An estimated 10,000 people marched through Dublin city centre on Saturday in a national protest organised by CATU about homelessness, high rents, lack of public housing and the facilitation of property speculators by Irish Governments.
Groups from across Ireland attended the national march organised by the Community Action Tenants Union and without regard to the British Border around the Six-County occupied colony. They gathered at the Garden of Remembrance before marching towards Leinster House.
One of the housing groups that travelled to Dublin from the occupied Six Counties (Photo: D.Breatnach)
It was warm but not excessively so and the rain held off. The march ended with a rally in Molesworth Street, where Garda barricades prevent marchers from crossing the street to approach the gates of Leinster House, where the parliament of the Irish State sits.
In addition to drummers and also some singing, many chants could be heard: Homes for need – not for greed! What do we need? – Public housing; When do we need it? Now! When tenants are under attack? Stand up, fight back! (also something like: Get the landlords out of the Dáil!).
Among banners and flags of local area housing action groups and trade unions there were a great many Irish Tricolours in view; to see them being flown on a demonstration not of the Far-Right was a welcome sight. There were some Starry Ploughs and some red flags flying also.
It was good also to see the Irish language on some placards among the demonstrators. A notable feature was the high proportion of young people participating, many with their own home-made placards.
A certain species of vulture seems to have raised hostility in Ireland! (Photo: D.Breatnach)(Photo: D.Breatnach)Too Damn everything – except good! (Photo: D.Breatnach)
A lot of people were also in Dublin that afternoon for other events, including supporters of Gaelic Athletic Association county teams competing in Croke Park, in particular the Cork Vs Dublin teams in the Hurling Semi-Final. (Dublin getting that far surprised many but Cork beat them decisively).
A large anti-abortion demonstration also took place in the city centre, starting later than its advertised hours but immediately after the start of the CATU march. There are a range of attitudes on abortion but in general those campaigners like to project themselves as ‘pro-life’.
Some might comment that a pro-life cause would also include good housing for all – or to support the Palestinian people but generally the anti-abortion campaigners do not march in support of those, which is why they are often accused of being ‘pro-birth’ rather than ‘pro-life’.
Numbers of homeless single people and families with children rising annually passes 15,000 for the first time.
Out of 10,743 adults accessing emergency accommodation in March this year, 1,178 were under 24. In addition, 4,675 children were also using emergency accommodation.1 In January 134 individuals were counted sleeping on streets and in parks in the four Dublin areas, a 14% increase on 2024.2
In addition, the numbers of homeless does not include those sofa-surfing, awaiting eviction, in domestic violence refuges or unaccommodated refugees.
CATU’s list of demands points to the unfilled needs across a range of indicators and in itself is an indictment of the current state of affairs. In addition, the numbers of homeless has been rising annually and does not include those sofa-surfing, in violence refuges or unserviced refugees.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Prior to the march, CATU published a list of objectives and demands:
End child homelessness by 2026
Eviction ban North & South, Lower rents
Properly resource the Tenant In Situ scheme
End Direct Provision
Ban Vulture Funds
Build and maintain Public Housing – use public land
Build and resource culturally-appropriate Traveller Accommodation
Homes, not Holiday Lets
Build Communities of Care: education, community, addiction & mental health services now!
Front of the CATU march comes around from D’Olier Street while the rest of it is still coming down O’Connell St. (Photo: D.Breatnach)(Photo: D.Breatnach)
COMMENT – Housing Need and Action
It was an excellent turnout for CATU who are to be congratulated on their mobilisation and organisation around the country and in Dublin. The housing crisis is one of the great practical problems facing working people and a very big public housing program is the only solution.
However, the Irish neo-liberal ruling class are clearly wedded to housing provision by the private sector, with its soaring rents and mortgage payments resulting for many in sleeping on the street or living in hotels and hostels, not just single people but family groups with children too.
Housing marches and occasional symbolic occupations of buildings through the years have not changed the situation which worsens annually. The far-Right use the issue to target migrants who have not caused the crisis and even asylum seekers who cannot possibly have any effect on it.
Plentiful public housing is clearly the answer, rented according to the occupiers’ income. After the initial building cost, the rents will pay for maintenance, repairs, upgrades and even new buildings. And the construction program will provide much employment too.
Clearly a radical program of action will be needed to force the Irish ruling class to adopt a large public housing program. It does not require a revolution to achieve the change but it will almost certainly need the fear of one to move our rulers in the necessary direction.
In the 1960s and 1970s a number of housing schemes construction and renovation programs were won by the direct action of the Housing Action Committees of Dublin and Dún Laoghaire. The Committees included occupations in their program, alongside street rallies and marches.
Some years ago a small group called Revolutionary Housing League began a series of occupations of empty buildings, also refusing to give guarantees not to continue the actions when taken to court. They called for replication action on a wide scale along the same lines but that did not materialise.
Action of the kind up and down the country seems to be what is required and activists may be jailed before this ruling class is prepared to supply the basic human need of decent and affordable housing for the working people. It remains to be seen what role CATU will play in all of that.
Trump says he convinced Netanyahu to agree to a Gaza ceasefire and the Palestinian Resistance1 had better take it because it’s the best they are going to get. Does the deal include the IOF pulling out of or an end to bombing Gaza? No, neither.
Mass media speculation abounds that the Resistance are under pressure (by starving Gaza residents in the midst of daily massacres) to agree to the ceasefire promoted by Trump and that it will be announced during Netanyahu’s visit to meet his imperialist backers in the USA.
Netanyahu says he won’t agree to ultimate peace nor even to the IOF pulling out of Gaza. His aim, he declares is the total defeat of Hamas (i.e. all the Palestinian resistance and the expulsion of their leaderships). Details of the deal mention a 60-day ceasefire.
Older now but still holding hands: back on 23 May 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and US President Donald Trump shake hands at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. (Photo cred: Sebastian Scheiner/AP)
And Gaza afterwards? All options are open, perhaps even the Israeli seaside resort of which Trump and Netanyahu were speaking earlier.2 But not a Palestinian administration by free and popular elections, because that would mean the election of supporters of the Resistance).3
No doubt in order to increase the pressure on the Resistance, the IOF intensifies its daily bombing of civilian housing and refugee centres and food queue massacres. Starvations deaths begin to appear, first of children then of adults too, emaciated bodies and skull-like faces.
July 2025 cartoon by D.Breatnach
The Palestinian Resistance factions led by Hamas have been adamant all along that they will sign up to an end to the war but not to a temporary ceasefire. The IOF must pull out of Gaza and the gates must be opened to let desperately-needed food, medicine, fuel and water in.
The Resistance will release living Israeli prisoners and dead (bodies) and ‘Israel’ will release Palestinian hostages. This has been their position for a long time and was part of the US envoy’s (Witkoff)-approved agreement of 19 January with ‘Israel’ this year which the latter broke on 18March.4
Smotrich and Ben Gvir threaten to bring down Netanyahu’s coalition if there is a ceasefire agreement, saying the war should continue without pause until the defeat of the Resistance. But Smotrich and Ben Gvir also shadow-box against one another through the Israeli media.
There are elements of pantomime and farce between some pushing for a deal and those against – “Look out, Netanyahu: Ben Gvir’s behind you!” But Trump and Zionists are playing with real lives, primarily those of the Palestinians but also those of their own IOF on the ground.
Funeral of IOF Captain Elkana Vizel in Mount Herzl Military Cemetery Jerusalem 23 January 2024. Vizel was killed with 20 other IOF when the Resistance fired a rocket into a house where the IOF had stored explosives intended for demolishing Palestinian houses. (Photo: Getty)
The armed Resistance, fighting in areas of Gaza cleared of civilians by the IOF have been hitting the latter hard, Israeli media reporting “a security incident” (its shorthand for fatalities of their soldiers by Resistance action) every second day or so (sometimes a number in the same day).
This after 20 months of attack by the strongest and best-supplied military force in the region which has undisputed air cover over Gaza.
Jon Elmer, in his Resistance Report on Electronic Intifada Updates podcast on Thursday evening said that June had been the worst month for the IOF in a year of battle fatalities and injuries. He recorded nearly 200 Resistance operations with IEDs, snipers, RPGs, rocket and mortar attacks.5
The IOF are being hit in areas they have invaded before and claimed to have ‘cleared’ of the Resistance. In approaching two years Netanyahu has failed to achieve his two declared war objectives: to defeat Hamas (Resistance leading faction) and recover the captives.
By any sober assessment Netanyahu and his coalition government have lost the Gaza war so far but he wants to cover that over and knock out the Israeli opposition which demands a deal with the Resistance to free the Israeli prisoners held by the Palestinians.
Netanyahu and his wife face a trial for corruption as soon as he can no longer use the war in Gaza (or with Iran!) as an excuse not to stand trial. So peace is not a good option for him personally. A deal releasing the prisoners of the Resistance followed by renewal of the war might be best for him.
The Resistance is taking heavy toll of the IOF whenever they try to move forward in Gaza. But in the limited area of the Resistance, possibly the IOF can defeat them eventually by massive continuous bombing with ordnance supplied by the USA, the UK and some EU states.
But who knows what other factors might develop in the meantime and whom they might favour?
The resistance of the Palestinian people and the operations of their armed Resistance factions have challenged not only the actions of the Zionist colonial state but its very legitimacy to a degree not seen before, across the world and among the people of the Zionist-supplying heartlands.
The desperation of the ruling classes of the colonial state and of its principal backer was behind their short recent war against Iran, leading to a danger of World War. They were defeated for now but in the logic of imperialist power must try again.
The world is changing but whether that will favour the Palestinians in the short or medium-term is not certain. However that the question can even be asked is the result of the long cultural and political resistance of the Palestinian people and of their armed resistance movement.
End.
FOOTNOTES & SOURCES
1Trump, Netanyahu and the western mass media generally identify the Resistance as Hamas, whether to avoid the legitimising term, as a shorthand or to conceal the fact that the Palestinian resistance is composed of a number of factions, some of them Islamist (e.g. like Hamas and Islamic Jihad and others secular (such as the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, perhaps the longest-surviving Resistance organisation.
5The Resistance in Gaza have made June the worst month for the IDF in a year (mostly in just one area, Khan Younis). “180 (resistance infantry) operations in Khan Younis in one month alone plus 60 artillery operations” (discussion at end of Jon Elmer’s Resistance Report @ 3.16 minutes mins.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4nuYJp5RC0&t=11283s)
The media and some British politicians have been in a furore about what a performer of one of the acts at the Glastonbury Festival1 called from the stage and got most of the audience to chant with him: Death, death to the IDF!2
The performer was not, for change, one of the Kneecap trio (who also performed at Glastonbury) despite British politician complaints after another anti-Zionist “controversy” (i.e. unlike daily Zionist genocide of Palestinians, supplied by UK weapons, which is not at all controversial).
The latest performer to raise the genocide-proof ire of British politicians and mass media commentators was a member of the Bob Vylan group and the call which caused such anger in pro-Zionist circles was uttered from the West Holts stage during the Festival on Saturday.
Bob Vylan lead singer performing on the West Holts stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset. (Photo cred: Yui Mok/AP)
This call was not only denounced by right wing conservative and social-democratic figures such as the UK’s Prime Minister, Keith Starmer, who dubbed it ‘hate speech’ but also went too far for the liberal Glastonbury Festival management who issued a statement declaring it “appalling”.3
To call for the ‘death’ of an organisation or a power is to call for it to cease to exist, to end. So what is the IDF? Well, the acronym stands for Israeli Defence Force, often and more realistically referred to as the IOF, i.e. the Israeli Occupation Force.
Now this organisation is the military wing of the Zionist European settler colony which is ‘Israel’, and with a history of attacks on the indigenous Palestinians, in addition to the people of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and, the week before last, Iran.4
APPALLING OR MODERATE AND REASONABLE?
On that basis alone, surely it would be moderate and reasonable to call for such a military organisation to cease to exist, i.e. to call for its death?
But there’s more – a lot more! The IOF has since 9th October 2023 been enforcing a water and starvation blockade on Gaza, also depriving it of importation of medicines.5 The IOF ground and air forces have destroyed at least in part but mostly completely every hospital and medical facility in Gaza.6
Cartoon regarding the Israeli water blockade on Gaza (D.Breatnach)
In addition to starving the population of Gaza by military blockade, the IOF has, with the direct assistance of the USA, set up the “killing fields” in which hungry Palestinian people are sniped, machine-gunned and shelled as they queue for meagre GHF food parcels.7
The IOF has assassinated or caused the death of at least 54,607 Palestinians and wounded 125,341 between 7 October 2023 and 4 June this year,8 including hundreds of first responders and civil defence workers,9 over 230 journalists10 and many police and security workers.11
This same organisation is the one primarily responsible for the mass demolition in Gaza of Palestinian residential buildings and the displacement of 1.9 million people,12 along with destruction of water and sewage infrastructure, desalination plants, water tanks and agriculture.
Many massacres by the IOF have been carried out in areas they had declared safe whendisplacing Palestinians from another area. (D.Breatnach)
The evidence of daily genocide by the IOF is incontrovertible and even the weak and hesitant International Court of Justice in the Hague stated that there was a plausible case to answer.13 The court also ordered the arrest of some leading government ministers who control the IOF.14
UNCONTROVERSIAL, A DUTY
To call for the death of an army of genocide is surely not only not controversial but is instead correct, a duty, one which all reasonable institutions and individuals should emulate.
According to the Genocide Convention of 1948, all signatory states have a dutyto act to prevent genocide,15 not only not to collude with it. Bob Vylan is to be commended for their call and those who condemn them should, at the very least, face widespread opprobrium.
Bob Vylan’s call is absolutely correct and humanity awaits its implementation, not only death to the IOF but also to the regime and colonial state that gave rise to and which program it follows. Let us join our voices to the humanitarian call and expand upon it.16
Death to the IOF — and to the Zionist settler colony that spawned it!
End.
Sources:
1The Glastonbury music festival is an annual event of a liberal alternative ambience.
8Gaza health Ministry figures, quoted in https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0r1xl5wgnko (which incorrectly quotes the Israeli figures on Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7th despite a number of Israeli sources indicating that an unknown number of those were killed by the IOF in implementation of the “Hannibal Doctrine”.
Reprinted in full from G.Ó.L’s substack and formatted for the Rebel Breeze blog.
Feminism used to be associated with pacifist anti-militarist movements, but times have changed and now there are feminists who call for war, whilst they still continue to blame all wars on men. It is an enormous contradiction.
For the last two years Gaza has lived under a siege and a genocide, supported by some sectors of feminism and in the midst of the conflict with Iran, once again feminist voices come out with a clamour for war. The reason is their supposed rush to free the women of Iran.
Four female political prisoners in Evin prison in Tehran (before it was bombed by Israel), conscious of the cynicism of some feminist groups in the West issued a communiqué denouncing the war and those who support it.
They stated that Israel wanted a submissive and weak Middle East and they opted to continue their own struggle against the government in Tehran without allying themselves with Yankee imperialism.
Our liberation…from the dictatorship ruling the country is possible through the struggle of the masses and by resorting to social forces – not by clinging to foreign powers or placing hopes in them.
The powers that have always brought destruction to the countries of the region through exploitation and colonisation, by inciting wars and killing in pursuit of greater benefits, will have no way out for us except for new destruction and exploitation.[1]
The four women are pro-Kurdish and also women detained in the protests following the death of Masha Amini at the hands of the Morality Police in 2022. One of them fought against ISIS in Syria. They are not coffee house feminists.
Women ‘of colour’ probably of the Combahee Collective with banner in what seems to be a general women’s liberation demonstration in the early 1970s. (Photo sourced: Internet)
They branded as traitors those Iranian who have called for war, amongst them the son of the despotic Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah imposed by the USA in 1953 following the CIA coup.
He ruled with an iron hand murdering and torturing the opposition, both the Left and Right, men and women. His son wants to go back to robbing the country’s coffers.
Traitors to Iran and traitors to the peoples of the Middle East and traitors to the people’s years of freedom-seeking struggles against oppression will know that their betrayal and disdain will be recorded in the memory of the Iranian people and in history.
Future generations will remember with shame those who stand on the corpses of defenceless people and trample them.[2]
Whilst these women who did actually rise up against the regime are opposed to the war, in the West there are those bourgeois feminists who in between their macchiatos ask for more attacks on Iran, in order to “free” the women.
They only think of Iran when a US president or the Nazis in Tel Aviv want to attack the country. They believe that the sexual predator who acts as US president is going to fight for the women. Maybe the way he did in Syria by installing ISIS.
One of the first to invoke the repression of women was none other than Netanyahu,[3] a man who has bombed maternity hospitals in Gaza killing women and children all around.
The US said something similar about Afghanistan and various bourgeois feminists came out to justify the war, deliberately ignoring that without US support the Taliban would never have existed.
It was Jimmy Carter and then Reagan who started to finance the troglodytes of the Mujahadeen and later the Taliban i.e. the bourgeois feminists too.
I should clarify that many of those feminists are not bourgeois in the sense of their social class, they have no capital, they are not rich, though there is no lack of those who are.
They are bourgeois in an ideological sense, although they use terms such as liberal, radical, separatist etc., but what unites them is their defence of capitalism and the bourgeoisie.
You could say right wing feminists but many of them like to present themselves as progressive when they are bourgeois, or in the case of the less wealthy ones, acolytes of the bourgeoisie.
Hillary Clinton, a bourgeois feminist (both in the ideological sense and also in terms of her bank balance) who has her hands stained with the blood of women in Libya and other parts is one of the spokeswomen for bourgeois feminism.
Much though they may shout, down with patriarchy! Their favourite slogan is Long Live Capitalism and Imperialism! This includes feminist intellectuals like Julie Bindel.
They kept silent about the genocide in Gaza and now believe that whoever criticises the war against Iran supports the regime. I suppose this includes the political prisoners who don’t sip macchiatos in their cells.
Bindel writing in The Sun said that those who criticise the war support Iran and the oppression of women. She repeated the usual lies about October 7th, mixed with some truths about Iran with the aim of supporting the war.[4] Bindel has kept silent about the massacres of women in Gaza.
She doesn’t support the women of Iran, but rather the West. It is worth pointing out that the owner of the paper, where she writes, has supported reactionary governments around the world, including in Great Britain where Bindel lives.
It is a misogynist, homophobic paper that frequently runs campaigns against the poor and migrants. Bindel is not alone, Kelly Jay Keen shares videos of the son of the Shah, perhaps to indicate that she supports the monarchy.[5]
The bourgeois feminists, like all of the bourgeoise in practice see other cultures as inferior ones. They use the same imperialist language to justify wars as did Rudyard Kipling, the author of the infamous poem The White Man’s Burden. They boast about the White Woman’s Burden.
It should be remembered that Kipling wrote that poem to seek and to justify the US invasion of the Philippines.
Take up the White Man’s burden The savage wars of peace Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch Sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.
Then they say that men are to blame for wars and not their dear capitalist system. Over and again the bourgeois feminists call for war.
But if they want wars and invasions, well why not ask for the US to be invaded, where women are pursued fleeing from one state to another to obtain an abortion, or where access to sex education is restricted and deficient as is access to contraceptives,[6] where women earn less than men and are under-represented in a wide range of fields.
Afghanistan is a country where women are more repressed than in any other part of the world. Throughout the conflict the US financed the Mujahadeen and later the Taliban.
They had the option of supporting organisations such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a women’s organisation that opposed the Islamists and also the Russians and later the US invasion.[7]
No, between one macchiato and another our dear bourgeois feminists let the men in the Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton support the Taliban troglodytes.
They said the same in Iraq. I am sure more than one reader is asking themselves what Iraq has to do with it all. It was a secular country, that promoted women’s education and participation.
However, one of the reasons bandied about by Bush was that he was rescuing and defending women and he compared their situation to that of Afghanistan, despite Saddam promoting women’s education.[8]
In fact, under Saddam, 30% of faculty staff were women, trained in Europe and the USA with full funding from the government. It is no longer like that, in fact there is no intellectual world in Iraq, the bombs the bourgeois feminists asked for, put paid to that.[9]
In the US the bourgeois feminists paid to go to universities, but Iraq promoted women as a state policy, something the Yanks have never done. In Britain, just 31% of the lecturers were women.
Iraq almost beat them, but in-between macchiatos the bourgeois feminists called for a war to improve the situation of women in Iraq and of course their investment portfolios.
Now the drums of war are beating again and the bourgeois feminists once more give themselves over to the war, despite believing that wars are a male product rather than a capitalist one.
They are not going to analyse their own participation, whilst a refugee from one of their wars prepares another macchiato for them.
As the female political prisoners in Evin said, it will be the Iranian people and the Iranian women who will free Iran and the Iranian women and not the bourgeois with the macchiatos, wine and caviar.
They are just as much the enemy of the women of Iran as the male bourgeois and are as deserving of our contempt.
There is no lack of Iranian voices asking for war and not just the son of the despot Pahlevi. Masih Alinejad is an exiled journalist. She took part in the movement against the obligatory use of head coverings in Iran and other things.
So far so good, unlike others she has fought against the oppression of women in the country.
But in exile, she turned out to be a Zionist and in the first Trump government met with the hawk Mike Pompeo and also worked at the official US propaganda radio station, Voice of America, transmitting programmes in Farsi.
Masih Alinejad & Jake Sullivan, Intelligence Adviser to US President Biden 2021 2025. (Source: Wikipedia)
Now she criticises Netanyahu, but not for bombing Iran and killing civilians but because of his bad timing. She believes he should have waited for protests against the government and attacked at that time. Of course the bombs were not going to fall on her, safe in New York.
Those feminists who keep silent about the genocide in Gaza do not seek the liberation of women in Iran, but rather a geopolitical reorganisation of the region and the victory of Zionism.
But that slogan doesn’t sound too good and you can easier convince the dozy in the world by talking about the rights of women in Iran. Meanwhile they have little to say about why their governments installed and recognised the Islamists from ISIS in Syria.
It is an exercise in public relations rather than real concern for the future of women in Iran. At the end of the day bourgeois feminists defend the bourgeoisie more than they defend women.
I was relieved by my attendance at the Raise the Roof housing demonstration in Molesworth Street in Dublin City Centre. That was because I learned from speakers that just by voting in ‘a Left Government’ we could receive the housing we need.
Raise the Roof is a coalition of trade unions with its address at the Labour Party-orientated ICTU and a number of housing NGOs. The coalition also contains political parties: Sinn Féin; Labour Party; People Before Profit/ Solidarity; Social Democrats; Independents4Change.1
A view of the protest in Molesworth St. Leinster House is in the background across Kildare Street with access prevented by police barriers at the end of Molesworth St with a special gate to allow entry and exit for customers of the hotel on the corner. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Previously I’d thought that either we’d need a revolution or a country-wide campaign of direct action occupying empty properties. This is because the housing crisis is deliberately constructed for the benefit of profits for big landlords, vulture funds and the banks that finance them.
And since they keep making massive profits out of the situation, they won’t want it to change as it would if, for example, were the State to seize empty properties2 for conversion to housing along with a massive public housing for rent construction campaign.
And if the profiteers don’t want that, naturally their (sorry, ‘our’) government will make sure not to do anything of the sort.
So it was great to learn that we won’t have to really fight and break the law, going to jail and all that. Phew! Just change the parties in the Government at the next election! Elect a Left Government!
Visual accidental irony comment in the same street. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
But… lately I have to admit I’ve been having doubts about this solution. First of all, there’s the question of numbers of TDs available to form this aspired-to government. There are overall 174 TDs in Leinster House (the Parliament of the Irish State) and a fragile majority requires 88.
The Sinn Féin party has 39 TDs and People Before Profit/ Rise/ Solidarity five in total, a combination of 44 still needing another 44 to reach the 88 minimum. FG and FF, formerly opposition parties but now in government have 86 votes between them and needed some extras to run the Government.
But I’ve got a much bigger doubt really, and that’s whether SF will stand up to the bankers and property magnates.
SF has for decades being setting out its stall that it is safe pair of hands to run the system, in other words that the profiteers have nothing to worry about. And to tell the truth, I believe them. Though some of their followers think SF is fooling the system, I think it’s the followers being fooled.
View of the Raise the Roof protest in Molesworth street. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
So … after further consideration, it really does look like a revolution will be required to end the housing crisis — or at least something so near as to make the managers of the system believe that unless they resolve the housing crisis, there will be a revolution. So I’m worried again.
Anyway, it was interesting seeing the amount of Tricolours in what was predominantly a left-wing rally of hundreds (despite a small contingent holding an Aontú banner) and there was some nice music with singers including Lisa O’Neill and Jimi Cullen (with his Homes for All composition).
A large number of tenants organised by the Community Action Tenants’ Union (CATU) from a number of Dublin City Council housing estates gathered outside City Hall on Monday 12th May evening to lobby the monthly elected Councillor’s meeting.
Those attending for the most part came from public housing blocks and estates from Ballymun to the Liberties and Coolock to Pearse Street. They carried placards and demanded that Dublin City Council negotiate with them.
A section of the lobby outside City Hall facing Parliament Street (note on top extreme left of photo plaque commemorating two leaders of the Irish Citizen Army shot dead in 1916). (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The recently-appointed Assistant Chief Executive over housing and community came out to receive the Union’s demands and petitions from tenants organising within their complexes and areas andthe lobbyistsalso forced the issues onto the agenda of the council meeting that night.
The protest was organised by the Dublin city CATU branch with wide support from community organisers and was attended by a number of elected councillors from some political parties and independents.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
The problems CATU representatives listed verbally and in writing included a general low level of maintenance and upkeep of their estates and blocs, of the actual dwellings, communal areas, playgrounds and rubbish chutes. Rat infestations were a problem in some.
Damp leading to mould, rainwater penetration, inadequate proofing, badly fitting windows and doors were also listed at a number of sites, as were inadequate insulation leading to high heating costs and a need for overhaul of the heating system itself.
Among the slogans chanted was: Dublin City Council – Negotiate!
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Included in their demands was that DCC officials recognise the right of their tenants to be represented by CATU as their union, which they stated was not always respected and they sought formal meetings with named officials responsible for the areas in question within one month’s time.
Although apparently currently not members of CATU, the organisation had invited the Pearse House Residents’ Committee to attend and speak at the lobby. Their chairperson Neil Maloney did so, addressing the issue of the long overdue regeneration of their housing bloc.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Maloney described the “blow to the community” when funding for stage two of the regeneration project to eliminate overcrowding was withdrawn, after their hopes had been raised by presentation of a regeneration timescale and a physical design in August of the previous year.
Ironically, the housing crisis was implicated in the Government’s reason for refusing to support the regeneration going ahead, in that the increase in inner space of the dwellings would reduce the number of actual housing units.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
The Pearse House chairperson commented that “the current bedsits are illegal” and that their homes currently don’t meet European standards, going on to state “a real need for bigger homes to address overcrowding and family needs.”
“This was always going to be a challenge for this protected structure, but in phases 2 and 3 of the regeneration plan, there would be 2 additional blocks built. The additionality that the Government is seeking would be gained through the social homes gained during the decanting process.”
Pearse House residents attended CATU’s protest “to highlight our anger and what we see as another block on this project,” Maloney said. And note that although DCC has committed to redesigning the project for submission to the Government there is no guarantee this will be successful either.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
“Ireland is still in breach of the European Charter for social housing and our human rights. Our community has seen the redevelopment and construction of new buildings, offices etc. and Pearse House is the eyesore in the middle of our community.”
“We were the community before all this redevelopment, and we will be the community when it’s all over,” concluded Maloney, voicing a common complaint along the south Dublin dockside. 1
A section of the lobby outside City Hall viewed looking down Dame Street. (Neil Maloney is pictured after his speech). (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Public Housing Background
There was little public housing in Dublin under British rule and the big town houses of the rich had been sold and sub-divided for rent by private landlords (including some who were elected councillors (or aldermen).
The new State built “2,000 local authority homes by 1924, a feat all the more remarkable in the context of a shortage of State funds, and the need to rebuild much of the infrastructure damaged in the War of Independence.”2
But of course it was not keeping up with the existing need or population growth and 40% of the population were forced to emigrate in the first 50 years of the Irish State.3
However 1924 too was the introduction of legislation facilitating state money subsidising the building of private housing.4 “In the decade after 1932 some 82,000 homes were built, the vast majority (public and private) with State subsidies.”5
Prof. Kenna relates that by 1940, some 41% of the Irish housing stock had been built by local authorities, far higher than that in England and Wales (25%) and also comments on the effect this had on subsidiary employment not only in construction but in sourcing and supply of materials.6
Although by 1964, a further 74,000 private and 63,000 local authority homes were built with State support and that between the 1950s and 1960s a million people had left the country, there was still a housing shortage and rents on private properties dug deep into workers’ incomes.7
Prof. Kenna comments that little attention was paid to the need for housing estate management, amenities, shops and the social, educational or other needs of the new community established there. That this should coincide with a boom time for property developers should not surprise us.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Government schemes to facilitate the purchase of their local authority accommodation from the 1950s resulted in the disappearance of much public housing stock into the private sector.8 Theoretically they would be replaced by new public housing builds but that didn’t happen.
Public land and land held by NAMA9 has been increasingly sold or even given away to private developers on promises of provision of a low percentage of public housing and often those individuals or consortiums do not even keep their earlier promises.
The Report of the Commission on the Relief of the Sick and Destitute Poor in 1927, Prof. Kenna reminds us, found 3,257 homeless people including 901 children, while in January 2021 there were 5,987 homeless adults and 2,326 homeless children in Ireland.
The Far-Right has jumped on the opportunity of the current housing crisis to blame it – not upon lack of public housing construction, big landlords, property speculators and vulture funds – but on migrants.
The Left in Ireland has until now in practical terms left this ground for exploitation of racists.
One of a number of speakers, photographed from across the street as too crowded there. (Photo: D.Breatnach)One of a number of speakers, photographed from across the street as too crowded there. (Photo: D.Breatnach)One of a number of speakers, photographed from across the street as too crowded there. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
GOING FORWARD
CATU seemed pleased with the lobby turnout and announced their intention to organise a housing protest march on Saturday July 5th. In the meantime they will no doubt be following up on the meetings they requested with area housing managers and agreeing objectives and deadlines.
Hopefully, seeing the initial results in the attention of DCC housing and amenity officials, and reflecting on their numbers when they take joint action, tenants of DCC will take heart and grow in confidence in their ability to ensure provision of decent housing and services for their needs.
Of course, the Far-Right won’t like that as it distracts from their targets – but the extension of this campaign does provide some hope of something like a solution to the current terrible grinding crisis of both housed and homeless.
End.
One of a number of speakers, photographed from across the street as too crowded there. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
APPENDIX: I916 Battleground
It might or might not have been mentioned (I couldn’t hear much of the speeches) that City Hall, outside of which CATU were protesting, had been a 1916 resistance centre, occupied by a small force of the Irish Citizen Army, known in some circles as the first workers army in the world.
Unaware of the extremely low British garrison on the Castle that day, the ICA had failed to take the complex and retreated to City Hall and some outposts in Dame Street and Parliament Street where they resisted until overwhelmed by British Army reinforcements.
The symbolism of the Castle, the administrative seat of the British occupation in insurgent hands, resulted in a ferocious assault on the ICA garrison and it fell on the Monday/ Tuesday of that week. One of the statues inside bears what appears to be a bullet hole to this day.
A steel plaque on the right of the outside front of the building lists the names of the ICA garrison of the area, around 50% of which were women. An older cast plaque at the east corner lists the names of two of the five who were killed there, Sean Connolly (OC) and Sean O’Reilly (2i/c).
The 1916 Rising was followed by the election of the First Dáil in 1919 with its Democratic Program affirming that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare, and that no child should suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter.10
That was followed by the War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish Agreement; and the new State that came into being had no intention of fulfilling the promise of the Democratic Program but rather a determination to suppress any who tried for that fulfilment.
Footnotes
1For example the construction plans for the Irish Bottle Glass site (sold by Nama to the Ronan consortium) contain no components of public housing and units at expected prices will not be affordable by most local people.
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (reprinted intact from his substack and reformatted for Rebel Breeze)
(Reading time: 5 mins.)
Once more Trump has acted like the lunatic he is and ambushed the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, stating that the country was undergoing a real genocide of whites.
Many have commented on the effrontery of Trump to talk of a fictitious genocide of whites in South Africa, whilst his main ally Israel is carrying out one in real time every day on the news shows.
Trump used images from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country more than 4,500 kilometres away, to show that they were killing whites in South Africa.
Trump also lied about the land question in the country, accusing the government of stealing the whites’ lands when the reality is that the whites continue to be the owners of the greatest part of the land in the country.
It is worth saying that Ramaphosa defended himself partially, and only partially as behind the new legislation on the matter there is the hidden failure of the peace process when it comes to resolving the land question.
When the Apartheid regime was ended, the country was one of the most unequal on the planet and the whites were the owners of the greatest part of the agricultural lands. Around 60,000 whites were the owners of 86% of all the agricultural lands, some 82 million hectares.[1]
The agrarian reform proposed by the ANC in its White Paper of 1997 was a market-driven reform, i.e. the voluntary sale and purchase with some help from the government without the government being a buyer.[2] Blacks could also ask for the restitution of lands stolen by racist laws since 1913.
A whole land bureaucracy was set up, not unlike what Colombia has, Land Claims Courts where all those who registered could make their case with three possible outcomes, the restitution of the land, the handover of alternative land or a financial compensation.
In 1992, the ANC had put forward a document in which they argued for the expropriation of lands and other non-land market mechanisms. But by 1997 they had accepted neoliberal discourse and adopted the land market as the cornerstone of their policy.[3]
Initially the ANC government had proposed handing over 30% of the agricultural lands held by whites to blacks within five years. But they kept postponing it.
By March 2011, they had handed over 6.27 million hectares, and of that 45% was not agrarian reform, properly speaking, but rather land restitution.[4] The government didn’t just fail regarding land, but on everything. Inequality rose since the fall of Apartheid.
The Gini[5] rose following the end of Apartheid in 1994 and now is situated in 0,67 making it the most unequal country on the planet in terms of income, where just 3,500 people own 15% of all the wealth of the country.[6]
SA President Ramaphosa looks on while US President ambushes him publicly with alleged ‘evidence’ of persecution of white people in S. Africa (Photo cred: Kevin Lamarque Reuters)
There is also a high concentration of land. “Currently 72% of farms and agricultural holdings are owned by white individuals, who make up 7.3% of the population, while black Africans, constituting 81.4% of the population, own only 4% of the land.”[7]
The whites continue to be the owners of the land, the black middle class through Black Economic Empowerment programmes reached agreements with those whites and the companies in the agricultural sector to integrate themselves into the neoliberal economy.
This is the so-called ‘white capitalism’ and South Africa became a leading country in the agribusiness sector of the continent. In 2015, of the 10 largest agribusiness companies on the continent, eight were South African.[8]
Ramaphosa himself is an excellent example of the new South African businessmen, the former fighters against capitalism who now profit from the blood and sweat of those who were once the grassroots militants of the organisations they led.
Between 1994 and 1998 he acquired a portfolio of more than 40 million Rand[9] (some 8 million dollars at the time) and ended up as an extremely wealthy man (some 700 million dollars) thanks to his controversial investments and acquisitions in the mining sector.
Ramaphosa is also the owner of the McDonalds franchise in the country. The former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers became a magnate in the sector.
In 2013 the Police murdered 34 miners in the midst of a strike at Lonmin, one of the companies where he was a director, being the owner of 9.1% of the company. [10]
South African police move forward to kill more striking miners at Lonmin 2012 while in background other police stand over miners killed already(Photo cred: Sephiwe Lebeko/ Reuters)
And just like in the times of Apartheid, the Farlam Commission, those charged with investigating the Marikana Massacre found nobody guilty. Nobody! Blood is washed from the hands of a black capitalist just as easy from those of a white capitalist.
When he took over the presidency of the country, there hadn’t been any great advances made regarding agrarian reform there. The failure to meet the promises of the transition and the political programme of the ANC cost them electoral support.
So much so that they now govern the black masses with the support of a white party, the Democratic Alliance, a right-wing party that strongly opposes any expropriation of land without compensation and in practice is opposed to any great change in land policy.
It is in this context that Ramaphosa launched his new campaign and new land law. The ANC say they want to implement the Freedom Charter, but it is not so. Mandela himself had discounted that in his speech to Davos.[11]
He didn’t explicitly refer to the document but he never again spoke of the nationalisation of resources such as mines and land.
Ramaphosa’s law proposes various measures that already exist in almost all capitalist countries, the expropriation of property with compensation for public purposes or where there is a public interest i.e. the compulsory purchase or as they say in the USA, the heart of capitalism, eminent domain.
These norms exist in almost the entire world. As is the case in many capitalist countries, it also includes elements to reduce the amount of compensation or not pay it.
It is another thing to believe that Ramaphosa aims to do what the ANC never wanted to since the first government. He does not want to fight with so-called white capitalism as he knows that so-called black capitalism is the same thing and one depends on the other.
What Ramaphosa is about is a public relations manoeuvre to strengthen a weakened and discredited ANC. There will almost certainly be more such initiatives. But the ghosts of Marikana tell us that this traitor has no intention of doing anything for the black masses.
Trump talks of a genocide that only exists in the sick mind of Elon Musk and of a land theft that Ramaphosa does not want. If he steals the whites’ lands, who will he sip cognac with then? White power is still in control of South Africa.
It dominates the economy in alliance with the not so new black bourgeoisie, the black apparatchiks that control the scaffolding of the state, and the growing presence of foreign capital.
We all recognise Trump as the enemy and idiot that he is. The problem is that sometimes we acknowledge those he attacks as friends when in reality they are the same enemies, except some are more intelligent, cultured and refined.
Ramaphosa when he was a trade union leader said “There is no such thing as the liberal bourgeois. They are all the same. They use fascist methods to destroy workers’ lives.”[12]
Workers’ blood is washed from the hands of all the capitalists, blacks, whites, Russians, Arabs or Yanks: Ramaphosa in Marikana or Trump everywhere. The whites in South Africa, the Elon Musks have no reason to fear their friend Ramaphosa, despite the stupidities from Trump.
[9] Bond, Patrick (2000) Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa, London & South Africa, Pluto Press and UNP, End Note No. 7, Chapter 2 page 266.
NB: Edited by Rebel Breeze for formatting purposes
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
Kneecap, the Belfast Irish language rap group, have found themselves at the centre of what is an artificially contrived furore dreamt up by people with little sense of real moral outrage.
The basics of the story are well known. They finished off their act at the Coachella event projecting pro-Palestinian statements. Given the band’s history and well-known politics, it could hardly have come as a surprise. Perhaps it was more that the fans welcomed it that upset some.
They were denounced by the non-entity known as Sharon Osbourne, a reality star famous for being the wife of Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne and also the mother of another reality star, her daughter Kelly Osbourne.
Kelly to her credit did carve out a brief musical career on the back of her reality tv exposure.
Sharon as part of the wider Zionist attempt to silence all those who criticise the genocide called for their visas to be cancelled, which in effect happened following the decision by their promoter and sponsor to drop them.
She also called for them to be more like Bono. Kneecap responded with a humorously devastating comeback that they would rather be Rangers fans than emulate Bono.
Bono still has some credibility in certain parts, mainly where they haven’t a clue about the man’s actual politics and obviously amongst the clueless, witless, gutless glitterati like Sharon Osbourne. But what would it mean to be like Bono?
Is he actually some sort of reasonable counterweight to Kneecap?
Well, first of all, in relation to Palestine, Bono is a Zionist, so even before the genocide began, he, unlike them, was already on the wrong side of history. Not for the first time, mind you. Bono has a habit of cropping up where he is not wanted like an ugly cold sore (my apologies to the virus).
He has, as Harry Browne, the author of The Frontman: Bono in the name of power, pointed out dedicated a lifetime to the service of imperialism and was rewarded with a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Genocide Joe.[1]
I am sure it will go well on his mantle piece alongside his KBE (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), for which he was fulsome in his praise of Her Majesty’s Ambassador, as he put it, and grinned like a cheshire cat during the ceremony.[2]
The claims made by Blair and others about Bono’s achievements were exaggerated, of course. But he is, if nothing, an equal opportunities imperialist and will get around to doing his bit for the others.
The idea that Kneecap would prostrate themselves before the British king is laughable and they wouldn’t be the first artists to reject one, were the Brits ever to mistakenly consider them for it.
The late black poet Benjamin Zephaniah was offered the lesser award of OBE (Order of the British Empire) by the same Tony Blair. He turned it down stating:
I get angry when I hear that word “empire”; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised…
Benjamin Zephaniah OBE – no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire…
If they want to give me one of these empire things, why can’t they give me one for my work in animal rights? Why can’t they give me one for my struggle against racism? What about giving me one for all the letters I write to innocent people in prisons who have been framed? I may just consider accepting some kind of award for my services on behalf of the millions of people who have stood up against the war in Iraq. It’s such hard work – much harder than writing poems.[3]
He also referred to his brother’s death in police custody and to Lizzie II as Mrs Queen, not Her Majesty. A display of dignity.
He pointed out that those who accept such awards, the Queen’s Shilling, though he didn’t use that archaic military expression for those who enlist in the British armed forces to put down uppity types in the colonies, always sell out.
However, calling Bono a sell-out, presumes he was ever anything other than a fan of empire. He tied his mast to the pro-British politics of the Irish chattering classes in the 1980s.
His song Sunday Bloody Sunday was always introduced with the line This is not a rebel song, lest someone think Bono actually had something interesting to say.
The song is quite vacuous though clear in saying he “won’t join the battle cry,” i.e. denounce those who had massacred 14 people on the streets of Derry. The British army is not mentioned once in the song.
You wouldn’t know who had done what, but you know not to point the finger “Cause tonight we can be as one”. John Lennon on the other hand, shortly after the massacre did not hold back.
Is there any one among you Dare to blame it on the kids? Not a soldier boy was bleeding When they nailed the coffin lids![4]
Bono couldn’t bring himself to condemn the British army for a televised massacre, so it comes as no surprise that he has little to say about a live-streamed genocide.
He hobknobbed with neoliberals such as Jeffrey Sachs, various presidents of the World Bank, promoted pharmaceutical companies in Africa and of course was on the side of Bush in the Iraq War, at least in practice and helped whitewash the reputations of many of those involved.
He hedged his bets a bit on Iraq, not wanting to seem too hawkish, saying the war was justified but the US should get UN backing for it. He then went on to endorse Clinton and Blair time and again. Jim Kerr from the Scottish band Simple Minds put it succinctly at the time.
How can Bono, having graced concert stages for over two decades, draped in the white flag of peace and screaming ‘No More War’ [sic] at the top of his lungs contemplate praising and back slapping Tony Blair? … I can’t believe that anyone could fail to identify that no matter what gesture Blair may make towards African debt relief, his slippery hands are currently dripping in the fresh warm blood of Iraqi men, women and children.[5]
Bono of course, could and did, and wined and dined with such hawks as Senator McCain. There were no depths to which he would not plummet, which brings us to Palestine.
Shortly after October 7th he endorsed the Zionist genocide by changing the lyrics of his song about Martin Luther King, Pride (In the name of love)[6]to “Early morning, Oct 7, the sun is rising in the desert sky… Stars of David, they took your life but they could not take your pride.”[7]
As part of the introduction to the reworked song he state “our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence… But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed.” Not at the Zionist occupiers was the answer. Roger Waters lambasted him for it.[8]
Not only that, he was criticised by Irish singer Mary Coughlan for his links to Israeli companies.[9] He did not fly out to Gaza as he had done in Ukraine, nor did he have much to say.
When he eventually did mention Gaza, he was always careful to lay the blame on Hamas for starting it all, ignoring history since the Nakba in 1948.
A good example of that is his piece in The Atlantic after receiving his Medal of Freedom from Genocide Joe.[10] An exercise in saying nothing, whilst attempting to sound profound, something Ireland’s most famous poisonous dwarf never pulls off.
Kneecap on the other hand have been clear from the word go about their support for the Palestinian cause. It didn’t take a genocide for them to take note. They have consistently been on the side of the oppressed, in this case the Palestinians, against the oppressor the Zionists.
So, Sharon Osbourne should probably stick to what she knows best, which is precious little.
As for Bono, as Harry Browne points out, perhaps nothing sums him up quite so succinctly as a piece of graffiti in Dublin that appeared following the scandal when they moved one of their companies to the Netherlands for tax purposes, “Bono is a poxbottle”.
We need more like Kneecap who stand with the oppressed, and a lot less of Bono and the likes who can’t condemn the powerful ever.
At best you can expect some “We are all guilty type” of fudge, which was the preferred slogan of the Irish trade union bureaucracy when the British or their proxies in the UVF or UDA ever did anything, coming as no surprise that they have also done next to nothing on Palestine other than issue the occasional banal statements.
I fully expect them to turn up with Bono somewhere to chastise Kneecap.
April 17th is the annual Palestinian political Prisoners’ Day and it was marked in O’Connell Street, the main street of Dublin’s city centre, by an event with speeches, banners and chants organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Palestine national flags fluttered about the crowd being addressed by a number of speakers with occasional toots of solidarity from passing traffic – a common occurrence at Palestine solidarity events in most of Ireland.
View of eastward of section of the crowd at the event (Photo sourced: IPSC)
Dáithí Doolan was one of the speakers and though saying some progressive things about solidarity with Palestine and the terrible situation in which the occupiers have them, soon revealed the political poverty and lack of solidarity with resistance of his Sinn Féin party.
Doolan reminded his audience of when there were political prisoners in Ireland, as though this was no longer the case, presumably because the prisoners now are not of his party. Nor did he mention the current attempts to extradite Irish Republicans to British administrations.
The SF speaker went on to extol the South African process, perhaps not caring about the betrayal of the struggle and sacrifice of the masses there, the deepening grip of imperialism on the rich natural resources, the corruption and repression of the ANC regime and the massacre at Marikana.1
If Doolan thought about it he must have hoped that his audience did not remember that the South African process had a twin, the Palestinian one at Oslo which sabotaged the Palestinian struggle and brought into being the corrupt Palestinian Authority2, the Israeli proxy in the West Bank.
Sinn Féin has achieved a somewhat similar position in the Six Counties colony and has been working hard to reach a corresponding role in the Irish state. And why not, when it endorses the “Two State solution” giving the Palestinians 20% of their land under Zionist eyes and guns.
The very least, Doolan said, that the Irish Government could do to help the Palestinians, would be to enact the Occupied Territories Bill but he proposed nothing further, not even the ban on US military flights through Shannon Airport or on Israeli arms flights through Irish airspace.
Darragh Adelaide from the People Before Profit party spoke too about Palestine and solidarity but also about the Palestine refugees that have had to sleep in tents on Irish streets and the attacks on them both by the authorities and by fascists and other racists.
Palestinian prisoner conditions
A woman gave a detailed list of statistics relating to Palestinian political prisoners but also went through the tortures and terrible conditions in which they are kept. She concluded reminding her audience that each prisoner is a human being, a parent, a child, a sibling and not a number.
View of the crowd southward from behind a speaker (Photo sourced: IPSC)
In a year and a half, more than 15,800 Palestinians have been arrested, including 500 women, 1200 children, and thousands of detainees who were placed under arbitrary administrative detention. 64 Palestinians have died in prison since October 2024, including a child.3
The prison administration’s special units have carried out violent raids on prisoners’ cells, administering severe beatings, torture, and ill-treatment.4
Prisoners have suffered power and water cuts, and all of their belongings—including clothes, electrical appliances, and hygiene items—have been confiscated.5
They have been placed under complete isolation, family visits have been completely banned, and the International Committee of the Red Cross has been prevented from visiting them inside prisons.
Additionally, a policy of starvation has been implemented against thousands of prisoners, who are being provided with only two extremely poor-quality and quantity meals a day.6
The MC of the event led chants in which he called out Palestinian political prisoners! and the audience responded with Free them all! Similarly with Free the children prisoners — Free them all! and Free the women prisoners! — Free them all!
Symbolising the Palestinian political prisoners (Photo sourced: IPSC)
He also referred to the woman arrested outside the Irish Embassy in Berlin for speaking in Irish and, in defiance, led the audience in a chant in Irish expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people: Saoirse don Phalaistín! (Freedom for Palestine!)7
What was notable in its total absence from all the speeches was any call to step beyond the marches and similar measures which have been supported by thousands in Ireland over more than 18 months but which have not succeeded in moving the Government even to enforcing its formal neutrality.
This is replicated in most solidarity events across the state, leaving those few who take action to increase greater pressure on the ruling class to face the repression of the Irish State, as with 23 men and women in three different events over a four-day period in Dublin recently.8
Political prisoners from the armed resistance
The Joe McDonnell Ballad9 would have been most appropriately performed at this event, in particular the chorus line: You dare to call me a terrorist, while you look down your guns … But the IPSC would hardly endorse the singing of that song nor wish to be associated with it in public.
There were two large prisoners’ solidarity banners of the IPSC at this event but it is remarkable how rarely one sees them on the IPSC’s national marches. The problem with the prisoners for liberal organisations is that some of them, at least, have been armed fighters of the Resistance.
This, combined with ignorance perhaps, accounts for the comparatively low numbers at this event. However, it has to be said that known revolutionary organisations were also visibly absent.
View south-westwards with the iconic GPO (General Post Office) building in the background. (Photo sourced: IPSC)
Doolan’s party was a problem for liberals when many of the political prisoners here had been armed Irish Republican resistance fighters; it’s still a problem for them today — but also for Doolan and his party now that the current Irish political prisoners are no longer associated with them.
If solidarity does not embrace resistance then it’s charity, not solidarity. And if resistance is to be embraced then it should be so for all its expressions, artistic, cultural, mass mobilisations, strikes, boycotts … and armed. Including solidarity with those who, because of resistance, end up in jails.
Free them all!
End.
NOTES
1Culminating on 16th August 2012 (while Mandela still lived) the police of the ANC Government carried out a massacre of over 40 striking miners over a period of three days. The massacre was to suppress a strike in a platinum mine of the Canadian Lonmin company, repressing also a breakaway union from theANC-allied National Union of Mineworkers. The massacre is widely believed to have been organised by Cyril Ramaphosa, then a millionaire and vice-President of the ANC Government and recent leader of the NUM, now President of South Africa.
2Which also beats and incarcerates Palestinians resisting the Occupation (exact figures are difficult to obtain) and has murdered some.
7This slogan has now become well known in Ireland in voice but also in writing, appearing on flags, banners and placards. It represents a partial success for those of us who have tried to insert a measure of the Irish language into Palestine solidarity, in the belief that it is important for the Irish language to be present in progressive movements.
9By Brian Warfield of the Wolfe Tones band in honour of Volunteer Joe McDonnell of the Provisional IRA who died on hunger strike in 1981; the song also names other hunger strike martyrs of the Provisionals Vols. Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, McCreesh but adds Vol. Patsy O’Hara of the Irish National Liberation Army. In total, seven of the Provisionals and three of INLA died on hunger strike in 1981.
Recently Donald Trump scandalised much of the world with his suggestion that Gaza could be turned into an attractive location after its inhabitants, the Palestinians, were removed.
Was this a serious proposal? If so, could the US and Israel manage it? What are the chances?
Firstly, a quick look at the territory envisaged and its recent history.
GAZA
A strip of land 365 km2 (141 sq mi)1 on the eastern coast of the Middle Eastern land of Palestine, bordered by the State of ‘Israel’ and the State of Egypt, with an estimated Palestinian population of 2.1 million in 2024 (since hugely depleted by genocide and removal).
Gaza had been settled mainly by Palestinian refugees expelled from Zionist-occupied Palestine in 1948 and by those fleeing Israeli Occupation Force persecution and harassment in the West Bank in subsequent years added to of course by their descendants born and growing up there.
The strip was occupied after the 1967 War by around 5,000 Zionist settlers – illegally even by international law — who took up around 40% of the land there but after the Second Intifada,2 left in 2005, as did the Israeli Occupation Army.
In the 2006 elections in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas won, ousting the Fatah party which had won the previous elections. However, Fatah refused to accept the results and had to be physically removed in Gaza in 2007, though Hamas stepped back from doing the same in the West Bank.
The Western powers, those bastions of the democratic way of doing things, refused to acknowledge the Palestinian popular will and blocked Hamas from all aid, which went instead to the undemocratic Palestinian Authority, which the Fatah party control.
‘Israel’ blockaded Gaza from then onwards, keeping the population at a marginal level of existence and regularly attacked it, what they called “mowing the lawn” in 2008/9, 2012, 2014, 2018/19, 2021 until the Palestinian breakout and counter-attack of October 2023.3
In October 2023 Hamas and Islamic Jihad broke out of their concentration camp, overran the ‘Israeli’ armed forces overseeing them and seized captives to exchange for the many Palestinian captives in ‘Israeli’ jails. Other groups and individuals also poured through the gaps in the wall.
The IOF besieged Gaza, cutting off its supplies of food, clean water and other supplies. It dropped 85,000 tonnes of explosives4 on that highly-concentrated population, killing an estimated 46,000 (with another 10,000 buried in rubble)5 and injuring at least 110,265 (one in every 20).6
The IOF destroyed nearly all wells and rooftop water tanks, along with desalination plants,7 destroyed totally or in part 90% of residential buildings,8 at least 27 hospitals and 12 other medical centres,9 along with schools, higher education buildings, mosques and churches.
Some 1.9 million people have been displaced, 90% of the population, with many of them forced to move repeatedly.10 “Nearly 1.9 million people in Gaza are internally displaced, of which nearly 80 percent are living in makeshift shelters without adequate clothing or protection from the cold.
“UN agencies estimated that nearly half a million are in flood-prone areas. Authorities in Gaza said about 110,000 of the 135,000 tents being used as shelters in the Gaza Strip are worn out and not fit for use.”11
PROPOSERS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING
The USA – In March 2024 Jared Kushner, property developer, senior policy adviser and son-in-law of Donald Trump (then former US President and now President again) commented that Gaza after the removal of the Palestinians would make a great site for a beach-front property development.12
Donald Trump, after being re-elected, commented in somewhat similar lines and bluntly proposed the expulsion (‘voluntary relocation’) of Palestinians from Gaza. But to where? Well, to Jordan and Egypt in particular, whose ruling regimes would accept them, he assured.13
The Democratic Party wing of the US imperialist ruling class expressed horror at such crass statements of ethnic cleansing but had supported the ‘Israeli’ state in maintaining the siege, periodic bombing attacks and in demonising Hamas along with the whole Palestinian resistance.14
‘Israel’: Prime Minister Netanyahu and a number of his cabinet made statements supporting the plan.
REACTION OF ARAB & IRANIAN STATE LEADERS
The leaders of Arab states and of Iran have opposed the ethnic cleansing plan, all of them concerned at further destabilisation of the Middle East (and threat to their regimes). Most (excepting Yemen and Iran), advocating instead Gaza as part of a Palestinian state (sic) alongside the ‘Israeli’ one.15
WHAT EUROPEAN STATE LEADERS SAY
All of the leaders of European states that have commented have opposed the plan, all of them concerned at further destabilisation of the Middle East and, with regard to Palestine, advocating instead Gaza as part of a Palestinian state (sic) alongside the ‘Israeli’ one.16
All of the main political parties in the European states have also opposed the ethnic cleansing and advocate the “two state solution” (sic).
RUSSIA & CHINA also oppose Trump’s plan as do many states in AFRICA and in LATIN AMERICA. The top levels of the United Nations also oppose Trump’s idea.
WHY MOST STATES OPPOSE THE PLAN
Those objecting to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and transporting Palestinians to other destinations may well have moral objections to that plan but their political and practical reasons for objecting are much stronger.
Lebanon already has a Palestinian refugee population of 60% and in 1975-’90 a war there saw fascist Lebanese forces combined with the IOF fight Palestinian and Druze forces with massacres of refugees as “Beirut” became a byword in urban destruction, invasion and ethnic conflict.
The Jordanian regime is heavily foreign-dependent and vulnerable to imperialist pressure but it also knows that it walks a tightrope and can’t afford to add to the economic, social and political pressures by taking in a large influx of Palestinians forced out of Gaza.
Nearly 25% of Jordan’s population is composed of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.17
The King of Jordan, an imperialist stooge trained in the UK, nervously attended the meeting with the real king, Trump, to which he was summoned, evidencing his unease with a nervous tic taking over his face. He agreed to take 2,000 injured children, not at all the same thing as Trump wanted.
Egypt, a bigger power though also US-dependent (especially its military) has its own economic, social and political reasons for rejecting a proposal to integrate a large population of forced Palestinian refugees into its society and economy and declined an invitation to meet Trump.
US ally Saudi Arabia, which has not been pressured to the degree of Egypt and Lebanon, nevertheless has reasons to reject the plan and that is the de-stabilization of the whole Middle East by a further expansion of the Zionist State and growing population of stateless refugees.
That is the other and fundamental reason why the Saudi ruling class is opposed to the expulsion of Palestinians and they have stated it in terms of the need for a ‘Palestinian state’ – within the framework of a two-state ‘solution’ (i.e. a partitioned Palestine with about 20% for Palestinians).
The Saudis have also proposed to rebuild and set up Gaza with the Palestinians remaining there but in the course of which they intend to have somebody other than Hamas – whom the people elected, let’s not forget – administer the area.
The Palestinian Authority (sic) despite its role as proxy policeman for the Zionist State and US Imperialism, would not welcome the loss of a large part of its possible fiefdom and certainly could not politically afford to agree to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Macron, for the French imperialist ruling class, has welcomed the Saudi proposal. It is not beyond possibility that the US ruling class will approve and it may even have been part of its plan to frighten everyone and make such ‘solutions’ as that of the Saudis more generally accepted.
UAE is not vulnerable internally to anything like the degree of Egypt and Jordan and on the other hand is at times in contention with Saudi Arabia for influence in the region but also ally of the USA is nevertheless opposed the Trump ethnic cleansing process.
Qatar, home of Al-Jazeera news channel and much more in contention with Saudi Arabia and also the UAE, is also an ally of the USA but opposed to removing the Palestinians from Gaza.
The elites of the WesternEuropean states, from imperialist to lesser capitalist states wishing to coexist with imperialism, including the colonial and neo-colonial states of Ireland all oppose the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, saying it threatens the ‘two state option’.
That option would copper-fasten Israeli occupation of around 80% of Palestine and control over the remaining 20% as a client state. They would hope to isolate the Palestinian resistance under collaborator rule and help and assist in the stabilisation under imperialism of the Middle East.
A DIFFERENT BASIS FOR OPPOSITION
The ruling elites of IRAN and YEMEN18 see ‘Israel’ as an important foothold for US and other Western imperialism in the Middle East and also as an aggressive colonial force in its own right. Therefore they are fundamentally hostile to any kind of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
That too is the position of Hezbollah, a major political and military force in Lebanon.
IS THE ZIONIST ARMY CAPABLE OF ETHNICALLY CLEANSING GAZA?
The Israeli Occupation Army is unlikely to welcome being sent back into Gaza to fight the Palestinian resistance there once again. And signalling that, rather than an inadvertent slip, may have caused the admission of very high combat fatality figures by the IOF’s commander.19
Eyal Zamir, ‘Israel’s’ new Chief of Staff, referred in a recent interview to the “5,942 of bereaved families”20 since October 2023, terminology only used by the IOF to refer to the families of their soldiers killed and also noted that some families likely lost more than one member.
Those numbers, apart from being around six times those previously admitted by the IOF, are not such that can be replaced in the short term.
Furthermore, the Palestinian resistance in Gaza (and presumably Hezbollah in Lebanon) targeted officers whenever they could resulting in a high attrition rate among higher ranks engaged in combat. These take longer to replace due to their experience, training and skills.
It has long been suspected in many quarters that Israel was concealing its war casualty numbers by imposing press censorship, installing IOF officers to answer queries at hospitals and issuing untrue statistics for foreign and home consumption.
Zamir also stated that 15,000 soldiers were suffering from physical or mental injuries.21 As early as December 2023, the ‘Israeli’ publication Haartez, quoted their Health Ministry figures of a staggering 10,548 injured as opposed to the 1,593 stated by the IOF.22
“In October 2024, Haaretz also reported that around 1,000 wounded soldiers were admitted to rehabilitation centres each month, along with new injury claims associated with past incidents.
“The report stated that the rehabilitation division estimates that by 2030, around 100,000 Israeli soldiers will be classed as disabled, and almost half also experience some form of psychological challenge.”23
Statistics show a military age population in ‘Israel’, male and female, of around three million24 of which some are already serving, many exempt from recruitment due to specific occupation or studies, pregnancy, general health or ability, criminal status or psychological unfitness.
This is without taking into account the Haredi, formerly exempt from service due to religious studies but since June last year eligible to call-up. However this has led to Haredi protests and only 10% of those called actually presenting for service — and also strains Netanyahu’s coalition.25
On the other hand, there is general agreement among commentators that the Resistance, in particular Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas military wing) have already replaced their fallen across the ranks. The survivors are likely to be for the most part battle-hardened, motivated and confident.
‘Israel’ fought the war in Gaza largely from the air through bombing and missile strikes along with artillery at a distance or a little closer by tanks. The IOF Merkava tanks have been severely depleted due to roadside IEDs (bombs) and Resistance-developed or modified RPGs.
The IOF generally did not take the Resistance on in soldier-to-soldier combat and when they did, were generally defeated. IOF snipers were often themselves sniped or they and their spy-posts eliminated by a rocket with thermobaric warhead.
Gaza still contains a vast network of sophisticated tunnels of which the IOF know very little nor, when an entrance is discovered, do the IOF go in there to fight. The IOF-created rubble landscape with rarely any building for the IOF to hole up but no way of spotting tunnel exits.
As demonstrated in the prisoner handover events, Hamas is not short of weapons, though level of ammunition stores is an unknown factor. Given the huge amount of unexploded bombs dropped by the IOF, possibly as high as 15% the Resistance will not be short of explosives either.26
CONCLUSION
Whether Trump was serious about the plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza or was merely soft-soaping Netanyahu and his most fascist Zionist supporters remains to be seen. Equally, the US may have wanted to scare Palestinian Arab neighbours to step forward to police Gaza for them.
Let us not forget that Brett McGurk under Biden’s administration discussed the need to consider how to manage Gaza “the day after” the war there ended and that a revamped Palestinian Authority might be able to do the job27 – Abbas rushing to assure his masters that the PA was indeed ready!
Proving themselves ready for Gaza management was probably the reason for the PA’s siege of Jenin and then participating in attacks upon the Resistance there alongside the IOF. However, it is unlikely that the imperialists have much faith in the corrupt PA’s ability to take on running Gaza.
The ethnic cleansing of Gaza, whether it was ever really contemplated by Trump or not, will not happen in the near future because none of the regional stakeholders – other than the blindest fascists of the Israeli Government – can afford to agree with it.
Also because the only ones reasonably available to attack Gaza again, the IOF, got really badly chewed up in their fifteen months of genocidal warfare there. But then perhaps the whole threat was scare-bait to get Arab states to collude even further with ‘Israel’ in managing post-war Gaza.
On the other hand, an unthinkable idea has been thought of and widely publicised. And when the unthinkable becomes part of public discourse, it breaks the taboo around it and makes it easier to put into practice at some point in the future.
Resumption of and constant bombing of Gaza is therefore not totally beyond possibility but it seems unlikely the master, the USA (Trump variety) wants that and, while that is the case, it cannot happen.
2The 2nd Intifada (uprising) was against the ‘Israeli’ occupation but also against the Oslo Accords, the perceived sell-out by the ruling Fatah party of Palestinian self-determination and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
14Since the IOF pulled out of Gaza and the election of Hamas by the people, five US Presidencies have supported ‘Israel’s’ actions and supplied them with the financial and military means to carry them out: George Bush Jnr, Barrack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Donald Trump (again). Two individual Presidents have been Democrats, two Republican; two Presidencies have been Democratic and three Republican.
18And seems to reflect the opinion of their countries’ masses also.
19Given the secrecy around the real statistics he may have been not only signalling disapproval of resuming the war in Gaza but also feeding information ammunition to others who might also be opposed to that return.
rebelbreeze 