Important Call for a United Resistance Front

On July 21, 2024July 21, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History, History commemoration, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Republicanism, NATO, Peace Process, Political Analysis, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time article: 3 mins.)

Earlier this month there was an oration delivered at the grave of Wolfe Tone¹ which contained some important elements which deserve inspection and discussion.

– The path to rebuild our struggle is the development of an Anti Imperialist Broad Front – said the speaker. – A United Front of Revolutionary republicans, working in cooperation to advance our common republican objectives and to achieve a common republican programme.

Looking around us at the parties and groups in the socialist and republican spectrum, the ostensibly revolutionary varieties, we see that for many of them, building up their own organisation takes precedence over anything else, including revolution – for them the revolution IS their party.

*Speaker giving oration at Wolfe Tone’s grave in front of the monument, faced by colour party.* (Photo: *RSM*)

The call given in this oration runs counter to that kind of thinking. “But we’ve heard all that about ‘unity’ before,” a reader might say. Yes we have and often “unity” meant only “unity” around that particular party or, even more often, around this or that leadership.

There is nothing of that to be found in this address “recognising and respectful of the autonomy and independence of the groups and independents involved”. “Hmmm,” the reader might say “but is it a genuine intention?” Given our experience, it’s a valid and important question.

The most dependable test is in the practice. The speaker of the oration at its annual Wolfe Town Commemoration² was representing the Socialist Republican Movement organisation (more often manifested publicy in recent years in the form of the Anti-Imperialist Action broad group³)

As an independent revolutionary activist for many years I have often participated in AIA’s actions and at times they have supported actions of which I had been part of organising. I have found that their practice matches their words and there is no truer test.

The speaker followed with practical suggestions for the implementation of the broad front: Trust and co-operation must be developed … through activism and the development of National Republican Campaigns that can be taken up by all Republican groups and independents …

There are many campaigns that could be developed from support for POWs to opposing internment and extradition, environmental campaigns such as (overcoming) the unacceptable situation at Lough Neagh, to campaigns that oppose the British and NATO presence in Ireland.

*One of the banners in the crowd at the event in Bodenstown.* (Photo: *RSM*)

Such a Republican Broad Front would be a fitting tribute to our Patriot Dead, the speaker added, to martyrs like Cathal Brugha,⁴ who gave his all in fighting for the sovereign, Independent Irish Republic and gave his life on this day in 1922 as a hero in the war in defence of the Republic.

In many of the pleas for unity of the fragmented resistance in Ireland, individuals have called for a conference to form a united front, others called for a unity document of principles around which to unite while in at least one case, two distinct organisations merged.

I have for years spoken out against such endeavours and advocated as a first step unity in practice. If organisations and individuals are not capable of that step, what kind of unity can they achieve around discussion of documents? Unity in practice also helps to break down distrust.

The speaker at the Wolfe Tone commemoration takes the same line, presumably speaking for the SRM when he does so and one supposes that this will continue to be the approach of the AIA in campaigns such as against internment, in solidarity with political prisoners⁵ or with Palestine.⁶

The above piece discussed two elements of the oration given by the SRM earlier this month which I believe to be of great revolutionary importance and in need of application in Ireland, one in advocating a principle and the other in suggesting avenues for practical application.

Later I will be taking a look at some other elements in that talk (the text of which, as published by the SRM, I attach as an appendix).

Beirimís bua.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Wolfe Tone, born into settler stock and of the Establishment Anglican congregation, was a leading figure in the formation of the revolutionary republican organisation The Society of United Irishmen, seeking “to unite Catholic, Protestant (i.e Anglican) and Dissenter” (i.e the other sects, Presbyterian, Methodist, Unitarian, Quaker etc.) to “break the connection with England. In 1798, the year of the Unitedmen uprising, the first of many Irish Republican uprisings and campaigns, Tone was captured by the British Navy on a French warship and, despite his French officer rank, tried and sentenced to death.

Tone died in jail some months before his brother Matthew was taken prisoner during the surrender at Ballinamuck (Baile na Muc) in Co. Longford of another French expedition to Ireland, late and too small, at the tail end of the Rising that year. Also ignoring his officer POW status, he was hanged in Dublin and his body reputedly thrown into the mass grave at Croppies’ Acre in Dublin city.

2Since even earlier than Thomas Davis’ (1814-1845) song In Bodenstown Churchyard, Irish Republican organisations and individuals have been making the pilgrimage to that grave in County Meath, at times with thousands in attendance.

3Also for an intense time as the Revolutionary Housing League in its attempt to spark a movement of occupation of empty properties to overcome the widely-acknowledged housing crisis in Ireland.

4Cathal Brugha (nee Burgess), son of a mixed Catholic-Protestant marriage, was a leading figure in Irish nationalist movement and in Republican rebellion in the last decades of the 19^th and early decades of the 20^th Centuries, learned Irish as a member of the Gaelic League, member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (which he later left, considering it undemocratic), officer in the Irish Volunteer, 2^nd in command in the South Dublin Union in 1916 served as Minister for Defence in the revolutionary government from 1919 to 1922, Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann in January 1919 and its first president from January 1to April 1919, Chief of Staff of the IRAfrom 1917 to 1918. He served as a TD (electe parliamentary representative) from 1918 to 1922. He was mortally wounded by Irish Government troops in the early days of the Irish Civil War.

5Both on their own and for example in support of the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign.

6Both on their own and for example as part of the Saoirse Don Phalaistín broad front.

APPENDIX

The following is the text of the main oration of which some sections are discussed in the preceding article and more to be discussed anon. It was delivered at the annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration at Bodenstown, organised by the Revolutionary Irish Socialist Republican Movement on Sunday July 7, 2024 and published on its Telegram page.

A Chairde is a chomrádaithe,

Táimid anseo i relig bodenstown ag uaimh ár n-athair, Wolfe Tone agus táimid ag rá go bhfuil an gluaisteacht a bhunaigh sé fós beo, agus tá sé ag fás arís.

Wolfe Tone is the father of Irish Republicanism. We come here each year not just for commemoration, but like Pearse, Connolly, Mellows and Costello before us, we come because we believe that the ideas and the vision that Tone put forward of a free independent Ireland is as relevant today as they were in the 1790s and because we believe that by remaining true to the teachings of Wolfe Tone we can build a revolutionary movement that will successfully free our country. Maybe not today, but our freedom is inevitable.

Tone’s most important belief was that we must ‘break the connection with England’ by any means necessary. It is for this reason that he established revolutionary military-political organisation the United Irishmen in 1791 and led a mass armed uprising in 1798 against British Rule in Ireland.

Tone was also clear that the revolutionary struggle could only be successful if it was based on the masses of the Irish People, stating that, ‘Our Strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property’.

And in these two simple quotes from Wolfe Tone, we have two of the most important teachings for the Revolutionary Republican Movement today. Firstly, that Republicans must work as a priority for National Liberation by any means we decide necessary.

That we must break the connection with England and defeat all forms of Imperialism in Ireland to establish a sovereign, Independent, Irish Republic.

And secondly, we learn from Tone that the fight for our Republic is a class struggle and that the driving force of that struggle will be the working class fighting for their own liberation.

These are two key teachings that when deviated from lead to compromise and the selling out of our revolution.

It is the duty of all of us here today and of all Republicans across Ireland, to ensure that the struggle for national liberation is kept at the fore of our revolutionary republican objectives and that we work tirelessly to achieve it and to ensure that our movement remains centred on and driven by the working class.

Some other key points laid down by Tone include that Republicanism is Anti Imperialist and it is Internationalist. Our struggle in Ireland is part of a wider international struggle of oppressed people against occupation, colonialism and imperialism.

Tone understood this when he looked to Revolutionary France to support the 1798 uprising. Today, Republicans must fight our struggle while also supporting Liberation struggles around the world in the belief that every blow struck against imperialism brings our victory closer.

So from Palestine to the Philippines and from India to the Basque Country, and everywhere people take a stand against NATO, the Revolutionary Republican movement must raise our cries in solidarity. The tide of revolution is rising in the world and there is much to be optimistic about.

But as revolutionaries we also have to be realistic. Since the time of Wolfe Tone the tide of revolutionary Republicanism has ebbed and flowed.

After the days of Tone and Emmet and the final defeat of the United Irishmen in 1805, Republicanism was reduced to an ember, spoken about in quiet corners until the birth of Young Ireland and the uprisings of 1848 and 1849 when revolutionaries such as Thomas Davis, Fintan Lalor, James Stephens and John O’Mahony would carry forward the vision of Tone, take up the hard work of rebuilding the Republican Movement and become the spark that would renew the Revolutionary fire, giving birth to Fenianism and the struggle that has carried us until today.

And today, we are 26 years on from the surrender of 1998, a surrender that had a devastating effect on the movement. Later this month it will be 19 years since the Provisionals ended their armed campaign.

These two great betrayals have led to the situation where the movement is fractured and split.

The revolutionary forces, though active, are scattered and there is mistrust between Republicans, whether in different groups or independents across Ireland, and this mistrust and division is exploited by our enemies.

It is a situation that all Republicans want to reverse and one of the revolutionary priorities in this phase of our struggle to overcome.

Comrades, like the revolutionary republicans after the defeat of the United Irishmen and Young Ireland, we find ourselves with the hard and gruelling task of rebuilding and reasserting the revolutionary republican struggle.

And the path to rebuild our struggle is the development of an Anti Imperialist Broad Front. A United Front of Revolutionary republicans, recognising and respectful of the autonomy and independence of the groups and independents involved, working in cooperation to advance our common republican objectives and to achieve a common republican programme. This is what our enemies most fear.

But again, this will not just happen overnight.

Trust and co-operation must be developed and we assert that this will be best achieved through activism and the development of National Republican Campaigns that can be taken up by all Republican groups and independents in a unity of purpose, that shows the real and forgotten strength of the Republican Movement.

There are many campaigns that could be developed from support for POWs to opposing internment and extradition, environmental campaigns such as the unacceptable situation at Lough Neagh, to campaigns that oppose the British and NATO presence in Ireland.

Such a Republican Broad Front would be a fitting tribute to our Patriot Dead, to martyrs like Cathal Brugha, who gave his all in fighting for the sovereign, Independent Irish Republic and gave his life on this day in 1922 as a hero in the war in defence of the Republic.

Over the last seven years we have put down a solid foundation as a movement. We have reasserted Irish Socialist Republicanism as the driving force of Revolution in Ireland.

We have recruited a new generation of republicans not damaged by the 1998 surrender who are now working with more experienced republicans to drive the struggle on.

While we can be happy with these achievements, the Republic needs more from each and every one of us and we all need to ask what we as individuals can do to carry the struggle forward.

Now is the time to move to the next phase of development in our revolutionary struggle, unsurprisingly by taking it back to Tone. Now is the time to strengthen and embed ourselves in the people of no property and to engage in systematic Republican Community work across the country.

In doing so, we would do well to return to Seamus Costello and the oration that he delivered from this spot in 1966, signalling the rise of Socialist Republicanism within the Movement. Costello outlined how it was the duty of all republicans to be active in our community.

How we should be involved in community groups, trade unions, tenants and residents associations, sporting, cultural and educational organisations and how we must take and assert our revolutionary republican position within them.

This is a task for all revolutionary republicans. Look at the groups in your area and see which ones your involvement in would advance the strengthening of Socialist Republicanism in your community.

Where no such groups exist, establish them. Where help is needed reach out to us as we have experienced comrades who excel in this area that would be happy to help in this work.

To conclude the comrades, this is a brief outline of our tasks in the time ahead.

While these plans will be deepened with discussion and debate within the movement, no one should leave this graveyard thinking there is no work for them to do, and the responsibility is on you to come forward and volunteer instead of waiting for others to come and ask you.

Our work is to free Ireland and our people by any means necessary to establish the 32 county All Ireland Socialist Republic, sovereign, independent, Gaelic and free, and we will not be stopped.

Redouble your efforts comrades, onwards to the Republic of 1916.

Beir Bua,

Tiocfaidh Ár Lá

CATALANS DENOUNCE A TORTURE POLICE STATION

On July 16, 2024July 29, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Canción en Lucha, Catalunya, Current Event Report, History commemoration, National Liberation, Police Violence, Political Prisoners, Song, Song in Struggle1 Comment

R. Breeze

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

On July Tuesday evening, a number of uniformed police officers watch the people in the road outside their police station on Via Laietana in Barcelona, the Catalan capital, many in the crowd holding placards protesting torture and impunity and a number carrying a banner.

The MC, a slim elderly woman, approaches the microphone stand, her back to the police station. Speaking in Catalan she reviews the reason for their rally which is to renew the historical memory of the Spanish State’s repression of dissent through torture with impunity.

*The MC at the event speaking briefly* (Photo cred: *D.Breatnach*)

A number of torture survivors address the crowd, sometimes experiencing difficulty in reading some passages of their notes. The crowd, mostly middle-aged or elderly, listen in silence. Some of them were victims too, many knew victims personally, many of the latter now dead.

For the past three years, the campaigners have been coming here every two weeks, renewing the historical memory and campaigning for a change of use in this building on one of the main roads of their city.

*One of the torture survivors displaying the Vermella, the socialist version of the Catalan independence flag.* (Photo cred: *Albert Bergadá Corso*)

*Torture survivor speaking* (Photo cred: *Albert Bergadá Corso*)

*Another torture survivor speaking, Catalan independence flag visible in the crowd.* (Photo cred: *D.Breatnach*)

REPRESSION AND TORTURE HEADQUARTERS

During the Franco fascist Dictatorship (1936-1975), this police station was the Barcelona HQ of repression and torture, its victims ranging from democrats to anarchists, republicans and communists. The Resistance methods were also varied: unarmed, industrial or armed.

The crowd takes to the street in front of the police station

After Franco’s death, repression continued through the period known as the Transition with torture as a standard police practice continuing for decades afterwards. Claims of torture were routinely ignored by judges who sentenced activists on the basis of their retracted admissions.¹

On the few occasions when torture claims were investigated, it was done cursorily and on the much rarer occasions of trial and conviction for torture, the perpetrators as a rule saw no jail time.

*The police station with a history of torture on Via Laietana, Barcelona, as demonstrators begin to gather in front.* (Photo cred: *D.Breatnach*)

*Commemorative plaque near the police station, regularly defaced and regularly repaired.* (Photo cred: *D.Breatnach*)

The methods are known by police and military torturers across the world: punches, slaps and baton blows through towels (causing pain but leaving no marks), forced stress positions, electrical shocks of particularly sensitive areas, simulated asphyxiation through plastic bags, simulated drowning …

In the past these included suspending victims upside down by their ankles or upright balanced on toes. Of course all tortures are also accompanied by threats to the victims and their families, humiliation (including nakedness), sometimes sexual threats and even actual penetrations.²

*Crowd gathering to begin their event.* (Photo cred: *D.Breatnach*)

IRISH SONG IN THE STREET

The MC returns to the microphone at the conclusion of the witness testimonies and asks the crowd to welcome an activist, writer and singer from Ireland. The Irishman says he is honoured to speak at a location of struggle and even more so to bring solidarity from one nation’s struggle to another.

Though the fact is routinely overlooked or even denied, he says there are political prisoners in Ireland and because of the recent mistreatment of one of those in a prison in the British colony, all his comrades protested and were in turn supported by political prisoners in the Irish state jail.

Wearing a Palestinian scarf, speaking in Spanish, having apologised for his lack of anything but a few words in Catalan, the Irishman highlights the role of police stations as local centres of repression on behalf of the bourgeoisie, the repression all too often including torture.

The Irishman applauds the protesters’ upholding of historical memory and also their campaign to have the building reappointed as a social centre, before continuing to introduce his choice of two short songs of resistance from his homeland, one in English and the other in Irish.

*The Irishman singing* (Photo cred: *Albert Bergadá Corso)*

The first song he sings is Four Green Fields,³ which he has explained symbolises the four provinces of Ireland, the nation represented by an elderly woman. This is followed by Gráinne Mhaol,⁴ the nation again represented by a woman but younger, a warrior and pirate clan chieftain.

Following the applause, the MC returns and begins to read out a long list of known police and military individuals, after each one the crowd roaring “Torturadors!”

*Crowd singing L’Estaca* (Photo cred: *Albert Bergadá Corso*)

The event concludes with the singing of L’Estaca (The Stake – a song of resistance composed by Catalan Lluis Llach during the Franco dictatorship), many doing so with clenched fists raised. Soon afterwards, the crowd begins to break up, the road open to traffic once more, shoppers and tourists going by.

*Section of the crowd at the anti-police-torture event with the Cathedral of Barcelona, destination of many tourists, visible in the background.* (Photo cred: *Albert Bergadá Corso)*

End.

FOOTNOTES
1A number of cases alleging torture found their way to the European Court of Human Rights but the Spanish State has never been found guilty of torture there (although in the case of one Basque woman, awarding her damages payment for failure of the State to investigate her allegations, the judges concluded almost in an aside that she had probably been tortured). It seems that the Strasbourg Court required the kind of evidence that could not reasonably be produced by the alleged victims. A number of judgements and payments have been recorded against the Spanish State on failure to investigate allegations of torture against political activists.

2 In the latter category two cases are well known, each suffered by Basques, one a woman and the other a man.

3 Composed by Tommy Makem who regularly performed with the Clancy Brothers folk group.

4 Composed by Pádraig Mac Piarais/ Patrick Pearse but structurally based on a much older Irish traditional song welcoming a bride to her new home. The heroine of his song is Gráinne Ní Mháille, a 17C clan chief in Co. Mayo.

SOURCES AND USEFUL LINKS

The campaigners may be followed on X (Twitter)
@comissdignitat
@p_represaliades

Torture in the Spanish state: https://www.amnesty.org/es/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/eur410011993en.pdf

https://www.omct.org/en/resources/blog/spain-reversing-the-long-lasting-impunity-for-torture

https://www.coe.int/en/web/cpt/-/anti-torture-committee-publishes-2020-visit-report-on-police-and-prisons-in-spain

BRITISH NAVY VESSEL PROTESTERS SENTENCED IN DUBLIN

On June 8, 2024June 8, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, NATO, Palestine, Political Analysis1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Around 30 people demonstrated outside Dublin’s Criminal Court on Thursday, many of them displaying Irish flags (Tricolour and Starry Plough) along with those of Palestine in solidarity with three activists before the court.

The activists were charged under Public Order legislation arising out of protesting a British war ship at Dublin docks in November last year, in solidarity with Palestine and against NATO’s support for the Israeli state’s slaughter in Gaza.

It was alleged that the activists (variously from Saoirse Don Phalaistín and Anti-Imperialist Action organisations) had entered a restricted part of the Dublin Docks and, holding a Palestine flag, had approached a British warship docked there and then occupied the gangway.

*British military displaying firearms on Irish state soil* *in November last year*. (Photo: *Anti-Imperialist Action*)

Gardaí had been called and the activists had refused their instruction to leave under the Public Order legislation and they had then been arrested. No act of violence, physical or verbal, took place on either side other than the refusal to leave and the arrests.

The activists appeared in the Parkgate Street building before Justice John Hughes and all three were defended by Damien Coffey of Sheehan Partners, a law firm which often handles political and human rights cases. Three Gardaí from Store Street acted in the role of the Prosecution.

The Garda in charge of the prosecution and his two colleagues gave evidence as to the arrests. Questioned by Coffey for the Defence, all confirmed that although the protesters had refused to leave, there had been no violence offered by them during their arrests.

Strangely, as shall become evident and relevant, one did not recall the British military presence on the gangway to be armed, whereas another did and confirmed that a photo of the armed men was of those who had been present.

One of the Garda offered his opinion that whereas the vessel was regarded in law as “British soil”, the gangplank was legally “Irish soil” and, if the protesters had actually set foot on the ship, they might have been charged with piracy. This piece of evidence also had unintended consequences.

*One of the placards displayed by supporters outside the courthouse* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

According to this evidence, the British in a foreign military uniform had been present on Irish state soil and all replied to the defence lawyer that they were unaware of any Ministerial permission to do so — or that this could have constituted an offence under Section 317 of the Defence Act 1954.¹

Furthermore, none were aware of any special permission granted to them to carry firearms on Irish state ground. The British military personnel themselves were not present as witnesses as their superiors had not replied to the Garda request to discuss giving evidence in the case.

Port security camera footage was shown as evidence by which protesters could be seen at the gates of a fenced-off section of the docks and some time later proceeding through a gate. A port security employee had been summoned by the Gardaí as a witness.

After he had been taken through his evidence (and failed to respond to what seemed an attempted prompt) by the Garda in charge the only relevance of his evidence was that a) the area was restricted and b) that he was worried for the safety of the protesters.

This (and the reason for the possible attempted prompt) was of importance when Coffey developed his defence summary on the legal grounds that Section 14 (1) of the Public Order Act required there to be an element of fear arising from the actions of those to be charged under the Act.

None of the evidence for the Prosecution had shown the presence of fear of anyone from the defendants and, furthermore, he submitted, any element of fear was much more likely to arise from the presence of two men holding firearms, to whit, the British military personnel.

The second part of the Defence summary dealt with right to protest, Coffey quoting a number of legal sources, also referencing the Irish Government’s recognition of a Palestinian state and statistics of people killed by the Israeli state against which the activists had been protesting.

Judge Hughes announced that a recess was due for lunch and that he wished to consult legal authority (case law etc) so they would recess and reconvene in an hours’ time.

A number of supporters who had taken time off from other commitments left at this point while a few arrived instead.

THE JUDGEMENT

After reconvening Judge Hughes began his long drawn out summing up and it gradually became clear that he intended to find the accused guilty. However people awaited with varying degrees of patience for the details of the sentence.

The Judge referred to the right to protest but also to the restrictions upon it (usually limiting its effectiveness) though he did not say that, nor that powers exist to abolish those rights when the State feels it necessary.

With regard to the ‘element of fear’ required for conviction under the Public Order Act Hughes quoted a judgement as a reference that seemed neither relevant nor reasonable, involving a woman experiencing fear of being broken into and even fear of children playing outside her home.

Despite repeating the standard claim of capitalist law that judges cannot adjudicate emotionally nor be swayed by what was occurring in Palestine, John Hughes revealed his own political bias when he bizarrely claimed that a British fleet had been welcomed into an Irish port in 1820.

He revealed his political naivety also when he expressed surprise that the British had not replied to the Garda communication regarding the incident.

On submission by Coffey regarding the lack of previous convictions and effect of criminal convictions on the lives of the three, Johnson, again drawing out the moment, gave them what amounts to a conditional discharge with a provisional forfeit of 500 euro.²

No doubt the desire not to create martyrs around whom solidarity campaigns might intensify played at least as much a part as any concern for the lives of the activists.

The defendants and their supporters left; outside the court they were embraced by a number of supporters before the gathering broke up, some attending to other solidarity activities elsewhere. The show of support was a good sign of solidarity against state repression.³

*View of some of the people outside the courthouse on Thursday in solidarity with the three activists* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

SERIOUS ISSUES AMONG ELEMENTS OF COMEDY

The name of the British naval vessel being The Penzance and the mention of a possible piracy charge brings to mind of course the Gilbert & Sullivan opera The Pirates of Penzance (1879).

The focus of the Gardaí on arresting peaceful protesters in preference to unauthorised people in foreign military uniform carrying unlicensed firearms on Irish soil and also trying to suggest that not they but the protesters would give rise to fear is not without its comedic elements.

However overall the whole matter is extremely serious, with regard to the zionist genocide in Palestine, the active collusion of the UK/NATO, the active collusion of the Irish ruling class⁴despite its verbal positions – and the repression of its State on more active and directed solidarity actions.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1 317. — (1) No person shall, save with the consent in writing of a Minister of State, enter or land in the State while wearing any foreign uniform. (2) No person shall, save with the consent in writing of a Minister of State, go into any public place in the State while wearing any foreign uniform.

2 It will not appear as a criminal record but in the event of a subsequent conviction, the 500 euro can be levied as a fine in addition to any other punishment in court sentence.

3 Though the absence of a number of political organisations and trends was also marked.

4 “Dual-use”exports to the zionist state which can be adapted to military use; failure to press for any economic, academic or cultural sanctions against the zionist state; shelving of the Occupied Territories Bill; failure to impose diplomatic sanctions of any kind.

REFERENCES AND USEFUL LINKS

Anti-Imperialist Action

Defence Act, 1954, Section 317 – irishstatutebook.ie

Israeli Army Mutiny call a sign of growing rift in Israeli society

On June 4, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Fascism, Genocide, Israeli Zionism, Political Analysis, ZionismLeave a comment

The Electronic Intifada Mati Yanikov 1 June 2024

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

On 25 May, a video surfaced on Israeli social networks in which an armed and masked man in an Israeli army uniform stood in front of a camera and threatened mutiny to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The message was also directed to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, the reserve soldier said Gallant should resign.

He warned that 100,000 reservists in Gaza are not willing to “hand over the keys of Gaza to any Palestinian Authority” or other “Arab entity,” and said these soldiers would only take orders from Netanyahu.

Among the many that shared the video was Yair Netanyahu, son of the Israeli prime minister, who later deleted it following the resulting controversy.

Despite being masked, the rifle in the video appears to carry the name “Luzon,” which helped eventually identify the man a few days later as Ofir Luzon, a right-wing activist from Herzliya, a town north of Tel Aviv.

He is a supporter of the local Likud party, which is also the party of Netanyahu.

Luzon is a reserve soldier serving in Gaza, but the video probably wasn’t shot in Gaza but rather in an abandoned building in the Tel Aviv area. He was likely acting alone.

Israeli media have since published many of his social media posts in which he expresses right-wing views, is seen alongside Likud ministers and city council members in Herzliya, threatens leftists and Israeli protesters against the judicial overhaul and opposes Gallant.

He expresses enthusiasm about the approaching attack on Rafah.

Day after

The immediate context of the video was a recent ultimatum issued by Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, to Netanyahu, in which Gantz demanded that his concerns over the management of Israel’s assault on Gaza and its aftermath be answered by 8 June.

And threatening to resign from government if they aren’t.

The “day-after” scenario is a heated subject of debate within the war cabinet. Gantz wants clarity around a “governing alternative” to Hamas to rule over Gaza, envisaging an international, Arab and Palestinian administration to handle civilian affairs in Gaza.

Netanyahu, however, is insisting there be no discussion of post-war scenarios or who should govern Gaza, arguing that as long as Hamas is not defeated, such discussions are “meaningless.”

Netanyahu has expressed strong opposition to the Palestinian Authority taking over, and maintains that Israel must keep “security control over the entire territory to the west of Jordan,” meaning Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or all the area from the river to the sea.

This is in direct contrast to Gallant, who is pressuring Netanyahu to declare that Israel will not take over civil rule or maintain a military occupation in Gaza.

Disintegrating army

The wider context, however, is a bit different, and has to do with dynamics that some Israeli analysts describe as part of the “disintegration” of the military.

Luzon’s video may be the first time that an open expression of mutiny has been voiced from within the ranks of the Israeli military, but Israeli reservists in Gaza during the current genocide have regularly disobeyed orders right from the outset in October.

The Israeli military has admitted to disciplinary problems and difficulty in controlling the rank and file. So far, these issues have been seen on social media, especially TikTok, where soldiers have filmed themselves giving political speeches, trashing homes and vandalizing shops.

Or blowing up universities and committing other war crimes.

These disciplinary problems have also surfaced over nationalist graffiti on houses and properties in Gaza, some calling for revenge and some for the rebuilding of Jewish settlements in the territory.

The military has not investigated most of these incidents, perhaps out of fear of pressure from right-wing politicians or protest from within the military, borne out of experience.

In November, an order to soldiers in Gaza to erase their own graffiti led to a public outcry from right-wing politicians, including from minister of national security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who called on Gallant to rescind the order.

Some soldiers openly refused to obey the order.

Chain of command

In addition to disciplinary issues with reservists, problems in the chain of command have also been exposed, notably between the chief of staff and division commanders on the ground.

Infamous, of course, is Barak Hiram, who gave orders to bomb an Israeli settlement near Gaza during the 7 October attack, and also gave the order to bomb a university in Gaza, without, the army says, prior approval.

Brigadier General Dan Goldfuss, meanwhile, was reprimanded following a statement to the media in which he said that national leaders must be “worthy of the soldiers.”

Whether from division commanders or rank and file reserve soldiers, it is clear that the Israeli military has a growing problem with discipline.

It is a problem that stems not only from deepening political divisions within Israeli society, but also from class and identity conflicts. Many reservists and regular soldiers are traditionally drawn from marginalized areas, and are often from religious and right-wing backgrounds.

It’s difficult to predict whether 100,000 soldiers will actually disobey orders to withdraw from Gaza, should such an order eventually come down.

But Luzon’s video does not come in a vacuum. It is rather the latest expression of a growing rift within the Israeli military, and in Israeli society more generally.

End.

Mati Yanikov is a Haifa-based anti-colonial activist.

This version of the original is very slightly edited organisationally with no matter changed or removed.

SOURCE: https://electronicintifada.net/content/mutiny-call-sign-growing-rift-israeli-society/46746

“ZIONISTS OFF OUR STREETS! IRELAND STANDS WITH PALESTINE!”

On May 27, 2024May 27, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, RacismLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

A Zionist march and rally was organised for Dublin today as an “Israel solidarity” event by the Ireland Israel Alliance. Despite prior publicity and drawing from around the country the attendance numbered only a few hundred.

Around a hundred anti-zionists with flags, banners, amplifier and loudhailer occupied the announced destination of the Zionist rally an hour prior to the scheduled arrival of the IIA march and had to wait even longer as the Zionist groups arrived at Stephens Green.

*One of the banners displayed by among the anti-zionists outside Leinster House on Sunday* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)(Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

During the week the IIA issued a statement in line with the Israeli state’s Foreign Minister that “Ireland rewards Palestinian terrorism with a State”¹ in response to the announcement by the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian states that they intended to formally recognise the Palestinian state.

Palestinian solidarity supporters in Dublin organised at short notice a counter-rally. “It’s a bit rich for Zionists who set up their settler state with terrorism”, said one in Dublin today, “claiming that Palestinian statehood rewards Palestinian ‘terrorism’!”²

*One of the banners displayed by among the anti-zionists outside Leinster House on Sunday* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

Although Palestinian Christians are suppressed and killed by Israeli armed forces, the IIA were supported by right-wing Christian Zionists, among them the All Nations Church, the Irish branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and the TJCII.

According to advance releases to the press, the newly inaugurated Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Yoni Wieder was to speak at the zionist rally.³

*Some Gardaí in Molesworth Street, stacked crowd barriers not yet erected at that point and contractor staff awaiting instructions.* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

The anti-zionists organised their event at a day or two’s notice and according to some sources the IPSC⁴ had called on its branches not to counter protest the Zionist event but around a hundred Palestinian supporters attended, mainly Irish but also with Palestinians and a sprinkling of others.

In their prior publicity the Zionists trotted out their usual claims that Palestinian solidarity is based on anti-Semitism and that Jews are being victimised,⁵ ignoring the fact that zionism does not equal judaism and that in fact a substantial number of Jews have opposed zionism.⁶

The population of Ireland went from being largely supportive of ‘Israel’ in 1948 to being mostly pro-Palestinian from the 1970s onwards because of their observation of the genocidal and ethnic cleansing actions of the Israeli state.

*Placard displayed among the Palestine supporters* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

There was a fairly high Garda presence at the events and after some delay crowd barriers were erected across the east end of Molesworth Street with a second line of barriers a little further west beyond which the Zionists were setting up a stage.

The anti-Zionists in front of Leinster House awaited the arrival of the pro-Israel march which when it got going could be seen passing the Stephens Green end of Kildare Street, eventually coming down Dawson Street and turning into Molesworth Street.

*View in distance of the zionist rally location before the arrival of their march from Stephens Green* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

As they arrived the Palestinian solidarity people attempted to move across the road but the Gardaí pushed back, individual Gardaí at times viciously shoving and being resisted; here and there an arrest seemed threatened but was evaded by solidarity action around the targeted person.

With the Palestinian supporters pushed to a couple of feet in front of the pedestrian pavement of Leinster House, the Gardaí stopped and by then two vans of the Public Order Unit had arrived and were deployed but some time later stood down, got in their vans and were driven off.

*View northward in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

*View southward in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

*The arrival of a Garda prisoner transport van in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday raised tensions among some of the anti-zionist demonstrators* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

There could have been some confused impulses among the Gardaí given the public symbolic positions of the Government in recognition of the Palestinian state and the sharp and public diplomatic language flying between the Irish and Israeli states.

Two Garda vans were parked in front of the entrance to Molesworth St, partially blocking the views of the zionists and their opponents. The latter however stood with banners and flags on top of barriers and an amplifier was also strapped to a pole to better carry the message to the Zionists.

*Palestinian supporters attaching an amplifier speaker to a pole outside Leinster House, directed at the Zionist rally in Molesworth Street* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

Despite the IIA having recommended its supporters to bring Israeli and Irish flags, only one Tricolour could be seen among their blue-and-white Israeli flags. One placard depicted the whole of Ireland covered with a menora, the traditional Jewish multi-candlestick.

Some of the Zionists’ placards repeated the debunked accusations of programmed mass rapes by the Palestinian resistance on October 7^th last year, for which no evidence whatsoever or known victim exists despite Israeli state propaganda parroted by some of its western media supporters.

*Zionist marchers arrive at their rally point in Molesworth Street, with two sets of barriers placed between them and the Palestine supporters* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

Among the Palestinian supporters the Palestine national flag was very much in evidence, also a couple of the PFLP⁷ and one in the colours of the anti-fascist Popular Front Government of 1930s Spain bearing the words “Connolly Column”, honouring the Irish who fought fascism there.

Here too there was only one Tricolour to be seen.

*Flag of the PFLP seen against the trees* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

There were intermittent rain showers during the events, often persistent and somewhat heavy, streams running northwards along the road and pavement edge down Kildare Street but the demonstrators remained without shelter, many also without specific rain gear or umbrellas.

Women (mostly) speaking through amplification led the slogans that have become common on Palestine solidarity demonstrations in English, Irish and Arabic but with a few additions, including “Zionist scum – Off our streets!” Also “West-Brit Blueshirt scum – Off our streets!”

*View of the rain’s ‘river’ running down between the Leinster House pedestrian pavement and the road.* (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

View of small section of Palestinian supporters’ line with police line in front and the rainwater swirling around their feet. The Zionist rally is taking place behind the police line and beyond two lines of metal crowd barriers. (Photo: *Rebel Breeze*)

At intervals Arabic resistance music was played and sections of the Palestine solidarity crowd began to sway or even dance, including one young woman from Gaza who seemed accomplished in traditional dance. Irish patriotic songs were played for a period also.

Among the Palestinian supporters the Zionist chants or speakers could not be heard, nor can one know how much of the Palestinian solidarity chants could be heard by the Zionists. Eventually the Zionists left to jeers from their opposition, a Garda helicopter watching over them in the sky.

The Gardaí left and the Palestinian supporters did too, mostly leaving together in a group.

AFTERMATH – FIGHT IN PARNELL/ O’CONNELL STREET

That was not all however for perhaps an hour later a fight developed between what seemed to be a far-Right man against a group of Palestinian supporters in Parnell Street. According to some people, the man had approached them aggressively about their Palestine solidarity activism.

Disliking their response, he punched one of the Palestine solidarity demonstrators in the face and when the women in the group protested, struck a couple of them too. Another male in the group then launched at the Far-Right man and gave him a bloody face.

When observed by this reporter, the man was covered in tattoos, stripped to the waist and shouting about being “for the Irish” (which for some reason the Far-Right assume Palestinian supporters are not — though many have a far better track record in that respect than do Far-Right activists).

In Palestine that same day the zionist air force bombed a tent town of displaced people in northwest Gaza, which they had declared a safe area, murdering over 30 and injuring many more, some of whom will die. They also bombed 10 UNRWA displacement centres.

End.

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES & USEFUL LINKS

https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/national-news/1508465/take-a-stand-pro-israel-march-to-dail-eireann-planned-this-weekend.html

1 https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/national-news/1508465/take-a-stand-pro-israel-march-to-dail-eireann-planned-this-weekend.html

2The zionists had a number of terrorist organisation pushing the formation of the Israel State: Haganah, Irgun, Palmach … Haganah became the core of the Israeli armed forces.

3 https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/national-news/1508465/take-a-stand-pro-israel-march-to-dail-eireann-planned-this-weekend.html

4Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the largest and longest-lived Palestine solidarity organisation in Ireland.

5Ditto.

6It is truly remarkable to observe how a racist occupying genocidal bully simultaneously paints itself as the victim.

7People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular Palestinian resistance organisation.

Dublin and Monaghan Bombings: A Legacy of Lies

On May 21, 2024May 21, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History commemoration, Ireland, Massacres, Peace Process, Political Analysis2 Comments

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 19 May 2024

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

President Michael D Higgins speaks during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Memorial to the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings on Talbot Street in Dublin, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. (Photo cred: *Brian Lawless/PA Wire*)

Fifty years ago, on May 17th bombs exploded in Dublin and Monaghan killing 34 people. The anniversary was marked in Talbot St. Dublin beside the monument erected in memory of those murdered on that day.

The attendance at the anniversary was addressed by Michael D. Higgins, the southern president.(1)

He made a number of points in his speech, mixing his praise for the Good Friday Agreement and Elizabeth Windsor’s visit to Ireland with calls for the rights of the victims to know the full truth, oblivious to the inherent contradictions in his statement.

He did acknowledge that there were huge problems with the subsequent investigations and cited the Barron Report.

The report compiled by the late Judge Henry Barron, published 10th December 2003, provided some of the answers, pointing as it did to systemic failures at State level, one that included possible collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries.

Also featured was the disappearance of important forensic evidence and files, the slow-motion conduct of the investigation, a reluctance to make original documents available, and the refusal to supply other information on security grounds.(2)

There is nothing surprising about this. The dust had barely settled in Dublin and Monaghan and the Irish Government and the Opposition rushed out to deflect and suppress any debate.

Both the Taoiseach at the time, Cosgrave (Fine Gael) and the Opposition leader Jack Lynch (Fianna Fáil) both issued statements that were remarkably similar.

In them they broadened out responsibility for the attacks to anyone who had been involved in any violent act; i.e. they blamed the IRA by implication and failed to mention loyalists at all. This was not accidental. It was deliberate.

The nature of the bombings, the coordination, technology used all indicated the involvement of the British secret services, coupled with the fact that the loyalists never again showed the same capability ever.

Under no circumstances was the southern establishment going to accuse the British of anything.

Just over two years earlier, following the murder of 14 people on the streets of Derry by the Parachute Regiment in full view of TV cameras, an angry nation protested and burned the British Embassy in Dublin to the ground. Cosgrave and Lynch sought to avoid a repetition of that.

As the Barron Report pointed out the Garda investigation was poor, forensic evidence was destroyed, the team set up to investigate it was wound down after just two months and the murder inquiry itself was closed after seven months.

All of this shows clearly that they had no interest in getting to the bottom of it. So much so, when the RUC informed them that they had arrested some suspects in relation to the bombing, the Gardaí did not follow it up.

Years later when Judge Barron carried out his investigation, it was not just the British who were uncooperative. The Gardaí and the Department of Justice didn’t provide him with any information, their files were “missing”.

So, any call for truth means demanding the southern government reveal what it knows and also who shut down the inquiry, why, what happened to the files etc.

It was ironic that the Taoiseach, Simon Harris, the former Taoisigh, Micheál Martin (Fianna Fáil) and Leo Varadkar (Fine Gael) who were present and laid wreaths represent those who covered up the bombings.

If we are going to talk about truth, then a starting point should be that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil covered it up and bear part of the blame for the failure to prosecute anyone.

But when Higgins and others demand the British hand over files and information, including the information offered at the time but not sought by the Gardaí, a question arises. Why would you ask the British government for information and files on a bombing that took place in Dublin?

There is only one possible answer: the British were involved in the bombing.

So, a good starting point would be not so much to talk euphemistically of full disclosure, but rather for them to admit their guilt and tell us all what they did and how and provide all the documentation relevant to their admission of guilt.

No Irish politician has ever demanded that the British own up for it. The demand is they give over information on those who carried it out, as if they were not serving members, at the time, of the British security forces.

The Irish state deliberately failed the victims of the bombings and continues to do so, to this day.

It is telling that the Barron Report on the bombings in not available on Irish government sites but rather on a site set up by victims of the bombings, Justice for the Forgotten (http://www.dublinmonaghanbombings.org/home/).

The Irish state has little interest in talking about the issue or of informing the Irish public, most of whom were born after the bombings.

Though Higgins criticised the Legacy Act, which puts a time limit on prosecutions, the Good Friday Agreement was always about drawing a line under what had happened. The GFA rewrote history to portray the British as honest brokers in a tribal sectarian conflict and not as an imperial power.

Acknowledging their role in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings would undermine that carefully crafted and now universally accepted lie about the British role in Ireland. The British will not release the files as to do so would be an admission of what their role in Ireland is.

The southern establishment despite its occasional calls for clarity and truth, dreads the British even considering such a move, as again it would undermine their role in the conflict as well and their responsibility for the ensuing cover up.

Notes

(1) See Speech at the Commemorative Event Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings https://president.ie/en/diary/details/president-attends-the-50th-anniversary-of-the-dublin-and-monaghan-bombings/speeches

(2) Ibíd.,

WHY BOMB DUBLIN AND MONAGHAN?

On May 17, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Film Review, History commemoration, Ireland, irish history, Irish Republicanism, Massacres, Poetry, Political Analysis, SongLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 9 mins.)

Thirty-five people were killed by bombings on 17^th May 1974, the most in one day during the recent 30 Years War but outside of Ireland and even within it, most people are unaware of that fact. That’s because the perpetrators were not the IRA.

And probably also because the victims were killed not just in Ireland but within the Irish state. Also no doubt because the perpetrators were Loyalists led by British Intelligence.

*Section of westward end of attendance at event as President Michael D Higgins approaches (just out of view)*(Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Three bombs exploded on that day in the middle of a rush hour in Dublin City Centre: Talbot Street, Parnell Street and South Leinster Street. Somewhat later, a bomb exploded also in Monaghan Town. Altogether 35 were killed¹ and “about 300”² injured, some permanently.

*The names of some of the victims being displayed at the premiere of the Anatomy of a Massacre documentary.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Within days and perhaps hours a number of suspects among Loyalist murder gangs had been identified but they were not arrested or even questioned about the atrocity – no-one ever was. Despite that, the Gardaí closed the case investigation seven months afterwards that same year.

A new documentary on the atrocities by Fergus Dowd was premiered in Dublin on Friday to two full screen auditoria in the Lighthouse Cinema, Smithfield, featuring interviews with witnesses, victims and relatives of victims, a former Taoiseach and a former State forensic scientist.

May-17-74 Anatomy of a Massacre is directed by Joe Lee and produced by Fergus Dowd.

The forensic expert had been given very little of the remains of cars containing the bombs since most had been sent to the RUC (colonial police) for their analysis (!) from which nothing useful emerged but he was able to determine that a high amount of amatol had been used.

At that time only the IRA among “paramilitary organisations” had the expertise to develop that explosive material which leads commentators to believe that the Loyalists received the necessary quantities from those seized from the IRA and held by the British armed forces.³

Given that many of the Loyalists involved were members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, a British Army unit, on the face of it the explosives could have been directly supplied by the British Army or indirectly obtained through the UDR as members of the British Army.

Nothing adverse is known about the Garda Commissioner who sent the exploded car remains to the colonial police but his Deputy and successor was Ned Garvey and whistle-blowing British spook Fred Holroyd claimed Garvey was a British Intelligence “asset” and to have met him in Dublin.

Confronted with this exposé years later Garvey admitted having met Holroyd but not to being a British spy – though he had not informed his superiors of his meeting with a foreign secret service agent. ⁴ Sadly this is not alluded to in the documentary.

As documented in Anatomy there had been a Loyalist bombing campaign of Dublin since 1969,⁵ with those in 1972 and 1973 killing between them three transport workers and no-one had been arrested by Gardaí or extradition sought in connection with even those fatal explosions.

No documentary about the bombing was made by RTÉ, the Irish broadcaster until 2004, thirty years after the atrocity.

However a much earlier documentary was by British company Yorkshire Television on ITV in 1993⁶. RTÉ had declined the offer of joint screening and many people in Ireland who did not have access to ITV at the time missed it or had to go to a friend or relative to view it.

The British documentary was mentioned only in passing by one of the interviewees in Anatomy but without reference to RTÉ’s declining of the offer of joint screening.

British spook whistleblower Colin Wallace states that he was obliged to report on every meeting he had with Loyalists or others and his erstwhile bosses would have kept those papers, as they would have for the MI5 operatives who steered the bombing gang for Dublin and Monaghan.

The existence of MI5 documents that would throw much light on the bombings was referred to a number of times in Anatomy and the Justice for the Forgotten campaign keeps seeking them. Irish Government ministers regularly state that they have requested them but are always refused.

Missing from the documentary was what is now known of the secret contemporary memos of Arthur Galsworthy, British Ambassador to the Irish state: It is only now that the South has experienced violence that they are reacting in the way that the North has sought for so long …

… I think the Irish have taken the point.

Galsworthy also noted that the Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Garret FitzGerald told him that “the government’s view was that popular hostility appeared to be directed more against the IRA“.

In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, both Liam Cosgrave for the Government and Jack Lynch for the Opposition sought to widen the blame to include Irish Republicans.⁷

VIEWING THE DOCUMENTARY

Two screens at the Lighthouse cinema were fully booked to view the premiere.

The documentary is fascinating and some of the witnesses and relatives really excellent in their descriptions and commentary. Others interviewed pulled no punches in castigating successive Irish governments for closing the investigation and allowing it to remain closed.

Some, too, alleged a conjunction of interests between the Irish and UK states in ensuring the truth about the perpetrators and the Irish State’s reaction never surfaced.

Many people prominent in Irish political circles at different ends were present to see the premiere and after a few words from Margaret Unwin, Coordinator of the Justice for the Forgotten campaign, along with filmaker Dowd, the Resistance Choir sang their song composed about the bombing.

*The Resistance Choir performing their song about the bombing massacre* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*Section of crowd from the Monument eastward* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Justice for the Forgotten organise a commemoration of the atrocity every year at which some music and poetry is performed, along with speeches by politicians representing the Irish State, and the local authority Councils of Dublin City and Monaghan and another individual or two.

Some of what is said there I have welcomed and some disliked but most of all I detest Ministers in the Irish Government coming there to tell us how they want the British State to release their secret documents regarding the event but never have any action to pressurise its Ministers in mind.

*Cormac Breatnach playing low whistle at event* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

This year, the 50^th anniversary, the event took place after noon on Friday 17^th May with a large crowd but only one speaker listed, President of the Irish State Michael D. Higgins, with traditional Irish music from Cormac Breatnach and Eoin Ó Dillon, a duo performing at the event for years.

Eoin Ó Ceannabháin sang The Parting Glass and poet Rachel Hegarty performed her poem about the bombing. But there was a surprise speaker also, an Italian from Breschia who also referred to state collusion in a bombing against an anti-fascist rally in his home town the same year, a few weeks later.

*Poet Rachel Hegarty performing her poem about the event* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The MC of the event, Aidan Shields, son of fatal victim Maureen, told the audience to applause that Justice for the Forgotten would be sending a delegation to Breschia for the 50^th commemoration of the atrocity in their town.

*At left, Aidan Shields, son of fatal victim and MC at event*, *with Monument to the victims centre* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

WHY THE BOMBING?

Trainee journalists are told to answer the ‘Five Ws’ in their reports: who, what, where, when and why.

The answers to four of those questions have been known for decades: Dublin and Monaghan is where; 17 May 1974 was the when; the bombing atrocity was the what. The who were the Loyalists and British Intelligence. But nobody seems to attempt to answer the why – or even to ask that question.

For the earlier 1972 bombing, the “why” is clear: to get the Irish parliament to vote for the Amendment to the Offences Against the State Act.

And they were successful in that since, all logic to the contrary, some of the Opposition decided to believe that the bombing was the work of Irish Republicans. So we now have that no-jury political court and senior Gardaí can give ‘evidence’ unseen by the accused from Garda “secret files”.

Apart from the guidelines of journalism, there are also those with regard to criminal investigations, which outline the importance of motive and opportunity. The British secret service certainly had opportunity – but what was their motive?

A bombing such as that in Dublin on 1974, in the Irish State’s capital city, is a message to the Irish ruling class (though the victims be different) were the. And from the British state through their intelligence service, which would hardly dare to carry out such an attack without at least the endorsement of their masters.

So the message was … what? “We will bomb your capital city if you don’t do what we want or if you do what we don’t want”? But the Irish ruling class was already cooperating about as fully as possible with the occupation in the Six Counties and repressing resistance in the Twenty-Six.

A similar campaign occurred in the 1980s, in the Basque Country within the French state (mostly). The Spanish Government waged a terrorist campaign⁸ of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations against suspected activists of the armed Basque liberation group ETA.

It seemed that what the Spanish authorities wanted was for the French to turn over Basque activists who were on the “French” side of the Border to the Spanish authorities, something the French had been unhappy to do, the Guardia Civil believed to be torturers even after Franco’s death.

After some of those bombings, the social-democratic French Government led by Mitterand began to hand over Basque activists to the authorities across the border, sometimes without even going through the official extradition procedures.

The Irish State did also permit extradition of Irish Republicans to the Six Counties (and later to Britain too) after the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, but not until ten years later, with Dominic McGlinchy, which hardly looks like the effect following its cause.

The Sunningdale Agreement had been signed in December 1973 which proposed some kind of power-sharing between nationalists and unionists with a role for the Government of the Irish state against which the Loyalists of the Ulster Workers’ Council had organised a general strike.

A British whistleblower, Colin Wallace claims that the bombing was a warning to the Irish ruling class to keep their fingers out of the colony.

VICTIMS AND RULING CLASS

Apart from not answering or even seeking the motivation for MI5 to arrange and oversee the bombing, I have not seen any discussion of the class nature of the locations. The bombings of 1972 and 1973 targeted transport workers.

But the bombings on the north side of the river in areas to the east of O’Connell Street also took place in areas where working and lower middle-class people worked, shopped and got on to the public transport buses. This hardly seems accidental.

*Aftermath in Talbot Street facing westward with Connolly Station tower in far background* (Photo: PA)

A part of MI5’s message could have been: “This time it was mostly the kind of people nobody (who are in power) cares about, so be thankful. Next time we might hit the north-east centre around Henry Street, or areas around Trinity College, Dame Street and Grafton Street on the south side.”

One other point that is rarely made is that the bombing and the State’s reaction to it showed the totally craven and foreign-dependent nature of the Irish ruling class, to allow their capital city to be bombed by another state without seeking revenge or even restitution.

The French state made a deal with the Spanish after some bombs exploded in territory to which it laid claim but does anyone believe the result would have been the same if the Spanish terrorist groups had bombed Paris?

End.

FOOTNOTES

1 Some accounts give a total of 34 or 35 dead from the four bombings: 34 by including the full-term unborn child of victim Colette Doherty, who was nine months pregnant; and 35 by including the later still-born child of Edward and Martha O’Neill. Edward was killed outright in Parnell Street.

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_and_Monaghan_bombings

3 Whether as a gift or stolen from the stores.

4 When Fianna Fáil came into government, they sacked Garvey but presumably not wanting to expose British Intelligence penetration of the Irish State’s management upper echelons, gave as a reason only that they had no confidence in him. This opened the way for Garvey to claim wrongful dismissal and win, giving him a payout and retaining his pension. Garvey was also important in running the notorious “Heavy Gang” within the Special Branch.

5 The Wolfe Tone Monument in Stephens Green had been blown up and the O’Connell monument, the Glasnevin ‘Round Tower’ had also been bombed.

6 “Yorkshire Television broadcast a documentary entitled ‘Hidden Hand – the Forgotten Massacre‘ made as part of its ‘First Tuesday‘ series. The programme dealt with the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974. [The programme came to the conclusion that the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) would have required assistance to carry out the bomb attacks. There was speculation as to where such assistance might have come from. While no firm conclusions were reached, it was suggested that the security forces in Northern Ireland were the most likely source of help. Allegations concerning the existence of a covert British Army unit based at Castledillon were considered; as well as alleged links between that unit and Loyalist paramilitaries. It was shown that Merlyn Rees, the former Secretary of Sate, had known of the unit’s existence. On 15 July 1993 the UVF issued a statement in which it claimed sole responsibility for the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings.]” https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/dublin/chron.htm

7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_and_Monaghan_bombings (The Aftermath)

8 Mostly using the GAL (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación [sic]) cover name.

SOURCES& USEFUL LINKS

Justice for the Forgotten campaign: https://www.patfinucanecentre.org/projects/justice-forgotten

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

https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/dublin/chron.htm

Breschia fascist bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazza_della_Loggia_bombing

STEP FORWARD, YOUTH!

On May 4, 2024May 6, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, France, History, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Palestine, Police Violence, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, US Imperialism, USALeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 8mins.)

University students in the USA protesting, setting up encampments, occupying university buildings; threats from administrators; police invasions, assaults on students, resistance, arrests …

Step forward, Youth and shake the towers

Those ivory towers stand on sweat and blood

Make those lies fall in showers —

Become the earthquake and the rushing flood.

Step forward youth

For solidarity and truth!

Academic freedom and investigation

and principles too of democracy

Have taken now academic vacation

Revealing true base in hypocrisy.

Step forward youth

For solidarity and truth!

Look down below your feet

Reach out to workplace and street

Stretch out solidarity’s hand

to the struggling in another land.

Step forward youth

For solidarity and truth!

only thus can you also be

in a better world, at peace and free.

(Dublin, May 2023)

It seems as though we’ve been here before, a sense of dejá vu … Ah, yes! During the Vietnam War (1955-1975). University students in the US were in conflict with the authorities about lifestyle, content and style of the curriculum, racism, sexism, sexuality and .. yes, the US’s war in Indochina.

Students lost their study and work plans, got hit by truncheons, were sickened by teargas and some were shot dead, as in Kent State University, Ohio by the National Guard and in Jackson, Mississippi 11 days later.¹

Which is why the suggestion of House Speaker Mike Johnson to send that same body in against the students last week was a vicious act of intimidation.

In the 1960s Trinity College Dublin, the academic bastion of the British-unionist Ascendancy, was a hotbed of protest and even revolutionary organisation along many fronts – including gay rights, contraception rights, Irish socialism and national liberation.²

The Ulster University in Belfast, in the British Six-County colony saw protests for Catholic civil equality, a struggle that faced armed repression and developed into a responding armed struggle of three decades.

In the USA those years coincided too with marches for black civil rights and also the rise of militant revolutionary groups such as the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, Weathermen, SLA and later the American Indian Movement.

Women’s liberation and Gay & Lesbian liberation movements³ also moved more to the fore.

The responses of the US State to many of those movements were even more vicious than they had been against the students, with trials, jailings,⁴ shootings⁵ and downright unofficial executions.⁶ As the campus protests now draw in wider communities, are we heading for something similar?

In the USA, the authorities seem terrified of that conjunction — or how else can we understand the violence of their reaction which has even horrified some university senates?

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEN AND NOW

When the students in the USA fought the institutional authorities, it was partly in solidarity with the people of Vietnam (and later of Laos and Cambodia). Yes, but many also feared being sent to the Vietnamese War meat grinder and being airlifted home from there in body bags.

The draft had been introduced in 1964⁷ and though middle-class students had a better chance of avoiding conscription, they were far from immune.⁸ Being an officer might make one safer from the enemy than being a grunt but not from the grunts themselves as “fragging” incidents soared.⁹

The students now protesting in US Universities are doing so in solidarity with Palestinians, in horror at their state’s support of Israeli genocide. They may have other issues with their universities’ management and society at large but in general we can rule out the motive of self-preservation.

*Encampment Palestine solidarity Vera Cruz University California Thursday* (Photo cred: *Aric Sleeper Santa Cruz Sentinel*)

The drug culture was very much seen as part of the protest movement back then, though opposed by some such as Panthers and viewed with suspicion by other revolutionaries. Pacifist trends were strong and Timothy Leary’s “turn on, tune in and drop out” mantra attracted many.

Much of the revolutionary potential of the movement was lost under that influence, nowhere near as powerful now and revolutionaries who know their history will be aware that such arch-opponents of the system as Leary became an FBI informant to get out of jail.¹⁰

Many may argue as to degree but the power of patriarchy and oppression of LBG sexuality, though certainly present, are nowhere near as strong today in the “western world” as they were in the 1960s.

The power of the Catholic Church hierarchy in Irish society has been greatly weakened by struggles, Church scandals and society’s evolution. Discrimination against Catholics in the Six Counties is also less than it was in the previous era.

The armed struggle is not currently being waged.

However, Ireland remains divided between a 26-County neo-colony and a Six-County colonial statelet. The economies are hugely penetrated by foreign multinationals, the health services tottering and a huge housing crisis due to turning housing over to big landlords and property speculators.

The main parties of the ruling classes have been exposed to such degree that they no longer act in the charade of opposition: Sinn Féin and the DUP share political administration of the British colony while Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil share it for the neo-colony, prepared to admit SF there too.

Fascists gather some of the disenchanted, marginalised and disinherited to try to mould them into a fascist movement against migrants and refugees, against LGBT rights, against socialism. The State facilitates that development while it grows more repressive in both the administrations.

The ruling class will be aware of the potential of a rise in student protest coinciding with a feeling of Palestine solidarity and frustration at Irish state complicity very widely spread throughout Ireland. But then the Irish state is not imperialist, it’s just complicit in imperialism.

UNIVERSITY PROTESTS NOW

Students in universities across the USA have staged occupations or built encampments in explicit solidarity with Palestine against their own government and against the collusion of their academic institutions with zionist genocide of Palestinians and the destruction of every university in Gaza.

The response of the academic authorities has been denunciation, threat, eviction and false characterisation of the high motives of the students as “anti-semitism”.¹¹

Municipal, county and state police forces have responded violently to peaceful protest, including bodily assault, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests. The Government has drafted a change of the legal meaning of anti-semitism to include opposition to the Israeli zionist State.¹²

*Rutgers students tents 29 April 2024* (Photo cred: *Sophie Nieto-Munoz/ New Jersey Monito*r)

The violence of the authorities has not been confined to the protesting youth but has been extended to staff who stood with them. During the week Dr. Steve Tamari, professor at the University of Southern Illinois got nine ribs fractured by cops – for filming what was going on.

Chair of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth University, New Hampshire, Annelise Orleck (senior citizen) was violently arrested and banned from campus for six months.

In some cases not only have the protesters resisted valiantly but actually drove the cops into retreat and in Portland, Oregon, police cars were set alight. Also a fascist who drove at protestors and pepper-sprayed them was, according to reports, identified and his car destroyed.

On the other hand, Zionists (and suspected fascists) have mobilised against the students in many universities, with the tired old propaganda of “anti-semitism” and in one case attacked an encampment with sticks and fireworks, also playing a “crying child” Israeli drone recording.¹³

Irish Republicans and other anti-fascists will not be surprised to learn that a) the police disappeared shortly before the violent attack and b) none of the attackers were arrested when the cops returned.

More than 2,100 people have been arrested at US campuses since April 18¹⁴ and students have been barred from their own campuses which, for many, means also their own accommodation.

*Police Attack Palestine solidarity UCLA campus Thursday 2 May 2024 LA* (Photo cred: *Ethan Swope/ AP*)

The university protests have spread beyond the USA and have broken out in Canada (McGill), Australia (Brisbane and Sydney) and even Humbold in Germany, main Israel arms supplying country after the US, where state repression of Palestine solidarity has been particularly heavy.¹⁵

In France, where there has also been much repression of Palestinian solidarity activity, there have been occupations at the Sorbonne and Sciences Po in Paris) and in England, Newcastle and London, while an encampment was set up in Edinburgh in front of the Scottish Parliament.¹⁶

“SHAMEFUL SILENCE”

In Ireland, the universities have been relatively quiet until now but the Trinity College Dublin administration fined their Students Union €214k for a one-day Palestine solidarity picket outside the building housing the Book of Kells exhibition, citing loss of visitor revenue in justification.

*“The People’s University” banner hanging from windows in Trinity College Saturday* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

But repression leads to resistance; now there is a Palestine solidarity encampment on the green in front of the Kells exhibition. People are mobilising to support the student resistance in Trinity and today saw a march there from the Spire with the administration locking the gates shut.

“We plan on staying here indefinitely, our message is there is no ‘business as usual’ during a genocide,” outgoing students’ union president Laszlo Molnarfi said.¹⁷

“When our academic institution, Trinity College Dublin, has ties to Israeli companies, entities and universities that are complicit in the war industry, we must speak up. That is why we are doing this.

“And we must speak up in this disruptive, powerful way. Because when we tried to engage with the authorities, with petitions and letters and meetings, we were met with shameful silence.”¹⁸

*Inside Trinity College grounds Friday night/ Saturday morning* (Photo: *Social Rights Ireland*)

In the wider ‘global South’, Palestine solidarity protests have been seen in India at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi against a visit from the US Ambassador to the country, Eric Garcett, which had to be cancelled.

More dangerous by far to the US ruling class and Israeli-colluding King of Lebanon, so geographically close to Palestine and with a strong Hizbollah guerrilla presence, are the student demonstrations at the university of Beirut.

*Students at American University in Cairo (AUC) Demonstrating Monday in Solidarity Palestinians* (Photo source: *X Twitter*)

Whether overall these actions of students, who comprise a large and influential section of youth, will significantly deepen, widen and energise the growing Palestine solidarity movement, and simultaneously the wider anti-imperialist movement, remains to be seen.

End.

“*Victory to the Palestinian Resistance” banner on Trinity College railings Saturday* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

FOOTNOTES

14^th May 1970, killed by the Ohio Kent National Guard during a protest against the Vietnam War. The Jackson killings occurred 11 days later on Friday, May 15, 1970, at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 14, 1970, city and state police confronted a group of students outside a campus dormitory. Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve.

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

2Ironically, precisely because it was free of the major socially controlling agency in Ireland at the time, the Catholic Church hierarchy.

3See the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in the US against homophobic police harassment.

4Including many frame-ups, some of which were only exposed decades later. Leonard Peltier was jailed on dubious evidence in 1977 which had already collapsed against a co-accused but is still in jail, 79 years of age with diabetes and other health problems.

5See MOVE organisation in the late 1970s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE_(Philadelphia_organization)#1978_shoot-out

6Fred Hampton and Mark Clarke were assassinated by police and other Black Panthers wounded in 1969 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_HamptonS and Black Panther George Jackson, shot dead by prison guards in 1971 allegedly while participating in a prison escape. https://www.freedomarchives.org/George%20Jackson.html

7Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. military drafted 2.2 million American men out of an eligible pool of 27 million https://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antivietnamwar/exhibits/show/exhibit/draft_protests/the-military-draft-during-the-

855% working class, 25% poor and 20% middle class, according to one study https://www.studentsofhistory.com/vietnam-war-draft

9Attack from lower ranks by fragmentation grenade rolled into a toilet being used by an officer or his tent. Between 800 to 1,000 such incidents are thought to have occurred among US Marines during the Vietnam War https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/geier/1999/xx/vietnam.htm

10 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/timothy-leary-was-an-fbi-informer-1103070.html

11Thereby also devaluing the meaning of that particular form of racism which was a basic ideological aspect of Nazism and Fascism and continues to be a strong trend in European fascism today.

12Ditto.

13One of the latest horrors from the Israeli Zionist cabinet, killer drones playing sounds of a crying baby or a woman needing help in order to bring would-be helpers out where they can then be shot dead, being played in this case mockingly.

14 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/03/world/pro-palestinian-university-protests-worldwide-intl-hnk/index.html

15 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/german-police-break-up-pro-palestinian-protest-at-humboldt-university/

16A semi-autonomous legislative assembly but part of the United Kingdom.

17 https://www.itv.com/news/2024-05-04/students-at-protest-camp-inside-trinity-college-vow-to-stay-indefinitely

18Ibid.

SOURCES

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

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/03/world/pro-palestinian-university-protests-worldwide-intl-hnk/index.html

Trinity College protest: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0wzgp7q0do?

https://www.itv.com/news/2024-05-04/students-at-protest-camp-inside-trinity-college-vow-to-stay-indefinitely

The Trinity occupation: https://www.instagram.com/tcd_bds

REPUBLIC DAY MARKED IN SEPARATE DUBLIN LOCATIONS

On April 28, 2024April 28, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn 1916 Rising, Cultural Comment, Current Event Report, History commemoration, Ireland, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Song, Song in Struggle, Traditions & Folk CustomLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: mins.)

Although the 1916 Rising had been planned to take place on Easter Sunday, April 23^rd, it was publicly cancelled by the titular head of the Irish Volunteers, Eoin Mac Néill and it went ahead instead on the 24^th, the following day.

The 1916 Rising was unsuccessful but is considered the birth event of the Irish Republic and for some therefore Republic Day is on April 24^th, the first day of that Rising and when Patrick Pearse, with James Connolly by his side, read out that remarkable Proclamation of Independence.

*Banner of the Republic Day event organisers in Arbour Hill* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

Tom Stokes, an independent Irish Republican campaigned for some years for April 24^th to be recognised as Ireland’s national day, replacing St. Patrick’s Day which is religious festival and now an excuse for excessive drinking and pseudo-Irishness.

Replacing too Easter Sunday and Monday, these being religious dates that move around on the calendar, never being on the same dates in any consecutive year.

Tom Stokes died in December 2018 and a small group of disparate independent Republicans have striven to keep his campaign going.

Stokes always held his Republic Day event at noon on the 24^th in front of the GPO, the location of the first public reading of the Proclamation (as did also the Save Moore Street From Demolition one year) but this group carrying on his campaign have been holding their event in Arbour Hill.

This is the location of an old British prison containing the location of a mass grave into which had been put the bodies of 14 of those executed by British firing squads after the surrender of the leadership and majority of the fighters, their bodies covered in quicklime and earth.

*The mass grave of 14 of the sixteen executed in 1916, with their names in Irish one side and in English on the other.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

CEREMONY IN ‘ARBOUR HILL’

The name Arbour Hill is a corruption of the original Irish name for the location which meant something distinct from “arbour”: Cnoc (hill) an (of the) Arbhair (cereal crop). Today it is a quiet spot tastefully laid out, the names of the dead etched around the mass grave-site in both languages.

A little distance away is a tall flagpole bearing the Irish Tricolour in front of a high wall on which are chiselled the words of the Proclamation in their original English and also in Irish translation.

Dramatist Frank Allen welcomed those present, in particular members of Limerick Men’s Shed who had travelled a distance to be present at the event. He also referred to descendants who were present of martyrs of the struggle Cathal Brugha, Thomas McDonagh and Harry Boland.

Frank Allen as MC for the event (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

Allen also reviewed the history of Tom Stokes’ campaign for the marking of the date as Republic Day and a national holiday, outlining also the man’s background and his family connections to the struggle for Irish independence, along with his support for Palestine..

First to be called to perform was Pat Waters, professional musician and a regular contributor to the 1916 Performing Arts Club who accompanied himself singing his own composition Where Is Our Republic Day? composed at request from Tom Stokes.

*Pat Waters performing his composition* Where Is Our Republic? (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

Allen called on Glen Gannon also of the 1916 PAC to read the Proclamation and then on Shane Stokes to read one of his father’s articles which clearly outlined the man’s socialist Republican principles and their distance from the reality of the current national society and polity.

In succession Fergus Russell of the Goleen Singers organising committee was called to sing The Foggy Dew, a song about the 1916 Rising which he performs every year and Shannon Pritzel to read Patrick Pearse’s famous oration on the grave of Ó Donnabháin Rosa.

Aidan recited the eulogy poem to the 1916 fighters composed by an ex-British Army officer living in Ireland. Anne Waters of the 1916 PAC was asked to present red roses to a number of those present to lay on the named dead on the stonework surrounding the mass gravesite.

Larry Yorell (best known as a long-time activist of the National Graves Association)¹, made an appeal for support for an initiative to build a monument to Patrick Pearse.

*Aidan reciting a eulogy poem for the 1916 Rising fighters* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

Frank Allen declared total opposition to a trend seeking to eliminate Amhrán na bhFiann as the “National Anthem” for being thought too war-like.

He called Diarmuid Breatnach (also a regular at the 1916 PAC) to conclude the event with the singing of the song https://rebelbreeze.com/2024/04/26/a-new-wave-of-censorship-and-repression/by Peadar Kearney, composed first in English² and sung during the 1916 Rising, including in the GPO.

PICKET AT THE GPO

The Anti-Imperialist Action group called a picket against imperialism to take place in the evening of the 24^th outside the General Post Office, which had been the HQ of the Rising forces in 1916.

While a number distributed leaflets, others lined out carrying a number of national flags of Palestine and one of the PFLP, in addition to a large Irish Tricolour, smaller Starry Plough and flags of the New Philippines Army.

Along with some of the standard Palestine solidarity slogans heard everywhere in Ireland on demonstrations, they called out “From Ireland to Palestine – Occupation is a crime!”; “There is only one solution – Intifada revolution!” and “Saoirse – don Phalaistín!”

*Flag of the New People’s Army of the Phillippines displayed alongside other flags of anti-imperialist struggle.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

A number of passers-by congratulated the picketers while some stopped to discuss. A representative of the organisers gave a short address regarding the background to Republic Day and the current situation in Ireland, commenting also on the zionist genocide in Palestine.

The event concluded with a youth reading the 1916 Proclamation out loud, followed by an acapella singer performing The Larkin Ballad which relates a compressed history of the 1913 Dublin Lockout but concludes with verses about the 1916 Rising.

*A youth reads the text of the Proclamation of Independence near where Patrick Pearse read it out on 24th April 1916* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

End.

*Southward view of part of the group marking Republic Day with a statement against imperialism today.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

FOOTNOTES

1The main organisation throughout Ireland maintaining and renovating and erecting monuments, graves, plaques in memory of Irish patriot men and women and battle sites; the NGA remains independent of political parties and declines to be in receipt of funding from government or political party.

2Kearney wrote the lyrics in 1907 in cooperation with musical composer Patrick Heeney. The music for the chorus was adopted by the Irish Free State as its national anthem. The lyrics were translated into Irish in the 1930s and unusually it is the Irish version that one most often hears, first verse and chorus. The opening sentence of the chorus “Sinne fianna fáil” (‘we are soldiers of destiny’) have been changed by some to “Sinne laochra fáil” (‘warriors of destiny) in order to avoid reference to a specific political party that called itself Fianna Fáil.

LINKS FOR INFORMATION/ FURTHER READING

https://theirishrepublic.wordpress.com

IRISH REPUBLIC DAY CELEBRATION – FIRST YEAR WITHOUT TOM STOKES

https://www.facebook.com/1916artsclub

https://anti-imperialist-action-ireland.com

Anti Imperialist Action Ireland (@AIAIreland) · X

A New Wave of Censorship and Repression

On April 26, 2024April 26, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Capitalism, Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Irish Left, Israeli Zionism, Palestine, Political Analysis1 Comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 18 April 2024

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

There is no doubt that the ghost of Joseph McCarthy wanders the earth through many a hallowed university hall, newspaper editorial room, police headquarters around the world and of course the cabinets of many western governments.

Censorship when it raises its ugly head, does so in a similar fashion to its past incarnations, though with new twists and turns that perhaps take us by surprise.

However, it should come as no surprise to see that voices on Palestine are being shut down, though the recent German police assault on an international conference in Berlin was a major escalation in government attempts to criminalise those critical of the genocidal regime that holds sway in Tel Aviv and the white supremacist philosophy that is Zionism.(1)

Various issues are thrown into the mix.

Palestine and Palestinian demands are presented as hate speech by governments and right-wing media, but so too is any defence of women’s spaces, though in this latter case the right-wing governments find some support from sectors of the Left.

These think that when they argue for censorship and the suppression of freedom of speech that somehow it will never be applied to them.

The German police stormed the three-day event as the first speaker was addressing it.

They claimed they did so to prevent antisemitic statements being made i.e. not only are we in McCarthyite land of criminalising certain ideas by labelling them as antisemitic but we are in the land of Minority Report(2) where thought crimes can be punished in advance, before they have been committed.

This is not that far removed at all from the Irish Hate Speech Bill that some on the Left have given support to, as the Police may inspect computers and phones and you may be charged with possession of material that may be used to commit hate speech.

It was laughable and ironic that one of the photos of the police intervention of the Berlin event was the arrest of a young Jewish man, wearing a kippa, who was there in solidarity with Palestinians. Following the event a number of Jews were charged with antisemitism.

Not only that but some of the speakers were banned from entering the country, amongst them Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah who was an eyewitness to what was happening in Gaza and is also the Rector of the University of Glasgow.

The former Greek politician Yanis Varoufakis was also banned from entering Germany and both were warned that they could not participate even by Zoom from another jurisdiction, an unlawful extension of German jurisdiction and a suspension of the free movement of European citizens within the EU.

This is part of a wider criminalisation of protest and the criminalisation of thought.

Though some on the Left in Ireland such as People Before Profit T.Ds like Paul Murphy who support hate speech legislation believed in the benevolence of capitalist leaders when restricting commentary on women’s rights would never be extended to them, it has and for obvious reasons.

Most right-wing governments, particularly those that claim some liberal kudos on certain social issues have taken advantage of the defeat of workers, critical thinking and any opposition at all to capitalism to advance right-wing hate speech legislation and restrictions on academic freedom.

This includes the dismissal of staff, limitations on the right to voice opinions that go against government policy and in the process have garnered the support of many liberal currents and of course major NGOs who depend on government largesse to finance themselves.

The German event is not an isolated incident. Over the years various lecturers in the US have been suspended or not had their contracts renewed for speaking out about Palestine.

Zionists were the original cancel culture specialists who managed to turn spoilt students whining into action, getting staff sacked and silencing other students.

Recently, a professor of 30 years standing at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the US was suspended over a contribution made to a blog.

In their suspension of the employee the president stated that “I find her comments repugnant, condemn them unequivocally, and want to make clear that these are her personal views and not those of our institution.”(3)

It was liberals, the wokerati and even some Marxists who pushed for employers to take action against employees for their personal views and activities outside of the workplace and now it has come back to bite some of them, though not all, as many liberals and wokerati in the US are Zionists.

Some of those who had been targeted were vile racists who shouted “Jews will not replace us” as they marched with torches. But you fight Fascism, you don’t give employers control over employees’ lives, ever.

As Trotsky once quipped, if you can’t convince a Fascist, acquaint their head with the pavement. He didn’t say give your boss and the state more control over you and beseech them to act in your interests.

A few days prior to that, Columbia University had suspended six students for allegedly participating in a panel discussion on Palestine.(4)

And in a further sign that jackboots are once again goose-stepping through Germany, the University of Cologne rescinded a job offer to Nancy Fraser, a Jewish American professor of philosophy, over her condemnation of killings in Gaza.(5)

They will not stop at that and it is not limited to issues such as genocide, but even local domestic politics.

In April 2023, a French journalist Ernest Moret was arrested by British anti-terrorist police due to his involvement in protests in France against the Macron government’s pension proposals.

He refused to give the police access to pass codes for his electronic devices and was charged with obstruction.(6)

There are other precedents for this, one of them being the arrest of David Miranda, Glen Greenwald’s now deceased partner, in Britain when returning from a meeting with another journalist who had also worked on the files released by Edward Snowden.(7)

The courts later upheld his detention to be lawful. Police held him and demanded access to his electronic devices.

Then there is the jailing and punishing of Julian Assange. The charges against Assange were dressed up in various disguises.

The first of them was the now discredited rape charges in Sweden which were dropped and also espionage charges when the real reason for jailing Assange is that he, as a journalist, exposed US war crimes in Iraq.

The message is clear, censorship is the order of the day as is the hounding of journalists who hold unpopular views and expose the crimes of the state. Assange did not receive the support he should have, due to the trumped-up rape charges, with many on the Left, like cowards running for cover.

Even today, when the rape charges have been exposed for the lies they were and have been dropped there are those who refuse to speak out on his behalf for this very reason.

There is no world in which right wing governments suppress freedom of speech, academic freedom, freedom of assembly and criminalise broad opinions that they label as hate speech and don’t target the Left. It has never happened and never will.

When they stood aside on Assange, they prepared the way for the assault on the Berlin Conference. When they harassed and tried to silence women defending women’s spaces they prepared the ground for the assault.

When they advocated and supported right-wing governments’ attempts at introducing hate speech legislation they paved the way for the criminalisation of solidarity with Palestine.

When the Hate Speech Bill comes back before the Irish parliament, they should take note and do the correct thing and oppose it, unequivocally.

Leftists who advocated employers taking control of employees lives and opinions, those that demanded that JK Rowling and others like her be hounded from the public sphere and that what they termed hate speech, in reality thought crimes, should be punished in law have aided and abetted right-wing governments in getting us to where we are now, which is that it is now very easy to criminalise pro-Palestinian voices.

All you have to say is “Hate Speech!” Meanwhile Rushi Sunak in Britain is pushing ahead with a very broad and loose definition of extremism which will see almost everyone who does not support Sunak or Starmer in the dock.

Notes

(1) See interview with Yanis Varoufakis https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/16/germany_palestine

(2) Minority Report is a Tom Cruise film in which three mutants can see the future and predict who will commit crimes and they are arrested, charged and sentenced in advance before the crime is committed. In the film the system unravels.

(3) WXXI News (16/04/2024) Hobart and William Smith Colleges professor suspended for comments on Israel-Hamas war. Noelle E.C. Evans. https://www.wrvo.org/2024-04-16/hobart-and-william-smith-colleges-professor-suspended-for-comments-on-israel-hamas-war

(4) WSWS (09/04/2024) Columbia University suspends and evicts pro-Palestinian students. Tim Avery. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/09/yimz-a09.html

(5) The Guardian (10/04/2024) German university rescinds Jewish American’s job offer over pro-Palestinian letter. Kate Connolly. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/10/nancy-fraser-cologne-university-germany-job-offer-palestine

(6) The Guardian (18/04/2023) French publisher arrested in London on terrorism charge. Matthew Weaver. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/18/french-publisher-arrested-london-counter-terrorism-police-ernest-moret

(7) The Guardian (19/08/2013) Glenn Greenwald’s partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-guardian-partner-detained-heathrow