Thousands March in Palestine Solidarity in Dublin as Gaza Death Toll Becomes Uncountable

On December 20, 2023December 20, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, Guerrilla Action, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Mass Media Criticism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, US Imperialism, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

As the death toll of Israeli bombing in Gaza long passes the capacity of imagination and as even the means of counting the dead can no longer be accurate, marchers took to Dublin streets in another Palestine solidarity march.

About 18,000 Palestinians have been killed and 49,500 wounded in Israeli attacks since October 7, including 300 in one 24-hour period.

View of section of the rally shortly after arrival at Molesworth Street. Leinster House, home of the parliament of the Irish State can be seen in the distant background but there were Garda barriers between it and the Palestinian supporters (in addition to the normal high railings). (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Despite the debunking of Biden’s claim of “unreliability” of the Gaza mortality statistics, which have been verified as of a high standard, Israeli bombing has now made his words come true. The ability to collect the numbers and names of the dead no longer exists in Gaza.

Not much left of where to treat the wounded or otherwise sick either with all major hospitals in the area gone and less than half remaining in semi-operation. The hospitals were the place of treatment and of data collection for statistics compilation.¹ The Zionist armed forces have bombed them too.²

*Another section of rally crowd taken facing away from direction of previous photo, i.e towards the rear.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

First the Israelis bombed people to death and now they have also bombed the mechanisms of collecting and checking the data on how many victims. And they have also not only buried thousands under rubble but also bombed the machinery and equipment for digging them out.³

DUBLIN MARCH

The Dublin march organised by the IPSC rallied outside the north city centre’s Garden of Remembrance and then marched down the city’s main street to cross over via O’Connell Bridge to the south side, then describing a half-circle around Trinity College and up Dawson Street.

Ending in Molesworth Street, the marchers found themselves facing Leinster House, the seat of the parliament of the Irish State but kept well back from it by the special Garda barricades near where the IPSC had their speakers’ platform.

Marchers started to drift off a while after arriving and many missed a performance with two kneeling males blindfolded and stripped to their underpants, with hands seemingly tied behind their backs while a young woman led chants in solidarity with Palestine.

*Men in Dublin’s Molesworth Street simulate treatment of Palestinian detainees in Gaza by Israeli Army while women lead solidarity chants.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

The blindfolded nearly naked men was clearly a reference to the Israeli army having been photographed recently doing the same to a line of their Palestinian prisoners, on the excuse that they were being interrogated regarding possible Hamas membership.⁴

Another such video purported to be a mass surrender by Palestinians fighters but was debunked as a number were recognised by others, including relatives: a shopkeeper, a journalist and a UN aid worker, while the few hard sources available indicate the IOF⁵ is far from gaining surrenders. ⁶

The very existence of such propaganda testifies to the lack of Israeli military success against fighters, as distinct from ‘success’ against civilians, including women and children, hospitals, public sanitation/ water treatment/ health infrastructure, housing, fishing boats …

*A notable feature of the Palestinian solidarity marches in Dublin since October 7th has been the appearance of the Irish language in the written and spoken (or shouted) word.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Many bystanders along the Dublin march route applauded the marchers and took photos of them. Some joined in the slogans: From the River to the Sea – Palestine will be free! There is only one solution – Intifada revolution! In our thousands, in our millions – we are ALL Palestinians!

Other slogans included: Free, free – Palestine! Saoirse – don Phailistín! Zionist Ambassador – Out, out, out! 1, 2, 3, 4 – Occupation no more! 5, 6, 7, 8 – Israel is a terrorist state! (I personally answer “Israel is a fascist state” which has long been an appropriate description).

IRISH PEOPLE MOSTLY IN SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE

Many other towns and cities in Ireland had marches, rallies or pickets on Saturday also. The Palestinian flag flies over Dublin City Hall for a week by vote of elected councillors and at least three city halls elsewhere have been lit up at night with Palestinian colours in solidarity.

With the exception of Loyalist areas in the Six Counties awash with Israeli state flags, the Irish overwhelmingly support the Palestinians.

*Section of the crowd at the commencement rally outside the Garden of Remembrance, before the march.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The Irish population overall is clearly pro-Palestinian which, in the current context, is clearly to be pro-humanity. But although the public position of the Irish Government is among the most supportive in the EU of the Palestinians it is not applying hard pressure against the Israeli state.

The Irish state supports the imperialist/ colonialist two-state ‘solution’ (sic) for Zionists and Palestinians, declines to expel the Israeli Ambassador, to apply sanctions, to progress the Occupied Territories Bill or even to refer Israel to the International Criminal Court.

A number of commentators (including two published on Rebel Breeze) have commented how useless such a referral to the ICC would be, except for its propaganda value perhaps. But the bias demonstrated by an ICC Prosecutor shows the situation to be even worse than was thought.

Palestinians complained that the Prosecutor accepted Israeli refusal to allow visiting Gaza but yet spent days visiting Israeli areas attacked by Hamas and declined a Palestinian offer to visit the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.

When Prosecutor Kharim Khan finally held a meeting with Palestinians, he spoke at length, leaving them only ten minutes for their own contributions, to their outrage. Although he later gave them an hour, they fear that he has revealed his deep bias against them.⁷

*A new banner seen on this march in Dublin, it bears the logo of the PFLP, words in Arabic and also calls for freedom for Palestine in Irish.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)(Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

A future government including Sinn Féin may not act very differently; the party supports the 2-State ‘solution’ and was pushing the Government to refer Israel to the ICC. More crucially perhaps will be its close relationship with the USA and its need to work with its future political partners.

The Irish mass media, in line with that of the West, continues to exhibit a deep level of partiality towards Israel, along with hostility towards the Palestinians. The genocidal bombing by Israel is never called that while the short Hamas offensive is called “a rampage”.

The bombing is always presented as a response to the Hamas attack while that attack itself is never portrayed as a response to the many, many Israeli bombings and murders going right back to the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians in the Nakba coinciding with the 1948 foundation of the state.

The most effective and realistic lever for Palestinian-supportive action remains the ordinary mass of Irish people and it is upon their support that we must rely, along with actions making zionist support as difficult and uncomfortable as possible at all levels in Ireland, especially at the higher ones.

End.

*Closeup of section of crowd at rallying point, at commencement of march.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Footnotes

1One of the Shifa statisticians was killed in the bombing of the hospital and the other three have disappeared since the IOF invaded the hospital https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-many-palestinians-have-died-gaza-war-how-will-counting-continue-2023-12-06/

2 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/12/how-are-gaza-casualty-updates-affected-by-israeli-attacks-on-hospitals

3And blocked fuel for the machines.

4And the relevance of that to stripping and blindfolding? What else but intimidation and humiliation? An eyewitness also reported having seen a number of Palestinian detainees shot for non-compliance.

5“Israeli Occupation Forces” (instead of IDF)

6 https://www.raialyoum.com/israel-isnt-winning/

7See link in Sources.

Sources

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/9/analysis-as-israel-escalates-gaza-war-its-kill-rate-claims-dont-add-up

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/12/10/israel-hamas-war-live-no-safe-place-in-gaza-as-severe-hunger-spreads

Statistics dead and wounded Palestinians: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/12/how-are-gaza-casualty-updates-affected-by-israeli-attacks-on-hospitals

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-many-palestinians-have-died-gaza-war-how-will-counting-continue-2023-12-06/

IOF casualties: https://www.raialyoum.com/israel-isnt-winning/

https://archive.is/2023.12.11-220841/https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-10/ty-article/.premium/idf-reports-1-593-wounded-since-october-7-but-hospital-data-is-much-higher/

ICC Prosecutor pro-Israel: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/12/9/alarming-palestinians-accuse-icc-prosecutor-of-bias-after-israel-visit

POLICING THE PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT

On December 8, 2023December 21, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

PALESTINE SOLIDARITY IN IRELAND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHICH SLOGAN?

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

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

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

WHICH FLAGS?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT KIND OF PALESTINIAN STATE?

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

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

BUT

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

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

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

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

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

PALESTINIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IN CONCLUSION

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

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

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

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

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

End.

FOOTNOTES

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

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

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

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

52^nd December 2023.

6Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

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

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

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

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

SOURCES

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

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

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

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

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

GENOCIDAL SLOGANS?

On December 5, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Censorship & Witch-hunting, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End.

FOOTNOTES

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

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

3Nazi slogan, literally “Jews out!”

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

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

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

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

SOURCES

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

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

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

On December 4, 2023December 4, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES

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

2Including the Irish State.

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

4 Rebellion, resistance, revolution.

SOURCES

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

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

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

The International Criminal Court: The judicial branch of imperialism

On November 27, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Massacres, Political Analysis, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

27 November 2023 (Reading time: 5 mins.)

The international criminal court in The Hague.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ESTIMATED 20,000 IN PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MARCH IN DUBLIN

On November 20, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Many thousands wound their way in Palestine solidarity on Saturday through the streets of Dublin City centre, crossing from north to south of the river, filling the streets with solidarity slogans that have now become very familiar.

*Section of the march in O’Connell Street crossing the river, the rest behind not having left Garden of Remembrance/ Hugh Lane Gallery area*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The national march called by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity campaign took nearly an hour to pass through Dublin’s O’Connell Street, Palestinian colours mixing with those of political party or group and some education trade union flags and banners – and the green and gold Starry Plough.¹

*And still they are coming* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*Graffiti on the Spire in O’Connell Street* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The weather was a welcome change from the heavy rain of the night before and, in contrast to recent cold days, was mild and autumnal. The trees by roadside and in parks, except for the berry-laden hollies, were losing their leaves but those remaining shone russet and gold.

Those political parties whose TDs² voted for sanctions against Israel on Wednesday³ were present: Social Democrats, that had sought the expulsion of the Israeli Embassy and Sinn Féin, who wanted the Government to refer the Israeli Government to the International Criminal Court.⁴

That included also the People Before Profit/ Solidarity, which for weeks had been calling for the Ambassador’s expulsion and the Labour Party.

Left-wing, feminist and animal liberation groups participated, along with local Palestine solidarity groups. In a change from recent marches, Irish Republican groups could be observed participating but were very few.⁵

An Ghaeilge, the Irish language, had a presence on the march in a small number of placards and a big banner proclaiming Saoirse don Phalaistín,⁶ the latter also shouted as a call-and-answer slogan, to merge with the now-familiar ones of Palestine solidarity, along with denunciation of genocide.

Other slogans included: 1, 2, 3, 4 – Occupation no more! 5, 6, 7, 8 – Israel is a terrorist⁷ state! Netanyahu, you can’t hide – We can see your genocide! There is only one solution – Intifada revolution! In our thousands and our millions⁸ – We are all Palestinians!

The “Ceasefire Now!” demand could be seen on some placards and heard on occasion but not as much as before. This slogan has come under some criticism as theoretically binding the Palestinians to cease resistance and leaving the Israeli army in possession wherever they are.

Despite the necessary problems caused to vehicular traffic, a horn blowing from a passing car or van called out often in solidarity to a cheer from the marchers in reply. In contrast to the early decades of the Irish state, the population has become overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian.

*Some appropriate decoration of the Irish Dept. of Foreign Affairs* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

A LONG MARCH

The route of the march followed the same as the previous Saturday’s but instead of stopping at the Dept. of Foreign Affairs, continued on eastwards and then into Merrion Square south where the rally was to be held but significant numbers had left without waiting for the speeches.

Eastward of there, many Garda vehicles could be seen in Merrion Street lower, probably in case people decided to bring to the Fine Gael party HQ their disgust at State collusion with Zionist genocide. Of course nowadays, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party HQs might feel the need for the same protection.

As people turned towards various destinations in the City Centre, to pick up their vehicles or to connect with public transport, most entered to proceed through the Merrion Square Park and, finding gates locked on to Merrion Square West road, headed for the next exit – but in vain.

All gates were locked until one, several hundred metres along Merrion Square North, finally allowed weary marchers to exit the park and turn west again towards the city centre. There was much much muttering about this deliberate inconveniencing of people in a public park.

Passing the corner of Merrion Square West, with the former home of the Wilde family on the right, a large Garda prisoner transport was parked at the corner with other police vehicles around and some Public Order Unit police standing around.

This march had been the 5^th weekend one in Dublin since the Israeli offensive, with a rally in the middle of each week also. And still the Israeli death-toll rises not just daily but by the hour. And still neither the UN Security Council nor EU will call for an end to the bombing.

And still the Israeli Embassy sits in Dublin with its staff free to spy and report on the population of the Irish State, even to insult the national feeling of solidarity and the President of the State for his comparatively mild demands that international law statutes be followed.

Indeed, those same rules, often violated by the western superpowers, lie now exposed in shreds and tatters in Palestine. If there ever was reason to believe in imperialist states ruling the world in common humanity, that belief too lies in tatters that cannot be stitched together again.

End.

*Front of march in O’Connell Street* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*Some trade union banners on the march* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

FOOTNOTES

1 The flag of the Irish Citizen Army, the first workers’ army in the world, formed to defend the workers from the attacks of the Dublin Metropolitan Police during the 1913 Lockout, who later fought in the 1916 Rising too.

2 Teachta Dála, Irish State equivalent to MPs (plural Teachtaí Dála).

3 The motions in Leinster House (seat of the Irish parliament) were defeated through the Coalition Government’s TDs voting for an amendment that pulled all the teeth from the original motions.

4 The SF party flags were absent from earlier demonstrations after their leadership stated they would not be calling for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador but once the leadership, no doubt facing a revolt of their members changed that position, they were out in force, some of them even stewarding the march. One wonders whether those members understand that the ICC has in a decade only tried 30 cases and convicted only ten, not one a state or an individual close allied with the Western powers.

5 Undoubtedly, more Irish Republicans participated as individuals or as members of local solidarity groups.

6 “Freedom for Palestine.”

7 A version occasionally heard substituted “fascist state” for the words “terrorist state”.

8 A different version heard that day called In our millions and our billions …

THE NEW WAILING WALL

On November 3, 2023December 1, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Creative writing, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Mass Media Criticism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

There’s a new Wailing Wall …
THERE’S A NEW WAILING WALL;
It’s in Gaza, and here mothers and fathers wail
at the bloody bodies of their children;
children wail at the bloody bodies of parents;
all wail over the bodies of friends and neighbours;
the wailing rises and the tears fall.

At this Wailing Wall …
AT THIS WAILING WALL,
we wail the mendacity of Israel and the West,
we wail the complicity of the media in the West;
while rockets, shells and bombs rained down upon us
the lies fell faster and thicker than rain,
a torrent of lies that never stopped.
To surge in flood over the bodies of our slain.

You come now with your flag of peace …
YOU COME NOW WITH YOUR FLAG OF PEACE
tramping along the bloodstained road
and up the mountain of our bones
and the rubble of our homes
and offer us business as before
or – bombardment once more.

Now that the bombs have stopped …
NOW THAT THE BOMBS HAVE STOPPED
we too stop and look around us:
our schools gutted and bloodstained,
mosques and hospitals in ruins,
so many of our buildings rubble,
or with gaping shell-holes,
in the hell-hole
you have made of Gaza.

We had so little and you destroyed so much.
WE HAD SO LITTLE AND YOU DESTROYED SO MUCH!

In the days to come, more will sicken and die,
of wounds on flesh and wounds on soul,
of lack of medicine, fuel or food
as even in pause you take your toll.

Many are numb, some try to forget …
MANY ARE NUMB, SOME TRY TO FORGET,
some try to live without forgetting,
but there is a begetting,
for in many hearts too,
your phosphorus flakes are snowing,
the embers of hate are glowing,
their machine guns and bombs are mowing
you and your children for generations to come.

Against your Goliath …
AGAINST YOUR GOLIATH,
our slingshots were of no use;
yes, God was with you –
he’s no longer Hebrew or English –
He’s American now;
you shot us down like fish
in the shooting barrel
you made of Gaza.

You wish us to recognise you?
YOU WISH US TO RECOGNISE YOU?
Of course we recognise you –
the imprint of your boots are upon our necks;
we carry them from cradle to the grave.

But we will never agree to accept
or agree that you should keep
what you have stolen and plundered
the land you have sundered
or that you can make us second-class
citizens in our own land.

While we struggle to endure …
WHILE WE STRUGGLE TO ENDURE
and to ensure
that you never defeat us
let it be that we do not learn to treat others
as you now treat us.

What did you learn from your oppressors?
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM YOUR OPPRESSORS?
If all you learned was how to also
do so much of what they did,
then truly have the six million died in vain
and you mock their memory by invoking them.

Diarmuid, Feabhra 2009

I began to write this just as the December 2008- January 2009 bombardment of Gaza by Israel was coming to an end and I rounded it off in February.

That was the one they called “Operation Cast Lead”, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly non-combatants, including 400 children and injured over 5,300 — again, mostly non-combatants.

I little thought that so few years later Israel would unleash an even worse bombardment upon the beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza, as it did in July 2014, during which it killed over 2,300, again mostly non-combatants and that time nearly 500 children.

The damage to infrastructure is colossal and the Israeli-Egyptian blockade makes significant repair impossible.

The commentary above was written in 2014. Apart from killing in raids, there were more massacres to come: March 2018, more than 700 Palestinian refugees killed at the borders of the Israeli state and in 2021, over 260 Palestinians killed after Zionist provocation at the Al Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem.

In August 2022, over 30 Palestinians, including women and children, killed in Israeli missile attacks and this year, by August, Israel had killed 172 Palestinians. Now, over October-November 2023, they have killed 133 Palestinians in the West Bank and over 9,000 in Gaza, including 3,760 children.

There is no question that this is genocide: “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”

“Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

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

Nor did that genocide begin in October this year, nor last year, nor the year before. It began in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel and has been continuing since.

end.

Should Israel be wiped off the face of the earth?

On November 1, 2023December 1, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, History, Human Rights, Imperialism, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis2 Comments

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh
(Reading time: 6 mins.)

28 October 2023

Changes in the Palestinian territories and Israel.

Occasionally in the “debates” on the Arab world and Palestine in particular statements are made that “they want to destroy Israel” as a criticism or “Israel has the right to exist” as if it were a human being.

The Left abandoned any discussion on the issue following the Oslo Accord where the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) surrendered and agreed to govern some Bantustans(1) in the name of peace.

The Palestinian “problem” was resolved through the half-measure of autonomy where the Palestinian Authority has less power than a small municipality anywhere in the world and the left replicated and took on as its own the right-liberal demand for Two States.

It is worth looking at the question of destroying Israel and its supposed right to exist. We should be clear though that no state has a right to exist. States exist because they exist, through force, popular support, or cunning and guile. States come and go.

In the 19th Century two states came into being, ten years apart, one being Italy through the struggles of Garibaldi and others and Germany, unified under Bismarck. These two states underwent various important changes in their nature, borders and ideological discourse on unity.

In the case of Italy (1861), the Papal States were reduced in size and a significant part of what we now call Italy belonged to Austria. It wasn’t until after the First World War that Italy came to have borders similar to what it now has and changed from a monarchy to a republic.

In the case of Germany, its borders waxed and waned throughout the 19th Century until unification under Bismarck in 1871. Later Hitler would expand them once again under the Third Reich or as it was officially called since 1871, the German Reich.

Following the Second World War, nobody argued that the Nazi state had a right to exist. It was partially dismantled. Poland recovered a part of its land, the Sudetenland, once again, became part of Checoslovakia, Austria recovered its independence.

The great racial nation of Germans was wiped off the face of the earth. The Allies divided the rest into four parts, with three of them becoming the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 and the other the German Democratic Republic, until 1991 when they were united.

Other states such as the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires also disappeared after the First World War.

These were not the only states to undergo dramatic change. There are more interesting examples from the anti-imperialist struggles. The Vietnamese guerrillas wiped off the face of the earth the reactionary (North American) state of South Vietnam.

The Algerian revolutionaries wiped off the face of the earth the French colonial department of Algeria and erected in its place the Republic of Algeria.

So, is the state of Israel immutable? Does it have a right to exist? Should that right be defended? It is easier to answer that question if we ask ourselves what defending that right means.

Israel’s existence is the theft of land, it is the Nakba, the displacement of 750,000 people in 1948. It is the invasion of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. It is also the current genocide the modern-day Nazis are trying to carry out in Gaza.

*Israeli destruction 31 October 2023 of Jabalia Refugee Camp, which was Gaza Strip’s largest of 8 camps. 150 were injured in this attack and 50 killed.* (Photo cred: *Anas al-Shareef/Reuter*s)

On that point, there are those who don’t propose to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, but rather to set up two states.

Amongst those who sometimes wave that flag is the USA and others who are more serious about it, such as Al Fatah, the dominant faction in what was the PLO, European liberals and the press.

There are also those who believe it is a pragmatic solution, but they are usually people who ignore the question of class as a factor in the Arab world.

Two states means acknowledging and accepting the invasion of 1948, the Nakba, the systematic theft, murder and torture. It also means not accepting the right of return of those displaced in 1948 i.e. to accept and reward the mass violation of the human rights of the Palestinian people.

It was worth recalling that the PLO and the various organisations that formed part of it were founded before the 1967 war, so propose two states is to propose the Zionist victory over the territory stolen in 1948.

It is to accept that if you commit mass human rights violations and crimes against humanity, the solution is to commit even more, so that some liberal or former leftist can come along and say we have to accept some degree of crime and blood.

So, what is the solution? It is not easy, though it is simple, at least conceptually. It is the historic Palestinian demand of One State. The Palestinians themselves proposed this from the word go, knowing that it brought up the problem of what to do with the Jews who had arrived.

One of the old factions of the PLO stated:

However, the DFLP had come to a premature recognition that as well as the Palestinian national question there was also a “Jewish question” which inevitably has to be resolved if one aims to reach a democratic solution to the conflict, emphasising that the resolution of the Jewish question was conditional on freeing itself from the zionist project and the necessary coexistence with the Palestinian Arabs on an equal footing under the slogan of a “Popular Democratic State” which would be built on the ruins of the State of Israel; but, how would this aim be achieved in the light of the overwhelming superiority of Israel and its firm commitment to North American Imperialism?

The answer is to be found in the “prolonged people’s war throughout the all Palestinian and Arab territories”.(2)

Such voices were, back then and continue to be, a minority, but what they say is true. Those millions of Arabs that have come out on to the streets to protest against the Zionist regime face various enemies, one of them being their own bourgeoisies, the Arab states that have betrayed the Palestinian people time and again.

However, a Pan-Arabist revolution is a far way off but not impossible. None of the Arab regimes are progressive and they exist because they repress their own people, their own working class. But what would happen to the Jews who lived in the new state?

Well, many of them, Netanyahu style Nazis would flee to the USA alongside the Yanks that have arrived in recent decades, those from Western Europe, and the Ukrainians, amongst others. Something similar happened with whites when the racist apartheid regime in Rhodesia was overthrown in 1979.

The white population fell from 240,000 to 28,000 now. In Algeria a million Pieds-Noirs fled. Others, those that descend from families that have been in the region for centuries will stay, others will have to negotiate their future in the new state.

But not an inch can be given on the right of return of ALL the Palestinians, not only to the country, but also to their farms, olive and lemon fields, their rural and urban houses in the whole country.

So, should Israel be wiped off the face of the earth? Of course it should, and a new Palestinian secular democratic state should be built on the ruins of Zionism and Apartheid. The Arab states and elites should also be wiped off the face of the earth.

Later the war criminals and those responsible for crimes against humanity will have to be tried. The Zionists rightly put the German Nazi Adolf Eichmann in the dock. It was an act of justice.

Now the Palestinians and the rest of us have to put Nethanyahu and the other criminals in the dock, perhaps with the same consequences.

Though whether they spend the rest of their miserable lives in prison or they go to the gallows may be up for discussion, what is beyond debate is whether they should be tried for crimes against humanity. They should be tried as such.

Long live Palestine Free and United!

Notes

(1) The Bantustans were segregated zones set aside for blacks in South Africa under Apartheid. They were supposedly independent from the regime but in reality had no autonomy. They were governed by black “leaders” that supported the regime, or at least were not very critical in the same way as the Palestinian Authority.

(2) F. Suleiman, (n/d), La Izquierda Palestina Revolucionaria: Tres décadas de exp eriencia de lucha (1969-1999), FDLP http://www.fdlpalestina.org/index.htm

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THE RIGHT TO DEFENCE

On October 27, 2023October 28, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, History, Human Rights, Imperialism, Israeli Zionism, Mass Media Criticism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Zionism1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Israel is justifying its bombardment of Gaza as the right to defend the state, effectively in the right to take revenge, with which the western states are in agreement.

Leaving aside the question of whether bombing homes, bakeries, markets and hospitals constitutes ‘defence’, what should we think about the right of a state to defend itself as a principle?

It seems natural that every state should have the right to defend itself; perhaps that right is extrapolated from the generally-agreed right of the individual to self-defence. In bourgeois law, the need to defend oneself can be a valid legal defence even against a murder charge.

The individual is generally understood to have the right of self-defence particularly in their home but also in public places. However, it is important to note that this right, even in bourgeois law, is not considered valid in every conceivable case.

For example, the right of one individual to use violence in their defence can be cancelled by the right of their victim to self-defence if the latter is being seriously harmed by the former, so that violence by the victim might be considered a reasonable response in their own self-defence.

People carrying out a robbery or kidnapping, to take another instance, are not considered to have the right to use violence if attacked in the course of the robbery by the victim or by security forces or even a passer-by.

Proceeding to the question of the rights of states to defence, we might say that the UK had the right to defend itself from Nazi attack during WWII and certainly so did the USSR, so too later with the rights of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from the USA’s invasions and bombings in the 1970s.

But did the Cambodian state have the right to defend itself from Vietnamese invasion when the Pol Pot regime was carrying out mass exterminations of sections of its population? Or the did the states of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy have the right to defence against the Allied forces?

Continuing in consideration of the right of a state to defence, how does that go when the attack comes from within the territory of the state itself?

Most Irish and democratic people outside would probably deny that the English Crown had the right to defend itself against the Irish rebellions of the clans (1167-1690s) or of the United Irish republicans, or against the Fenian insurrections, the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence (1919-1921).

Similarly, most would deny the right of the English or French monarchies to defend themselves against the internal republican uprisings of 1649 and 1789, respectively.

When the “internal” force attacking is a nation, then national rights of self-determination counter and supersede the rights of the state to self-defence. The case of the United Irishmen has already been noted but slave colony Haiti and colonial Algeria against France could be listed there too.

ISRAEL

The Israeli State is a colonial regime sitting on the Palestinian people’s land. It is in addition a state which is deeply religiously sectarian on the basis of Judaeism, in a sense which is far more racial than it is religious and, in many cases, may have no religious aspect at all.

Being able to claim Jewish descent is the qualification for Israeli citizenship, not religious practice or even belief. As for the Palestinians, whether Muslim or Christian, Arab or Berber, they are ‘other’, second-class or even third-class at best.

Third-class because the Ashkenazi Jewish colonists discriminate against other Jews too, for example the Ethiopian (because many are black), the Sephardic and Mizrahi (because they are not Ashkenazi). They will all speak Hebrew now but many additional languages are spoken too.

The Zionist trend in the Jewish world insisting that Jews had a right to a state of their own on a land of their own, even if some other people already lived there, was a minority trend among Jews until fairly recently, though it gained dominance in the West over years after the establishment of Israel.

Indeed there are sections of Jewish society that consider the creation of a Jewish state to be contrary to the teachings of the Torah. But as observed earlier, Zionism is not really about religion.

The establishment of the Zionist state was achieved at the price of the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians, the imposition of racist and sectarian laws, apartheid, massacres,¹ oppression of the Palestinians and repression of their resistance.

The story of the state of Israel in the land of Palestine until now can be characterised by two images: the murder of Palestinian people along with the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 as the Zionist state came into being – and the genocidal bombing of Gaza these three weeks.

As of some hours ago, over 7,000 Palestinians have been killed in the past three weeks – including nearly 3,000 children.

*Medical staff in Gaza treating children and woman injured by Israeli bombing, uploaded 26 October.* (Source image: *Al Jazeera*)

There are many ways to kill, including despair, lack of or obstruction to medical treatment or access to good water and food. But from 1948 to 2021 (i.e excluding the killings since then and this year’s), well over 20,000 Palestinian civilians have been directly killed by the Israeli state’s military and settlers.

To claim that “Israel has the right to defence” is to say that all those things are justified and must be defended, must be perpetuated, that we must be complicit in it and that the best we can do is to ask Israel to practice its racism, colonialism, oppression and repression somewhat more gently.

*Israeli bombing wide-scale destruction of Gaza, October 2023* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Israel – which is to say the Zionist project — has absolutely no right to defence.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1When hostilities erupted in 1948, the villagers of Deir Yassin and those of the nearby Jewish village of Giv’at Shaul signed a pact, later approved at Haganah headquarters, to maintain their good relations, exchange information on movement of outsiders through village territory, and ensure the safety of vehicles from the village. The inhabitants of Deir Yassin upheld the agreement scrupulously, resisting infiltration by Arab irregulars. Though this was known to the Irgun and Lehi forces, they attacked the village on April 9, 1948. The assault was beaten off initially, with the attackers suffering 40 wounded. Only the intervention of a Palmach unit, using mortars,[20] allowed them to occupy the village. Houses were blown up with people inside and people shot: 107 villagers, including women and children, were killed. The survivors were loaded on trucks that were driven through Jerusalem in a victory parade,[19][21] with some sources describing further violence by Lehi soldiers.[22] Four Irgun or Lehi men were killed.[23] The incident became known as the Deir Yassin massacre.

On April 10, 1948, one day after the Deir Yassin massacre, Albert Einstein wrote a critical letter to the American Friends of Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (the U.S chapter of Lehi) refusing to assist them with aid or support to raise money for their cause in Palestine.[24][25] On December 2, 1948, many prominent American Jews signed and published an op-ed article in The New York Times critical of Menachem Begin and the massacre at Deir Yassin. (Wikipedia)

SOURCES

Click to access JVP-Jews-of-the-middle-east-fact-sheet.pdf

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

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/27/israeli-air-strikes-kill-dozens-in-gaza-overnight-palestinian-sources-say