTINIANS

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

When so many people and even states around the world are calling for a ceasefire, it may seem perverse to oppose the call, doing so not from a genocidal Zionist position but on the contrary from one of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

A search for definitions1 of the word ‘ceasefire’ make it clear that it is a temporary status in conflict and that is exactly how the Zionist state intended it and practiced it, returning to bombing again this weekend (and shifting its main target to the very area to where it advised people to flee).

Poster from JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) a very active Jewish anti-Zionist organisation in the USA (Image sourced: Internet)

Is this truly what the Palestinians and billions of people around the globe want? No, we all want a permanent end to the bombing of Palestinians – nothing less!

The argument might run that “Surely even a temporary ceasefire brings some relief to the Palestinians, allows emergency supplies to reach them, release of hostages from both sides?” Well sure but can we not call for something better?

There is another problem with the calls for a ‘ceasefire’, which is that it seeks to impose a restriction on both sides and makes both appear as equally — or at least to some degree – the source of the problem. But the Zionists are guilty of occupation, Palestinians of nothing except resistance.

Nor are the two equally-balanced sides: the 4th larges military power against guerrillas and civilians. And do we have the right to call on the Palestinians to cease military resistance operations? Do we even want to? Do we want the IOF to remain in control of even their limited military gains?

(Image sourced: Internet)

This not a question of semantics alone but goes deep towards the heart of the matter. Resistance is the life-blood for a people, even as it costs the blood of many, many of its individuals. Without resistance, a people ceases to exist, its culture and history blown to the winds of time.

So how to give voice to the feelings of outrage and pain while viewing the atrocities of the Zionist State? How to express our solidarity with its victims?

Recent protest in Tokyo, Japan (Photo sourced: Internet)

We can simply call to STOP THE BOMBING – STOP IT NOW!

Beyond that, we must not support anything less than the departure of the colonisers – freedom, from the river to the sea! Not a two-state “solution” which, apart from being profoundly unjust to the Palestinians, would be only a stage in Israel’s program of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

That ‘two-state solution’ seeks to allow the occupiers to maintain what they have stolen and to condemn the indigenous Palestinians to less than 40% of their territory, with the most arid land and least water, permanently under the guns of the Zionist State.

Change.org petition poster and promotional photo (Photo sourced: Change.org)

It is the option favoured by all the imperialist states and their allies,2 also by the minority colluding Palestinian leadership and their political allies abroad3 but scorned by the vast majority of Palestinians in Palestine and, one would assume, by all the exiled refugees.

The only long-term solution is an independent democratic unitary Palestinian state – preferably a socialist one but that is up to the people of that state. In the meantime and in order to achieve that: THE ONLY SOLUTION IS INTIFADA4 REVOLUTION.

FOOTNOTES

1 One definition: A cease-fire is an agreement that regulates the cessation of all military activity for a given length of time in a given area. It may be declared unilaterally, or it may be negotiated between parties to a conflict. (The Practical Guide to Humanitarian Law.

2Including the Irish State.

3The Al Fatah political party leadership that controls the PLO and the PA (though they lost the elections to Hamas) in Palestine and for example in Ireland, the Sinn Féin party.

4 Rebellion, resistance, revolution.

SOURCES

https://guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/article/3/cease-fire/

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cease-fire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intifada

The Martyrdom of Gaza: A Never Ending Saga

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Imperialism, Irish Left, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, Trade unions, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

16 November 2023


Israel uses white phosphorus munitions in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

Norman Finkelstein published a book a number of years ago entitled Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom.

In it he looked at various major episodes in the long bloody onslaught on the people of Gaza, amongst them Operation Cast Lead and also the attack on the boat Mavi Marmara and the Goldstone Report, amongst other issues.

He could have written it yesterday about the current genocidal plans of the Israeli state.

The Israel Defense Forces fired at least three white phosphorus shells above this UN-run school in Beit Lahiya on January 17, 2009, killing two and wounding 14. The school was housing about 1,600 displaced persons at the time. The IDF have used these munitions a number of times since. © 2009 Getty Images

The current Israeli offensive is just one more in a long line of massacres. This is not a review of Finkelstein’s book, though any book by him is worth reading and should be read. Rather I just want to use the book to show that what is happening now is not new, it is just more intense.

Israel has murdered before, it has lied, it has committed war crimes and it has always received the support of western states.

Above all we should be clear that we are where we are partly due to the Oslo Accord and also the role played by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO. They cannot wash their hands of the affair.

“One of the meanings of Oslo,” former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami observed, “was that the PLO was . . . Israel’s collaborator in the task of stifling the intifada and cutting short . . . an authentically democratic struggle for Palestinian independence.”

Rabin (left) and Arafat shake hands on the Oslo Accords under the management of then US President Clinton. (Photo sourced: Internet)

In particular, Israel contrived to reassign to Palestinian surrogates the sordid tasks of occupation. “The idea of Oslo,” former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky acknowledged, “was to find a strong dictator to . . . keep the Palestinians under control.”

“The Palestinians will be better at establishing internal security than we were,” Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin told skeptics in his ranks, “because they will not allow appeals to the Supreme Court and will prevent the Association for Civil Rights in Israel from criticizing the conditions there. . .

They will rule by their own methods, freeing, and this is most important, the Israeli soldiers from having to do what they will do.”(1)

In other words, Gaza has bled under the passive gaze of the bureaucrats of the Palestinian authorities and of course of the reactionary Arab regimes that have never lifted a finger to help their Palestinian brothers and sisters.

They have not even threatened to cut off the supply of oil to the West, something they could do right now, but won’t. It has also happened under the gaze of those on the Left who run around shouting Implement Oslo! Two State Solution!

They ignore the fact that Oslo represented an ideological, political and military defeat for the Palestinians. The PLO accepted its role as puppet, administrator of a small urban city-like council and as chief repressor of those who continued to fight for Palestinian freedom.

A look at the Oslo II Accord, signed in September 1995 and spelling out in detail the mutual rights and duties of the contracting parties to the 1993 agreement, suggests what loomed largest in the minds of Palestinian negotiators.

Whereas four full pages are devoted to “Passage of [Palestinian] VIPs” (the section is subdivided into “Category 1 VIPs,” “Category 2 VIPs,” “Category 3 VIPs,” and “Secondary VIPs”), less than one page—the very last—is devoted to “Release of Palestinian Prisoners and Detainees,” who numbered in the many thousands…

The barely disguised purpose of Oslo’s protracted interim period was not confidence building to facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace but collaboration building to facilitate a burden-free Israeli occupation.(2)

However, Israel is now militarily weak. Finkelstein points to a number of attacks where it has shown its weakness. Its predilection is for attacks on the civilian population that can’t fight back.

In 2006, it opted to bomb civilians in Lebanon rather than engage in a proper fight with Hezbollah “terrorizing Lebanese civilians appeared to be a low-cost method of “education.”(3)

In Gaza in Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9, it followed a similar path of aerial bombardments of civilians rather than land invasions, that would see its troops face the wrath of Hamas and other armed organisations. So first they relentlessly bombed Gaza before any troops went in.

When the troops went in, the civilian population was their preferred target then as it is now. The murder of civilians is not new. It is part of an Israeli strategy of claiming easy victories.

An Israelicombatant remembered a meeting with his brigade commander and others where the “rules of engagement” were “essentially” conveyed as, “if you see any signs of movement at all you shoot.”

Other soldiers recalled, “If the deputyBattalionCommander thought a house looked suspect, we’d blow it away. If the infantrymen didn’t like the looks of that house—we’d shoot” (unidentified soldier); “If you face an area that is hidden by a building—you take down the building.”

Questions such as ‘who lives in that building[?]’ are not asked” (soldier recalling hisBrigadeCommander’s order);

“As for rules of engagement, the army’s working assumption was that the whole area would be devoid of civilians … Anyone there, as far as the army was concerned, was to be killed” (unidentified soldier);

“We were told: ‘any sign of danger, open up with massive fire” (member of a reconnaissance company); “We shot at anything that moved” (Golani Brigade fighter); “Despite the fact that no one fired on us, the firing and demolitions continued incessantly” (gunner in a tank crew).

“Essentially, a person only need[ed] to be in a ‘problematic’ location,” a Haaretz reporter found, “in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to be ‘incriminated’ and in effect sentenced to death.”(4)

In all around 1,400 Palestinians were murdered in Operation Cast Lead, with 80% of them being civilians including 350 children. Israeli casualties were risible in comparison, just 10 combatants were killed, four of whom were killed by friendly fire.(5)

Then as now, Israel wheeled out the old trope of “human shields”. Amnesty International found no evidence of that,(6) in fact, it found evidence of Israel using children as human shields.(7)

It also found that Israel used then, as it does now, white phosphorous against schools, hospitals and even the UNRWA.(8) Furthermore, 99% of the air attacks were accurate.(9) If they murdered civilians, it is because the civilians were the target.

Following the operation, the Goldstone Report was published. It surprised no-one when it found evidence of Israeli war crimes and to a lesser extent of Hamas. It is a salutary lesson for those who now place their confidence in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Goldstone made various recommendations.

Individual states in the international community were exhorted to “start criminal investigations in national courts, using universal jurisdiction, where there is sufficient evidence of the commission of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

“Where so warranted following investigation, alleged perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with internationally recognized standards of justice.”(10)

We know that nothing of the sort happened. In fact, the western governments paid little heed to the report. Goldstone was forced to recant on the conclusions to his report.

Netanyahu for his part announced that he wanted to amend the rules of war leading to Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell asking “What is it that Israel wants … Permission to fearlessly attack defenseless population centers with planes, tanks and artillery?”(11)

Exactly.

And here we are today, with Israel unilaterally amending the rules of war, with the green light from the EU and the USA, amongst others. They murder civilians and no one proposes doing anything.

In Operation Cast Lead, the harshest sentence emitted by an Israeli court was seven and a half months to a soldier who had stolen a credit card!(12) Minor financial crimes are of greater concern than war crimes or crimes against humanity.

After this genocide in Gaza, we can’t expect much from the ICC.

Throughout its history the ICC has opened just 31 cases, including one for genocide. All of them against African leaders. This does not mean that those leaders did not deserve to be judged for their crimes, but that the ICC is just the legal arm of imperialism.

It has never attempted to put on trial the powerful in the West and despite everything even less so Israel. This year it issued a communiqué announcing that it would issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for war crimes and did so on its own initiative.(13)

In the case of Gaza, it will do nothing of the sort. Those who place their trust in the ICC or in the Palestinian Authority are fooling themselves. This situation is the result of turning a blind eye to Israel for many years whilst it commits all sorts of crimes.

It didn’t act before and it won’t do so now. Neither will the Arab regimes do much, unless their own populations force them. They fear the Palestinians and their own people as they know that the struggle against Zionism is also a struggle against them.

The more revolutionary Palestinian groups used to say that the path to Jerusalem went through Amman and Damascus. They were right, it does pass through those capital cities and also Beirut, Riyadh, Cairo and all the others and not through the ICC.

In fact, one day the judges and prosecutors of that body should be put on trial for their complicity in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity through their inaction and omission.

It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with the role of Amnesty International in its own reports on Palestine.

They are what Finkelstein refers “as far from being the exception that proved the rule, Amnesty actually constituted a variant of the rule: instead of falling silent on Israeli crimes during Protective Edge, Amnesty whitewashed them.”(14)

I will leave it to the reader to look at the book for more information on that particular betrayal. Suffice to say, we can expect little from such organisations. At best they gather data we can sometimes use.

Notes

(1) Finkelstein, N. G. (2018) Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom. California. California University Press. pp 6 & 7

(2) Ibíd.p.10

(3) Ibíd. p.26

(4) Ibíd.p.45

(5) Ibíd. p.70

(7) Ibíd. p.71

(8) Ibíd., p. 75

(9) Ibíd., p. 204

(10) Ibíd., p. 91 & 92

(11) Ibíd., p.93

(12) Ibíd., p.101.
 
(13) See https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and

(14) Finkelstein, N.G. (2018) Op. Cit. p.238
 

IRONIES MOUNT IN THE STORY OF THE RACIST RIOTS

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Ireland, Political Analysis1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

As more information emerges — without any great help from the mass media or the political class – it completely undercuts the platform of lies constructed by the fascist manipulators of the recent rioting mob in Dublin.

The story in fact is replete with ironies – not unusual in the country called by some ‘Ironyland.’

As most people will know, the immediate story began with a stabbing attack on three children and a worker who intervened to save them outside a Gaelscoil1 creche in Dublin City centre. Riding the crest of the horror story ran a footnote alleging that the attacker was a migrant.

A recent view of the steps to Scoil Mhuire BÁC (Photo credit: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos)

The fascist manipulators and their far-Right followers quickly boosted the footnote into the main – almost ONLY — story and mobilised on social media for the next few hours. By that evening, they had gathered a few hundred in the city centre, burning police cars and public transport.

Well, the alleged target of the riots were migrants and that was certainly the message being put out by the fascist manipulators and high-profile racists. And precisely here is where we see the emerging ironies and undermining of the racist memes.

For it quickly emerged that of those who intervened against the attack on the three children and the creche worker, two — possibly three — were themselves of migrant background, with another an Irishman.

All the injured were taken for medical care to hospitals where, of course, many of the workers at all levels are also migrant workers. No doubt they too would have been targeted except that such is one step too far even for the racist foot soldiers. Up to now, anyway.

As usual, the fascists and other racists spread lies about the circumstances of the attack, alleging the perpetrator was an illegal immigrant and motivated by Muslim fundamentalism.2 For although of migrant background he had been legally 20 years in Ireland and had mental health issues.

Nothing particularly ironic about that since lying comes naturally to fascists.

But then, what is not surprising to any except racists perhaps is that one of the injured children is from two migrant parents, each from a different region. And they sent their child to an Irish-speaking creche, probably to prepare for Irish-language schooling anon.

So racists whip up anti-migrant hatred around an attack on children, one of whom is herself a child of parents of migrant background, in an incident in which two out of the three who come to the victim’s assistance are migrants and the children are treated in part by migrant health workers.

And then the racists were at it again on social media, trying to reduce the heroic roles of the people of migrant background, counterposing the heroic acts of the people of Irish background against the others, implying that promoting the role of migrants was some kind of ‘woke’ propaganda.

FASCIST USE OF “WOMEN AND CHILDREN“

The call to “protect our children, our women” is a common trick to whip up emotions without any moderating thought. It is in fact a call hearkening to the Neolithic, when such things were real needs and often enough, sadly, since then in many parts of the world.

States have used the trick to get people to join armies to kill one another on battlefields while the masters of those states are far from “where the fast bullets fly” and, when the war is won or lost, may well sit down together draw up deals, to chop up and trade lands and markets.

But the fascists use the slogans and the underclass of the city allow themselves to be used, mouthing the slogans and talking about “undocumented migrants” “of military age”, parroting their lines.

The irony here too is that fascists want to protect women only if they stay in the kitchen or at least ‘know their place’. And the children of course will be fodder for capitalist exploitation or for fighting in foreign wars, against others of their class.

And increasingly with every war, women and children form the larger part of the casualty lists, not to mention widows struggling to get by and care for their bereaved children.

When Naoinrí3 managers, workers and children’s parents were demonstrating outside Leinster House for help with a sector struggling so badly that some have closed and others are considering doing so, were these elements called there by their fascist manipulators to support the protests?

Of course not!

A protest on March 29th this year about the lack of Irish Government support for the Irish language in education, including in the Irish-language creche services. Of course no support from the fascists and far-Right for improvement in these services for “our children”, not to speak of our national language! (Photo sourced: RTÉ)

But we have not exhausted the ironies yet, there are some still to go. The Gardaí, who have drawn their batons and struck at Republicans, water protesters and anti-fascists often enough, were afraid to do so while their patrol cars burned as they awaited the arrival of the Public Order Unit.

Which has led to irrelevant calls from some quarters to reform GSOC investigations and more recruitment for the police.

Mary Lou McDonald is absolutely correct in saying that the rioting was easily foreseeable and that the fascists and their followers had been active in recent years threatening and harassing people and so they had: migrants, refugees, LGBT people and some politicians.

But there is irony here too because McDonald’s party, once the largest revolutionary opposition to the State did not at all mobilise against those fascist and far-Right thugs, not even when one of their youth wing was knocked unconscious by National Party supporters on Custom House Quay.4

But wait, this piece of irony is a real beaut! The Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris, is only three years out of his previous job as Assistant Commissioner of the sectarian colonial armed police force, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (formerly the Royal Ulster Constabulary).

Why is that an irony, you ask? Well, in his previous job, Harris would have been fully au fait with the biggest collection of far-Right bigots, racists and drug-dealing violent fascists to be found in Ireland, i.e the ‘Ulster’ Loyalists, the enforcers of the Orange Order.

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris being congratulated on his appointment by his former colleague in the PSNI, Asst. Commissioner Hamilton. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Did he think that the Dublin variety was as easy to control as those in the Six Counties, or that he had a similar “understanding” with them?

So what now? Well the final irony of all. The Gardaí are going to get better tooled up which of course, they will not be using primarily against the fascists and their far-Right followers at all but rather on the anti-fascists, anti-racists and Republican campaigners and protesters in general.

But they were incapable of having a Garda presence at the school a few days later when, according to reports, parents found a drunken man who had urinated himself on the steps of the school building. Prevented from attending by fear of GSOC reports??!!

End.

FOOTNOTES

1School teaching through the medium of Irish language, usually all subjects except other languages. The one in question was adjoined to the primary-level Scoil Mhuire which in turn is connected to the Secondary-level Coláiste Mhuire. There is as yet no totally-Irish-language university although there are streams and some university courses taught through Irish.

2Irish-language creches or nursery schools.

3On 20th August 2020; he was there with friends and not part of a SF contingent https://rebelbreeze.com/2020/08/31/there-will-be-another-day/

SOURCES

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dublin-stabbing-victim-is-from-migrant-family-3nw0fsppv

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/190000-euros-raised-for-brazilian-who-saved-kids-in-dublin-stabbing-1556510.html

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41277331.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Dublin_riot

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/unforgiveable-no-garda-presence-outside-school-at-centre-of-dublin-knife-attack-dail-told/a1492199036.html

HERE, BUT THERE

On By rebelbreezeIn Creative writing, Creative writing, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Ireland, National Liberation, Palestine, Poetry, Popular Resistance, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Ireland, Palestine)

Here, the leaves are dying,

There, the people are dying;

Here, the leaves are falling,

There, the bombs are falling.

Here it is the turn of season,

There, genocide’s the only reason.

The tree seems as though it died

It is not dead but now asleep;

Retreated to its living roots

Underground stretched down deep.

In the Spring new buds we’ll see;

It is not easy to kill a tree.

Hard to kill a people too

As they rise up to resist anew.

November 2023

Centre: Birch tree, Dublin City North, November 2021 (Photo: D.Breatnach)

THOSE AMBASSADORS

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, History, Human Rights, Imperialism, Ireland, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Ambassadors generally don’t represent people but rather states. They report to their home state on attitudes at different levels in the country where they are based and on friendly and not-so-friendly contacts also.

Two ambassadors have been in the news recently and they are both from the same part of the world – one is Israeli and the other is Palestinian.

Individually ambassadors may be nice and friendly or, like the Israeli one, arrogant and aggressive but all that is really not the main thing to remember about them, which is that they represent the state that sent them. What you do or say to them, you do or say to their state.

The Israeli Dana Erlich is in the news because a number of political parties have tabled motions in the Irish Parliament for her expulsion.1 She is representing the Israeli State, a racist, Zionist colonial state which is at present carrying out a genocidal bombardment on the Palestinian people.

Dana Erlich, Israeli Ambassador to the Irish state (Photo sourced: Internet)

Wahba Abdalmajid is the Palestinian Ambassador in Ireland and, in the news mostly because she was warmly received at the recent Ard-Fheis (annual congress) of the Sinn Féin political party. A look at her “Embassy’s” website gives little indication of a people struggling for freedom.2

WHOM DOES THE PALESTINIAN AMBASSADOR REPRESENT?

Despite there existing formally a Palestinian state, in reality its people have been actively prevented from creating one. Wahba Abdalmajid’s real employer may be said to be the Palestinian Authority which functions somewhat like a state – but under the control of the Israelis.

Wahba Abdalmajid, Palestine Ambassador to Ireland, photographed recently (Photo sourced: Internet)

In a recent interview, Norman Finkelstein commented that Israel had a great many spies in Gaza, most of them former employees of the Palestine National Authority, i.e the administration of which Al Fatah lost control when beaten in the 2006 legislative elections by Hamas.3

In the wave of imperialist pacification processes (incorrectly called “peace processes”4) that swept through anti-imperialist conflicts around the world, the Palestinian variant in 1993 seems to have been the first, which then spread like a virus to South Africa, Ireland, the Basque Country5 …

In the Oslo Accords of 1983, the leadership of the PLO recognised the ‘legitimacy’ of the Zionist colonial state of Israel and agreed to the idea of a Palestinian state on a part of Palestine, with the worst land and least water, forever to be under the guns of Israel.

No arrangement was made for the descendants of the 700,000 Palestinians expelled by Israel when the Zionist State was created in 1948, forbidden by Israel to return.

The attraction for the PLO’s leadership was getting to run their own administration and with that went a spiraling of the already-existing corruption and nepotism. And accompanying that, repression of dissent through the use of their ‘security force’ where they were in control.

Financial aid comes from the European Union and USA to the PNA (to the total of US$1 billion in 2005) and, despite 2006 elections won by Hamas, the funds are paid to the West Bank HQ, i.e to Mahmoud Abbas’ offices.

Mahmoud Abbas, imperialist and zionist stooge, glued to the presidential seat of the Palestinian National Authority. (Photo sourced: Internet)

The dissatisfaction of Palestinian youth and of much of society with Al Fatah and their agreement to the Oslo Accords broke out into the Second Intifada 2000-2005 and since then Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation has been led by other organisations.

At a Tokyo meeting of foreign affairs ministers,6 USA’s envoy Blinken indicated that after Israel’s hoped-for defeat of Hamas (and cowing of Palestinians) they would favour the Palestine Authority administering Gaza again, to which PNA President Mahmoud Abbas indicated agreement.

Meanwhile, elections have not been held for the PNA since 2008, despite promises a couple of years ago. The reason is obvious: Al Fatah would again lose. Nevertheless, the western imperialist bloc recognises the PA as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people!

The same bloc and the Irish State also supports the “2-state solution” which was no solution even when being mooted back in the 1970s and is visibly risible now7; furthermore surveys show that most Palestinians do not want that option.8

So who does represent the Palestinian people? Difficult to see how that question can be answered at the moment. There are a number of resistance organisations that can legitimately claim to represent sections of the Palestinian people while the PA can only represent collusion and repression.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Unsuccessfully, so far, with the Government and its allies in opposition.

2And the most recent entry in the Embassy’s news section is dated 14 August of this year!

3That was the last election held for the PA, which remains under the control of Al Fatah, which did not accept the election results. In Gaza in 2007, Hamas had a short fierce conflict with Al Fatah and took the administration to which they had been elected but refrained from doing so in the West Bank.

4Inaccurate because they do not address the central issues and therefore do not at all bring peace.

5Also Turkish Kurdistan, Colombia … The only one where the people gained anything was South Africa, which got universal suffrage but under a neo-colonial corrupt and repressive regime whose police in 2012 murdered two score striking miners.

6Earlier this month.

7Also supported by Sinn Féin in Ireland and by the Chinese Government.

8Gallup poll found “24% of Palestinians support a two-state solution, down from 59% in 2012.” Also, a Pew Research poll showed only 35% of Israelis think “a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully.” 

SOURCES

https://news.gallup.com/poll/512828/palestinians-lack-faith-biden-two-state-solution.aspx

Israelis have grown more skeptical of a two-state solution

A TERRIBLE DEED BECOMES A FASCIST EXCUSE

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Fascism, Political Analysis, RacismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4 mins.)

A man stabs three children and a teacher in Dublin, after which certain elements riot, burn public transport and Garda vehicles and threaten migrants. What is the connection between these events?

The terrible stabbing was carried out and the assumed assailant is under arrest, facing charges and if convicted will certainly lose his freedom. The alleged assailant, it is claimed, was a foreign national1, he was himself injured and is in hospital under arrest.

Burning Dublin Bus and car on O’Connell Bridge, Dublin City centre Thursday night (Photo cred: Brian Lawless/ PA)

Yes, but what’s the connection between all that and street riot, burning public transport and police vehicles and threats to migrants?

None whatsoever, to the rational mind. But in far-Right minds and those of their fascist instigators, one migrant assailant condemns all migrants.

Very late mobilisation of the Garda Public Order Unit (Photo sourced: RTÉ)

How is that logical? If an Irish person carried out an attack in Britain, should all Irish people in Britain be judged culpable and attacked?

SCATTER-GUN BLAMING

In fact that’s exactly what happened many times, perhaps most memorably to the Birmingham Six, Maguire Seven, Guildford Four and Judith Ward. Of course, the real reason behind that was the State terrorising of the Irish community, who were protesting British repression in Ireland.

And, as it happens, there is hidden fascist reasoning here too, because for some time now, fascists and other far-Rightists have been blaming migrants and refugees for the crisis of homelessness in this neo-liberal and neo-colonial Irish state.

Migrants and other minorities, insecure, without strong support networks, often unorganised, are vulnerable and among the first and easiest targets of fascist movements in most parts of the world, dividing the working people and obscuring their real enemies.

In Britain in the 1800s the targets were the Irish; in Germany, Britain, Ireland and other places in the 1930s, those to demonise and attack were Jews and socialists2; in Britain during the latter half of the last century the Irish again but also Afro-Caribbeans, S. Asians, Africans and Muslims.

Far-Right rioters attacking late-arrived Garda Public Order Unit (Photo sourced: Internet)

EXCUSE

And it turns out, interestingly, that two out of three of the men who intervened to save the children were also migrants.

But riots and burning buses? A catharsis of the sub-working class of the inner city, alienated and disregarded for generations, devastated by substance addiction, most recently mobilised by fascists against Covid restrictions and, yes, against refugees and migrants then too.

Out of such material were the Brownshirt stormtroopers formed in 1930s Germany; out of such material too did former Garda Commissioner O’Duffy form his fascist Blueshirt movement that later helped form the Fine Gael party.

The big capitalist ruling classes use fascists to split the working class and suppress its resistance organisations and capability, so that the rate of exploitation can be increased and profit margins be defended or increased. The upper echelons of fascism are duly rewarded with government posts.

In the organising for fascist power, elements among the police and army are often in sympathy with the fascists or actually recruited by them. Or fascists may simply be tolerated, or painted as merely the other side of the threat to society, i.e the Left.

Wounded national pride was a factor in making Germans amenable to the Nazi message. The Irish people certainly have reason for wounded national feeling but these far-Right elements, for all their Tricolour-waving, by and large have no history of activity in the Irish Republican movement.

They may feel that they have lost something but in fact they never had it. Such elements also turn to opportunist looting and in the city centre shops selling shoes, expensive bicycles, alcohol and clothes were broken into and looted.

The disadvantaged and disinherited are ironically mobilised — by the very authors of their woes — against the working people, the only social sector that can change the system to one of equality and a decent living for all. They are deserving of pity certainly but dangerous for all that.

Another view of the burning Dublin Bus on O’Connell Bridge with O’Connell Monument to the left (with its British bullet-holes from 1916). (Photo sourced: Extra.ie)

THEY HAVE BEEN ENCOURAGED

And during the Pandemic, the far-Right and fascists have been encouraged to a false feeling of strength, treated extremely tolerantly by the Gardaí, even as the far-Right continually breached laws, attacked anti-fascists and threatened LGBT people and migrants.

There’s a few faces from a little further back missing but thanks to LAF for this, including Screaming Dee Wall, Gemma O’Doherty, Niall McConnell …

Dublin City Centre was much quieter than normal on Saturday, with less stalls than usual open in Moore Street and less shoppers. Thirty far-Right types gathered near the Spire in the City Centre and menaced a group with a banner reading “Grandfathers Against Racism”.

It was remarked that until the arrival of the Public Order Unit, the Gardaí allowed the mobs to collect and gather strength, even setting a patrol car alight. This has led to some calls for the resignation of the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee and the Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris.

Among those calling for their resignations was Mary Lou McDonald, leader of Sinn Féin, the party with most elected TDs (MPs) in Leinster House3, the parliament of the Irish State, who commented that the riot could easily have been predicted, given previous far-Right behaviour.

Harris, of course, is accustomed to “softly softly” managing the largest collection of fascists and far-Right thugs in Ireland, i.e the ‘Ulster’ (sic) or Orange Loyalists. After all, his previous job was Assistant Commissioner of the colonial police force, the Police Service of Northern Ireland.4

But the monster hates his facilitators too and breaks out against them when he can find no easier targets upon which to vent his rage. And in all probability, those who facilitated the monster in the recent past will now repress it to an extent.

But in the course of that, repressing all progressive resistance movements too. Garda violence and the water-cannon borrowed from the colonial police force will certainly be inflicted far more upon progressive movements than on the far-Right.

The monster hates his facilitator and his creator but ends up serving their purpose even as they use him without the slightest regard for him as a living, hurting being.

And the working class, even as they know this, must organise to defend itself against that monster while at the same time reaching beyond it, to pull down the monster’s creator once and for all.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1It is well known that fascists and far-Right agitators lie and ascribe foreign status to the perpetrators of crimes when they are of indigenous background, apart from tarring all migrants with the brush of an individual’s crime. And when the attack is by an indigenous person upon a migrant, of course the fascists remain silent.

2In Nazi Germany, other targeted and murdered minorities included Roma (‘Gypsies’), the mentally ill and disabled.

3But currently in opposition.

4A colonial armed gendarmerie, formerly the sectarian Royal Ulster Constabulary and, prior to 1922, the Royal Irish Constabulary. Their soft approach on Loyalist violence and disorder was and is in direct contradiction to their repression of even non-violent activities of Irish Republicans.

SOURCES

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/dublin-stabbings-and-riots-a-visual-guide-to-how-events-unfolded-1556624.html

https://www.sundayworld.com/crime/irish-crime/sinister-threats-to-kill-foreigners-broadcast-on-social-media-before-dublin-riots/a967680324.html

Mary Lou McDonald calls for Helen McEntee and Garda commissioner Harris to resign following riots
Gardai bring in water cannons overs fears of more rioting in Dublin

The International Criminal Court: The judicial branch of imperialism

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Massacres, Political Analysis, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

27 November 2023 (Reading time: 5 mins.)


The international criminal court in The Hague.

In the context of the Zionist genocide in Gaza, a number of personalities and Palestinian solidarity organisations have asked that Netanyahu and others be put on trial by the International Criminal Court. 

This will not happen, that court has been described in vulgar but accurate terms as a stinker.  It is true, its putrid stench is nauseating and the history of international tribunals is full of hypocrisy, even when they judge people who should be tried and punished.

We all know of the Nuremberg Tribunal where the Nazis were put on trial.  A correct decision, but Harris the man responsible for the fire-bombing of Dresden that killed 30,000 civilians was not tried, nor were other Allied criminals. 

In Tokyo, the Indian judge, Radha Binod Pal argued that the USA should be tried for the atomic bombs used against purely civilian targets.  But they didn’t.  In more recent times we have seen international tribunals try one group of people but not another.

Radha Binod Pal, dissenting jurist at the Tokyo War Crime trials (Image sourced: Internet)

One of the first tribunals in recent times was the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.  That tribunal tried a significant number of war criminals, amongst them people as vile as Ratko Mladić, the butcher of Srebrenica, where they murdered more than 8,000 men and boys. 

In all, 111 people were tried, but there were those who they never ever considered putting on trial.  Following the war, two high-ranking British officials took advantage of their contacts in the Serbian government and in the name of the British Natwest Bank facilitated the privatisation of Serbian Telecom. 

It has been said that not only did that save Slobodan Milosevic but that he used those funds for his later war in Kosovo. 

The British officials who collaborated with someone who was nothing more than a war criminal were none other than Pauline Neville-Jones, Britain’s key diplomat in the Yugoslav crisis, seen by many as appeasing Milosevic and her boss the Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd.(1) 

Of course, no one ever proposed trying them for facilitating the war in Kosovo.

Perhaps a clearer example of not trying Europeans is the Special Court for Sierra Leone. 

That tribunal decided upon various despicable crimes such as murder, rape and sexual slavery.  It also decided upon another issue, particularly in the case of Charles Taylor, that of what are termed Blood Diamonds.  Though in reality it did no such thing. 

The tribunal rightly tried Taylor, but never looked at the role of the Belgians or the South Africans in the trade of Blood Diamonds.  Any black person would do, but no whites, no businesspeople from the sector. 

The company De Beers is a key player in the market, not only as far as production is concerned, but also in the sale of diamonds from other companies, controlling 80% of the market.  But in the Sierra Leone tribunal, they didn’t even think of looking at the role of companies such as those.

They also set up a tribunal for Iraq, though it was supposedly set up by the “new government”. They tried various high-ranking officials from the Saddam Hussein regime, amongst them his once upon a time minister of defence, due to his use of gas against the Kurdish people, known as Chemical Alí. 

The regime massacred thousands of Kurds, wiped off the face of the earth whole towns, displaced the Kurds and tried to repopulate those areas with Iraqis.  Something similar to what Israel does with the Palestinians. 

There can be no doubt about the regime’s responsibility for war crimes and also for the crime of genocide.  But who sold them the gas they used against the Kurds?

Up to 40 German and European companies were involved in supplying the raw materials and know how to Saddam.(2)  Yet this was not an issue for the West. 

A Dutch court eventually sentenced one person to 15 years in jail.(3)  However, Frans van Anrat was arrested and tried after the Saddam regime had been destroyed, not before.  No one sought to arrest him and imprison him when the regime was an ally of the West. 

In 2023, another Dutch court ordered a Dutch company to compensate five Iranians injured in those chemical attacks.(4)  But the use of chemical weapons is a war crime, so why were the directors of the company not charged? 

Previously, in 2013, a group of Iraqi Kurds tried to sue a French company that had supplied chemicals to Saddam.(5)  So far, they have made little progress on that matter. 

However, recently the French courts saw no problem in issuing arrest warrants for the Syrian president, Assad over the use of chemical weapons.(6)  US involvement in the supply of chemicals has not been subject to such judicial investigations, nor will it ever be.

The US, however, did not just supply chemicals, it actively participated in their use. 

According to Foreign Policy, a magazine that could hardly be described as progressive or opposed to US foreign policy in general, in the war with Iran, Iraq repeatedly used chemical agents, with the US providing satellite imagery to help Iraq target Iranian forces more successfully.(7)

So, evidence is not a key factor in deciding who gets tried by international tribunals and who doesn’t.  Political expediency is the key factor, trumping all others.  Justice is not what is sought, though it may be an unintended consequence in some cases. 

Justice would see all those involved being brought to trial.  But many of them pay the wages of the prosecutors and the judges and even pay for the logistics of these tribunals.

The ICC is no different.  Its wages are paid by the states who carry out the greatest human rights violations in the world.  The refusal to arrest Tony Blair or Netanyahu is not an oversight.  They will never bite their master’s hand. 

To date the ICC has dealt with 31 cases, including one for genocide.  All of these cases were against black African leaders, some of whom relied on western complicity in their crimes. Their western accomplices will never face charges. 

Judges and staff International Criminal Court (Photo sourced: Internet)

If western generals, politicians and companies don’t face charges when they are directly involved in war crimes and genocide, they are not going to face charges when they are murky figures in the shadows.

It is highly unlikely that Israel will be brought before the ICC, though sacrificing some lower ranking officers is not beyond the realm of possibility, though it is also highly unlikely. 

Placing our faith in an international court which has shown itself to be nothing more than the judicial branch of imperialism is a mistake.  In principle there is nothing wrong in taking a case, but believing you will get justice at the court is a criminal level of naivety and gullibility. 

It dismissed cases against US allies such as Colombia, but immediately opened a file on Venezuela after the deaths of some protestors.  When the Colombian police murdered over 80 protestors in 2021, the ICC looked on passively, just as it does now in the face of a Zionist campaign of genocide in Gaza. 

One day it is to be hoped that the prosecutors and judges of that court are put on trial for their own role in facilitating the repression and murder of people around the world.  But it won’t be the current western regimes that do that.

Notes

(1)  The Guardian (13/05/2010) Pauline Neville-Jones: diplomat who did business with Milosevic. Ian Traynor and Richard Norton Taylor https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/may/13/pauline-neville-jones-conservatives

(2)  GfvB (13/03/2008) German and European firms were involved. https://web.archive.org/web/20130806082700/http://www.gfbv.de/pressemit.php

(3)  BBC (23/12/2005) Saddam’s ‘Dutch Link’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4358741.stm

(4)  AP (15/11/2023) Dutch court orders company to compensate 5 Iranian victims of mustard gas attacks in the 1980s. https://apnews.com/article/iraq-iran-mustard-gas-netherlands-court-compensation-aeaca7355d8a7417749d9216d9dae5ca

(5)  RFI (11/06/2013) Iraqi Kurds sue French companies for Halabja chemical attack. https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20130611-iraqi-kurds-sue-french-companies-halabja-chemical-attack

(6)  Reuters (15/11/2023) France issues arrest warrant for Syria’s President Assad – source https://www.reuters.com/world/france-issues-arrest-warrants-against-syrias-president-assad-source-2023-11-15/

(7)  Foreign Policy (26/08/2013) Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran. Shane Harris & Matthew M. Aid.  https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/

“We made Palestine bloom”

On By rebelbreezeIn Análises Político, Cartoon, Current Affairs Comment, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, Resistance ArtLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

A common Zionist fabrication is that Palestine was uncultivated until they arrived. Whatever cultivation their settlers added was more than compensated by the Palestinian cultivated lands settlers stole and the destruction they have visited upon the Palestinian people.

(Cartoon by D.Breatnach)