“70,000” IN DUBLIN MARCH DEMAND GOVERNMENT ACTION AGAINST GENOCIDE

On July 22, 2025July 22, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Uncategorized, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4 mins.)

The fact that the Irish Times reported ‘tens of thousands’ on Saturday’s march in Dublin was telling, avoiding their usual euphemism of ‘thousands’ or even ‘hundreds’ for a demonstration’s great multitude.¹

Even so, it was much larger, the organisers claiming 70,000 participants.

It was huge, without a doubt. From the D’Olier Street northern corner, the front of the march organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign had gone to the gates of Trinity College while the rest of it could be seen northwards the length of O’Connell Street and possibly beyond.

*In the distance marchers may be seen along the length of O’Connell Street. Behind the photographer, a section of the march is proceeding while the front has reached the Trinity College gates.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

This was the 16th national mobilisation in Palestine solidarity since October 2023 organised to take place in Dublin, while many smaller marches, pickets, vigils, public meetings, talks, film shows and other solidarity events have been held weekly across the nation.

BANNERS, FlAGS & PLACARDS

In addition to local branches of the IPSC, banners on the march also proclaimed party, trade union and professional body allegiance, along with specific declarations and calls for actions.

Placards included the professionally-printed but also a wide range of the ‘home-made’ examples and these can be of particular interest, such as the one that declared that “Blaming Hamas for firing rockets at Israel is like blaming a woman for punching her rapist.” Indeed.

*“Gaza is a death camp”.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

As the marchers passed the iconic General Post Office a small group organised by socialist Irish Republican organisation Éirigí held up giant letters spelling SAVE THE GPO.² A group wearing blue tops with PRESS on the back marched and held up photos of individual journalists in Gaza.³

The PBP-Solidarity contingent carried a banner calling for the enacting of the Occupied Territories Bill which seemed a rather tame demand of the Irish State from an organisation claiming to be revolutionary socialist (see Irish State Options section).

*A bagpiper playing amongst the marchers.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The most popular non-party flag on the march was of course the Palestinian one but the Irish Tricolour has been making a greater appearance on these marches of late and not before time.⁴ I noted only one Starry Plough, in green with the Plough design in gold and white stars.

DESTINATIONS AND ROUTES

The IPSC marches tend to begin at the Garden of Remembrance and end near Leinster House,⁵ seat of the Irish State’s parliament, or occasionally at the Department of Foreign Affairs. Saturday’s march also went to Molesworth Street but through a longer circular route.

This route saw the march take in part of Dame Street, then the whole of South George’s St. and Aungier Street, turn left towards Stephens Green and proceed along the Green’s west side, then along part of its southern side before turning down Dawson Street.

Molesworth Street was full of marchers already but IPSC stewards hustled marchers off Dawson Street, eventually giving up their usual endeavour to push the crowd past the Schoolhouse Lane junction so the Gardaí could erect barriers across that section to enclose the marchers.

The unusual route on this occasion avoided the temptation to march up the pedestrianised shopping area of Grafton Street, which the Gardaí do not like and at which there was a confrontation during the previous IPSC march when a number of protesters tried to take that route.

*One of the supporters of the march.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Despite the crucial role of the USA as chief supplier of arms, funding and political cover for the genocidal Zionists of the ‘Israeli’ state, since 2023 the IPSC have approached Dublin’s US Embassy only twice, no doubt respecting the Gardaí wish not to have the main road outside blocked.

On those two occasions the IPSC halted the march in a street behind the Embassy and away from one of the main roads into Dublin from the south (and along which the ill-fated Northumberland Fusiliers marched in April 1916). Marches to the Israeli Embassy were rare during the period too.⁶

IRISH STATE & OPTIONS

Both leaders of the Irish Coalition Government⁷ have built up some kudos with many anti-genocide people around the world for publicly stating that Israel is committing genocide – the first leaders of an EU or indeed Western state to say so.

In addition, the Irish Government joined with those of the Spanish and Norwegian states in a failed attempt last week to have the EU remove ‘Israel’ from its preferential trade agreement for violation of the human rights conditions of the Agreement.⁸

However, as a number of speakers at the IPSC rally and some marchers’ placards declared, the Irish State is in fact complicit in genocide by allowing military equipment for ‘Israel’ to fly through Irish airspace and by not enforcing its neutrality on US military transit through Shannon Airport.

And in allowing the Central Bank of Ireland to process ‘Israeli’ war bonds, which was the target of a number of representations including its huge logo on the march and a speech by Gary Gannon, DCC Councillor of the Social Democrats party.

The glacial progress of the moderate Occupied Territories Bill,⁹ delayed and then attempted weakening of it by removing services from the ban,¹⁰ is another hallmark of the Irish Government’s collusion (notwithstanding expressed Zionist rage and bullying by some US Congressmen).

Next to the USA, the Irish state is the biggest importer of ‘Israeli’ goods and a ban on these would greatly affect the genocidal state not only morally but also practically. In the absence of government action, the trade unions could impose a ban on their members handling those goods.

The contradiction is that the Western state most overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian is the biggest importer of ‘Israeli’ products and having hardly any practical effect towards preventing the genocide against the Palestinians, contrary to what the majority in Ireland actually want.

End.
Note: For the photos in this report I concentrated on the more unusual of those participating.

*Molesworth Street, the destination, is full from one end to the other*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

FOOTNOTES

IRISH MEDIA REPORTING

Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/07/19/this-war-took-my-entire-life-from-me-thousands-attend-pro-palestine-march-in-dublin

RTÉ: Thousands take part in march for Palestine in Dublin

1 https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/07/19/this-war-took-my-entire-life-from-me-thousands-attend-pro-palestine-march-in-dublin Nevertheless, that was the national broadcaster RTÉ’s approach.

2 https://www.businesspost.ie/politics/plan-for-gpo-to-house-offices-and-retail-to-be-signed-off-by-government/

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_journalists_in_the_Gaza_war

4The Irish far-Right of fake patriots has been permitted illegitimately to almost monopolise the Irish Tricolour.

5‘Near’ rather than at Leinster House, because the Gardaí set up a crowd barricade at the end of Molesworth Street across the street from the House and that is as far as the march goes and also where the speakers’ platform is set up.

6This was so even before the Israeli Ambassador abandoned her Dublin post in disgust at popular Irish hostility to genocide and prior to the reputed closure of the Embassy (despite which the site has a 24-hour Garda guard).

7Taoiseach (Prime Minister equivalent) Mícheál Martin of the Fianna Fáil party and Tánaiste (Deputy PM equivalent), also Minister of Defence Simon Harris of the Fine Gael party. The Green Party is also a member of the Coalition.

8The European Union as a body and economic area is the largest consumer of Israeli exports https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/22/which-countries-trade-the-most-with-israel-and-what-do-they-buy-and-sell

9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied_Territories_Bill

10 https://www.trocaire.org/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-occupied-territories-bill/

CIVILIAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS: ‘ISRAEL’, USA AND THE BRITISH

On July 13, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, History, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

The Zionist state’s latest genocidal plan involves driving the inhabitants into a densely-packed area in the south of Gaza where they will be examined on the way in and then never allowed to leave unless to emigrate to another state.¹

This plan was announced recently by ‘Israeli’ Minister of Defence (sic) Israel Katz and has been enthusiastically approved by a number of ‘Israeli’ politicians, including Finance Minister Smotrich.

It’s being suggested Katz’s plan is to be run by the GHF food-and-bullets organisation and to connect to Trump’s earlier remarks about turning Gaza into a seaside resort once the Palestinians had left. However, Trump and his administration have declined to comment on this latest plan.

*The* Gaza Humanitarian (sic) Foundation, responsible for the deadly food traps in Gaza, has been suggested as the organisation to run the concentration camp (also being called Humanitarian Camp). (Image: *Cartoon by D.Breatnach*)

But wasn’t Gaza previously a concentration camp? Well, it has been called “the largest open-air prison in the world”² due to its intensified blockade since 2007 with Israeli control over who went in or came out.³ The intention was to make living intolerable but the Palestinians managed.

The refugees who came there from the Nakba in 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli War built houses, shops, community centres, mosques and churches, shops and markets, schools, colleges and university, farmed land and grew produce in polythene tunnels, dug wells, desalinated sea-water …

The IOF have destroyed nearly all of that (even roads and sewage treatment facilities) and now of course with water, fuel and food blockaded and frequent forced internal displacement, Gaza conditions are much much worse, with starvation andcontagious disease spreading.

This new plan however, is to compress the population into a smaller and smaller area, a concentration camp within that prison.

CIVILIAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

The plan announced by the Zionazis is a concentration camp for civilians and this was in fact admitted by an Israeli journalist on one of their news channels. It’s fascist and racist but it’s not a new idea, having been practised by others including the British, USA and the Turks previously.

Concentration camps for civilians were used by the Nazis and Spanish fascists4 for example; in those cases their punitive function was clear. But during WWII the British interned Germans (including Jewish refugees) and allowed the Poles to run camps for dissidents in Scotland.

‘Concentration Camp’, drawing by David Ludwig Bloch. (Image sourced: *Internet*)

The British too built two Jewish concentration camps in Germany to prevent them from emigrating to the British Protectorate of Palestine, where the Zionists, encouraged to emigrate there by the British originally, were now destabilising British control and antagonising the indigenous people.⁶

The British also held Jewish civilians in a concentration camp in Cyprus, many of them Holocaust survivors who had tried to enter Palestine without British authorisation.⁷

During their war in Malaya (1948-1960) also the British ran civilian concentration villages, a model which the USA were to adopt later in Vietnam. These British measures were under the Briggs Plan and formed part of widescale repressive measures including forced deportations of Chinese.⁸

Those interned by the British in Frongoch concentration camp after the 1916 Rising were not all military personnel but included civilian members of Irish nationalist organisations.

The USA interned Japanese ethnic minority people during its war with Japan, allegedly as a purely security non-punitive measure. 1,862 deaths (out of 180,000) were recorded in those camps⁹ for which the USA did not apologise until 1976¹⁰ or pay reparations until 1998.

The Imperial Japanese forces during the same war period established concentration camps in their conquered territories for civilians, mostly Dutch and British colonial settlers, administrative officials and their families. More than 140,000 of those died in the camps.¹¹

Previously the USA had briefly used concentration camps against Native Americans but later shifted to removal and reservations policed by state-appointed officials. They also interned civilians, tens of thousands dying, in the US-Philippines War of 1898-1914.

In its war against the PKK (1978-2025) the Turkish State forced the evacuation of Kurdish villages where it felt unable to prevent guerrilla penetration, forcing relocation of the people and placing them under a collaborator administration in the new residential location.

The Turks also created a paramilitary police force to operate in the local areas but responsible centrally to the State which they called the Jandarma. In fact this was on the model of similar gendarmerie of the British in Ireland, of the Spanish, French and Italian states.¹²

Large rural areas of Turkish Kurdistan villages were cleared and relocated forcibly by the authorities. Arguably, despite the difficult conditions, the final defeat of the PKK was internal through adoption of a pacification process under the orders from captivity of their leader Ocalan.¹³

The village had Turkish-appointed guards and the headman was expected to ensure that the guerrilla forces did not enter and, if they did, to inform the South Vietnamese authorities (and through them the US military). Presumably he was also charged with informing them of ‘disloyal’ villagers.

Of course this put those recruited by the authorities in danger from the insurrectionary forces who viewed the guards and any collaborating headman as traitors. On the other hand, the headman might come under great pressure from the authorities to comply with their plan.

The USA’s version in Vietnam, the Strategic Hamlet Program was practised in 1962 during their War through their proxy, the South Vietnam government.¹⁴ Villagers either had their hamlet fortified or more often, they were forcibly relocated to a fortified location.

The Program was reportedly sabotaged but it is doubtful if it would have succeeded in any case as the forced relocations alienated even those who did not already sympathise with the insurrectionary forces. It marked President Kennedy’s last attempt to fight their war in Vietnam ‘indirectly’.

The living conditions in Israel’s version currently being contemplated for Palestinians in Gaza will be intolerable and the clear intention is for those who survive to want to emigrate – so, once again ethnic cleansing within a genocidal framework.

*Israel Katz, Minister for Defence (sic) in centre of photo on his sally with IOF into Lebanon with IOF occupying troops.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

It will also be very dangerous for those trying to enter, especially men, having to pass the interrogation process at the gate. Those suspected of Resistance activities – or even related to such suspects – will be deeply interrogated and many no doubt interned without trial.¹⁵

Families which have survived the genocidal bombing and starvation will be broken up as some enter and some refuse to enter (or are refused).

Overall, the historical experience of people confined in civilian concentration camps has been oppressive but for many a death sentence also. Despite the suffering, as a measure of repression against insurgency amongst the population, it has largely been ineffective.

Actually, there is one recorded case of the civilian concentration camp being successful in a counter-resistance context and that was of the British (again!) against the Boers of South Africa. In the Second Boer War the British (who had been defeated in the first) killed Boer livestock and burned their farms.

The British constructed a civilian concentration camp¹⁶ in which they placed the abducted Boer women and children in order to get their menfolk to submit. (The IOF are not above using relatives also, frequently arresting relatives in order to coerce a ‘wanted’ resistance person to surrender.)

80,000 Boer civilians were interned and, in separate camps, 115,000 African servants of the Boers. Due to the conditions, between 18,000 and 28,000 Boers died, 80% of them children. The British kept no records of African deaths but their losses are believed to have been similar.¹⁷

However, the British-Boer wars were between one group of settlers and another. So far, for all the suffering it causes, the record of the civilian concentration camp as a repressive measure by an occupying state against a resistant nation is one of failure.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/07/israeli-minister-reveals-plan-to-force-population-of-gaza-into-camp-on-ruins-of-rafah

2David Cameron, Prime Minister UK called it a prison in 2010, as did others, including Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director Human Rights watch in 2022. As late as 2023, so did British-Israeli historian and emeritus professor of International Relations at Oxford University Avi Shlaim who said it had evolved into “an open-air graveyard” at the time of his writing (there are numerous sources for the description by various people).

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip

4The civilians in General Franco’ hugely overcrowded camps and jails contained large numbers of Basque, Catalan, Galician nationalists, Republican, Communist non-combatant nationalist civilians in addition to opposition military.

5 https://jacobin.com/2017/05/uk-concentration-camps-wwii-poland-internment-prisoners

6Ibid.

7 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna24457292

8A good account is given in this admittedly anti-communist biased report: https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/vol-15/issue-3/oct-dec-2019/civilians-in-crsfire

9 https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

10Admission by US President Gerald Ford.

11 https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/a-short-history-of-civilian-internment-camps-in-east-asia

12The RIC (later RUC now PSNI in the British colony) in Ireland, the Guardia Civil in the Spanish state, Gendarmerie in France and Carabinieri in Italy. Those forces in the last three named operate throughout the different nations that are incorporated in those states.

13Highly critical analysis https://noria-research.com/ceasefire-and-the-end-of-the-pkk/

14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Hamlet_Program, a hostile source like most I’ve found on line.

15A process the Zionist State calls ‘Administrative Detention’, resulting in six months trial without judicial process, which can be renewed.

16The main reason for the belief that the British originated the practice of concentration camps.

17 https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/south-african-concentration-camps

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

Israeli plan: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/07/israeli-minister-reveals-plan-to-force-population-of-gaza-into-camp-on-ruins-of-rafah

Turkey civilian concentration villages: https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/06/19/assessment-turkish-kurdish-conflict-1984-1999/

British concentration camps for Boer civilians: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/south-african-concentration-camps

and for civilians in Malaya, good account is given in this admittedly anti-communist biased report: https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/vol-15/issue-3/oct-dec-2019/civilians-in-crsfire

USA civilian concentration camps for ethnic Japanese civilians https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment and ‘strategic hamlets’ in their Vietnam War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Hamlet_Program (a hostile source, like most I’ve found on line).

BBC, Kneecap and the long history of censorship

On July 8, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Censorship & Witch-hunting, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Ireland, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Mass Media Criticism, Political Analysis, Resistance Art, Rhyming Rapping & Ranting, Song, Song in Struggle, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh June 2015

(Reformatted entire for publishing in Rebel Breeze from article of same title in his Substack)

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

Kneecap’s music is not really my thing. I am perhaps too old, or maybe my musical tastes are more conservative. But I do love their politics and their stance on Palestine.

I don’t think much of Hezbollah, but I do think waving their flag is not a criminal offence.

The BBC think otherwise as evidenced by their decision to not broadcast Kneecaps’s performance at the Glastonbury festival. The only reason for this was their support for Palestine. There was no other reason.

Though, it didn’t work out well for the BBC as Bob Vylan who was broadcast live got the crowd to chant Death to the IDF!, one of the noblest of chants ever to be heard at Glastonbury.

But there is a long history to the BBC and other British media censoring musicians. The BBC in its statement said:

Whilst the BBC doesn’t ban artists, our plans ensure that our programming meets our editorial guidelines.

We don’t always livestream every act from the main stages and look to make an on-demand version of Kneecap’s performance available on our digital platforms, alongside more than 90 other sets.[1]

In other words, the BBC does ban artists.

*The rapper trio under the band name of Kneecap* (Image sourced: *on line*)

It is not like this is the first time they have banned some of them. Following the Bloody Sunday massacre by the British Army in Derry in 1972, Paul McCartney, penned a song titled Give Ireland Back to the Irish.[2] It was the debut single of Wings.

It was instantly banned in Britain by the BBC but managed to get to No. 16 in the British charts nonetheless and got to No. 1 in Ireland.

They banned songs that mentioned sex, even Shirley Bassie’s Burn My Candle[3] and they banned songs that were considered more political such as The Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK,[4] a song that wasn’t really political at all.

Not surprisingly they banned the then relatively unknown Heaven 17’s debut (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,[5] over concerns it might upset the then recently-elected US president Ronald Reagan.

This was a man whose government through the CIA went on to support deaths squads in Latin America and set up cocaine smuggling networks to finance them through his loyal servant Oliver North.[6] Reagan of course is referred to in the song.

Democrats are out of power
Across that great wide ocean
Reagan’s president elect
Fascist god in motion

That wasn’t the last of it either. The BBC went on to ban a song by The Police, Invisible Sun[7] because of a possible slight on the British Army contained in the lyrics and of course the official video to the song.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life
Looking at the barrel of an Armalite
I don’t want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say

I don’t want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the walls of a prison cell
I don’t ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart

The BBC would, during the 1st Gulf War ban a total of 67 songs for the duration of the war, amongst them songs by such establishment figures as Elton John whose song Act of War [8] recorded in 1985 with Millie Jackson was put on the list.

As was Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield,[9] recorded even earlier in 1983. It takes little to upset the BBC it would seem.

The former Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar criticised Keir Starmer’s call for Kneecap to be not allowed play at Glastonbury stating that

It’s not great for politicians to get into deciding which artists should be allowed to perform where or not.

To me, that’s illiberalism. Part of the whole point of art and music and literature is to be inappropriate, is to be challenging, is often to be anti-establishment,” he said.

We’ve had a situation now for quite some time in Ireland and in Europe and Britain, where politicians didn’t get into the space of saying who should be allowed to perform, who shouldn’t, what books you should be allowed to read, and I hope we don’t slip back into doing that under the guise of national security and anti-terrorism when it isn’t really about that.[10]

Varadkar tut tuts the BBC and Starmer. Sounds great, except his party and the Irish state in general does not have a great record in the matter.

The state broadcaster took an insidious approach to censorship with songs rarely being banned outright. Rather they were just not simply played on the radio station. Hint hint, nudge nudge. A very Irish way of doing things.

The Irish group The Wolfe Tones released many songs over the years about the conflict in the north of Ireland and got little to no airtime. Such was the situation that they even recorded a song about it, called Radio Toor I Li Ay (sometimes called They Don’t Play Our Songs on the Radio) [11].

The lyrics are pertinent to Kneecap and Starmer and sum up exactly what the Establishment are about.

You don’t play our songs on radio
You say they’re too political!
Who controls the mind, where’s the mind’s control?
For the music on the airwaves
Follows empty minds, those empty heads
Play songs of sex and drugs instead
Don’t tell them how it really is

Won’t MI5 look after you, control your thoughts
Feed information to your hearts and minds
To save you all from thinkin’, thinkin’, thinkin’, thinkin’

It is a fact that RTE didn’t give them much airtime and still don’t. So much so that in 2024, Derek Warfield the lead singer with the group said it was time to end the ban on them.[12] It still hasn’t happened, nor will it.

In fact, the Irish women’s football team got into trouble for singing one of their songs, Celtic Melody,[13] and were excoriated by British sports journalists, who are not renowned for their knowledge of music, politics, history or much else aside from who ran how fast and where.

Not exactly intellectual heavyweights. Nonetheless these idiots led to the Irish women’s team being eventually fined €20,000 for singing the song.[14]

The Irish singer Christy Moore found himself on the wrong end of state repression in Ireland on many occasions and his songs, like those of The Wolfe Tones were not banned per se, but they never received much airplay.

Except those that were considered to be humorous and non-political, such as Don’t Forget Your Shovel.[15]

But other songs of his were censored on the radio without the need for an official ban, such as Ninety Miles From Dublin,[16] which was about the IRA and INLA prisoners on the Blanket and Dirty Protests in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh.

Likewise, other songs he recorded about the prisoners and later on about the Hunger Strikers equally received no airplay. There was one brief exception to this.

Patsy O’ Hara (INLA) died on hunger strike on May 21st 1981 after 61 days. His mother Peggy O’Hara was initially adamant that she would not let her son die and that when he lapsed into a coma she would intervene and give the doctors the order to break his strike with an intravenous drip.

However, in her last conversation with her son, he said to her that he was sorry they had not won and asked her to let the fight go on, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. Christy Moore wrote a song about that exchange called The Time Has Come.[17]

It was well received and got airplay and praise. Then someone informed the ignorant and arrogant mandarins at RTE what the song was about and suddenly it got no more airplay. Listening to the song, it is obvious what it is about.

The gentle clasp that holds my hand
Must loosen and let go
Please help me through the door
Though instinct tells you no

Our vow it is eternal
And will bring you dreadful pain
But if our demands aren’t recognized
Don’t call me back again

Ironically Christy Moore would record another song that got no airplay. It was called Section 31,[18] a reference to the article of the Broadcasting Authority Act (1960) that gave the minister power to ban interviews with members of Sinn Féin and proscribed organisations such as the IRA.

But in effect it led to RTE’s scant reporting of or carrying out of few interviews that were critical of state policy on the conflict. The song explained exactly why some issues are censored.

Who are they to decide what we should hear?
Who are they to decide what we should see?
What do they think we can’t comprehend here?
What do they fear that our reaction might be, might be?

*The Kneecap trio with friends at the Sundance Festival in January.* (Photo sourced: RTÉ)

It is always about silencing the opposition and preventing a reaction to their repression and in this case genocide.

So back to Kneecap. They stand in a long line of artists who have put their money where their mouths are. They stand side by side with giants from other musical genres such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger who were repressed by the McCarthyite wave in the US in the 1950s.

The BBC for its part continues to be the propaganda arm of the British Empire, or what is left of it, covering up, lying about or justifying murder, massacre, torture and plunder from India to Kenya, Ireland and now Palestine.

Woody Guthrie had the words This Machine Kills Fascists carved into his guitar, a slogan that might earn him a jail sentence nowadays.

It was meant more in the sense that his music was part of the struggle against fascism, carrying political messages to workers, Dustbowl refugees and migrants.

It didn’t literally kill anyone, though in his song Ludlow Massacre,[19] Guthrie celebrated the workers taking up arms to kill the scab thugs that came to shoot them.

Scabs at the behest of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, owned by the infamous Rockefeller family murdered 26 people, mainly the wives and children of the striking miners.

However, the massacre was just one large incident, the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency had harried and harassed the striking miners, murdering them in ones and twos.

The detective agencies celebrated in comics and films were what would later become known in Latin America and elsewhere as death squads. The miners fought back and Guthrie celebrated this in his song. Resistance, including armed resistance was legitimate.

The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corners,
They did not know we had these guns,
And the Red-neck Miners mowed down these troopers,
You should have seen those poor boys run.

The press, at the time, described the striking miners as savages.

Any similarity to the current media onslaught on Palestine is not a coincidence, it shows the class interests of the media moguls and the western states. Working class people, foreign resistance movements will always be savages to the media.

And the use of armed masked thugs by the state is not new either. Before ICE, there were the detective agencies. Most of the dead at Ludlow were migrant workers. The final death toll according to Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the US was sixty six men women and children.

Kneecap have contributed to the fight against fascism and Bob Vylan’s chant Death to the IDF! should be on everyone’s lips. There is no reforming the IDF, just like there was no reforming Hitler’s SS. Only the complete destruction of the IDF will bring any change.

Can their music, like Guthrie’s be said to kill fascists? I don’t know, time will tell, but from the reception they got at Glastonbury it is looking good.[20] What I do know is Keir Starmer and Trump finance fascists.

Starmer like a fascist wants to ban Palestine Action. The BBC covers up for fascists, praises them and censors those who stand up to fascists. I know who is on the right side of history.

End.

NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

NOTES

[1] The Guardian (28/06/2025) Kneecap’s Glastonbury set Will not be broadcast live, BBC confirms. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jun/28/kneecap-glastonbury-set-will-not-be-broadcast-live-bbc-confirms

[2] See Wings: Wild Life – Give Ireland Back To The Irish

[3] See

[4] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q31WY0Aobro&list=RDq31WY0Aobro&start_radio=1

[5] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV5dbcOmw6I&list=RDlV5dbcOmw6I&start_radio=1

[6] Jacobin (12/11/2021) What We Really Know About the CIA and Crack. Daniel Finn. https://jacobin.com/2021/11/what-we-really-know-about-the-cia-and-crack

[7] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VuDjJ9KIxM&list=RD1VuDjJ9KIxM&start_radio=1

[8] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKbuDkueGek&list=RDvKbuDkueGek&start_radio=1

[9] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGVZOLV9SPo&list=RDIGVZOLV9SPo&start_radio=1

[10] The Journal (27/06/2025) Varadkar on Kneecap row: Terrorism is bombs and guns, not music. https://www.thejournal.ie/varadkar-on-kneecap-row-terrorism-is-bombs-and-guns-not-music-6745000-Jun2025/

[11] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtsxQaXdflU&list=RDjtsxQaXdflU&start_radio=1

[12] Newstalk (11/09/2024) ‘Systemic ban’ on The Wolfe Tones should be lifted – Warfield. Jack Quann. https://www.newstalk.com/news/systemic-ban-on-the-wolfe-tones-should-be-lifted-warfield-1764007

[13] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgWeD7tHhaE

[14] Sky News (08/12/2022) Ireland women footballers fined €20,000 for singing song referencing IRA in World Cup celebration. https://news.sky.com/story/ireland-women-footballers-fined-20-000-for-singing-song-referencing-ira-in-world-cup-celebration-12764012

[15] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV9c0OnekvM&list=RDrV9c0OnekvM&start_radio=

[16] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q98EcxrOr6w&list=RDQ98EcxrOr6w&start_radio=1

[17] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7wJsDx2qg&list=RD6E7wJsDx2qg&start_radio=1

[18] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m19Pc-b7EBc

[19] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDd64suDz1A&list=RDXDd64suDz1A&start_radio=1

[20] See https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLdeW1sI2A-/?igsh=YnJqeDd0bm1obzdi

GAZA CEASEFIRE DISCUSSION: A PANTOMIME WITH MANY ACTORS

On July 4, 2025July 6, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Guerrilla Action, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, Uncategorized, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

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.

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.

2 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2006/1/26/hamas-wins-huge-majority and https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/if-palestinian-elections-proceed-hamas-may-have-upper-hand

3 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-gaza-riviera-echoes-kushner-waterfront-property-dreams-2025-02-05/

4 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5klgv5zv0o

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)

MEANWHILE, IN GAZA, THE OTHER WAR: RESISTANCE OPERATIONS EVERY DAY

On June 24, 2025June 24, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Cartoon, Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

As Israel and Iran slug it out with some criminal interventions from the USA, the older war continues in Gaza – the one that’s been ongoing since the late 1940s and has intensified sharply since 8^th October 2023.

The antagonists in this war are the Israeli Occupation forces, supplied not only by the USA, the UK, and the EU but to practical purposes by the whole western imperialist alliance, against the Palestinian resistance, now reduced to their existing stockpiles and own inventions.

But the IOF is not fighting the armed resistance in Gaza – it is rarely fighting at all. It is killing unarmed civilians in GHF food traps, in bombings of homes and refugee centres and targeting media workers, first responders, security personnel. And arresting hundreds.

The IOF has destroyed huge areas of Gaza by air bombing, demolition charges and bulldozing by machines built in the USA. Areas are declared unsafe where Palestinians may be sniped but nowhere is safe really, whether from random missile or shell strikes or targeted assassinations.

But there IS armed resistance and it IS fighting, even if we are not told of it, unless by some well-connected sources outside the heavily-censored and biased western mass media. There are Resistance operations almost daily – 50 reported the week before last alone.¹

*Israeli tank in Gaza after hit by the Resistance, presumably with the tandem Yassin. Date unknown.* (Cred: *Palestine Chronicle*)

Several times a week the Zionist military or public media reports “a serious security incident” in Gaza, their usual code for an event in which either a very senior IOF officer has been killed or more usually, one in which two or more IOF have been killed or injured.

Many of these operations are Resistance ambushes or traps by previously-laid IED² either detonated electronically or by pressure of the heavy tanks or armoured bulldozers. These may be followed up by ambush of rescuing force or attack on survivors, then a fast evacuation from the scene.

And it needs to be fast because the IOF has control of the sky and the ordinance from which to blast whole areas in the hope of killing a couple of fighters.

The IOF also take over Palestinian buildings as sniper and observation posts and sometimes the Resistance has pre-mined the building. The IOF soldiers and dogs check for hidden explosives but rarely find them before they explode around, underneath or above them.³

Or their post may get hit by Resistance rocket with thermobaric warhead. Again, the detonation of the building⁴ may be followed by ambush of the rescuing IOF forces, such battles sometimes lasting for considerable time, occasionally in close combat, despite the IOF control of the sky.

There are also Palestinian bombardments by light and heavy mortars or missiles from hidden positions targeting IOF infantry and vehicle concentrations, after which the firing positions are concealed and the vicinity quickly abandoned in advance of IOF artillery or missile targeting.

Resistance sniping operations continue and, where possible, commanding officers are targeted. The Palestinians have developed their own Al-Ghoul single-shot sniper rifle, effective up to 2,000 metres.⁵ Tanks, armoured bulldozers and troop carriers may be hit by shoulder-launched rockets.⁶

Incredibly, video exists of fighters emerging from a ruined building carrying a bomb, placing the explosive device at an IOF tanks’s most vulnerable spot and racing back to shelter before the explosion.

*A Palestinian Resistance fighter (PFLP by headband) firing a medium mortar shell in Gaza.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

What are the weapons of the Resistance and where from are they obtained?

The Resistance has many weapons, mostly automatic rifles, which they were supplied by allies in the past but none of those supply routes are probably open now. They have also taken weapons from dead IOF⁷ and constructed their own.

Aside from the Al-Ghoul, there is also the tandem Al-Yassin⁸ in which the Resistance has developed a shoulder-launched rocket of limited penetration strenght into a deadly armour-penetrating missile, seen on occasion blowing the entire turret off an IOF tank.

The IEDs employed as mines or carried to place against tanks contain high explosive donated by the IOF in their hundreds of unexploded bombs littering Gaza. With a failure-to-explode rate estimated as high as 20%⁹ the Resistance looks unlikely to run out of source for years.

Recently too the Resistance filmed themselves removing sacks of high explosive from an IOF stack intended for the demolition of homes. Both missiles and mortars are developed and produced in engineering shops below ground, as are bullets and IEDs and they too are filled with explosives.

*The Tandem Yassin, manufactured in Gaza by the Resistance.* (*Sketchfab*)

Where are these operations taking place? In the areas of Gaza which the IOF and Netanyahu boasted of “clearing of Hamas” over a year ago, mostly now devoid of civilians, into which the IOF moves tentatively — and have recently been instructed to move even more cautiously.

Where from are the Resistance fighters coming? Sometimes from still-standing fractured buildings but mostly from the network of tunnels which they have been constructing for years. Here they live frugally, waiting the chance to attack the Occupier of their land,¹⁰ the killer of their children.¹¹

Who are the armed Resistance in Gaza? They vary in history and in ideological basis, religious or secular but all unite in resistance and often take joint actions. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, of course are the main force but not the only ones.

Next in size and influence are the Al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad. Other factions include the Al-Nasser Salah Ad-Din Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees¹² and the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades of the marxist-leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.¹³

Representatives of different Palestinian Resistance factions posing for photograph to show their unity against the Zionist Occupation as the ceasefire approached in March 2024, soon after breached and abandoned by ‘Israel’. (Photo cred: *Workers World*)

The IOF collects their dead and wounded by helicopter, rushing them to some of the World’s most up-to-date war trauma treatment facilities. They drop smoke cannisters to obscure surveillance, not to protect from snipers: the Palestinian resistance never fires on those ‘copters.

Perhaps they should – the IOF — “the most moral army in the world”¹⁴ – certainly has no qualms about firing on Palestinian ambulances, paramedics, first responders and they hold the world record for destruction of hospitals and medical facilities. But clearly the Resistance has higher standards.

All military matters in the Zionist Entity are subject to military censorship and this includes numbers of dead and injured IOF, which allows them to conceal the numbers; they have military liaison officers stationed at hospitals to deal with queries.

Analysts have concluded that the IOF masks the numbers of killed and injured¹⁵ while wildly expanding the numbers of Palestinian Resistance fighters killed. Of course in war both sides engage in propaganda and it is said that Truth is the first casualty.

However, while there have been a great many videos of the Resistance in action filmed by themselves, there are none of the IOF fighting the Resistance at anything like close quarters. Clearly this is not due to modesty or even less to delicacy – it is due to absence of occasion.

While the Zionist state continues its daily genocidal actions in Gaza (and in the West Bank) and its aggressive actions in Lebanon, Syria and now in Iran, in 19 months they have failed to defeat the armed Resistance factions in Gaza. And now they have admitted to arming criminal looters.¹⁶

The IOF is unfit for standard military combat, even against insurgents and specialises only in assassinations, usually from the air and in genocidal operations against unarmed civilians, from air, sea and on the ground. Oh, and in destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, infrastructure, wells …

According to increasing number of reports, it is becoming unfit even for those.¹⁷

End.

FOOTNOTES

REFERENCES

Resistance operations over six months: https://electronicintifada.net/blog/503891

A hostile source reports briefly on Gaza Palestinian domestic weapons engineering: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/11/middleeast/hamas-weaponry-gaza-israel-palestine-unrest-intl-hnk-ml

IOF casualties: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/heavy-israeli-casualties-in-gaza-as-resistance-ambushes-intensify/

1Elmer, Jon, Resistance Report, Electronic Intifada YouTube podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXvvCOjdgjI

2Improvised Explosive Device

3Nine IOF were injured, four fatally in such an ambush on 7^th June. Report from hostile source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/4-idf-soldiers-killed-5-wounded-after-booby-trapped-south-gaza-building-collapses/

4A daily experience for Gazans but a rare one for Israelis, until the retaliation from Iran in the more recent ongoing war.

5 https://www.presstv.ir/doc/Detail/2024/05/29/726456/whats-story-behind-advanced-ghoul-sniper-rifle-used-hamas-fighters

6 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240125-haaretz-the-missile-that-killed-21-soldiers-in-gaza-was-produced-by-hamas/

7 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-weapons-rockets.html

8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasin_(RPG)

9 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/thousands-of-unexploded-israeli-bombs-have-become-key-resource-for-hamas-wing-in-gaza-report/3559371

10Israel declared itself the Zionist state on the land of Palestine in 1948.

11The IOF has killed at least an estimated 17,400 children (15,600 have been identified) since 7^th October 2023,; at that rate Israel kills a child in Gaza every 45 minutes. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/3/26/gazas-stolen-childhood-the-thousands-of-children-israel-killed

12Many sources including this one, non-supportive of the Resistance: https://www.newsweek.com/not-only-hamas-eight-factions-war-israel-gaza-1841292

13They are the only organisation of the Gaza resistance which is also part of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which bars Islamic-ideological organisations from membership. The PFLP has called for unity of all Palestinian resistance (as have the Islamic organisations) but the PLO is dominated by the Fatah party and holds only internal functions to formally approve its own manoeuvres. It also controls the undemocratic, repressive, corrupt and Israeli collaborator Palestinian Authority under Fatah nominee Mahmoud Abbas.

14 https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1745501858611786029

15 https://www.palestinechronicle.com/heavy-israeli-casualties-in-gaza-as-resistance-ambushes-intensify/

16 https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250607-israel-admits-support-anti-hamas-armed-group-accused-looting-gaza-aid-bedouin-abu-shabab

17 https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-close-israeli-army-collapse/49851

The Palestine Struggle in Cartoons – April/ May

On June 2, 2025June 3, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Cartoon, Current Affairs Comment, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Massacres, NATO, Palestine, Political Analysis, USA, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

Like many others through much of the genocidal attack on Gaza since October last 2022, I’ve been attending pickets, demonstrations and vigils organised by others. I’ve also written some reports on those events and analyses of the solidarity movement.

But in addition, I’ve been drawing cartoon comments in a sketch book, most unpublished and I thought I would publish a selection here.

One of the poorest states in the world, Ansarallah is the only one to uphold its duty to prevent genocide, which it does by putting heavy pressure on the Zionist state’s economy through maritime blockade. For this, the UK and USA rain missiles and bombs down upon it. But it does not yield.

*This one is at least as much placard as it is cartoon but I never got around to making the placard.*

*Ansarallah escalates to attack the ‘Israeli’ state directly, then again in response to Zionist airforce bombing of Yemen.*

The USA Navy sends two aircraft carriers to assist the genocidal state by attacking Yemen. Ansarallah attacks the US Navy, forcing the retreat first of one aircraft carrier followed by capitulation of the US which offers Ansarallah to end attacks on Yemen if they end attacks on US Navy. The deal makes no provision for defence of the Zionist state and is accepted by Ansarallah.

*Facing some of the most heavily armed forces in the world but somehow, it’s always the national liberation forces that must disarm. For the sake of peace, of course.*

The physical war against the Palestinians by the Zionist State was armed by a number of western imperialist states but also ideologically by the whole western media. In the face of real and ongoing genocide the WMM reported propaganda, repeated lies and framed its reports in the Zionists’ terms of reference – while courageous journalists reporting from the actual killing grounds were picked off by the IOF.

*The western imperialists promote the two-states solution (*sic) and a Palestine colony of Israel as a ‘Palestinian State’. This would be run by Zionist proxies such as the Palestinian Authority with its Fatah boss, Mahmoud Abbas, who recently publicly insulted the national resistance fighters of Hamas, calling them ‘sons of dogs’.

“RECOGNITION OF THE PALESTINIAN STATE” IS A TRAP

On May 30, 2025June 2, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Mass Media Criticism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The declared preparedness of a number of states, including the Irish one, to give formal recognition to the State of Palestine is widely seen as a step in favour of the Palestinian people and generally opposed by the Israeli state.

So on that basis many people who support the Palestinians may think that recognition of the State of Palestine is a good thing. How can it be otherwise? And yet …

Recognition of the Palestinian State is predicated upon the “two-state solution” (sic), in which the Zionists and the Palestinians supposedly get to live in separate states as neighbours, everybody happy. Except that the Zionists get most of the land and water while the indigenous get the least.

Effectively “Recognition of the Palestinian State” as advocated is to agree to

Zionists occupying 80% of Palestinian land
Palestinians getting 20% of their land
With least water
Forever under Zionist surveillance
and Zionist guns.

*Area in pink shows territory notionally available to the “Palestinian State” in a “two-state” proposal; however the Zionist state is not in agreement and nor are many Palestinians.* (Image: BBC)

In any case, Zionism is a colonial settler project and inherently expansionist; even in the unlikely situation that the two-state proposal were accepted by Zionists and Palestinians, the Zionists would always be looking to expand as even now they are extending further into Syria.

Currently the ‘State of Palestine’ is represented by the Palestinian National Authority,¹ widely seen as the Israeli occupation’s proxy, run by Mahmoud Abbas and backed by the Fatah party. Its police force attacks solidarity demonstrations, arrests and even kills resistance fighters and critics.

The PA was created as part of the Oslo pacification process² and supposed to hold elections every five years thereafter. The first elections³ saw the Fatah party elected to govern the West Bank and Gaza. But as the Second Intifada⁴ erupted against Oslo, the popularity of Fatah plummeted.

The Fatah administration was widely considered corrupt, repressive, violent and collusive with the Occupation.

The next elections, in 2006 saw Hamas win most seats across both areas. But Fatah would not accept the popular verdict and in 2017 Hamas removed them in Gaza after a brief struggle⁵ but however did not do so in the West Bank. Abbas has not held another election since.

At a special conference allegedly of the PLO (which was attended by none of its organisations apart from Abbas’ lackeys), Abbas called the leading organisation of the Palestine national resistance, Hamas, “Sons of Dogs.” (Cartoon: *D.Breatnach*)

The PA kept the grants it was getting from other states including those intended for the administration of Gaza, western powers cut off funding, Israel and Arab states initiated punitive economic sanctions against Gaza and Israel began a siege with periodic massacres.

In the West Bank, the PA’s security forces have suppressed demonstrations in solidarity with the Resistance and also against the PA’s brutality. They have jailed Resistance activists and fighters, including killing a number of them. This year they began and then colluded in the siege of Jenin.

Recognising the State of Palestine means supporting this corrupt and brutal Israeli State proxy and also accepting 80% of the land of Palestine going to the Zionist colonial occupation which, with the ‘two state proposal’ is also the policy of the PA.

There may be some, including probably some Palestinians, who think to accept it would be better than nothing, especially if it stops the genocide. But genocide is the basic program of the colonial invader: to take the land, the indigenous must be enslaved and if not enslaved, removed.

How else is a colonial minority to rule in security? The other option is not to rule but to share, in a democratic secular state of Palestine with equal rights for all of whatever background. Yes, but that is not ‘the Palestinian State’ being promoted.

The Zionists say they are in an existential fight and in a sense they are right. The Palestinians are in a fight for their life as a people too. A huge difference is that the Zionists have the option to stop being racist colonial occupiers oppressing the indigenous people.

For a few years also the PA has been mooted as the ‘Palestinian’ governing force for Gaza to replace the elected choice of the people, Hamas, with a proxy of the Occupation. This has been suggested by envoys of the US and also more recently by Egypt (although opposed by ‘Israel’).

This would find favour with some Arab client states and all of the European imperialist states who can’t see any other way of stability for the Middle East in particular and for their exploitation of the world in general. Without that ‘peace’ their whole imperialist world could be endangered.

The option of a democratic, secular all-Palestine state is not going to be supported by the imperialists because such a state would encourage the masses of Arab states to carry out their own revolutions. However it is the option for all democratic and revolutionary people to support.

To support ‘the Palestine State’ is to encourage the continuation of colonialism, genocide and ethnic cleansing, enable the current specific Zionist plan for Palestine and to support the US imperialist and Egyptian proxy plan to have Gaza run by the traitorous Palestine Authority.

End.

Sources:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/11/what-is-the-palestinian-authority-and-how-is-it-viewed-by-palestinians

Notes:

1Usually referred to just as The Palestinian Authority.

2With South Africa’s, this was the beginning of a wave of imperialist pacification processes starting in the 1990s that went around the word wherever national liberation struggles had strong popular support. Those who had succumbed to it were used to encourage others to do so too: the ANC and Fatah attended annual congresses of Sinn Féin to recommend it to Irish Republicans; Sinn Féin and S. Africans in turn ‘sold’ it to the Basques and to the FARC in Columbia; there were attempts to get the Kurds in Turkey, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and some of the Philippines fighters to accept it. Wherever the process took hold the resistance split first between those who would collaborate and those who would not but the latter also fragmented further. None of the movements that embraced the process won anything more than the partial release of prisoners, with the exception of S. Africa where the people won universal suffrage (but also experienced increased imperialist exploitation and poverty).

3The first legislative elections were held in 1996, won by Fatah; the next in 2006, won by Hamas; there have been none since.

4In 2000, against the Zionist Occupation, the collusion and corruption of Fatah, against denial of the right of return to the refugees.

5Represented in most Western mass media and online history sources as “Hamas seized power in Gaza”.

Trump, Ramaphosa and White Power

On May 30, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Africa, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Police Violence, Political Analysis, South Africa, Trade unions, Uncategorized, US Imperialism1 Comment

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.

End.

NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

NOTES

[1] Lahiff, E. & Li, G. (2012) Land Redistribution in South Africa: A Critical Review. WB.p.3 https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/28ccc35a-31cd-58ba8d0e-1b65b74b275c/content

[2] Ibíd., p.5

[3] Ibíd., p.8

[4] Ibíd., p.9

[5] The Gini is a measure of inequality where 0 = absolute equality and 1 = absolute inequality.

[6] Valodia, I (2023) South Africa can’t crack the inequality curse. Why and what can be done. https://actsa.org/the-facts-land-reform-in-south-africa/

[7] Actsa (19/02/2025) The Facts: Land Reform in South Africa. https://actsa.org/the-facts-land-reform-in-south-africa/

[8] See ACB (2015) Africa an El Dorado for South Africa’s Agribusiness Giants. https://safsc.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/SA-Agribusiness.pdf

[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.

[10] The documentary Miners Shot Down can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch

[11] See https://www.weforum.org/stories/2013/12/nelson-mandelas-address-to-davos-1992/

[12] Cited in Miners Shot Down.

PALESTINIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS’ DAY IN DUBLIN

On April 18, 2025April 18, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, History, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

April 17^th 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 16^th 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.

3 https://www.addameer.org/news/5549

4Ibid.

5Ibid.

6Ibid.

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.

8See https://rebelbreeze.com/2025/04/06/irish-state-ramps-up-repression/

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.

USEFUL LINKS

IPSC:https://www.ipsc.ie

Adameer – Prisoner Support and Human Rights Organisation: https://www.addameer.org/

Adameer Statement on Prisoners’ Day: https://www.addameer.org/news/5549

DUBLIN SEES LARGE PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MARCH ALSO FASCIST PROVOCATION AND GARDA REPRESSION

On March 26, 2025March 26, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Palestine, Police Violence, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Dublin city centre on Saturday witnessed another giant Palestine solidarity march with a breakaway group; also a picket against internment of Irish Republicans; fascist provocations and Gárda repression resulting in the arrest of a demonstrator.

The national demonstration march had been called by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign as part of a solidarity and protest pattern that included fortnightly Dublin marches last year but is now generally monthly and at times with other events in addition.

*One of the banners just having crossed O’Connell Bridge on the IPSC-organised march* (Sourced: *IPSC Facebook*)

Numbers on these marches in a city of only around 1.5 million population are impressive, though they draw on some participation from outside Dublin but there also regular local pickets and demonstrations of much smaller numbers at locations of high visibility or of specific significance.¹

The march set off from the Garden of Remembrance in the north city centre proceeding towards Leinster House, seat of the parliament of the Irish State, near O’Connell Bridge passing a picket with an anti-Internment banner organised by the Anti-Imperialism Action organisation.

*Anti Imperialist Action displaying a banner against extradition to the passing Palestine solidarity march.* (Photo sourced: *Anti Imperialism Action Leinster FB page*)

As the march reached the non-pedestrianised stretch of Grafton Street a half-dozen fascists made their presence felt on the sidelines by throwing insults at a section of the marchers, who responded with louder From Ireland to Palestine – Occupation is a crime! and antifascist slogans.

Not just the Irish state but fascists and other far-Right elements in Ireland have a real problem with Palestine solidarity, claiming that’s because the protesters should be marching for Ireland. However those elements for the most part have zero track record in marching for Irish independence.

No, for them ‘Irish nationalism’ consists of demonstrating against immigration and burning buildings intended – or which they believe intended – for housing refugees. Clearly as fascists and far-Right what they detest about marches such as these is internationalist solidarity itself.

*Placard calling for what is surely the minimum we have the right to expect from the Irish Government, followed by some of the placards of Mothers Against Genocide.* (Photo sourced: *IPSC FB page*)

Incongruously for those who want only internal causes upheld, the fascists of the Loyalist variety in the occupied Six Counties uphold the Zionist state of ‘Israel’ and those inside the Irish state, as was seen in Dublin on Saturday too, laud and uphold as an example Donald Trump!

BREAKAWAY²

Mock Icon of Irish Central Bank carried against processing Israeli Bonds (Source photo: IPSC FB page).

Very shortly after the verbal exchange with the fascists, a section of the march diverted to walk up the pedestrianised section of Grafton Street. A couple of Gardaí, reinforced by the fascists, attempted to prevent this but the marchers flowed around the obstruction to continue up the street.

On Wednesday evening, some of those present had marched down that very street on their way to occupy O’Connell Bridge, bringing traffic in both directions to a halt for half an hour.³

Further along the pedestrianised street the breakaway, including Ireland Action for Palestine and Saoirse Don Phalaistín groups, joined with another section of marchers who had earlier broken away from the IPSC march, this one led by the Mothers Against Genocide banner.

The shouted slogans from what were broadly two differing sections tended to merge with regard to calls to stop the bombing, opposition to genocide and broad support for Palestine but differed in that one section was also calling for support for the Palestinian Resistance and resistance generally.⁴

Content of slogans from the groups differed less markedly in calling for Irish Government intervention in support of Palestine, with the ‘Mothers’ mostly demanding the enactment of the Occupied Territories Bill⁵ and others condemning Government collusion in Shannon Airport.

The whole breakaway mass marched along South Stephens Green and turned north into Dawson Street, to pause inside the junction with Molesworth Street, where the tail of the main march, was already beginning to reduce although speakers and artists were performing on the IPSC platform.

*Molesworth Street facing Dawson Street after the breakaway sections arrived and before the later incidents.* (Source: *R. Breeze*)

*View of the IPSC-organised march at its destination, the Garda barriers in Molesworth Street across the road from the entrance to Leinster House.* (Photo: *R. Breeze*)

On Dawson Street, across from the junction, the fascists had installed themselves, including a man in a red ‘Trump’ hat waving a “Make America great again” flag.

*Two known fascists from the group trying to harass Palestine solidarity marches from Grafton Street to Dawson Street.* (Photo sourced: AFA https://www.facebook.com/afaireland)

The Palestine solidarity protesters here – some distance from the diminishing main march crowd,⁶ with some IPSC stewards standing watching nearby, responded to the fascists’ jeers and Trump fan with jeers of their own, slogans and some bursts of song.⁷

According to a report form Anti-Fascist Action observers nearby and posted later that day, a senior Garda officer approached one of the fascists and had a quiet word with them, after which the fascists packed their banner and went away quietly smiling while the Public Order Unit arrived.

*Soldiers of the master race (ehem) packing up after notification from their friend in the Gardaí that the POU would soon be deployed against some of the Palestine solidarity demonstrators.* (Photo sourced: *AFA Ireland*)

These then began to aggressively push the demonstrators back towards Molesworth Street and as a demonstrator remarked it was the POU that were now blocking Dawson Street to traffic.

Soon the Gardaí seemed to decide to arrest one of the Palestine solidarity demonstrators and charged into the crowd, shoving, knocking down and even punching people who resisted strongly or just held on to the intended victim as long as they were able to.

A woman struck back at a POU man who had seized her by the throat but even so it took the intervention of one of his unit to get him to release his hold. The marks of his hand on her throat could be seen afterwards. Interestingly a press report later stated the Gardaí denied there was any incident.

( https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/cofounder-irish-government-dublin-ireland-international-holocaust-remembrance-alliance-b1218253.html)

Eventually the Gardaí succeeded in their intent and the protester was taken away to chants of Let him go! Numbers of the main march were dwindling greatly by this point but so were those of the breakaway section and people there were concerned to support their arrested comrade.

One of three police stations was the likely destination: Store Street, Pearse Street or Kevin Street. It was established that he was held at the latter station and was later released, given a few days to decide, under the Public Order Act whether to accept a caution or to be charged and face trial.

More confrontations of various sorts are likely as the Zionist genocide in Palestine ratchets even higher and frustration mounts at the Irish Government’s persistent refusal to end their collusion with the Zionist state and with its main supplier, US imperialism.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Mostly by organisations not part of the IPSC.

2Breakaway actions by groups often take place when they seek another target to that of the march organisers or to spread the visual and auditory impact of the demonstration or to break the ‘normalisation’ pattern, as when protesters feel the IPSC leadership is organising set marches of minimum disruption, on routes agreed with the Gardaí (which is not legal requirement in the Irish state).

3See https://rebelbreeze.com/2025/03/21/dublin-traffic-clogged-up-as-palestine-solidarity-protesters-march-around-city-centre

4There is only one solution – Intifada revolution! From Ireland to Palestine – Occupation is a crime!

5 Agreed years ago in the Irish Parliament before but prevented from enactment by successive coalition Governments.

6As soon as the IPSC march arrives numbers always begin to leave, either to commence return home journeys or because they feel they are not going to hear anything new and their contribution was to be part of a visible mass, which they have now done.

7The Irish-language Gráinne Mhaol and English-language Come Out Ye Black n’ Tans.