Clare Daly stood for election in the 2024 elections of the Irish State, in the Dublin Central parliamentary constituency, one with a tradition of independent representation going back to Maureen O’Sullivan and Tony Gregory before her.
Daly was standing as one of the loose Left coalition of Independents for Change in a heavy competition for the four-seat constituency.
Clare Daly has a track record as elected public representative and socialist political activist, also as a prominent Socialist Party activist, with which organisation she partedcompany in August 2012.
She was elected MEP for the Dublin constituency from July 2019 to July 2024, TD1 for Fingal from Feb. 2016-July 1999 and TD Dublin North Feb. 2011-2019; in recent years Daly has been better known outside Ireland due to her public interventions in the European Parliament.
Daly and her partner Wallace were both vilified by pro-imperialist liberals and ‘Left’ for publicly opposing US/NATO/ EU imperialist campaigns against Islamic regimes and the Russian Federation, being subjected to a host of unfounded allegations contrary to their actual record.
Tik Tok clips of Daly’s biting attacks on the EU’s complicity in the US-backed ‘Israeli’ genocide provided relief for many around the world from the Zionist sycophancy and insincere and ineffective concern for the victims of that daily genocide prevalent in the EU Parliament.
And who can forget Daly’s calling German politician and EU Commission President Ursula Van Der Leyen out as ‘Frau Genocide’ in the European Parliament in December last year!2
While an MEP, Daly also intervened in the discussion around the Irish Gombeen3 class’ attempt to push us towards NATO, further undermining a quite tattered Irish neutrality. And while a TD, she and her partner Mick Wallace TD were arrested protesting the foreign militarisation of Shannon.
To their credit both risked jail by refusing to pay the fines imposed but the Gombeen ruling class decided to restrict the damage of its exposure of collusion with US imperialism by also reducing the punishment of both to a few hours in captivity.
Daly has been one of the few TDs prepared to speak in public against the repression of Irish Republicans and to visit some of the consequent victims in jail.
In the EU Parliament, Daly also denounced the Spanish State’s police invasion of Barcelona and violence against voters there on 1st October 2017 during the referendum on Catalunya’s independence.
2024 Dublin Central election poster for Clare Daly.
In Ireland today
In her election flyer here Daly highlighted representation independent of political party for her electoral area, housing, health service, cost of living, Palestine, the endangered climate and Irish neutrality without any indication of how these issues might be effectively addressed.
Daly’s election flyer did not mention capitalism or imperialism, nor did she campaign on a platform of overthrowing the current neo-colonial and neo-liberal capitalist system in force, instead indicating her wish to “hold to account the people who’ve got us into this mess.”
“Holding to account” is something to which Daly is accustomed doing and does it well, eloquently, with passion and fluently, scarcely having to refer to her notes while doing so. But like ‘speaking truth to power’, it has little effect on those who are in control of the political-social system.
It can indeed have an effect on the victims of the system but we are left with the question of what to do about the situation. Refreshing as it may be to hear her again in Leinster House, neither voting Daly in — nor fifty Dalys — is going to change any of the conditions under which we suffer.
BY THE WAY,
in case anyone’s interested, I gave my first preference vote to Daly and hope she does get elected.
End.
1Teachta Dála, the title of a public representative elected to the parliament of the Irish State.
2Imperialist politician and proven plagiarist in her doctoral thesis.
3Vernacular term in Ireland for huckster, carpet-bagger-type capitalists, derived from the Irish language gaimbíneachas, profiteering, nowadays used to describe the neo-colonial Irish capitalist class.
While thousands marched once again in Palestine solidarity in Dublin, a section of the demonstration marched as a bloc in specific solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance with banners, flags and slogans declaring their position.
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign with a number of branches has been for many years the major organiser of Palestinian solidarity events and had once again called for a national march in Dublin, again to Leinster House, home of the Irish Parliament.
Section of the front of the Palestinian Resistance Solidarity Bloc in Dublin on Saturday. In this photo may be seen the flags of three factions of the Palestinian Resistance and, left foreground, the flag of Irish revolutionary socialist Republicanism, the Starry Plough (Photo: R.Breeze)
This has become a pattern of the main IPSC street activity in Dublin, along with holding a rally on the central pedestrian reservation in Dublin’s O’Connell Street, with occasional marches to the Department of Foreign Affairs (though in the past it organised boycott pickets of ‘Israeli’ products).
The US Embassy seems to have become out of bounds for the IPSC. This is despite the clear responsibility of the USA for supplying most of the armament, political and financial backing for the genocide being carried out by the Zionist state against the Palestinians.
Some believe that the IPSC leadership is complying with the wishes of the Irish police, the Gardaí, not to have Palestine solidarity marches go to the US Embassy. The offices of the EU, Germany and the UK, major contributors to the genocide, have also been given in effect a waiver.
The national march called by the IPSC at its destination in Molesworth Street last Saturday. The photo is taken from the platform and PA lorry facing the crowd, with its back to Leinster House (of the Irish Parliament) which also has crowd barriers erected behind it. (Photo sourced: IPSC)
Neither the march last Saturday nor any organised before it by the IPSC was going to promote solidarity with the Resistance, despite their former chairperson having once said of them in public that they are ‘freedom fighters’. Of course, to the ‘Israelis’ and EU they are ‘terrorists’.
Section of the front of the Palestinian Resistance Solidarity Bloc in Dublin on Saturday (Photo: R.Breeze)
The IPSC has organised only one public meeting during this year’s genocide to highlight the terrible conditions of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners in ‘Israeli’ jails and rarely mentions them, nor in solidarity with the Samidoun1 organisation being banned in USA and Canada.
In October last year, as this phase of the genocide began, the IPSC dithered over whether to call for the expulsion of the ‘Israeli’ Ambassador to Ireland, as did the Sinn Féin leadership until a near revolt of the party’s members forced them to return to their previous position. As did the IPSC.
Clearly the IPSC leadership is trying to keep itself somewhere around the ‘middle road’ in Palestinian solidarity, probably in order — as it sees it – to remain with influence among the ruling circles. However, the actual results among those circles do not bear testimony to their effectiveness.
NO CHANGE
The Irish state continues to permit US military planes and personnel to violate the State’s nominal independence through Shannon International Airport, to permit Zionist armament overflights of its air space (similarly with the RAF) and to permit British Navy docking in Irish ports.
The relatively mild Occupied Territories Bill, long approved through Leinster House, remains not brought into force, blocked by the Coalition Government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party. It could not be clearer that the ruling class in Ireland do not feel under enough pressure.
This is despite a clear popular feeling among the public in Ireland of solidarity with Palestine and revulsion at their genocidal attacks by the Zionist state.
There is a long-established train of thought that maintains that solidarity with the Palestinians is not just calling for the genocide to stop – that alone is charity and that actual solidarity means solidarity with the people’s resistance and the political prisoners.
If the IPSC were to adopt that position they might find it easier to support more radical action to pressure the Irish state to break with the western powers’ consensus of support for the ‘Israeli’ state and consequently for its genocide against the Palestinians.
Perhaps that is one of the very reasons that the IPSC leadership will not take that stand and that its stewards have at times even tried to convince people to remove their flags supporting various Resistance factions.
Section of the front of the Palestinian Resistance Solidarity Bloc in Dublin on Saturday (Photo: R.Breeze)
On Saturday independent activists joined those of Saoirse Don Phalaistín, Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland and Queers For Palestine in forming a sizeable bloc on the march with banners, flags and call-and-answer slogans advertising its solidarity with the Resistance.
This seems a welcome trend likely to grow.
End.
FOOTNOTE
1Palestinian political prisoner support and advocacy organisation.
A number of years ago I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book We Were Eight Years in Power, which was a eulogy to the Obama era and people like himself who had done well out of that period in the US.
It was a terrible book, rightly slated by many and led to black academic and activist Cornel West describing him as the neoliberal wing of the black freedom struggle.[1] The book was so bad, I barely got half way through it and put it down never to pick it up again.
Cornel West (left) described Ta-Nehisi Coates (right) as the neo-liberal wing of the black freedom struggle.
I never thought I would read another of his books, though I have read some articles of his. Then came his new book The Message and the criticism from the Right on his comments on Palestine. So, I surrendered and read it. This time in its entirety.
It is an easy well-written read.
As with all his books, this is very much about him. His preferred pronouns are definitely I and My (yes, I know My is not a pronoun, but none of this pronoun nonsense obeys the rules of grammar in any case).
It deals with three trips he made and how he felt about them and the issues that arose. Given the CBS interview I fully expected to find some hard critique of the US, Israel and Apartheid, though that is not his style.
Instead, he relates stories about his experiences in Palestine, talking to Palestinians and also to Israeli settlers. That is it. The Israelis obviously do not come out well in the book. How could they?
Coates likens his experiences in Palestine to Jim Crow in the US and Apartheid in South Africa. They are the comments and observations on what he saw, and pretty much middle of the road.
He is no Norman Finkelstein with his searing condemnations of Israeli massacres and Apartheid. It says more about the US media that Coates’ interesting, but in no way extreme comments, have provoked such fury.
This part of the book, is partly a Mea Culpa for previous articles he had written in which he praises Israel, chief among them, apparently, is his essay published in The Atlantic, The Case for Reparations.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
In the essay, he liberally and uncritically quotes terrorists and murderers such as David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin.[2] He has much to apologise for in that essay.
The essay starts off with a biblical epigraph from the book of Deuteronomy and also an anonymous quote from 1861 “By our unpaid labor and suffering, we have earned the right to the soil, many times over and over, and now we are determined to have it.”
Except the land in question, that which Lincoln promised to give to freed slaves was land that had or would be stolen from native American Indians, who do not figure in his case for reparations, just like Palestinians didn’t exist for him.
It is a thoroughly vile, though well researched piece, that I have criticised previously in an essay entitled Reparations Without Talking About Capitalism[3] and won’t go into again here.
He now says that he is ashamed of some of the things he said in that essay, which he mentions in his book. He does not mention an earlier essay which leaves no doubt as to where his loyalty and politics lies: The Negro Sings of Zionism.[4]
In it he compares Zionism to Black Nationalism, Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement to Huey Newton and even Malcolm X! This essay was written only months before Obama, his hero, came to power and was in the throes of his election campaign.
Obama was and, like Kamala Harris, still is an ardent supporter of Israeli atrocity. Coates was not going to challenge Obama on this point, ever.
And even now in the midst of the genocide in Gaza he has publicly called for people to vote for Kamala Harris, saying that sometimes the choices are bad.[5]
And further, he says a Kamala presidency which supports “apartheid and genocide” would be nightmare scenario “of being the first Black woman president and having 2,000-pound bombs with your name on them dropping on Gaza.”[6]
Except it is not. It is business as usual. The only nightmare is for the Palestinians, not for him or the rest of the liberals who will vote for Harris.
Under Obama, the US bombed at least six countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, where the Houthis are actually challenging both the US and Israel and of course Libya
where the toppling of Gaddafi led to the reintroduction of open-air slave markets where black Africans were once again for sale. Not a minor point you would think for a black identitarian.
In 2016 alone, Obama in his final year of his presidency dropped a staggering 26,171 bombs i.e. three bombs every hour, every day of the year.[7] Meanwhile Coates was waxing lyrical about how he and others like him had spent eight years in power.
He should own it! That was on Coates as well. He doesn’t get to wash his hands now.
Sometimes the choices are bad, he claims. But would he tolerate a white person voting for a racist politician on the grounds that they had good positions on other issues, such as abortion? I think not.
His arrogance leads him to think he and Harris deserve a pass on this now. He doesn’t, nobody does. Neither does the hypothetical white voter who wants to vote for some racist who has good positions on other issues.
The level of ignorance that Coates claims for himself is hard to fathom and even harder to believe. He claims to not be sure when exactly in his visit to Palestine he first heard the term Nakba.
He also states that “For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere.”
Revealing itself? Under which rock had Coates been hiding? Had he not heard of Operation Cast Lead?
It was launched in the same year he sang his hymn to Zionism. It resulted in around 1,500 Palestinian deaths, mainly civilians and the displacement of 100,000 people. Did he never hear of the Goldstone Report on that operation?
And the scandal when Goldstone was forced to recant? It was one of many such assaults on Gaza. All of this and other incursions have been well documented.
Writers write. Everyone knows that, it is their art, their trade. But more than write, they read. All writers read, even the bad ones have to read something occasionally. Coates’ ignorance is not credible.
When he researched his essays praising Zionism, did he not come across a single solitary article to give him some pause for thought? Any piece by Finkelstein, Ilán Pappé, Chomsky, anyone at all? His feigned ignorance is not plausible.
In his song to Zionism, Coates looked at the conflict through his identitarian eyes, and chose a side that he thought was closest to his own identity. His “repentance” is a similar process. He now sees the Palestinians through those eyes.
We have no idea how far he will go with this and when he will backtrack. Like many writers he can read the room and probably feels now is a good moment to be on the Palestinian side. But his repentance only goes so far.
If Harris wins the election, he will at some point write Another Eight Years in Power. Or if she loses, The Land of Milk and Honey We Were Deprived of.
He states early on his book that “we could never practice writing solely for the craft itself, but must necessarily believe our practice to be in service of that larger emancipatory mandate.” Like Gandhi said of British civilisation, it would be a good idea.
But what is that mandate? Abortion rights in the US, but genocide in Palestine?
He has little understanding or willingness to deal with issues of capitalism, imperialism, or his own role in it all. The book will through its anecdotes prove interesting to many and he has an easy-to-read style. You could read this book in one sitting.
Just don’t expect any deep analysis or understanding, there isn’t any. I have said nothing of the other two parts to the book, which almost deserve a critique of their own, though it would be more favourable than I have been thus far on his coverage of Palestine.
Borrow it, don’t buy it. Money is hard to come by, Coates is not short of a bob or two and there are better things to spend your money on.
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (30/09/2024) (Images and captions by R. Breeze)
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
Kemi Badenoch, the contender for the Tory Party leadership in Britain has stirred up controversy through her comments that not all cultures are equally valid.
She referred to women’s rights, gay rights and even hating Israel as signs of which cultures are less valid.
Not surprisingly some right wing “feminists”, like the ones currently campaigning for the man who advocates sexually assaulting women in the US came out to agree with her.
Key amongst them Kellie Jay Keen, who saw fit to bring up child marriage,[1] an issue Trump and every US president would know something about, given the huge numbers of child marriages in the US, where it is legal in 37 states.[2]
There are “cultures” they say where women have fewer or even no rights, gays are hounded or even killed and even where witch burnings are legal. Badenoch said
We cannot be naive and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid.
They are not. I am struck, for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here. We must recognise that the world has changed.[3]
Imagine belonging to a culture that hated genocide! I am tempted to say the joke writes itself, except it is no laughing matter.
Although she brought up the issue in relation to immigration, when Badenoch says some cultures are less valid, what she really means is that there are countries that the “civilised” can bomb into the stone age, there are people Western troops can rape, women who can be bombed in maternity hospitals just as Israel does.
What she does not mean is that Britain will not supply weapons to regimes like Saudi Arabia; her concern for women only goes so far. In fact, she would personally sharpen the sword or knot the whip used to mete out lashes to women, if there was money in it for British companies.
Between March 2015, when the Saudis began bombing Yemen, and March 2024 the Saudis received 8.2 billion in weapons sales. BAE received 25 billion in the same period and has 6,700 employees based in the country.[4]
Maybe some of these people whose culture she thinks are less valid are just fleeing the British bombs dropped on them by the head-chopping misogynists in Riyadh.
But what is a culture?
There is no agreed upon definition of what is a culture, but it is popularly understood to be the norms, customs, beliefs, practices, artistic production and world view of a given set of people, who are in turn not that easy to define.
It is a malleable term that can be twisted and distorted to suit any agenda. But Badenoch had specific people in mind. Of course, she meant Muslims, though she pointed out she didn’t mean all Muslims, certainly not the ones buying British bombs.
But are there cultures where rape, witch burning and the persecution of gays is not only legal but socially acceptable? Well yes, but let’s look at some of the facts and the British or Western values Badenoch thinks are being undermined.
Witch burning
Well, belief in superstitious nonsense is prevalent everywhere. Most people believe an invisible man in the sky not only controls their everyday lives, but blesses the bombs as they rain down on the innocent. But that aside, what about witches?
Well, it was Germany that gave us the Malleus Maleficarum and the witch hunts that murdered thousands of women in Britain and Ireland between 1450 and 1750 and King James (yep the bible basher) was particularly obsessed with the issue. That was a long time ago, however, nowadays.
The harshest place for witches, or rather, female foreign domestic house workers the government thinks are witches, may be Saudi Arabia. An entire police unit is dedicated to fighting witchcraft crime, and religious judges often convict people with laughable evidence.[5]
It is now, what it always was, the persecution of women in the economy. But nobody in Britain burns witches nowadays, do they? Well, it depends on what you mean by a witch. The term is as malleable as culture.
Acid attacks are a modern form of witch burning, where women are attacked for being women.
Britain has the highest rate in the world of recorded acid attacks, with 1244 incidents in 2023,[6] not all of them against women, but a significant number were and racists have tried to paint it as an Asian problem.
But police statistics tell another tale and debunked that myth as far back as 2017.
In reality, just 6% of all suspects in London over the last 15 years were Asian.
For the same period (2002-16), ‘White Europeans’ comprised 32% of suspects, and African Caribbeans 38% of suspects. About one in five suspects remain unknown – either because they can’t be identified, or because the victim has refused to identify them.
The number of Asian victims is 421 – around one fifth of the 2,196 total for the 15-year period. Almost half the victims (987) are White European, and one quarter (557) are African Caribbean.[7]
Some right wing “feminists” have also made similar arguments to Badenoch. They ignore all their campaigning on rape when a migrant is charged and talk about imported problems. But rape has been an historic problem in Britain and indeed around the world.
“[Police ]Forces recorded 194,683 sexual offences in 2021-22, including 70,330 rapes, the highest number since records began in 2002/03.”[8] We also know now that it is part of police “culture” in Britain to rape women, particularly in Manchester.
Not sure who is sharing which “British values” Badenoch and her “feminist” friends were referring to. Rape in every society is committed mostly by the partner of the woman or someone she knew.
Migrants are not beating a track to Britain to rape women, women in Britain are being raped by their husbands, boyfriends, partners and other relatives. That is a statistic that holds true around the world.
As for political rights. It is true that Britain has had three female prime ministers (well, two and a half), Thatcher, May and Truss. None of these female leaders defended women’s rights, in fact Thatcher was particularly hostile to women.
Margaret Thatcher speaking as Prime Minister of the UK in 1974 – she supported no steps forward for women in the UK or abroad. (Photo sourced: Internet)
She cared so little for women that she agreed to fund the Afghan Mujahideen, the forerunner of the Taliban.[9] The Tories shared the same values as these troglodytes and that is the tradition Badenoch stands in, despite the illusions and denials of right wing “feminists”.
The US has yet to have its first female president, though that may change with the vote in November.
Meanwhile, a host of countries that do not share Badenoch’s commitment to “British values” and the rights of women, as she would claim have had female leaders, including a number of Muslim countries, such as Indonesia, Tunisia, Mauritius, and Bangladesh.
The latter has had two female leaders in the last 25 years, with both of them serving two non-consecutive terms each. One of them was recently overthrown, a fate that should have befallen Thatcher, but didn’t.
But how does Badenoch fare on women’s rights? Well, she has abstained on extending abortion to Northern Ireland, buffer zones for abortion clinics and she opposed government supports for women going through menopause.
Kemi Badenoch MP, contender for leader of the Conservative Party in Britain. (Photo sourced: Internet)
As Minister for Equality, she refused to outlaw discrimination against women going through the menopause, despite the fact that one in ten women between the ages of 45 and 55 leave the workforce due to menopause symptoms.[10] She has no commitment to women.
Cultures change over time, before the British arrived two of the most celebrated Arab poets were gay. After the British imposition of anti-gay legislation and the promotion of conservative figures, their books were burned.
They are not static and within certain cultures there are those who oppose the most reactionary elements of them, like Irish women who campaigned for contraception, abortion and divorce for decades.
Badenoch is just an old-fashioned imperialist, who likes to play up her own black and migrant credentials to attack other minorities. She does not defend women and the tropes about migrants repeated by KJK put her firmly in the Tommy Robinson camp she joined after the recent race riots.
It is a myth that the West is some bastion of women’s rights, when it is the West that promoted and props up the most reactionary anti-women regimes in the world.
The British police have a record of rape culture both on and off duty. They represent a greater threat to women than the “less valid” cultures of Badenoch’s delirium.
Badenoch is the enemy of women, as is her entire Tory Party, hangers-on and Tommy Robinson’s new found “feminist” friends.
On Saturday 12th October, thousands of people descended on Shannon Airport1 in an organic action to protest our land and airspace being used in the transport of U.S. munitions bound for Zionist Israel.
Demonstrators arriving in buses and cars were immediately met with Garda pushback at checkpoints about 2 kilometres from the entrance of Shannon Airport.
The diverted protestors were led down side roads and cul-de-sacs away from the mini roundabout area where regular anti-war protests occur. Such diversions epitomise government strategy perfectly: Divert. Distract. Divide.
The protestors were met with a hostile environment of steel barriers erected to separate and divide them upon entering the airport from all directions.
The weather was not so unkind, as the sun emerged around noon in time for the beat of the drums striking up an atmosphere of resistance and bold defiance.
Drums, placards, flags and chants at Shannon Airport Saturday (Photo source: Participant)
As the crowd descended, the silence was broken by Social Rights Ireland with a number of speeches given addressing Ireland’s connection with Palestine’s struggle for liberation, whilst our banners, “Break the Chains of Zionism” and “Sovereignty for Ireland NOW!” acted as a backdrop.
Various chants ensued, such as, “From Ireland to Palestine, occupation is a crime!”, “Resistance is an obligation in the face of occupation!” and “Saoirse don Phalastín!” Overall, the protest was peaceful and lasted several hours.
Two arrests were made under Section 6 of the Public Order Act following some pushing at barriers where protestors were gathered.
(Photo source: Participant)
As we know, genocide has been ripping through Palestine, devastating an entire population. Reports of the most brutal and dehumanising acts have forced people of conscience from all corners of the earth to confront the questions: how can this happen?
Why is no government or institution able to stop this Zionist terrorism?
For the first time in human history, a government has openly declared and is conducting a live-streamed genocide. This government also claims it is civilised, democratic and an upholder of human rights.
What started as a war of displacement has turned into a war of total obliteration. Meanwhile, the Irish people look on aghast, lost for words and running out of ideas as to how to make it stop.
The Free State2 watches too, unwilling to act but feigning concern and placating the masses with saccharine-coated words and vacuous gestures.
On the 9th October 2024, Fine Gael blueshirt,3 Simon Harris4 declared, “I think the world in general has failed the children of Gaza,” speaking in abstraction as if he is indeed not “part of the world”.
Not only is this an expression of abdication of responsibility, this admission to the people of Ireland confirms that he knows he is indeed powerless, a mere subject of his U.S. imperialist masters. Whether most Irish voters realise this, is debatable.
Allowing U.S. weapons to pass through our civilian airport, while claiming to be a neutral country and letting on to be concerned about the children of Gaza, is not simply an example of Fine Gael’s hypocrisy or gaslighting.
It is also blatant testimony to Harris’s and the state’s complete unwillingness to cut any ties with the U.S. Today the Free State is a tool of the Zionist ruler, it cannot fathom a future that is not connected to U.S. imperialism.
It is important for the Palestinian solidarity movement to not confuse solidarity and sovereignty.
How can Irish voters fully and genuinely express solidarity with the oppressed and work hand in hand with the oppressor? How can Irish voters call for an end to genocide whilst continuing business as usual?
How can politicians feast with genociders and sympathise with the starving?
Those who understand how oppression works know instinctively that hypocrisy is inbuilt to the psyche of politicians and the ruling class. The idea that politicians or the ruling class can be appealed to is pointless.
(Photo source: Participant)
The façade of Western democracy has completely unravelled. European values have been dismantled and replaced by E.U. interests best illustrated in the rise of Zionist leaders such as Ursula von der Liar and fascist governments across the E.U.
Anti-genocide protestors must stop trusting, appealing to, working with or appeasing the oppressor, be that Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Green fascist Party, or indeed, so-called opposition parties on the neo-liberal Left.
While those who descended on Shannon had a common, collective demand for the government to STOP THE PLANES! STOP THE BOMBS! what is still missing from our collective conversation is the topic of Ireland’s sovereignty.
To question WHY the U.S. or indeed the British forces can use our land, sea and air ports is of vital importance. Socialist Republicans understand that only a 32-county socialist workers’ republic can be truly sovereign, free from the chains of imperialism, free from Zionism.
We know Ireland’s long history of oppression. We know occupation, dispossession and genocide. We know what displacement means and being stripped of our land, our resources, our mother tongue.
However, the slow erosion of our identity as a people through persecution, plantation, genocide, occupation and pacification is not always grasped by the Irish population following the successful assimilation process which still has a tight grip on our people.
This process is mediated through a pervasive neo-colonial mindset which continues to infect many in our places of work, education and society more generally.
Yes, since October 2023, the Irish people have turned their outrage in action, mobilising in local communities and workplaces to take a stand against genocide.
(Photo source: Participant)
Yes, many have applied pressure to the government via petitions, rallies and calls to support bills in government that they believe will effect change.
In response, the Irish government agreed to recognise the state of Palestine, but of course, this action means nothing for the people in Palestine who continue to be bombed, brutalised and slaughtered. But nothing tangible has happened.
If anything, the situation grows worse as the threat of nuclear confrontation becomes imminent.
Trying to quell the rising anger on the streets, the Free State government has attempted to placate Irish voters by deceiving them in the run up to election time.
Real action begins with expelling the Zionist Ambassador from Ireland. Real action begins with stopping U.S. war planes from using our airports. The Free State’s social control mechanism via its fake support for Palestine may fool some voters and placate neo-liberals, just in time for the general election.
In the words of Connolly,5 “Yes, ruling by fooling is a great British art – with great Irish fools to practice on.”
Section of the protest at Shannon Airport on Saturday (Photo cred: Mostafa DarwishAnadolu via Getty Images).
End.
Footnotes
1Located in Co. Clare in the west of Ireland, one of two international airports in the Irish state and has been the target of protests over the years due to documented cases of US military planes landing and taking off from there and Irish Government refusal to inspect alleged non-military US planes for military personnel, materials or indeed prisoners subject to ‘extraordinary rendition’ to CIA dark sites in client states.
2This was the name the neo-colonial state adopted when it was formed in 1921 and the name stuck particularly among the abandoned nationalist population of the occupied Six Counties colony.
3A pejorative term for Fine Gael, recalling its founding from a coalition of three parties, one of which was the fascist Army Comrades Association, commonly known as the ‘Blueshirts’ which described a part of their uniform.
4Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the current 3-party coalition government of the Irish state: Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party.
5James Connolly, revolutionary socialist worker intellectual, historian, journalist, song-writer and trade union organiser, born and raised in Edinburgh, one of the Seven Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation of Irish Independence and Dublin Commandant of the Rising, executed along with the other signatories after the surrender of the Rising in Moore Street.
The news about the sexual predations of Mohammed Al Fayed, owner of Harrods and Chelsea Football Club, was not news to many. His predilections, we learn now, were well-known in his circles. Yet only after his death are these stories made public.
Again and again we learn these stories of sexual predators, even paedophiles, whose predations come to the attention of the public only after their deaths. Entertainers such as Rolf Harris and Jimmy Saville, for example, who preyed on children.
Fayed wasn´t an entertainer but he was very rich and preyed on young women – in this world in which we live, some entertainers are often very rich too. With wealth comes protection, not just of the privately-hired variety but of the public kind also – the police force.
Their victims, at least the adult ones, knew that their words would count less with the police than would those of the rich. In the end, the police know instinctively who are their employers. The government ministers and senior police officers mix in the same circles as some of the rich.
Mohamed Al-Fayed demonstrating his access to power and influence, posed next to the late British monarch, Queen Elizabeth. His son Dodi was friendly with Princess Diane and died in a car crash with her – at the time she was married to the former Prince Charles, now King of the UK. Jimmy Saville, paedophile, we may recall, was also close to the Royal Family as were the Epstein-Maxwell couple, who procured at least one underage female for Prince Andrew. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The victims are aware of how the vertical power structure in society is constructed. They know or are soon taught that the rich have not only direct protection but retribution for those who offend also. There are penalties beyond police harassment or lack of police response to complaints.
There is the jeopardising of employment for the employee, lacking of job reference, unfavourable comment in another employer´s ear … The employers also have a network of mutual interest.
HR managers of one company will wish to further their career progression through the capitalist network. Players know how the game is played.
WHY AND HOW
The predators do not do what they do merely because they like to – there are many temptations in people´s heads that are not acted upon, that remain in internal fantasy or perhaps acted out only with consensual partners.
The famous predators functioned out of a sense of entitlement – like their wealth which they felt they deserved,1 they believed also that they were entitled to do what they wanted to “lesser” beings because they themselves were famous and rich (like Harris and Saville) – or just rich, like Mayed.
Just as their wealth was the accumulation of the wealth created by the work of many others, with their sense of entitlement went also the reality of their ability to do what they wanted. They did it because they could.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were eventually arrested and went to jail, Epstein dying there. Far from being a vindication of the justice of the system, their victims were initially ignored by the police and even harassed – and Epstein died in mysterious circumstances before trial.
All around the world people are suffering these kinds of abuses to one degree or another, have done so for centuries and will continue to do so. Yes, even with the occasional exposure of this or that person.
For as long as the system of status, wealth and privilege exists. Which means at least for as long as the capitalist system exists – and even beyond that, perhaps.
So in organising to overthrow the capitalist system we must ensure that we do not replace a system of unquestionable authority and power with another.
Yes, well, that´s for the future, right? No. It starts now. In our treatment of one another. In how we conduct ourselves. In ensuring we do not claim a special entitlement or the right not to be be questioned.
And when we err, individually or organisationally, to act to correct and remedy the ill.2
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Let us remember here too that no-one can get rich by their own work, no matter how hard – it requires the work of many others to make one person wealthy.
2Let us not forget the one example among many: the past history of the ostensibly revolutionary socialist organisation of the former Workers Revolutionary Party. Its General Secretary Gerry Healy was accused of the sexual abuse of 26 young female activists in the organisation. A painfully honest description of the replication of systems of unquestioned privilege in the former Party and the process of the expulsion of Gerry Healy and of his defence (for example by famous film actors Corin and Vanessa Redgrave) can be found here: https://libcom.org/article/break-wrp-horses-mouth-simon-pirani
NB: Rebel Breeze shares this near the anniversary of the fascist military coup in Chile, the same date as the Twin Towers massacre years later.. The article is a year old but relevant as long as British imperialism exists.
As the Pinochet regime rounded up and murdered its political opponents after the 1973 coup, a UK Foreign Office propaganda unit passed material to Chile’s military intelligence and MI6 connived with a key orchestrator of the coup, newly declassified files show.
Foreign Office helped Pinochet regime to develop a counter-insurgency strategy based on British military campaigns in Southeast Asia
MI6 officer David Spedding was attached to British embassy in Santiago in 1972-4, and had relations with a key member of the military junta
The UK government assisted Chile’s military intelligence in the aftermath of the brutal 1973 coup against elected president Salvador Allende, newly declassified files show.
The assistance was authorised by the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret Foreign Office propaganda unit which worked closely with Britain’s secret intelligence service, MI6.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office building, Whitehall, London. Many a dark deed was planned here. (Photo accessed: Internet)
The IRD had long seen Allende as a political threat. As Declassified previously revealed, throughout the 1960s, the unit had sought to prevent Allende from ever becoming president through election interference and covert propaganda operations.
After Allende was elected in 1970, the IRD’s distribution of propaganda material became “strictly limited”, with the British embassy having fewer reliable contacts in the Chilean government.
This all changed after the coup.
In January 1974, the IRD began to “extend the distribution” of its material, which was now passed “to the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government information organisations” and, crucially, the dictatorship’s “military intelligence” services.
At this time, Chile’s security forces – including the country’s intelligence apparatus – were responsible for massive human rights violations, including the widespread use of torture as a political weapon.
The UK government was under no illusions about this. As Foreign Office official Christopher Crabbie noted three months after the coup in December 1973, “I do not think that anyone seriously doubts that torture is going on in Chile”.
Reliable figures indicate that, between 1973 and 1988, Chilean state agents were responsible for over 3,000 deaths or disappearances and tens of thousands of cases of torture and political arrests. This was in a country which, in 1973, had a population of only 10 million people.
Chile Army 1973 coup soldiers watch detainees – many were shot, many more tortured then shot, many more still ‘disappeared’, probably tortured and shot. Many, many more were jailed where they were also tortured; young children were also abducted and given to fascist childless couples. (Photo accessed: Internet)
‘Hearts and minds’
The nature of the information passed to Chile’s military intelligence remains unclear, though the files suggest it may have included material for use in propaganda, research reports on left-wing activity, and even manuals on domestic security operations.
For instance, newly declassified files show how the UK government secretly helped the Chilean authorities to develop a counter-insurgency strategy, using techniques refined during Britain’s colonial interventions in Southeast Asia.
The idea for such assistance was first raised during the visit of British navy chief Sir Michael Pollock to Chile in late November 1973, two months after the coup.
The timing of Pollock’s visit was “politically tricky”, noted the British ambassador in Santiago, Reginald Secondé, since there was “much critical attention” being given “to the Chilean Government’s treatment of their political opponents”.
However, there were “two frigates and two submarines for the Chilean Navy under construction in British yards” – an arms deal worth around £50m – and “this was not a moment to prejudice the historic tradition of Anglo-Chilean naval friendship”.
“This was not a moment to prejudice the historic tradition of Anglo-Chilean naval friendship”
In Santiago, Pollock and Secondé met with a number of regime officials, including navy chief José Toribio Merino Castro, defence minister Patricio Carvajal Prado, and foreign minister Ismael Huerta.
With Huerta, the British officials spoke about the UK government’s “hearts and minds” campaign in Northern Ireland, a counter-insurgency strategy inspired by Britain’s war in Malaya (1948-60).
Huerta “seemed impressed with the concept”, and Secondé “later twice heard him muttering to himself ‘hearts and minds’”.
Subsequent meetings were held between Secondé, British information officer Tony Walters, and Captain Carlos Ashton, the director of overseas information in Chile’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Like Huerta, Ashton was “very receptive to the idea that this kind of approach to Chilean security problems might be the right answer”, and requested “details of what practical measures a ‘hearts and minds’ exercise would involve”.
Ashton’s request for assistance was forwarded to Rosemary Allott, the head of the IRD’s Latin American desk.
In a letter dated 15 February 1974 and marked ‘secret’, Allott agreed to provide the Chilean regime with counter-insurgency advice, but limited this to material on Britain’s past colonial interventions.
“In view of the delicate political considerations involved”, Allott wrote, “it would be best to confine, at this stage at least, the material we send you of insurgencies of the past, rather than those currently preoccupying HMG” such as Northern Ireland.
The Pinochet regime was soon issued with three books on British counter-insurgency strategy, alongside a “Manual of Counter Insurgency Studies”.
“Britain agreed to share its colonial policing methods with the Chilean junta”
Allott also tracked down “various official reports on Malaya” including “The Fight Against Communist Terrorism in Malaya”, the “Review of the Emergency in Malaya (1948-57)”, and “two booklets on the Philippines insurrection”.
Britain’s military campaign in Malaya involved the “resettlement” of over 500,000 civilians, aerial bombardment, and an intensive propaganda operation.
Embassy officials suggested that they were teaching Chilean officers “tactics of tolerance and magnanimity”. However, brutal repression often lay behind the UK government’s rhetoric about “winning hearts and minds”, and the Chilean authorities were only sharpening their repressive techniques.
None of the material given to the Pinochet regime was “for attribution to HMG”. This meant that the Chilean authorities could use the information but not source it to the UK government.
The extent to which Britain’s advice was acted upon remains unclear; the Pinochet regime was certainly not lacking in support from the CIA.
Nonetheless, it is clear that Britain agreed to share its colonial policing methods with the Chilean junta, with the goal of stabilising Pinochet’s regime against domestic opposition.
MI6 in Chile
Evidence of British assistance to Chile’s intelligence services raises further questions about what Britain’s own secret intelligence service, MI6, was doing in Chile.
In 1972, MI6 officer David Spedding was attached to the British embassy in Santiago – his only foreign posting outside of the Middle East throughout his career.
This was not Spedding’s first visit to Chile. As a postgraduate student at Oxford University during the mid-1960s, Spedding had spent his gap year in Santiago and found work as an assistant in the British embassy’s press office.
Spedding’s first role in the diplomatic service was thus in the same British embassy that had been directing covert propaganda operations against Allende throughout the 1960s. The job gave him “an entrée into SIS [MI6]”, historian Nigel West noted.
Spedding remained in Chile until September 1974. He was subsequently made responsible for MI6 operations across the Middle East, and would go on to become MI6 chief between 1994 and 1999.
‘Our relationship with Admiral Merino’
Spedding’s name rarely appears in declassified Foreign Office files on Chile.
Yet in one file, dated 4 December 1973, Spedding informed the Foreign Office that 2,800 civilians and 700 armed forces personnel had been killed during and after the coup.
“In order to protect our relationship with Admiral Merino”, Spedding noted, “we would not like these figures to be quoted, at least for the time being”.
Admiral Merino was one of the key orchestrators of the 1973 coup. He was head of the Chilean navy in September 1973, and remained in post until the fall of the dictatorship in 1990. Merino claimed responsibility for convincing Pinochet to join the coup.
Some of the culprits saluting (Photo accessed: Internet)
One of Spedding’s roles, then, was to ensure close collaboration with the Chilean junta by covering up its responsibility for massive political repression and human rights violations.
The MI6 station in Santiago was only closed down in 1974 amid the UK Labour Party’s return to government.
It would not be surprising if MI6 played a supporting role to the CIA’s covert operations against Allende during the early 1970s. It was recently revealed that the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) had “opened a base in Santiago to assist in the US Central Intelligence Agency’s destabilisation of the Chilean government” in 1971.
Britain’s secret assistance to the Pinochet regime was consistent with the UK government’s position on the coup.
The Conservative government under Edward Heath had welcomed the coup and rushed to give diplomatic recognition and arms to the Chilean junta, with the Foreign Office noting that it had “infinitely more to offer British interests than the one which preceded it”.
The coup against Allende inaugurated a 17-year dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet, who only left office in 1990.
end.
John McEvoy is co-directing a forthcoming documentary investigating Britain’s hidden role in the death of Chile’s democracy and rise of the Pinochet dictatorship. You can support the film’s production here.
If one read and believed the international press, one would conclude that the only vessel to sink in the Mediterranean in recent times was the super-yacht, Bayesian, belonging to the magnate Mike Lynch.
The sinking of the yacht was not only international front-page news, but dominated the headlines in the major media outlines since going down on the 19th of August.
From the comments of those who have little to do in life except talk inanely about yachts, it seems to have been an impressive yacht in all senses of the word, and it is surprising that it sank so quickly, as just like the Titanic, it was considered unsinkable and could list up to 75 degrees without capsizing.1
But the super-yacht wasn’t a news item due to its technical characteristics, nor its value, estimated in the region of $40 million dollars, although both aspects were mentioned in the press, but rather for the characteristics and value of those who died (excluding crew of course).
Late tycoon Mike Lynch photographed at home (Source photo: Internet)
Mike Lynch was a software magnate, compared by some media to Bill Gates. He sold his software company Autonomy to Hewlett Packard for eleven billion dollars.2 Without this favourable bank balance his death in the African cemetery that the Mediterranean now is, would go unremarked.
It is not the first time the press went into overdrive on the sinking of a vessel belonging to a rich person.
In June 2023, the submersible Titan imploded near the wreck of the Titanic killing five people, all of them rich and the press dedicated extensive columns to the tragedy for some time, even enquiring about the details of life onboard the Titan.3
On both occasions large-scale and long search and rescue operations were deployed, something the Italian government has tried to criminalise in the case of Africans trying to reach Europe.
In April this year, a court in Sicily acquitted the crew of the Iuventa, who were brought to trial for rescuing migrants (officially for “human trafficking”, i.e. the survivors of a shipwreck).
The crew of the Iuventa rescue ship were on trial for saving lives (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Iuventa boat had by 2017, when Italian authorities impounded it, rescued not less than 14,000 people without favourable bank balances.4 It is not the only attempt to criminalise rescuing shipwrecked people in the Mediterranean. The contrast with Mike Lynch is noteworthy.
Many ships sink each year. The insurance industry reports that between 2013 and 2022, 807 ships with a gross tonnage in excess of 100 tonnes sank around the world, 32 of them in the Mediterranean, almost all of them commercial vessels of different sorts.5
However, according to the IOM, in 2023, 3,041 people died crossing the Mediterranean and 100 alone in the month of January 2024.6 Nobody rescued them, the press did not give over daily columns to their lives. Unlike Mike Lynch, they were not rich.
When the rich die, just like the poor they don’t take their bank balance with them. However, that balance is important.
When the press talk of the value of the person, eleven billion dollars buys words like ‘tragedy, disaster,’ obituaries in major media outlets and it buys a rescue attempt without any fear of those who do the rescuing being charged.
Now that all the survivors and bodies have been rescued, there comes another judicial persecution. The Italian authorities are going to investigate the crew for the accident, but not the deceased Lynch, as if it were possible for the crew to say no to a man with eleven billion in the bank.7
People that rich are all like Donald Trump, they do not take ‘no’ for an answer. Their wish is a command, that must be obeyed. So once again the Italian authorities are going after those who are least to blame for a shipwreck.
A boat carrying over 500 migrant people capsizing off the Libyan coast in 2013 (Photo cred: Italian Navy via AFP)
If they are African migrants, they were asking for it and do not deserve our sympathy or empathy. If they are billionaires, they are victims of the indolence of their employees and we should all mourn them. The world turned upside down.
Most people in the Western world will have experienced being stopped at a checkpoint, usually feeling irritated at the delay to their journey, commonly afraid only if driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Or curious perhaps – what is this stop about? In many parts of the world however, apprehension or fear are the normal emotions for drivers approaching a checkpoint. The mind wonders: Might I be arrested, beaten, robbed, raped, killed?
For people in a country invaded and occupied, those are rational fears; the people staffing the checkpoints are occupying soldiers or police; or perhaps auxiliaries, locals working for the occupation, perhaps from a different ethnic group. Which can sometimes be worse.
Many Palestinians have been arrested at checkpoints and certainly some have been killed there, while arrest does not mean one will not be killed anyway, or not be used as a human shield under threat of death, or even killed despite doing what their captors asked.
In those situations there are other negative experiences not necessarily including physical harm: humiliation, harassment, the display of power imbalance in how people are treated, delayed, mocked, insulted. An everyday experience for Palestinians passing through IOF checkpoints.
A busy checkpoint, the Palestinians packed worse than cattle. (Photo source: Internet)
It was so also for many people going through British Army and colonial police checkpoints in the occupied Six Counties of Ireland. Cars with Irish registration plates might be held up for half an hour or longer. Or people who answered that their destination was Derry, instead of “Londonderry” (sic).
People have had their children upset by searches, cuddly toys ripped open, intimate adult clothing in luggage inspected, been body-searched, intimidated by loaded weapons pointed at them and, if known as activists, or even related to activists, been threatened with murder.
All of this happens to Palestinians at checkpoints where Israelis can pass through, hardly stopping. And there are LOTS of checkpoints throughout the West Bank or on the way into “Israel” (i.e. the lands seized and occupied by the Zionists since 1948).
Map of established Occupation checkpoints in the West Bank, illegally occupied according to the UN. Temporary checkpoints in addition are often established. (Source: Internet)
The guards on checkpoints are often bored or irritated and take out their feelings on those trying to pass through. But the oppressing power wants that to happen: the checkpoints are part of the control structure, physical and mental in effect.
The structural effects and attitudes of the checkpoint guards affect Palestinians travelling to and from their jobs inside ‘Israel’ in addition to Palestinians travelling between one place and another in the occupied lands outside official ‘Israel’.
Those journeys can be for medical treatment (including emergencies), to work or apply for work, to school or university, shopping, to visit friends or relatives, to attend weddings, births, funerals, to support the elderly or disabled, to assist in community work, to take a break, attend festivals …
Apart from anything else, for the Palestinians queuing it may mean a long time in stifling heat in close proximity to other bodies, without water or with a limited supply, no access to a toilet, possibly in direct sun or, in winter, exposed to cold wind and rain …
An Occupation soldier at a pedestrian checkpoint examines the IDs of Palestinian children accompanied by an adult for their protection. (Source: Internet)
VULNERABLE
Temporary checkpoints however are also vulnerable. A soldier or policeman approaching a vehicle or even pedestrians on foot has only his body armour and firearm standing between him and attack, even if having done this four hours a day for weeks without a single misadventure.
Because one day, just that once, it might be different.
In the past, a Palestinian might blow himself up at a checkpoint. More recently another who’d had enough drove his car through a checkpoint at speed, fatally wounding one of the guards and then shot another. On another occasion, a Palestinian seriously injured two guards by stabbing them.
A long line of Palestinian vehicles await clearance to proceed through IOF checkpoint (Photo sourced: ARU)
Now, more and more frequently, IOF checkpoints are coming under fire. An incident might last no more than a minutes or two but how long does it take a bullet to travel and enter a body? And even without killing or wounding the body, what is the affect on the mind to feel like a stationary target?
These might seem easy operations but no armed action against the Zionist state is free from danger, especially with IOF drones to record or even fire at Palestinian fighters, to say nothing of artillery shells, bombs and missiles. Success rate in killed or injured IOF in such operations tends to be low.
But their psychological effects are quite significant and wars are not fought just by and on bodies; they are fought by and on minds too. The checkpoints, instruments and symbols of power and oppression have become vulnerable and targets … like the repressive forces staffing them.
End.
A Palestinian youth being arrested by Occupation soldiers at a checkpoint. (Photo cred: Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
It is reported that at some point in the near future a representative of the Palestine Authority will be officially received in Leinster House as part of the recognition of the Palestinian State by the Irish Government (and presumably by the Irish State).
This will be an important occasion and all who support the Palestinian people should get ready to give this representative of the Palestine Authority an appropriate welcome.
The PA is an unelected, unrepresentative, corrupt, repressive and occasionally murderous organisation colluding with the ‘Israeli’ occupation, feeding its Occupation master (and their master’s masters) with information on the activities and persons of the Palestinian Resistance.
In the course of the current genocidal offensive of the Occupation, operatives of the PA have seized weapons of the Resistance, dismantled explosives1 and for years have arrested and jailed activists. They also arrest Resistance activists to hand over to the Occupation.
In carrying out this dirty ‘duty’ for their masters, the PA encounter natural resistance and in overcoming that resistance the PA has executed and killed under interrogation dissidents and members of the Resistance, including since October last year.2
Palestinians objecting to repression face the security force of the Palestinian Authority. (Image sourced: Internet)
Elected once, then widely rejected
Since it was created in 1994 arising out of the Palestine Pacification (wrongly named ‘Peace’) Process,3 elections were held by the PA just twice. The Fatah political (and military) party under Yasser Arafat won the first ones in 1996 but Hamas overwhelmingly won the next, in 2006.
The largely secular-voting Palestinian society rejected Fatah in favour of an Islamist party largely because of Fatah’s corruption and nepotism in the PA and also due to its collusion with the Israeli state, formally and informally in fact.4
The Hamas electoral victory of 2006 was not accepted by the Western powers, nor by Fatah, who refused to vacate their administrative control. Eventually, after a short, sharp struggle in June 2007 Hamas evicted them from the positions in Gaza to which the electorate had voted Hamas.
However, Hamas refrained from doing the same in the West Bank, presumably to avoid all-out civil war and so Fatah remains in control of that section of Palestinian governance, which is the one universally known as “the Palestinian Authority” (and, since 2013, as “The State of Palestine”).
Since 2006, the PA has held no elections though it was supposed to do so every four years.5 The reason is clear: Hamas would win again and the Fatah leadership want to hold on to their corruption opportunities and are decidedly opposed to having their funding streams6 cut.
Currently Hamas runs the government of Gaza and is the leading element in the Palestine armed Resistance, a coalition of Islamist and secular organisations that are united in fighting the Israeli occupation and in the negotiation position of the Resistance.
Fatah had been invited to participate in talks in Beijing in April to present a united Palestinian front but at the last minute declined to attend. Nevertheless, in recent days they have been invited again; it is not known at present whether their representatives will attend or not.7
Hamas and others have called for a unified position on Palestinian self-determination and for participation in a broad united Palestinian government.
Netanyahu, with the support of his internal allies and with the US and Western powers externally, refuses to accept the verdict of the Palestinian electoral process and wants a pro-Israeli administration there which, for the Western powers, means a “revitalised”8 Palestine Authority.
US Middle East would-be ‘fixer’ Blinken, already mooted that9 and Mahmoud Abbas, sitting grossly at the head of the PA in the West Bank, indicated his willingness for the job.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reads a statement as he meets French President Emmanuel Macron, in Ramallah, West Bank, October 24, 2023. Christophe Ena/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo. Note: The key on his jacket lapel is a symbol of the right of return of Palestinian refugees for which the PA has done nothing at all and which Fatah agreed to exclude from the Oslo Accords under which the PA was founded.
The USA also proposed a coalition of their Arab regime clients for that job but the Resistance has made it quite clear that managing Palestinian society and resources is for Palestinians elected democratically only and anyone else will be a usurper for the Occupation and treated accordingly.
The real purpose of Palestinian State ‘recognition’ by the Three
Sadly, it is in this context that we should see the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian recognition of the Palestinian State. It does not represent a break from the EU’s imperialist position of support for Israel in principle but rather only in tactical approach.
These states are giving the imperialists “good advice”. What they are saying in effect is this: “You have to make the Palestinians thing that they are gaining something and use Palestinians to control Palestinians. Otherwise they’ll continue resisting and you could lose the whole thing.”
Coat of arms of the Palestinian Authority (Image sourced: Internet)
They know of what they speak. This was what the British colonialists imposed on Ireland in 1922 and what the Spanish ruling class imposed on the southern Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia after the Franco Dictatorship, granting them limited autonomy under Spanish control.
And cultivating “independent” locals to run these for them.
The program these states desire for the Palestinian people is one in which they will have their local autonomy in a Palestinian state on approximately 20% of their nation, with worst land and least water and under the guns and watchtowers of their expansionist and dominating neighbours.
The reality of Israeli genocidal colonisation and the “two-state solution” beloved of imperialists and liberals. (Image sourced: Internet)
The decision on what the Palestinian people accept or reject is ultimately theirs, of course. Equally, how we decide to receive representatives of this undemocratic, corrupt, treasonous and violent PA is ours.
Let us not fail to make it a hot welcome, both in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in apology for the neo-colonial proposals of this Gombeen state.
Let those Irish political parties that support the PA answer for their position. Ours should be clear, from which too our actions should flow.
End.
FOOTNOTES
142 times in the West Bank since October 7th and most recently this week as I was writing this piece, blowing some up at 3am on the morning of the 17thJuly.
4e.g. in concluding a deal that excluded the Palestinians still in “Israel” and any right of return for the millions of Palestinian refugees around the world.
rebelbreeze 