Clive Sulish
Amidst the horror of the daily zionist genocide of Palestinians, actively aided or condoned by the western states, it is easy to feel helpless (although there is always something we can do) and despondent. We offer this from the Electronic Intifada as an antidote.
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 4 mins.)
If we truly want to help the Palestinians, we need to stop calling for a “ceasefire” and also stop calling for implementation of the “two state” option.
A ceasefire is a temporary measure agreed between or imposed on all the belligerents in an armed conflict and indeed the Irish word for it, sos comhraic, conveys that perfectly: “a break/ rest during conflict”.
The Israeli attack on Gaza is nothing like an armed conflict between two sides that are in any kind of balance: the Palestinians have no air force, no navy and only a guerrilla resistance. And overwhelmingly, in their thousands, it is Palestinian civilians who are being targeted.
Nor is there any question about the justice of competing claims: the Palestinians are the indigenous people on the land for centuries1 whilst the Israeli state is a European colonial occupation of Palestinian land, practicing genocide upon the indigenous people and backed by imperialism.
If what we want is to save lives, in particular civilian lives, we want the Israeli State to stop bombing the Palestinians by bombs and missiles, right? So surely the most accurate and least mixed messages demand would be “Stop the bombing! Now!”?
No ambivalence there at all.
But if we only want a temporary ceasefire so some food and medicine can be delivered to people who will be killed in the following days, well then “Ceasefire now!” is the one for us.
Or if we think the two sides are evenly balanced militarily, or we’re confused about whose cause is just and don’t necessarily think the Palestinians have the right to wage armed struggle against an armed occupier, well then “Ceasefire now!” by all means.
And if we think the Palestinians don’t have the right to resist invasion and occupation, then we can demand the contradictory “permanent ceasefire now” which is a binding on both the occupied and the occupier.2
So, as an endgame, what about the “two state option”? The rulers of most of the Middle Eastern Arab states support it, as do the leaders of the USA, China, UK and all the EU States.3 And so does the Al Fatah organisation, which runs the Palestinian Government.4
Well yes, but most Palestinians don’t! And at least a sizeable chunk of Israelis don’t either.5 It is the only “solution” being proposed by most commentators and is in complete contradiction to the only real solution, which is a unitary democratic state with right to return of Palestinian refugees.
“Well, that’s a non-starter!” we might be told. “The rulers of Israel will never agree to that. Nor will the rulers of the USA, UK and EU states.” The implication there is that they, rather than the Palestinians, are the ones who can set the red lines.
And if we outside Palestine promote this option, we are saying that colonial occupation and genocide is OK. Presumably the next step would be to condemn the “dissidents” who are “rejecting peace”, even though those “dissidents”, political and military, represent the majority view.
And we’d be saying that the Palestinians should be glad to accept less than 40% of their land, the worst of it with the least water and under Zionist guns forever.
It also happens to be unworkable, with the thousands of Zionist settlers who have “illegally” occupied the territory. But making much of that factor is a mistake since firstly it is not the point and secondly can give rise to pointless and unprincipled discussion about how to make it viable.6
But of course, this discussion is about slogans, which are important in pointing out direction. But they are also, as the Irish language origin of the word7 suggests, a call to action. And if we want to help Palestine, we must act – and continue in effective actions.
STOP THE BOMBING – NOW! END THE OCCUPATION – NOW!
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA – PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
End.
FOOTNOTES
1The Palestinian population before the founding of the Zionist state, even with Zionist-organised immigration, was less that 10% Jewish, with smaller percentages of Christian etc, the vast majority Muslim. They were mostly Arab with smaller groups of Berber.
2Although as we have seen, no power currently on Earth is capable – or in cases of capability, such as the EU and USA, willing – to force the Israeli Zionists to stick to any agreement.
3And Varadkar, the Prime Minister of the Irish state, has been flogging that hard of late: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/very-clear-majority-but-not-unanimity-in-eu-for-gaza-ceasefire-varadkar-1565330.html
4The most popular resistance organisations in Palestine were the secular ones, Al Fatah first and PFLP second. Al Fatah jumped at the ‘two state’ proposal which gave them, through the Palestine National Authority, their own government to run, funded by the EU and USA with greater opportunities for corruption. Their corruption and collusion with Israel was so pronounced that in the 2006 elections, Hamas got most votes and seats, ruling Gaza as a result but not the West Bank, despite their majority. There have been no elections since but funds are still flowing in to the PNA and Al Fatah.
5Most Israelis perhaps for different reasons than those of the Palestinians who reject it.
6Hence complicit politicians raising the issue of the “illegal settlers” in the West Bank (as though the other settlers are entitled), both to look like they are doing something, at least but also fundamentally to seem to make the two-state proposal viable.https://www.irishnews.com/news/ireland/martin-urges-tough-sanctions-on-extremist-west-bank-settlers-if-violence-goes-on-HUHM4I33YNOV5DPGX3V6VJIDOU/ and https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-41294251.html
7The word “slogan” is derived from slua-ghairm in the Irish language, i.e “call to the multitude/ crowd/ troop”.
SOURCES
Two-State proposal from Ireland: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/very-clear-majority-but-not-unanimity-in-eu-for-gaza-ceasefire-varadkar-1565330.html
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-41294251.html
Two-State proposal from Palestinians & Israelis: https://news.gallup.com/poll/512828/palestinians-lack-faith-biden-two-state-solution.aspx
News & Views No. 12 Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 4 mins.)
“The President and I will not hesitate to take necessary action to defend the United States, our troops and our interests. There is no higher priority.”
“While we do not seek to escalate conflict in the region, we are committed and fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities.”
Those were the reported words of USA Defence (sic) Secretary Lloyd Austin to the mass media after US President Biden announced an air strike against a sovereign country,1 Syria on three sites on Tuesday, killing people.
Austin’s words, though lightly coded are quite revealing. Rereading slightly, they will not hesitate to take action they consider necessary to defend (or to further) the imperialist strategic and economic interests of the United States or their imperialist troops.
While they do not wish to – and recognise the dangers – if they escalate conflict in the region, they are committed and fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect their interests and their imperialist facilities.
The logic is purely that of imperialism and colonialism: They take an economic or strategic interest in an area, place their troops there and then, if those troops are resisted, they have the ‘right’ to strike back (the same “right of defence” claimed by the European zionist settler Israel).
The reporting throws up a whole smokescreen then, hiding the scarcely disguised real meaning of those words and going on to provide a heavily-propagandised “context and background” to the incident. However, let’s reorganise it a little for greater accuracy:
Thousands of US imperialist troops are in occupied Iraq repressing resistance along with training the country’s forces and combating remnants of the Islamic State group, as well as hundreds in sovereign state Syria.
They were in Syria partly combatting Islamic State and partly engaged in trying to overthrow the Assad regime to install their own puppet.
“There is no higher priority”
This is another very revealing statement. Saving the human race from catastrophic collapse of civilisation? Not a priority and in fact the US is a major contributor to global warming. Ending the suffering of the Palestinians? Not a priority. Avoiding the danger of world war? Not a priority either.
Even for the US internally, resolving their social, economic and political crises? No, not a priority. What IS a priority for the leaders of the US financial-industrial-military complex is increasing their profits and protecting their imperialist gains across the globe.
The latest attack on US troops follows months of escalating threats and actions against American forces in the region since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, which sparked the devastating war in Gaza, the report says.
But if the “attack on Israel on October 7th … “sparked the … war in Gaza”, what “sparked” the Palestinian attack? What has “sparked” every act of Palestinian resistance back through the periodic Israeli genocidal bombing campaigns right back to the colonisation of Palestinian land?
And the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians as the State of Israel was being created?
But not only are the Palestinians to blame, apparently but so also is Iran – anybody except the imperialist actions of the USA and the genocidal acts of the Zionist settler state!
The US has blamed Iran, which has funded and trained Hamas, for the rising violence by a network of proxy groups across the region, including attacks by Yemen’s Houthis against commercial and military vessels thorough a critical shipping choke point in the Red Sea.
Yes, a strategically vulnerable geographical area overlooked by Western imperialism!
The clashes put the government of Iraqi prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in a delicate position – yes, since he is running a coalition government of parties in part supported by Iran but overall a puppet of and under occupation of western imperialism.
It is a difficult circus act to ride two horses and in a statement on Tuesday, Mr Sudani (Premier of the puppet government) condemned both the militia attack in Irbil and the US response. Mr Sudani said some of those injured in the strikes were civilians.
Ah, civilians – who cares about them? Oh but remember the screams of outrage that the Palestinian operation on October 7th had “attacked Israeli civilians”? Before and since then, the Israeli Zionist state has amply demonstrated how much it cares for civilians, as have its imperialist supporters.
Available statistics show that in the current Israeli war on Gaza and on the West Bank, the Israeli state has killed 20,424 Palestinians, of which over one-third were women and children or, in other words, indisputably civilians. With thousands more buried under rubble.
And no doubt a huge proportion of the adult males, apart from the paramedics, doctors, writers and reporters killed by Israel were also civilians. And the killing goes on, in addition now to starvation.
Instead of passively swallowing the imperialist propaganda in the mainstream western media – or raging at it – it is sometimes useful to reorganise its sentences to reflect something closer to reality, the reality of imperialism in our world and to resistance against it.
End.
Source
Footnote
1The point with mentioning “a sovereign country” is that the USA and other imperialist states make much of those words when action is taken against a state it favours but, as their practice shows repeatedly, they have no difficulty with attacking or even invading sovereign countries that go sufficiently against the imperialist states’ interests.
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.
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
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.
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 …
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.
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 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.
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/
2https://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)
6https://www.raialyoum.com/israel-isnt-winning/
7See link in Sources.
Sources
Statistics dead and wounded Palestinians: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/12/how-are-gaza-casualty-updates-affected-by-israeli-attacks-on-hospitals
IOF casualties: https://www.raialyoum.com/israel-isnt-winning/
ICC Prosecutor pro-Israel: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/12/9/alarming-palestinians-accuse-icc-prosecutor-of-bias-after-israel-visit
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).
Is this truly what the Palestinians and billions of people around the globe want? No, we all want a permanent end to the bombing of Palestinians – nothing less!
The argument might run that “Surely even a temporary ceasefire brings some relief to the Palestinians, allows emergency supplies to reach them, release of hostages from both sides?” Well sure but can we not call for something better?
There is another problem with the calls for a ‘ceasefire’, which is that it seeks to impose a restriction on both sides and makes both appear as equally — or at least to some degree – the source of the problem. But the Zionists are guilty of occupation, Palestinians of nothing except resistance.
Nor are the two equally-balanced sides: the 4th larges military power against guerrillas and civilians. And do we have the right to call on the Palestinians to cease military resistance operations? Do we even want to? Do we want the IOF to remain in control of even their limited military gains?
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?
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.
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/
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 02 November 2023
Richard O’ Rawe’s Stakeknife’s Dirty War is a timely book, coming as it does after the death, or supposed death of Stakeknife in England and what looks like a thwarting of the intent and findings of Boutcher’s Kenova Inquiry into the affair.
It is now accepted by all that IRA Volunteer Scappaticci was also the British agent known as Stakeknife.
O’Rawe had access to IRA volunteers and former intelligence operatives and weaves together aspects of Scappaticci’s life and role into a narrative that is convincing and despite the nature of the subject matter, torture, murder and betrayal it is an easy read.
O’Rawe also introduces us to Scappaticci the person. The person however, isn’t any more likeable than the British agent, torturer and murderer. In fact, it would seem they are flip sides of the same coin. Scappaticci was an industrious character, always on the make, running private tax scams.
He was used to money long before he became a paid British agent. His fortune earned from murders on behalf of the British and the IRA, though the IRA weren’t giving him anything like the sum the British did, is estimated to be in the region of a million pounds in pay-outs.
He also had various properties. Scappaticci was also a lowlife thug long before the British and the IRA gave him carte blanche to murder and torture his way through republican ranks. Some of things he did, had he not been in the IRA would have led to him being kneecapped by the IRA.
A man called Collins made the mistake of publicly calling the area in Twinbrook in which Scappaticci lived ‘Provie Corner’. Scappaticci did not like that and decided that Collins had to pay for his transgression.
He knocked on Collins’ door and, when it was answered, the informer battered the older man multiple times over the head with a sock containing a brick. Only when Collins collapsed did Scappaticci walk away.
This is the type of low life thuggish behaviour that the IRA was willing to tolerate and perhaps even encourage from people like Scappaticci. In a genuinely political movement, a thug like Scappaticci would have been out on his ear. But not in the IRA nor in Sinn Féin.
He was, to paraphrase the Yanks when talking about the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza, “he may be a son of a bitch, but he is our son of a bitch”, though in this case it would seem that not only was he theirs he had just the qualities that both the IRA and the British valued, ruthless thuggish qualities.
Scappaticci the person and agent are intimately related it would seem though O’Rawe doesn’t explicitly say so. He does however, give us ample material with which to draw that conclusion.
One of the issues never dealt with it in the press and not really fully covered here is what type of organisation recruits, tolerates and promotes such people. He was a reprobate who should never have graced the ranks of the IRA. That he did so, is down to Adams and co.
That is also clear from the book. It is not an aspersion on Adams or on McGuinness either to question their role.
The latter of the two comes in for some questioning in the book regarding his role and O’Rawe goes into some detail and also explains in the epilogue that before beginning his research he was unaware of the level of unease amongst republicans about McGuinness’ trustworthiness.
Though he does point out earlier that if McGuinness was a tout, why was it necessary for the British to have a spy such as Willie Carlin get close to him. The same could also be said of Adams.
The British had an agent, Denis Donaldson, whispering sweet nothings in Adam’s ear over many years, shaping Adam’s view of the world and reporting back to the British how successful he had been in his endeavours.
The Peace Process, in that regard, was partially the result of what ideas the British planted in Adam’s and McGuinness’ minds through their various agents. However, it does seem unlikely either of them were touts in the classical sense of the word.
They didn’t need to be, they were at a different level. They were both on the same side as Scappaticci in winding down the war, they just had different methods of going about it.
It is possible that at some stage they had dealings with the British security services in pursuit of common aims. O’ Rawe is not the first to question McGuinness either.
Ed Moloney has put forward the idea that the reprehensible proxy bombs that provoked so much revulsion were signed off on, precisely because they would strengthen the hands of those who sought to wind up the war.
O’Rawe gives many examples of what Scappaticci and the other British agents in the Internal Security Unit did. It wasn’t limited to executing alleged informers or those the British thought should be removed for various reasons under the guise of them being informers.
They were also in a position to give information on operations which led to the British either arresting or killing the Volunteers involved. The book opens with an account of one such operation, where fortunately they were able to pull back from it without the planned British ambush going ahead.
There were of course other incidents, one of them being Loughall where the British ambushed an entire unit of the IRA. Scappaticci and his ilk did great harm to the IRA, but they were not the reason the IRA lost the war, and O’Rawe doesn’t argue it was either.
However, others have made this point. But the IRA was never going to win the war, they weren’t going to outgun the Brits ever.
Another part of the problem of course, is related to Scappaticci. A movement so highly infiltrated would always have problems, but it is telling of the political weakness of the IRA and Sinn Féin that a thug like Scappaticci could rise through the ranks and remain at the top for so long.
That says more about their weaknesses, than anything else.
That Denis Donaldson, a British agent was the chief advisor to the IRA and Sinn Féin on strategy, for so long, shaping policy, whilst Scappaticci weeded out of the ranks anyone who would oppose it, says more about the weakness of republican politics than whether operations went ahead or not.
O’Rawe, however, is more interested in what happened and who bears responsibility for it.
He is quite clear that the IRA are to blame and is equally clear that those in the intelligence services who allowed Scappaticci and other British agents in the ISU to murder their way through republican ranks are also to blame.
He is not wrong in that, Danny Morrison described Scappaticci as Number 10’s murderer(1) and that he was, he was also the IRA and Sinn Féin’s murderer.
Adam’s infamously justified in a blasé fashion the IRA murder of alleged informer Charles McIlmurray in 1987 when he said that “like anyone else living in West Belfast [he] knows the consequence for informing is death.”(2)
Neither the British, the IRA, Sinn Féin and Gerry Adams in particular, get to wash their hands of the affair.
This book is an important contribution to uncovering the truth of Troubles, one which will neither please Sinn Féin nor the British and Irish governments written from the perspective of a former IRA volunteer.
It deserves to be read and kept on the book shelf as the issue is not going away any time soon.
end.
Notes
(1) Morrison, D. (30/01/2016) No 10’s Murderer – Scap https://www.dannymorrison.com/the-times-of-no-10s-main-murderer/
(2) See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kwrj6Ku9ZU
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 7 mins.)
We understand the pressure under which news media organisations are under and how easy it is to lapse into descriptions that have become common usage in the profession and so have issued this guide to greater accuracy.
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Israel-Hamas war
OUR CORRECTION
Israel-Palestinian war1
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Hamas-controlled/ Hamas takeover
OUR CORRECTION
Palestinian elected government2
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Palestinian militant
OUR CORRECTION
Palestinian
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Hamas/ Palestinian terrorist
OUR CORRECTION
Hamas/ Palestinian freedom fighter
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Hamas rampage into Israel
OUR CORRECTION
Hamas breakthrough into Israeli-controlled territory
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Israel bombardment of Gaza in response to Hamas attack on October 7th
OUR CORRECTION
Israeli attack on Gaza in response to Palestinian response to 75 years of oppression, murders and massacres, including well over 200 Palestinians killed by August this year.3
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Palestinian attack on Israel
OUR CORRECTION
see above
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Israeli civilians
OUR CORRECTION
Israeli armed settlers, military reservists – and civilians
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Hamas hostages
OUR CORRECTION
prisoners of Hamas
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Palestinian prisoners
OUR CORRECTION
Hostages of Israel4
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
two-state solution
OUR CORRECTION
ridiculous Palestinian ‘Bantustan’ proposal
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
IDF (Israeli Defence Force)
OUR CORRECTION
IOF (Israeli Occupation Force)
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Israeli security forces
OUR CORRECTION
Israeli repression forces
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
“International community”
OUR CORRECTION
Most capitalist imperialist states around the world
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Israel’s right to defence
OUR CORRECTION
Right of the Zionists to occupy land, massacre and terrorise the inhabitants, treat them as third-class citizens and massacre and terrorise again if they resist.
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Palestinians were killed/ Hamas killed Israelis
OUR CORRECTION
Israel killed Palestinians/ Hamas killed Israelis
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Jewish state
OUR CORRECTION
Zionist state
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Illegally-occupied lands outside Israel
OUR CORRECTION
Part of unjustly-occupied whole of Palestine
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Contested attribution of bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza
OUR CORRECTION
Israeli bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza5 after telling hospitals to evacuate
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Uncertainty around accuracy of Palestinian casualty figures
OUR CORRECTION
Absolute accuracy of Palestinian casualty figures, accepted by a wide section of international organisations including bodies of the United Nations.
FOOTNOTES
1We’re aware that the term “war” often brings to mind the air forces, armies and navies of two states in conflict and that the Palestinians have neither air force nor navy and that their army is collectively composed of guerrilla groups. Nevertheless, for convenience and in the tradition of naming armed long conflicts of liberation “wars” we consider the term useable in this context.
2Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Elections throughout the territory – not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank. Al Fatah did not accept the results and tried to stage an armed coup in Gaza and in a short and brutal struggle were defeated by Hamas which, however left the West Bank in more-or-less Fatah hands. The then-Fatah choice for President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, remained in power and has not authorised elections since. The PA has a huge number of security personnel (over 80,000) widely regarded as brutal, repressive and colluding with the Israeli regime against Palestinians.
3The massacres by Zionist militias forced 700,000 Palestinians out of Palestine in 1948 as the State of Israel was being founded. Since then, in regular raids, massacres and bombardments, Israel had killed an estimated 65,000 Palestinians just up to 2021, after which there have been a number of bombardments of Gaza and raids into the West Bank at intervals with thousands more deaths in total. The vast majority of those `Palestinian deaths have been and continue to be those of civilians, over half of women and children, the latter over one-third.
4At the end of June 2023, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) was holding 4,499 Palestinians in detention or in prison on what it defined “security” grounds. According to recent reports, since the attack on Gaza, that number has doubled.
5For a detailed analysis both of type of Palestinian rockets and Israeli bombs re. explosion and past history https://youtu.be/7DhDKy7vARM?si=C6MWmywbFF-oNxaR
SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_casualties_of_war
https://www.btselem.org/statistics/detainees_and_prisoners
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 5 mins.)
As smoke rose over the homes and shops of Gaza, an unseasonal October brought sunshine on to the streets of Dublin city centre and the crowds with Palestinian flags outside Leinster House, the home of the parliament of the Irish State.
As the sound of explosions, wailing of ambulances and of people rang around the streets of Gaza, the call-and-answer of solidarity rang out in Kildare Street: In our hundreds, in our millions – We are all Palestinians! From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free!
The Dublin rally was one of a number of Palestine solidarity events organised in Ireland after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas’ military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades on Saturday and the Zionist State’s bombardment of civilian structures and people in Gaza.
The Zionist State, which also controls Palestine’s water supply to Gaza, as well as exit from and entry to the enclave, has cut off water and electrical power as well as barred entry to everything including food, medicine and heating gas.
The Dublin rally was called at very short notice by the Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM), a broad front organisation formed by the People Before Profit party around 2003 to oppose the imperialist war against Iraq waged by the Coalition of states led by the USA.1
A branch of the Student’s Union of Ireland also supported the rally, which had a high percentage of Middle Eastern people present, presumably mostly Palestinians. The flags in evidence were mostly national Palestinian, some of the PFLP,2 a couple of Starry Ploughs and one Tricolour.3
Speakers from the Palestinian community, IAWM and PBP condemned the decades of attacks by the Israeli state on the Palestinians in general and on those in the Gaza enclave in particular, going back to the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians4 as the Zionist state was founded in 1948.
Richard Boyd-Barret TD (PBP) spoke as did also Ibrahim Halawa from Dublin, who was a prisoner of the Egyptian regime for four years without trial. Halawa said that awareness-raising and education served the ignorant but that action is required from those who know the real situation.
Some of the orators spoke about the right to resistance of the Palestinians, some about being against killing and war (but blaming the Zionist state for causing it), some about the plight of the Palestinian civilians, particularly in Gaza and one referred to the thousands of political prisoners.
MIND THE LANGUAGE!
A number of speakers referred to the “International Community” and when one listens to them in context it becomes clear that this imagined “community” is one of capitalism and imperialism.
It is not the community of workers, much less the community of people struggling for freedom. In Ireland, the overwhelming majority of people have over decades seen through the Zionist propaganda and switched from being pro-Israeli State to being pro-Palestinian.
We should take more care with the words we use lest we reinforce capitalist-imperialist dominance in the world of concepts in addition to their dominance over the physical world. Another trap is the term “illegal” and Boyd-Barret used it in reference to Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine.
Who makes the international laws by which something is ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’? It is of course the imperialists who do so on the international scale while the capitalists define legality within their states; by their standards the actions of Israeli Zionism are lawful but of Palestinians, illegal.
All the speeches and all the slogans chanted were in English, as were the words on banners. I participated in some Irish conversation near where I was standing but saw only one placard in Irish. The fact that this is normal is part of the problem in this neo-colonial state.
Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, from an Irish speaking-family from Connemara and himself an Irish speaker, also spoke in English as he introduced the song he was about to sing, in the same language as the lyrics of Patrick Galvin’s Where Is Our James Connolly?
Eoghan is a PBP supporter and a fine singer, particularly in sean-nós5 style and has an amazing range. It was good to hear references to James Connolly at such a rally, something that all too rarely happens, nor is the flag of his Irish Citizen’s Army often seen at internationalist events either.6
CONDEMNATION IN COLLUSION, CONFUSION AND ILLUSION
The imperialist states that united in condemnation of the attack by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, were joined by leaders of neo-colonial states such as the Irish one. Naturally also by parties competing to lead the neo-colonial Executive, such as Sinn Féin.
Media reports noted Mary Lou Mac Donald’s condemnation of Hamas as a change in Sinn Féin policy7. Indeed it is such a change but is generally in line also with the party’s trajectory of presenting itself as a safe pair of hands for management of the neo-colonial state.
Mícheál Martin, Tánaiste (Vice-Premier), who earlier had condemned Hamas, stated that the Government’s position is to support the “two state solution”, more correctly “the two-state illusion” and this, if not already SF’s position on Palestine will no doubt soon be so.
This is the position of all the imperialist and capitalist states, also of social-democratic and liberal groups. It is worth taking a minute to look at this “solution” which in the first place was totally undesirable and which since conceived has been undermined by the Zionists themselves by their colonial expansion.
If it could even be implemented now it would leave the Palestinians with in reality a colonial-type Bantustan-status client of the Israeli Zionist state8, owning less than 40% of their land area and most of their good land and water taken by Zionist settlers.
In addition, their territory would be fragmented, linked by “corridors” through areas of Israeli dominance. In any case, as of 2021, in a poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research most Palestinians were against the two-state solution.9
Since this is not in the least a practicable solution, why does Mícheál Martin and Joe Biden, among many others10 keep saying it’s their preferred solution?
Biden, because it allows US imperialism to pretend that it supports some kind of solution other than total Zionist appropriation and expansion. Mr. Martin? For the same reason or just because his Gombeen class follows the world imperialism leader’s lead.
The only real solution, i.e the only one both just and capable of bringing peace, is the one that we hardly ever see or hear even mentioned: a secular republic with equal citizenship for all, return of refugees and reparations to the dispossessed Palestinians.
The Zionists will not accept the loss of their Zionist empire; US imperialism (and other imperialisms) won’t accept the loss of their only safe strategic foothold in the Middle East – free from the dangers of either Islamic fundamentalist or national liberationist revolution.
US imperialism, now sending an aircraft carrier against the Palestinian people who have neither air force nor navy, is the main financial and political prop supporting the Zionist state. But whatever they thought, I heard no speaker in Dublin call for the necessary defeat of US imperialism.
end.
FOOTNOTES
1The IAWM seems to have no permanent existence but can be revived in order to organise events such as today’s from time to time. There is nothing wrong with a party creating a broad front on a specific issue but when it is a front of the Party rather than a people’s front, it will of course suffer when the party’s activists, limited in number, are organising on other issues and cannot keep the ‘broad front’ going, much less expand it.
2The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular socialist organisation fighting for Palestinian national liberation; it has consistently been the 2nd-largest of the groups comprising the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
3The Starry Plough was the flag of the Irish Citizen Army, the first workers’ army in the world and usually signifies socialist Irish republicanism. The Plough painted in gold follows the shape of the Ursa Mayor constellation on a green background, the seven stars in white or silver. Another version appeared in the 1930s, the Ursa Mayor shape in white stars on a light blue background.
Obviously people carry Palestinian flags to show solidarity with Palestine but would it not be useful to carry Irish flags at such an event to demonstrate the solidarity of the Irish movements for national liberation and social progress with the corresponding movements in Palestine?
4That figure represented over half the pre-WWII Arab population (Muslim and Christian) of Palestine.
5Literally “old-style”, a traditional style of singing with ornamentation having a number of regional variations, nearly always unaccompanied and solo-voiced.
6James Connolly was a Scottish-Irish socialist revolutionary, writer, journalist, trade union organiser and historian, one of the Seven Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation, Dublin Commandant in the 1916 Rising, one of the 16 executed by British firing squads. He was a co-founder of the Irish Citizen Army to defend the strikers and locked-out workers in 1913 from vicious police attacks, the first workers’ army in the world, which also recruited women, some of whom were officers. The ICA fought alongside other progressive organisations in the Rising.
7And one which cut across the quoted posts of a number of the party’s TDs, including those of Chris Andrews (see Irish Times report in Sources).
8A real irony since Israel is a kind of colony, a state founded by Zionist settlers with imperial support.
9See Wikipedia entry
10Including China – a sad disillusionment for those who somehow still believe it to be a socialist state.
SOURCES
https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-10-09-23/index.html
News & Views No. 6 (Reading time: 4 mins.)
Original Breaking News article: DAVID YOUNG, PA (with commentary in italics by Diarmuid Breatnach)
The rededication of a memorial to the National Army soldiers killed in the Civil War enables their memory to be rehabilitated, a ceremony in Dublin has heard.
Defence Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Sean Clancy paid tribute to the some 810 soldiers killed serving on the Free State side in the 1922-2023 conflict as he addressed the event at Glasnevin Cemetery on Sunday.
Descendants of some of those who died, representative of all four provinces, were invited guests at the ceremony, among them relatives of Michael Collins, the commander in chief of the National Army who under direction by Churchill, gave the orders that began the Irish Civil War and who was killed in 1922.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tánaiste Micheál Martin, the leaders of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, the two main parties forged from the divisions of the Civil War, also attended the rededication of the National Army Monument.
Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy also attended the military commemoration, as did Dublin Lord Mayor Daithí de Róiste.
This neatly brought together political parties of the neo-colonial and neo-liberal Irish State with opposing histories: Varadkar to represent the pro-British and fascist neo-colonial origins of Fine Gael; Mícheál Martin and De Róiste representing Fianna Fáil, the allegedly Republican but in reality Irish Gombeen split from the previous iteration of Sinn Féin; Carthy for the current neo-colonial, neo-liberal and colonial servant Sinn Féin.
Prior to the ceremony, there was no monument in the country specifically dedicated to the soldiers of the National Army who fought against the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War.
Weeks after the war ended, on August 3rd, 1923, the Oireachtas passed legislation that led to the creation of the modern-day Defence Forces, Óglaigh na hÉireann. That is, the defence forces of the neo-colonial ruling class who created the Irish state.
The rededication event for the forgotten fallen of the National Army, which had already robbed the Irish language version name of the IRA, adopted the name Óglaigh na hÉireann during the Civil War, took place on the Sunday prior to the centenary of that date.
“It is appropriate then, in the spirit of real inclusiveness, of ethical remembering, and with a full desire to deal with some of the more uncomfortable aspects of our shared history, that we remember some of 810 uniformed members of Óglaigh na hÉireann who gave their lives in the service of the State during the tragic and critical period at the foundation of our democracy,” Lt Gen Clancy told the ceremony.
It is necessary, in order to bury any idea of achieving the Republic declared at the start of the 1916 Rising, that we honour some of the 810 men we recruited to bury that Republic in 1922, kitted out in uniforms, armed and transported by our ancient enemy. We wish to pass over quickly over not only the kidnappings, torture, murders, killing of disarmed prisoners and even sexual assaults by this fine body of men – the precursors to the current army of the Irish State – but also their terrorising of major part of the country with raids on homes and internment of men and women. Although this fine body of men were fighting to establish a neo-colony not even covering the whole of Ireland, we make no apology for calling them what they clearly were not, Óglaigh na hÉireann, i.e “Warriors of Ireland”.
“For far too long there has been no memorial of any kind, nor any complete listing of the National Army war dead.” Understandably.
“Indeed, this year represents perhaps the last real opportunity to rectify that.”
As we prepare to commit this armed force to NATO at some point in the future and to PESCO in the nearer future, it is important to take a further step in legitimising this armed force of the neo-colonial state.
The remains of some 180 of the 810 soldiers who died serving in the National Army are buried at the plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. Uncomfortably close to graves of many of their victims.
“Sources at the archives show that the average soldier buried here was in his early 20s, was unmarried and from a working-class background,” said Lt Gen Clancy. In other words, the typical recruitment profile of lower-rank soldiers in capitalist and imperialist armies.
“Many had previously served in the IRA during the War of Independence, some even in the 1916 rising, many others had served in the British Army, underlying yet again how complex is the weave of Irish history.”
Actually, “many” is a questionable though vague estimate of the numbers who had “served in the IRA during the War of Independence”, though some had, including some of the most vicious, such as Major-General Paddy Daly, torturer and murderer.
The chief of staff highlighted the “poignant example” of two young Belfast-born Dublin-raised brothers – Frederick (18) and Gerald McKenna (16) – who were buried in Glasnevin after being killed together in action in Cork in August 1922 only a month after joining the National Army.
Aye, two men born in Belfast, a city which the Free State was fighting to ensure remained a direct colony of the United Kingdom.
“Whatever the often very legitimate reasons our forebears may have had for forgetting in the intervening 100 years, I think it’s appropriate now that I as the 32nd Chief of Staff of Oglaigh na h Eireann should finally take this opportunity to rehabilitate their memory,” said Lt Gen Clancy.
Especially as I try to establish a legitimate background to the armed force of an illegitimate State preparing to enter foreign imperialist wars and suppression of legitimate uprisings.
After all, we have great experience in all that, as the history behind this monument shows.
End.
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
In all areas of endeavour and no less in revolutionary work it is essential to review our actions (and those of others) periodically in order that we may draw lessons to improve the success of future activity.
Irish history provides an abundance of material to revise.
The most recent period worthy of intensive review in my opinion is the three-decade war, mostly in the Six Counties but also having repercussions within the territory of the Irish State, in Britain and even further abroad.
An article in the July issue of An Phoblacht Abú1, monthly hard-copy newspaper of the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation, discusses the psychological and organisational problems arising from the way that three-decade struggle came to an end and its effects on the resistance movement.
That period in Ireland commenced with a struggle for democratic civil rights, not one of the demands of which were for more than was already well established in the rest of the ‘UK’. But it soon changed into a guerrilla war with huge numbers of political prisoners and jail struggles.
The movement experienced a number of splits and changes of leadership but for most of of the time it was led by the Provisional organisation’s leadership although changes took place inside its own leadership too.
The period ended with that leadership not only abandoning armed struggle but being coopted with its structures into joint management of the colonial occupation and preparing for joint management of the neo-colonial Irish state, a number of smaller splits in the movement a much disillusion.
The An Phoblacht Abú article concentrates on building or rebuilding trust in leadership through measures such as clear communication, discussion, organisational restructuring, collective solidarity, open discussion, transparent communication and education.
The article does not say this but in my opinion one of the basic educational needs is to acknowledge that in the circumstances, what happened was inevitable (and to consider how different circumstances might be constructed in future).
UNWINNABLE
It is essential in my view to acknowledge that the struggle, as it was waged, was bound to lose. Yes, unwinnable: an unassisted armed struggle against a world imperialist power fought primarily in one-fifth of our territory where the population is deeply divided – how could we think otherwise?
Clearly, the Provisional leadership did think otherwise. Assuming they were not insane or very stupid, on what could their belief have been based?
I can see only two rational possibilities:
1) They believed the British had no essential need to retain the 6-Co. Colony and would abandon it if put under enough pressure, or
2) that the Irish ruling class, through its government, would step in and join the struggle.
If they believed the first, their analysis was not historically-based. Since its invasion and occupation of Ireland in the mid-12th Century, the British ruling class has repeatedly gone to enormous efforts to suppress Irish self-determination.
When they had the opportunity to leave in 1921 they had cultivated a client bourgeoisie, then instigated a civil war and partitioned the land, leaving themselves a firm foothold in the country.
Their initial response to a call for simple civil rights in the late 1960s was violent suppression on the streets, abolition of habeas corpus and introduction of internment without trial – and army massacres.
If the previous lessons of history were not clear to the movement’s leadership, then those events up to 1972 should have made them crystal clear.
If the Republican leadership believed the Irish ruling class would step up, they failed to draw the lessons of history since at least 1921 and to understand the neo-colonial nature of the Gombeen class, amply illustrated in the preceding 50 years of the Irish State.
As embarked upon and fought, the war could not be won but a struggle was potentially winnable.
However, to have a chance of winning, the struggle would have to be over the whole 32 Counties. And to engage the maximum number of people, it would have to take up the social, cultural, economic and political deficits across the Irish state and across the colony.
The social rights of women and LBG2 people were widely-acknowledged deficit areas, yet the Republican movement did not seriously address them. Of course, doing so would have put the Movement in direct opposition to the Catholic Church hierarchy and its followers.
Why should that be a problem? Hadn’t the Hierarchy been pro-British occupation since the late 1800s3 and anti-Republican since the 1790s? Wasn’t it one of the cornerstones of the neo-colonial Irish State, its social prop and social control mechanism?
Yes but the problem was that some of the leadership themselves were in that ideological ambit and were in any case afraid to disaffect many of their followers. A natural fear, of course. Yet only in that way could the struggle go forward across the Irish state’s territory.
It was left to campaigners mostly outside the Republican Movement, including social democrats and liberals, to fight for the rights to contraception, divorce, equality for women, LGB rights. And later, to take on the huge institutional abuses of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
Those issues affected directly well over half the population of the Irish state and the the leadership lacked the interest or the courage4 to take part in their struggles, never mind lead them, which it left to mostly non-revolutionary leaderships.
There were many other issues that affected people in the 32 Counties which a revolutionary leadership could take up and, I would argue, should have taken up.
The latter includes emigration, rights of the Irish diaspora (particularly in Britain), foreign penetration of the Irish economy, foreign land ownership, housing shortage, industrial struggles, academic freedom, Irish language rights, Church control of education and the health service …
Some of those issues were taken up for a while by the movement in parts of the 26 Cos. prior to the split in the Republican Movement but were progressively dropped as the armed struggle in the 6 Cos. took off.
When years later the Provisional leadership got interested in social democratic reformism, they found they could hardly make any headway in the unions against the Labour Party and the remains of the Workers’ Party – because of the Provos’ earlier overwhelming neglect of that area of struggle.
SUMMARY
The struggle in the Six Counties could not be won precisely because it was primarily confined to that area and also one in which a powerful enemy had seduced a huge section of the population.
When the leadership acknowledged the unwinnability of the struggle as being waged, instead of changing their methods and aims of struggle to take in the whole 32 Cos, they decided on capitulation and getting the most possible out of it for themselves.
The leadership of the Republican movement was unwilling to widen the struggle because they believed that it was unnecessary to do so and/ or they were unwilling to overcome their own ideological indoctrination and/or lacked the courage to confront prejudices among their following.
Some of the social struggles have now been won or hugely progressed but without the leadership of the Republican Movement, in fact by leaderships of mostly reformist trends.
Due to leaving the industrial struggle to social democrats, the trade union movement has degenerated hugely and is in a poor state to take on any substantial economic or rights struggle, to say nothing of a revolutionary one.
The surviving Republican movement seems unwilling to acknowledge those historical facts and its failure thus far in leadership. Admission of the facts is necessary in order to commence to repair the movement and to prepare for a struggle with a prospect of success.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Page 9, entitled COMRADESHIP – GUARD AGAINST BETRAYAL; I intend to review the July issue of the newspaper separately some time soon.
2I have omitted the T from LGB because it is only comparatively recently that the transexual issue has gained wide acknowledgement, whereas the Gay, Lesbian and even Bi-Sexual issue were widely known about at the time under discussion.
3The Irish (settler) Parliament passed an act giving middle-class and higher Catholics the right to vote in 1793.
4Though no-one could fault their physical courage
rebelbreeze 