In the western world we observe the manifestation of solidarity with Palestine in giant marches and in college solidarity encampments and building occupations. But there are many other manifestations to be seen every week and on specific occasions.
These other smaller actions take place of special occasions or on a regular weekly, monthly or even daily basis. The Bridges of Solidarity event was organised as a specific one-off but others are organised weekly, for example in Dublin where one of them, by coincidence is also on a bridge.
These solidarity events are seen by passing people away from the routes of the big marches and locations of encampments and allow those people at minimums to express their approval and, for a few seconds at least, to be part of that solidarity expression.
This contributes to the popular public opinion. Smaller or special events sometimes also pull in people who might not normally participate in marches for a variety of reasons.
The Solidarity Bridges protest day was set for Friday 31st May and Palestine solidarity flags were waved and banners hung from bridges over motorways and rivers across the nation, disregarding the foreign-imposed border.
In Dublin, motorway and main road bridges, over river and stream showed the Palestinian colours and were greeted every few seconds by motor horns sounding in support.
One of the Bridges of Solidarity with Palestine events that took place across different parts of Ireland on 31 May 2024, this one on the Dublin Fairview pedestrian bridge across the road.
On the “RTÉ Bridge”1 the numbers were small with Palestinian flags and a drop banner bearing the message “RTÉ LIES”. However the horns of passing traffic blowing in approval sounded every ten seconds or so, sometimes individually and sometimes in a chorus, accompanied by thumbs up.
Irish and Arabic recorded resistance music sounded out from an amplifier. On the UCD Bridge, chanted slogans replaced recorded music with a couple of songs too, sung accapella; the numbers here were boosted with students from the ongoing solidarity encampment there.
A huge “Ireland Stands With Palestine” banner figuring the watermelon slice2 hung off the southern side of the bridge with flags and a text banner facing north.
According to media reports and its FB on 28th June, the IPSC called for those bridge protests but none of the Dublin ones were listed and today there were no photos of any such events on its FB page; however its website lists nineteen such protests for next Friday 7th June.
Every Thursday evening in Dublin a solidarity picket takes place from six to seven o’clock in four areas in prominent locations passed by much motorised traffic: Annesley Bridge Fairview/ East Wall (alternating between them weekly); Ballymun; Cabra and Donnycarney.
One of weekly Palestine solidarity picket every Thursday in four Dublin city areas – this one on Annesley Bridge, Fairview, 30 May 2024.
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Committee does not for some unexplained reason promote these events. In its weekly list of activities for participants around the country, it does not list the Thursday events.
The IPSC is long-established and the main organisation promoting Palestine solidarity across Ireland but this kind of censorship, for that is what it amounts to, is harmful to that solidarity. These initiatives are not even radical3 nor organised by people hostile to Palestinian solidarity in any way.
Bernadette McAlliskey joined the weekly protest on Annesley Bridge on 22nd May.
Of course in themselves these actions do not stop the genocide but nor do big marches, while the college encampments may force some limited divestments and academic boycotts. But all together form part of the political ambience of the country upon which yet other actions may be based.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1So called because of its proximity to the headquarters of Radio Teilifís Éireann, the national broadcasting service.
2The Palestinian Flag is forbidden in “Israel” and wherever else they exercise control in Palestine and, because the colours of the watermelon slice are those of their flag, the Palestinians have used it as a “legal” substitute (green and white in the rind, red in the flesh and black in the seeds). An interested 6th Year student cycling past asking the reason for the design had it explained to him and told participants, whom he thanked, that he’ll be taking Politics as a subject in university.
3 Not that there is anything wrong with radical protests and in fact they are needed but one might think that the IPSC was not supporting certain types of protest because it was concerned that they might be perceived as being too radical.
A Zionist march and rally was organised for Dublin today as an “Israel solidarity” event by the Ireland Israel Alliance. Despite prior publicity and drawing from around the country the attendance numbered only a few hundred.
Around a hundred anti-zionists with flags, banners, amplifier and loudhailer occupied the announced destination of the Zionist rally an hour prior to the scheduled arrival of the IIA march and had to wait even longer as the Zionist groups arrived at Stephens Green.
One of the banners displayed by among the anti-zionists outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
During the week the IIA issued a statement in line with the Israeli state’s Foreign Minister that “Ireland rewards Palestinian terrorism with a State”1 in response to the announcement by the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian states that they intended to formally recognise the Palestinian state.
Palestinian solidarity supporters in Dublin organised at short notice a counter-rally. “It’s a bit rich for Zionists who set up their settler state with terrorism”, said one in Dublin today, “claiming that Palestinian statehood rewards Palestinian ‘terrorism’!”2
One of the banners displayed by among the anti-zionists outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Although Palestinian Christians are suppressed and killed by Israeli armed forces, the IIA were supported by right-wing Christian Zionists, among them the All Nations Church, the Irish branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and the TJCII.
According to advance releases to the press, the newly inaugurated Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Yoni Wieder was to speak at the zionist rally.3
Some Gardaí in Molesworth Street, stacked crowd barriers not yet erected at that point and contractor staff awaiting instructions. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The anti-zionists organised their event at a day or two’s notice and according to some sources the IPSC4 had called on its branches not to counter protest the Zionist event but around a hundred Palestinian supporters attended, mainly Irish but also with Palestinians and a sprinkling of others.
In their prior publicity the Zionists trotted out their usual claims that Palestinian solidarity is based on anti-Semitism and that Jews are being victimised,5 ignoring the fact that zionism does not equal judaism and that in fact a substantial number of Jews have opposed zionism.6
The population of Ireland went from being largely supportive of ‘Israel’ in 1948 to being mostly pro-Palestinian from the 1970s onwards because of their observation of the genocidal and ethnic cleansing actions of the Israeli state.
Placard displayed among the Palestine supporters (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
There was a fairly high Garda presence at the events and after some delay crowd barriers were erected across the east end of Molesworth Street with a second line of barriers a little further west beyond which the Zionists were setting up a stage.
The anti-Zionists in front of Leinster House awaited the arrival of the pro-Israel march which when it got going could be seen passing the Stephens Green end of Kildare Street, eventually coming down Dawson Street and turning into Molesworth Street.
View in distance of the zionist rally location before the arrival of their march from Stephens Green (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
As they arrived the Palestinian solidarity people attempted to move across the road but the Gardaí pushed back, individual Gardaí at times viciously shoving and being resisted; here and there an arrest seemed threatened but was evaded by solidarity action around the targeted person.
With the Palestinian supporters pushed to a couple of feet in front of the pedestrian pavement of Leinster House, the Gardaí stopped and by then two vans of the Public Order Unit had arrived and were deployed but some time later stood down, got in their vans and were driven off.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)View northward in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)View southward in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)The arrival of a Garda prisoner transport van in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday raised tensions among some of the anti-zionist demonstrators (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
There could have been some confused impulses among the Gardaí given the public symbolic positions of the Government in recognition of the Palestinian state and the sharp and public diplomatic language flying between the Irish and Israeli states.
Two Garda vans were parked in front of the entrance to Molesworth St, partially blocking the views of the zionists and their opponents. The latter however stood with banners and flags on top of barriers and an amplifier was also strapped to a pole to better carry the message to the Zionists.
Palestinian supporters attaching an amplifier speaker to a pole outside Leinster House, directed at the Zionist rally in Molesworth Street (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Despite the IIA having recommended its supporters to bring Israeli and Irish flags, only one Tricolour could be seen among their blue-and-white Israeli flags. One placard depicted the whole of Ireland covered with a menora, the traditional Jewish multi-candlestick.
Some of the Zionists’ placards repeated the debunked accusations of programmed mass rapes by the Palestinian resistance on October 7th last year, for which no evidence whatsoever or known victim exists despite Israeli state propaganda parroted by some of its western media supporters.
Zionist marchers arrive at their rally point in Molesworth Street, with two sets of barriers placed between them and the Palestine supporters (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Among the Palestinian supporters the Palestine national flag was very much in evidence, also a couple of the PFLP7 and one in the colours of the anti-fascist Popular Front Government of 1930s Spain bearing the words “Connolly Column”, honouring the Irish who fought fascism there.
Here too there was only one Tricolour to be seen.
Flag of the PFLP seen against the trees (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
There were intermittent rain showers during the events, often persistent and somewhat heavy, streams running northwards along the road and pavement edge down Kildare Street but the demonstrators remained without shelter, many also without specific rain gear or umbrellas.
Women (mostly) speaking through amplification led the slogans that have become common on Palestine solidarity demonstrations in English, Irish and Arabic but with a few additions, including “Zionist scum – Off our streets!” Also “West-Brit Blueshirt scum – Off our streets!”
View of the rain’s ‘river’ running down between the Leinster House pedestrian pavement and the road. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)View of small section of Palestinian supporters’ line with police line in front and the rainwater swirling around their feet. The Zionist rally is taking place behind the police line and beyond two lines of metal crowd barriers. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
At intervals Arabic resistance music was played and sections of the Palestine solidarity crowd began to sway or even dance, including one young woman from Gaza who seemed accomplished in traditional dance. Irish patriotic songs were played for a period also.
Among the Palestinian supporters the Zionist chants or speakers could not be heard, nor can one know how much of the Palestinian solidarity chants could be heard by the Zionists. Eventually the Zionists left to jeers from their opposition, a Garda helicopter watching over them in the sky.
The Gardaí left and the Palestinian supporters did too, mostly leaving together in a group.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
AFTERMATH – FIGHT IN PARNELL/ O’CONNELL STREET
That was not all however for perhaps an hour later a fight developed between what seemed to be a far-Right man against a group of Palestinian supporters in Parnell Street. According to some people, the man had approached them aggressively about their Palestine solidarity activism.
Disliking their response, he punched one of the Palestine solidarity demonstrators in the face and when the women in the group protested, struck a couple of them too. Another male in the group then launched at the Far-Right man and gave him a bloody face.
When observed by this reporter, the man was covered in tattoos, stripped to the waist and shouting about being “for the Irish” (which for some reason the Far-Right assume Palestinian supporters are not — though many have a far better track record in that respect than do Far-Right activists).
In Palestine that same day the zionist air force bombed a tent town of displaced people in northwest Gaza, which they had declared a safe area, murdering over 30 and injuring many more, some of whom will die. They also bombed 10 UNRWA displacement centres.
2The zionists had a number of terrorist organisation pushing the formation of the Israel State: Haganah, Irgun, Palmach … Haganah became the core of the Israeli armed forces.
Resistance to colonialism and imperialism takes many forms but there are those who try to downgrade, deny or even condemn its armed aspect and this has been happening recently in the case of the Palestinian struggle.
Historically, resistance has taken the form of strikes, sabotage, protest pickets, marches, rallies, placards, hunger strikes, songs, poetry, visual arts, arson, petitions, articles, books, leaflets, speeches, graffiti, clothing, language promotion, riots … and armed action up to and including revolution.
All have proved useful and the question of whether the prevailing circumstance favour some more than others is a tactical one, never one of principle. Those who seek to forbid some tactics to the movement in all circumstances are they who cannot be trusted in leadership of the struggle.
The facet of resistance that temporisers and outright opponents of the resistance movement most often seek to outlaw and remove from the struggle is the armed one, presumably because it is one of the least amenable to sidetracking into cosmetic reform.
Ruling classes of states regularly outlaw armed resistance activity including the organisations that espouse that, usually dubbing them “terrorists”, while of course ensuring they themselves have military forces which, even when aggressive invaders, they dub “defence forces”.
Indeed, those elites usually arm even their civil security forces, i.e their police. But arms and their use in the hands of working people or the invaded populations? No, that would be terrorism!
Joint press conference with representatives of different resistance organisations. (Photo sourced: Internet)
THREE-PRONGED ATTACK ON ARMED RESISTANCE
Recently a three-pronged ideological and propaganda attack was carried out on the Palestinian armed resistance from sources that are seen by some as friends of the Palestinian people: The Palestine BDS National Committee, the President of the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League.
The National Committee made their attack through a document advising on tactics and principles in presentation of BDS demands, in particular of the student campus encampments or occupations, advising activists that upholding the armed resistance was not advisable.1
Around the same time, the Arab League was having its summit meeting and, though not stupid enough to advocate giving up the armed struggle, long upheld by the Palestinian people, recommended the resistance to place themselves under the leadership of the PLO2 and the PA.
The PLO is controlled by the leadership of Fatah; their nominee, President of the PA Mahmoud Abbas, who was also at the Arab League summit, accused the October 7th attack by the Palestinian resistance of providing the Israelis the excuse for their genocidal war on Palestine.
In October 2023, during the genocidal war by “Israel”, Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State and envoy to the Middle East, shakes hands with Mahmoud Abbas, “President” of the Palestinian Authority, who remains in office despite his term having concluded in 2009. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Arab League is composed of the current 22 Arab states, i.e those for which the dominant language is Arabic.3 But the elites of the majority of those states are clients of imperialism, chiefly of the United States. In the case of Yemen, it is the overthrown ‘government’ that is a member.4
Apart from their weakness against imperialism, one must wonder at their impertinence in telling the Palestinian armed resistance, which they do not at all assist, who should be their leadership5 and that the “two-state solution” (sic) is the only option available and recommended.6
The leadership of Fatah under Arafat betrayed the struggle for an independent Palestine and the right of return of the millions of Palestinian refugees when they agreed to the Oslo Accords in 1993/’95, for which they received limited autonomy through a “Palestine Authority”.
The corruption of Fatah in the PA and their betrayal of fundamental objectives of the Palestinian struggle led to their ousting in the elections of 2006, which were won instead by Hamas, who then had to fight Fatah who were refusing to hand over administration in Gaza.
Fatah refused to recognise the electorally-expressed wish of the people in the West Bank too but Hamas chose not to enter into a civil war with them there. From that point onwards, Gaza was besieged by the zionist authorities and periodically bombarded.
Meanwhile the PA continued in their corruption, Abbas continued to be unelected President, occupying the office and sharing the funds coming in among his clique but using their security force primarily to control and repress the Palestinians of the West Bank.
During this week alone, Resistance News Network reported that the PA’s forces dismantled explosives prepared by the resistance in the home of Tamer Fugaha which was planned for demolition by the Israeli occupation forces, where the explosives would target them.
The zionist forces regularly demolish the homes of Palestinian fighters and Tamer Fugaha was killed, along with another four Palestinian comrades, in an epic 15-hour battle with the IOF early this month in Tulkarem.
The PA has Palestinian political prisoners and also identifies these for the IOF to arrest later. Naturally (as even admitted by western mass media) the PA is hated by Palestinians, yet the Arab League wants the armed resistance to place themselves under its rule!
The armed resistance movement, which is composed of a number of distinct organisations7 fighting in unity, has of course rejected any such move and instead continued its calls for the support of the Arab people and to break the zionist blockade at the Rafah gate of desperately-needed aid convoys.
Palestinian fighters from different resistance organisations. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Palestine BDS National Committee headquarters is also, like that of the PA, in Ramallah (West Bank). A recent statement of theirs also advised organisations working for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions with regard to the Israeli State to drop mention of armed resistance.
Furthermore, they did so in the name of a host of organisations that sponsor Palestine BDS but the Boycott and Anti-Normalization Campaign, condemning the advice given,8 established that those organisations had not been consulted at all and if they had, would not have given approval.
The BANC criticised the offending committee not only for the original statement but also for acting as though they commanded the BDS movement.9 The statement in question was quickly withdrawn and replaced with another with the offending section on armed struggle removed.
Among the Palestinian groups that criticised the statement was the PFLP’s Haitham Abdo, head of the organisation in Lebanon, at the Popular Women’s Committees festival in Beirut on the occasion of Nakba Day, celebrating also the memory of a group of women fighters:
“Holding the resistance responsible for what happened after October 7 serves the zionist narrative and harms our people’s struggle and national fight. This statement is rejected, regardless of who says it.”10
In Yemen, the weekly “million-men march”11 sent a solidarity message to the Palestinians12 but also rebuked the participants in the Arab League summit with a non-too subtle hint as to where lie their allegiances:
“to the rulers of the Arab regimes meeting in Manama, near the embassy of the enemy entity: We regret to inform you that the enemy has committed more than 3,000 massacres to date, and even one massacre should have stirred your consciences.”13
Scene from Palestine solidarity demonstration in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo sourced: Internet)
OPPOSITION TO ARMED RESISTANCE IN IRELAND
The dislike of or even hostility to promoting the armed Palestinian resistance can be seen in Ireland. A Garda confiscated a demonstrator’s a flag of one of the resistance groups, the secular Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine, while another was asked by IPSC stewards not to fly it.
In one of the student encampments, the PFLP flag was taken down too. The PFLP is a secular resistance organisation while others are Islamist but all are fighting in unity.
In some cases this opposition could be seen as a reluctance to have the solidarity movement associated with one specific liberation organisation which would be understandable but then a compromise would allow the flags of all groups — or one non-specific one of armed resistance.
To restrict the solidarity movement to the Palestinian national flag only is the imposition of an undemocratic “unity” and removes one of the most salient features of the Palestinian resistance – its armed aspect, fighting now amid the ruins and alleys of Gaza and in the West Bank.
Every week RNN posts photos of fighter martyrs of different resistance organisations, killed as they fought tanks, IOF bulldozers and, more rarely, IOF troops on the ground. The fighters too have been killed by aerial bombardment as of course there is no Palestinian air force or air defences.
Yet every week RNN also lists IOF tanks, bulldozers, troop carriers and IOF ground troops hit by the resistance at close quarters or at remove by mortars and rockets. The IOF dead and wounded are evacuated by helicopters which – unlike Palestinian ambulances – are never fired on.
The western mass media is not reporting these engagements and Al Jazeera reports only some of them.14
Our internationalist duty to support the Palestinians means also supporting their right to resist and that means in effect to support the armed resistance, whether we elevate one organisation or more, or just the broad principle of the right to armed resistance.
An Israeli tank hit by Palestinian fire. (Photo sourced: Internet)
THE IRISH EXPERIENCE
In the struggle for Irish liberation we have used – in different combinations – all the forms of resistance listed in the second paragraph at the beginning of this article ; indeed one of those forms during the Land War gave the word “boycott’ to the world!15
But the armed aspect has been a part of that struggle from the time of the clans right down through eight hundred centuries, against even internal opposition. In July 1846, John O’Connell’s proposal to have the Union Repeal Association renounce the use of armed force split the organisation.16
At the meeting, Thomas Meagher, said that “There are times when arms will alone suffice, and when political ameliorations call for a drop of blood, and many thousand drops of blood. Opinion, I admit, will operate against opinion. But … force must be used against force.
“The soldier is proof against an argument, but he is not proof against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason, let him be reasoned with; but it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone avail against battalioned despotism.”17
LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE – IN ALL ITS FORMS!
End.
Palestinian youth respond to an Israeli raid on Beita in the West Bank Aug 2023 (Photo cred: Nidal Esthayeh/ Xinhua)
FOOTNOTES
1 We reiterate our firm position and call for a just and comprehensive peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue, and we support the call of His Excellency President Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, to convene an international peace conference and to take irreversible steps to implement the two-state solution in accordance with the Arab Peace Initiative and resolutions of international legitimacy to establish an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the lines of 4 June 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital, and to accept its membership in the United Nations as an independent and fully sovereign state in common with other countries in the world, and to ensure the restoration of all legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, in particular, the right to return and self-determination, empowerment and support.
2At its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 28 May 1964. After concluding the meeting, the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its stated “complementary goals” were Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine. (Wikipedia) Under Fatah domination it banned Islamist groups from membership.
3 Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordon, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
4 Rather than those in power, the Ansar Allah (“Houthis”) government, preferred by the vast majority of Yemenis to the western-recognised exiled government.
5We call on all Palestinian factions to join together under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and to agree on a comprehensive national project and a unified strategic vision to focus efforts towards achieving the aspirations of the Palestinian people to achieve their legitimate rights and establish their independent national State on their national soil, on the basis of the two state solution, and in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy and established references.
6 The 2-state option, supported by the imperialist powers, is of a much smaller Palestine state alongside an Israeli state at least the size of its current dimensions. However even this has arguably been made impossible by the spread of Israeli settlements and is rejected by most Palestinians and many Israelis. The 1-state option envisages the whole of historic Palestine under a democratic regime.
7 Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (QQB) – Hamas; Al-Quds Brigades (AQB) – Islamic Jihad; Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (PFLP) – People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine; National Resistance Brigades (DFLB) – Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – Fatah (not under Fatah political control); Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades (PRC) – Popular Resistance Committees; Lion’s Den; Mujahideen Brigades.
8The Boycott Campaign – Palestine condemns the statement issued by the Boycott National Committee, in Ramallah, which asserts the danger of supporting the Palestinian resistance on their work and the necessity to distance themselves from any positions that support the resistance, especially armed resistance.
This disgraceful stance comes at a time when the zionist enemy is committing the crime of genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip for over seven months, resulting in the killing and injury of more than 120,000 innocent Palestinians and the destruction of 70% of Gaza’s buildings.
Such dangerous statements provide cover and legitimacy for the enemy to continue its aggression.
What is more dangerous is that the BNC claims it issued the statement in consultation with a large number of national entities and organizations.
However, through our communications with several entities mentioned in the statement, it is certain that they were not presented with this statement nor consulted about it, and they would certainly refuse to sign such statements that promote non-national positions.
All struggles for freedom around the world have seen various forms of struggle side by side, with armed resistance at their core. Therefore, our Palestinian struggle strategy should reinforce different forms towards the major goal of dismantling this zionist project on our land.
Accordingly, we call on the BNC to revise its position and align with the authentic national stance that glorifies resistance in all its forms.
We also urge it to stop this approach that attempts to monopolize the legitimacy of international work for Palestine and issue top-down orders to everyone. Palestine is greater than all, and the global revolution today to support our people is greater than something that can be monopolized by anyone.
Boycott Committee — Palestine / Boycott and Anti-Normalization Campaign
11 For the 31st week, the Yemeni people turned out in massive crowds across various cities in Yemen in support of Gaza under the slogan: “With Gaza: Holy Jihad and No Red Lines.” A million-man flood took place in the capital Sana’a, a massive rally occurred in the city of Ibb, and marches were reported across 23 locations in Rima, among other cities. (RNN)
12 “The statement at the weekly turn out reiterated the legendary steadfastness of the fighting Palestinian people and the perseverance of its fighters in this critical phase. The people assured the American and British enemies that they will not be deterred from maintaining a steadfast stance.” (RNN)
14Electronic Intifada updates reports a number with analysis and RNN posts the reports of the groups themselves.
15 The word comes from the National Land League successful campaign of withdrawal of labour along with isolation of services (or even social contact) with Captain Charles Boycott, the agent of an absentee settler landlord who was planning to evict some tenants in 1886. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott Boycott is a non-violent tactic but the fact of the use of violence during the Land War by the Occupation and in response by the peasantry is often overlooked. The Fenians supported the campaign and landlord’s agents were shot at, police and bailiffs stoned and scab labour attacked.
16 The Repeal organisation’s leadership became dominated by the rising Catholic Irish bourgeoisie of which John and his father Daniel were leading members. The “split” became known as the Young Irelanders and contributed nationalist culture and journalism, in particular through The Nation newspaper and some long-lasting songs such as A Nation Once Again. The Irish Tricolour was first presented to Meagher by French women during the revolution in Paris in 1848; the Young Irelanders also staged an ill-fated uprising that same year.
University students in the USA protesting, setting up encampments, occupying university buildings; threats from administrators; police invasions, assaults on students, resistance, arrests …
Step forward, Youth and shake the towers
Those ivory towers stand on sweat and blood
Make those lies fall in showers —
Become the earthquake and the rushing flood.
Step forward youth
For solidarity and truth!
Academic freedom and investigation
and principles too of democracy
Have taken now academic vacation
Revealing true base in hypocrisy.
Step forward youth
For solidarity and truth!
Look down below your feet
Reach out to workplace and street
Stretch out solidarity’s hand
to the struggling in another land.
Step forward youth
For solidarity and truth!
only thus can you also be
in a better world, at peace and free.
(Dublin, May 2023)
It seems as though we’ve been here before, a sense of dejá vu … Ah, yes! During the Vietnam War (1955-1975). University students in the US were in conflict with the authorities about lifestyle, content and style of the curriculum, racism, sexism, sexuality and .. yes, the US’s war in Indochina.
Students lost their study and work plans, got hit by truncheons, were sickened by teargas and some were shot dead, as in Kent State University, Ohio by the National Guard and in Jackson, Mississippi 11 days later.1
Which is why the suggestion of House Speaker Mike Johnson to send that same body in against the students last week was a vicious act of intimidation.
In the 1960s Trinity College Dublin, the academic bastion of the British-unionist Ascendancy, was a hotbed of protest and even revolutionary organisation along many fronts – including gay rights, contraception rights, Irish socialism and national liberation.2
The Ulster University in Belfast, in the British Six-County colony saw protests for Catholic civil equality, a struggle that faced armed repression and developed into a responding armed struggle of three decades.
In the USA those years coincided too with marches for black civil rights and also the rise of militant revolutionary groups such as the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, Weathermen, SLA and later the American Indian Movement.
Women’s liberation and Gay & Lesbian liberation movements3 also moved more to the fore.
The responses of the US State to many of those movements were even more vicious than they had been against the students, with trials, jailings,4 shootings5 and downright unofficial executions.6 As the campus protests now draw in wider communities, are we heading for something similar?
In the USA, the authorities seem terrified of that conjunction — or how else can we understand the violence of their reaction which has even horrified some university senates?
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEN AND NOW
When the students in the USA fought the institutional authorities, it was partly in solidarity with the people of Vietnam (and later of Laos and Cambodia). Yes, but many also feared being sent to the Vietnamese War meat grinder and being airlifted home from there in body bags.
The draft had been introduced in 19647 and though middle-class students had a better chance of avoiding conscription, they were far from immune.8 Being an officer might make one safer from the enemy than being a grunt but not from the grunts themselves as “fragging” incidents soared.9
The students now protesting in US Universities are doing so in solidarity with Palestinians, in horror at their state’s support of Israeli genocide. They may have other issues with their universities’ management and society at large but in general we can rule out the motive of self-preservation.
Encampment Palestine solidarity Vera Cruz University California Thursday (Photo cred: Aric Sleeper Santa Cruz Sentinel)
The drug culture was very much seen as part of the protest movement back then, though opposed by some such as Panthers and viewed with suspicion by other revolutionaries. Pacifist trends were strong and Timothy Leary’s “turn on, tune in and drop out” mantra attracted many.
Much of the revolutionary potential of the movement was lost under that influence, nowhere near as powerful now and revolutionaries who know their history will be aware that such arch-opponents of the system as Leary became an FBI informant to get out of jail.10
Many may argue as to degree but the power of patriarchy and oppression of LBG sexuality, though certainly present, are nowhere near as strong today in the “western world” as they were in the 1960s.
The power of the Catholic Church hierarchy in Irish society has been greatly weakened by struggles, Church scandals and society’s evolution. Discrimination against Catholics in the Six Counties is also less than it was in the previous era.
The armed struggle is not currently being waged.
However, Ireland remains divided between a 26-County neo-colony and a Six-County colonial statelet. The economies are hugely penetrated by foreign multinationals, the health services tottering and a huge housing crisis due to turning housing over to big landlords and property speculators.
The main parties of the ruling classes have been exposed to such degree that they no longer act in the charade of opposition: Sinn Féin and the DUP share political administration of the British colony while Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil share it for the neo-colony, prepared to admit SF there too.
Fascists gather some of the disenchanted, marginalised and disinherited to try to mould them into a fascist movement against migrants and refugees, against LGBT rights, against socialism. The State facilitates that development while it grows more repressive in both the administrations.
The ruling class will be aware of the potential of a rise in student protest coinciding with a feeling of Palestine solidarity and frustration at Irish state complicity very widely spread throughout Ireland. But then the Irish state is not imperialist, it’s just complicit in imperialism.
UNIVERSITY PROTESTS NOW
Students in universities across the USA have staged occupations or built encampments in explicit solidarity with Palestine against their own government and against the collusion of their academic institutions with zionist genocide of Palestinians and the destruction of every university in Gaza.
The response of the academic authorities has been denunciation, threat, eviction and false characterisation of the high motives of the students as “anti-semitism”.11
Municipal, county and state police forces have responded violently to peaceful protest, including bodily assault, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests. The Government has drafted a change of the legal meaning of anti-semitism to include opposition to the Israeli zionist State.12
Rutgers students tents 29 April 2024 (Photo cred: Sophie Nieto-Munoz/ New Jersey Monitor)
The violence of the authorities has not been confined to the protesting youth but has been extended to staff who stood with them. During the week Dr. Steve Tamari, professor at the University of Southern Illinois got nine ribs fractured by cops – for filming what was going on.
Chair of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth University, New Hampshire, Annelise Orleck (senior citizen) was violently arrested and banned from campus for six months.
In some cases not only have the protesters resisted valiantly but actually drove the cops into retreat and in Portland, Oregon, police cars were set alight. Also a fascist who drove at protestors and pepper-sprayed them was, according to reports, identified and his car destroyed.
On the other hand, Zionists (and suspected fascists) have mobilised against the students in many universities, with the tired old propaganda of “anti-semitism” and in one case attacked an encampment with sticks and fireworks, also playing a “crying child” Israeli drone recording.13
Irish Republicans and other anti-fascists will not be surprised to learn that a) the police disappeared shortly before the violent attack and b) none of the attackers were arrested when the cops returned.
More than 2,100 people have been arrested at US campuses since April 1814 and students have been barred from their own campuses which, for many, means also their own accommodation.
Police Attack Palestine solidarity UCLA campus Thursday 2 May 2024 LA (Photo cred: Ethan Swope/ AP)
The university protests have spread beyond the USA and have broken out in Canada (McGill), Australia (Brisbane and Sydney) and even Humbold in Germany, main Israel arms supplying country after the US, where state repression of Palestine solidarity has been particularly heavy.15
In France, where there has also been much repression of Palestinian solidarity activity, there have been occupations at the Sorbonne and Sciences Po in Paris) and in England, Newcastle and London, while an encampment was set up in Edinburgh in front of the Scottish Parliament.16
“SHAMEFUL SILENCE”
In Ireland, the universities have been relatively quiet until now but the Trinity College Dublin administration fined their Students Union €214k for a one-day Palestine solidarity picket outside the building housing the Book of Kells exhibition, citing loss of visitor revenue in justification.
“The People’s University” banner hanging from windows in Trinity College Saturday (Photo: D.Breatnach)
But repression leads to resistance; now there is a Palestine solidarity encampment on the green in front of the Kells exhibition. People are mobilising to support the student resistance in Trinity and today saw a march there from the Spire with the administration locking the gates shut.
“We plan on staying here indefinitely, our message is there is no ‘business as usual’ during a genocide,” outgoing students’ union president Laszlo Molnarfi said.17
(Photo: Social Rights Ireland)
“When our academic institution, Trinity College Dublin, has ties to Israeli companies, entities and universities that are complicit in the war industry, we must speak up. That is why we are doing this.
“And we must speak up in this disruptive, powerful way. Because when we tried to engage with the authorities, with petitions and letters and meetings, we were met with shameful silence.”18
Inside Trinity College grounds Friday night/ Saturday morning (Photo: Social Rights Ireland)
In the wider ‘global South’, Palestine solidarity protests have been seen in India at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi against a visit from the US Ambassador to the country, Eric Garcett, which had to be cancelled.
More dangerous by far to the US ruling class and Israeli-colluding King of Lebanon, so geographically close to Palestine and with a strong Hizbollah guerrilla presence, are the student demonstrations at the university of Beirut.
Students at American University in Cairo (AUC) Demonstrating Monday in Solidarity Palestinians (Photo source: X Twitter)
Whether overall these actions of students, who comprise a large and influential section of youth, will significantly deepen, widen and energise the growing Palestine solidarity movement, and simultaneously the wider anti-imperialist movement, remains to be seen.
End.
“Victory to the Palestinian Resistance” banner on Trinity College railings Saturday (Photo: D.Breatnach)
FOOTNOTES
14th May 1970, killed by the Ohio Kent National Guard during a protest against the Vietnam War. The Jackson killings occurred 11 days later on Friday, May 15, 1970, at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 14, 1970, city and state police confronted a group of students outside a campus dormitory. Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve.
2Ironically, precisely because it was free of the major socially controlling agency in Ireland at the time, the Catholic Church hierarchy.
3See the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in the US against homophobic police harassment.
4Including many frame-ups, some of which were only exposed decades later. Leonard Peltier was jailed on dubious evidence in 1977 which had already collapsed against a co-accused but is still in jail, 79 years of age with diabetes and other health problems.
11Thereby also devaluing the meaning of that particular form of racism which was a basic ideological aspect of Nazism and Fascism and continues to be a strong trend in European fascism today.
13One of the latest horrors from the Israeli Zionist cabinet, killer drones playing sounds of a crying baby or a woman needing help in order to bring would-be helpers out where they can then be shot dead, being played in this case mockingly.
There is no doubt that the ghost of Joseph McCarthy wanders the earth through many a hallowed university hall, newspaper editorial room, police headquarters around the world and of course the cabinets of many western governments.
Censorship when it raises its ugly head, does so in a similar fashion to its past incarnations, though with new twists and turns that perhaps take us by surprise.
However, it should come as no surprise to see that voices on Palestine are being shut down, though the recent German police assault on an international conference in Berlin was a major escalation in government attempts to criminalise those critical of the genocidal regime that holds sway in Tel Aviv and the white supremacist philosophy that is Zionism.(1)
Various issues are thrown into the mix.
Palestine and Palestinian demands are presented as hate speech by governments and right-wing media, but so too is any defence of women’s spaces, though in this latter case the right-wing governments find some support from sectors of the Left.
These think that when they argue for censorship and the suppression of freedom of speech that somehow it will never be applied to them.
The German police stormed the three-day event as the first speaker was addressing it.
They claimed they did so to prevent antisemitic statements being made i.e. not only are we in McCarthyite land of criminalising certain ideas by labelling them as antisemitic but we are in the land of Minority Report(2) where thought crimes can be punished in advance, before they have been committed.
This is not that far removed at all from the Irish Hate Speech Bill that some on the Left have given support to, as the Police may inspect computers and phones and you may be charged with possession of material that may be used to commit hate speech.
It was laughable and ironic that one of the photos of the police intervention of the Berlin event was the arrest of a young Jewish man, wearing a kippa, who was there in solidarity with Palestinians. Following the event a number of Jews were charged with antisemitism.
Not only that but some of the speakers were banned from entering the country, amongst them Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah who was an eyewitness to what was happening in Gaza and is also the Rector of the University of Glasgow.
The former Greek politician Yanis Varoufakis was also banned from entering Germany and both were warned that they could not participate even by Zoom from another jurisdiction, an unlawful extension of German jurisdiction and a suspension of the free movement of European citizens within the EU.
This is part of a wider criminalisation of protest and the criminalisation of thought.
Though some on the Left in Ireland such as People Before Profit T.Ds like Paul Murphy who support hate speech legislation believed in the benevolence of capitalist leaders when restricting commentary on women’s rights would never be extended to them, it has and for obvious reasons.
Most right-wing governments, particularly those that claim some liberal kudos on certain social issues have taken advantage of the defeat of workers, critical thinking and any opposition at all to capitalism to advance right-wing hate speech legislation and restrictions on academic freedom.
This includes the dismissal of staff, limitations on the right to voice opinions that go against government policy and in the process have garnered the support of many liberal currents and of course major NGOs who depend on government largesse to finance themselves.
The German event is not an isolated incident. Over the years various lecturers in the US have been suspended or not had their contracts renewed for speaking out about Palestine.
Zionists were the original cancel culture specialists who managed to turn spoilt students whining into action, getting staff sacked and silencing other students.
Recently, a professor of 30 years standing at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the US was suspended over a contribution made to a blog.
In their suspension of the employee the president stated that “I find her comments repugnant, condemn them unequivocally, and want to make clear that these are her personal views and not those of our institution.”(3)
It was liberals, the wokerati and even some Marxists who pushed for employers to take action against employees for their personal views and activities outside of the workplace and now it has come back to bite some of them, though not all, as many liberals and wokerati in the US are Zionists.
Some of those who had been targeted were vile racists who shouted “Jews will not replace us” as they marched with torches. But you fight Fascism, you don’t give employers control over employees’ lives, ever.
As Trotsky once quipped, if you can’t convince a Fascist, acquaint their head with the pavement. He didn’t say give your boss and the state more control over you and beseech them to act in your interests.
A few days prior to that, Columbia University had suspended six students for allegedly participating in a panel discussion on Palestine.(4)
And in a further sign that jackboots are once again goose-stepping through Germany, the University of Cologne rescinded a job offer to Nancy Fraser, a Jewish American professor of philosophy, over her condemnation of killings in Gaza.(5)
They will not stop at that and it is not limited to issues such as genocide, but even local domestic politics.
In April 2023, a French journalist Ernest Moret was arrested by British anti-terrorist police due to his involvement in protests in France against the Macron government’s pension proposals.
He refused to give the police access to pass codes for his electronic devices and was charged with obstruction.(6)
There are other precedents for this, one of them being the arrest of David Miranda, Glen Greenwald’s now deceased partner, in Britain when returning from a meeting with another journalist who had also worked on the files released by Edward Snowden.(7)
The courts later upheld his detention to be lawful. Police held him and demanded access to his electronic devices.
Then there is the jailing and punishing of Julian Assange. The charges against Assange were dressed up in various disguises.
The first of them was the now discredited rape charges in Sweden which were dropped and also espionage charges when the real reason for jailing Assange is that he, as a journalist, exposed US war crimes in Iraq.
The message is clear, censorship is the order of the day as is the hounding of journalists who hold unpopular views and expose the crimes of the state. Assange did not receive the support he should have, due to the trumped-up rape charges, with many on the Left, like cowards running for cover.
Even today, when the rape charges have been exposed for the lies they were and have been dropped there are those who refuse to speak out on his behalf for this very reason.
There is no world in which right wing governments suppress freedom of speech, academic freedom, freedom of assembly and criminalise broad opinions that they label as hate speech and don’t target the Left. It has never happened and never will.
When they stood aside on Assange, they prepared the way for the assault on the Berlin Conference. When they harassed and tried to silence women defending women’s spaces they prepared the ground for the assault.
When they advocated and supported right-wing governments’ attempts at introducing hate speech legislation they paved the way for the criminalisation of solidarity with Palestine.
When the Hate Speech Bill comes back before the Irish parliament, they should take note and do the correct thing and oppose it, unequivocally.
Leftists who advocated employers taking control of employees lives and opinions, those that demanded that JK Rowling and others like her be hounded from the public sphere and that what they termed hate speech, in reality thought crimes, should be punished in law have aided and abetted right-wing governments in getting us to where we are now, which is that it is now very easy to criminalise pro-Palestinian voices.
All you have to say is “Hate Speech!” Meanwhile Rushi Sunak in Britain is pushing ahead with a very broad and loose definition of extremism which will see almost everyone who does not support Sunak or Starmer in the dock.
(2) Minority Report is a Tom Cruise film in which three mutants can see the future and predict who will commit crimes and they are arrested, charged and sentenced in advance before the crime is committed. In the film the system unravels.
A huge Palestine solidarity march proceeded from the north Dublin city centre on Saturday 20th, passing down O’Connell Street, over the Bridge, around by Trinity College and on towards Leinster House, the parliament of the Irish State.
Detained by an earlier activity I hurried to join it, catching up with it near the Larkin Monument. From there I could see sections of the march across the river and another section wending around Trinity College in the distance, its leaders out of sight.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
“Over a thousand”, reported our “newspaper of record”, the Irish Times. In other words, less than 2,000. Really?!
The march was organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity organisation, the main Irish nationwide Palestine solidarity organisation, sponsored by a multitude of organisations and was supported in marching by many organisations and individuals, the latter being the capacity or most participants.
The usual slogans could be heard as I hurried past marchers, such as “Free, Free – Palestine” and including the one that Suella Braverman tried to ban when she was a Minister in the UK Government: “From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free!”
I paused by the Thomas Moore monument waiting to meet up with friends in order to march with them. One group passed calling out that what is occurring in Palestine is “Not a conflict, not a war”. I understand them to mean it is genocide instead but I can’t agree with them.
It IS a conflict, the old one of the European colonial settler against the indigenous people, fought for centuries on all the continents of the world except in Antartica. And the zionist State IS waging a war, a genocidal war against the Palestinian people.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Another group went by with a chant leader calling out a list of categories of victims of the zionist genocide such as medical workers, journalists, ambulance crews, refugees etc, to which the group replied “Not a target”. Perhaps they meant “not a legitimate target” but targets they certainly are.
I was flying the Palestinian flag but also the Starry Plough, flag of the risen Irish working class in 1913 and 1916, the only one I saw on the march and which was how my friends found me. A woman I mistook for a visitor asked to take my photo, to which I agreed.
Near the rear of the march one could hear the usual call-and-response slogans drifting back towards us but people in our section marched silently or chatted with one another. Then a voice called out: “From the river to the sea!” and the reply was instantaneous: “PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!”
Chanting takes energy but also seems to supply it and from then our section joined in with gusto: “In our thousands, in our millions – We are all Palestinians!” “In our millions and our billions – We are all Palestinians!” “In our TRILLIONS and our billions – We are all Palestinians!”
“Netanyahu, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?” “Joe Biden, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?” “EU, you can’t hide – You’re supporting genocide!” “Irish Government, you can’t hide – You’re supporting genocide!”
“Saoirse – Don Phalaistín!” was the only slogan1 in Irish. There was no doubt about what people wanted for the Israeli Ambassador or the zionist Embassy, which was “Out, out, out!”
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
As we turned from Dawson into Molesworth Street, the rest of the march was packed ahead of us all the way up to the presumed police barriers at Kildare Street, across from the main gate of Leinster House. Here the IPSC stewards were urging us to move in still closer ahead.
What was the reason? Apparently the Gardaí wanted us past the intersections with South Frederick Street and with Molesworth Place. But for what purpose? Those were southward traffic only streets which should have been blocked anyway and Dawson Street was open in both directions.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)Molesworth Street from the Junction with Molesworth Place, already packed and with more arriving, yet we were expected to pack in closer and have barriers moved up against us! (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Then a private company began to erect barriers across the north-eastern section of Molesworth street which looked to me like kettling, a view which seemed born out as the barriers were moved once more further eastward with instructions to keep moving – with which I declined to cooperate.
This whole exercise seemed to me of dubious traffic easement validity and more about getting people used to obeying order and to being kettled by police if required by them. In the Irish state we do not have to gain police permission for a march or approval for its route.
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the IPSC leaders informing the police of their march routes for traffic easement. But our rights have to be protected and not easily surrendered, much less for no visible valid reason. It is not good for stewards to automatically comply with police wishes.
I have seen (and resisted) Garda attempts to push demonstrators from the front of the GPO into the pedestrian reservation in the middle of O’Connell Street, while they told people that “It’s what your organisers (IPSC) want.”
Declining to be kettled.
The police of a state are not neutral forces for the public good and have drawn and used their batons through the decades against people protesting partition of their nation, imperialist war, water privatisation, growth of fascist and racist attacks, against imperialism and colonialism …
Not to mention torturing and framing people to have them jailed.
CHRISTY MOORE AND REPRESSION
In the distance, we could hear that Ireland’s chief living balladeer, Christy Moore, had got on stage and was speaking, then singing, though I could make out only snatches of the lyrics. Moore gained fame both as a member of Moving Hearts band and Planxty but also as a solo performer.
Moore had been litigated against for his song about the young 48 Stardust Fire victims but was vindicated during the week by a long-delayed second inquest into the deaths.2 On the other hand he’s received no apology for the police raid on his H-Block album launch back in 1972.3
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are facing repression throughout the western world, in some places much worse than others. The German State is behaving like Nazis in banning demonstrations and raiding a conference, apparently in twisted expiation of its sins under the Adolf Hitler regime.
This impacted also on an Irish language group in Berlin during the week while they attempted to have a small gathering speaking and singing in Irish in a park in front of the German Parliament. The police told them that only German and English languages were permitted in that area.4
The Irish Tricolour has been seen on many London demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians, on its own or flying below the Palestinian flag inscribed with “Saoirse don Phalaistín”. The Tricolour turned up too as university students and staff faced down the New York Police.
Columbia University, New York, Monday.St. Patrick’s Day, New York, March 2024.London, November 2023.London, clearly.
In Palestine itself new horrors are being revealed with the recovery of bodies in mass graves in the areas of destroyed Gaza hospitals recently occupied by the Israeli military. Their remains testify to their being patients and medical staff in addition to refugees.5
A totally new horror are the Israeli killer drones emitting the wailing of a baby or a woman’s cry for help, waiting to gun down would-be rescuers. Palestinians in Gaza have been accustomed to responding to those cries in reality for months and often enough shot or bombed as they did so.6
This however is a new depth for the zionist military.
Under danger of Israeli bombardment, digging bodies out of a mass grave at the destroyed Nasser Hospital site April 2024. (Photo cred: Ramadan Abed/Reuters)
During the week also the independent investigation commissioned by the UN has found no basis to the Israeli claim that many staff of its aid agency for Palestinians, UNWRA, were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, much less involved in the October 7th Palestinian resistance operation.7
That investigation result has UNRWA vindicated of the false Israeli claims but also commended on its procedures to comply with the impartiality requirements of the UN and of its funders, many of which however now stand condemned for withdrawal of their funding from starving people.
But UNRWA chiefs should share the condemnation for appearing to give the accusations credibility in firing some of their Palestinian staff, not to mention sacking appallingly and reducing to poverty a number without hearing or appeal, on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations.
And from a source known for lying for decades and long hostile to the UNWRA organisation. True to type, the Israeli government has rejected the findings, despite having provided no verification of its accusations to date.
Few official actors of states or of the UN come out well in evaluation over the last six months of this daily broadcast genocide.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Interestingly the word “slogan” is itself from the Irish language, or at least Scottish Gaedhlig, meaning a “call to/from the multitude/ troop”.
A solidarity rally in Dublin to mark 17th April Palestinian Prisoners’ Day was staged by the IPSC outside the iconic General Post Office building on Dublin’s main street and was supported by the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign.
At a public meeting about Palestinian prisoners after the event Tala Nasir, a lawyer working with the prisoner support group Adameer, stated that there are 8,000 Palestinians currently held by the zionist state of which 275 are women and 500 are children.
Ms. Nasir was on a round-Ireland speaking tour organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the main Palestine solidarity organisation in Ireland but which has not been prominent in highlighting the situation of the Palestinian political prisoners.
On the other hand, at its street information pickets, although primarily working for Irish political prisoners, the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign has regularly flown a Palestinian flag in support of political prisoners from that nation also.
An IAIC spokesperson recalled that at their traditional annual prisoner solidarity rally in December, their speaker stated: “Wherever there is oppression, there will be resistance; but also wherever there is resistance there will be political prisoners and in Ireland we have centuries of that experience.”
The organisation maintains that although large-scale official internment last used in the occupied Six Counties ended in 1795, it continues on a smaller scale under another name: “Remand in custody”, in which Republicans regularly wait two years before their case comes to court.
The decision to deny bail is taken by the special no-jury political courts: Diplock Court in the Six Counties and Special Criminal Courts within the Irish state, all of which have been condemned by civil liberties organisations in Ireland and abroad.
Israel also has a form of internment without trial which they call “administrative detention”, under which Palestinians can be detained for up to six months at a time as a preventive measure without any kind of trial or evidence shown against them.
PALESTINIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS
Tala Nasir, a lawyer of the Adameer organisation was introduced by Gary Daly (of Lawyers for Palestine group) to the audience in the theatre of Pearse House, formerly the home of Patrick and Willie Pearse and sculpture business address of their English father (and of Willie).
Ms. Nasir informed the packed audience that Israel has declared her organisation of Palestinian prisoner support and advocacy to be a “terrorist” on “evidence” they declare “secret” but the absence of which results in no other state accepting that designation in the case of Adameer.
“Once you’re a prisoner you will always be a prisoner,” stated Ms. Nasir, illustrating that in raids the Israeli military frequently detain former prisoners, often repeatedly. “Crimes” can include a comment on social media, “Liking” or sharing a comment against Israel.
Even the posting of a “green heart” symbol may be interpreted as a sign of support for Hamas and may become the reason for a person’s arrest. Children are most often accused of throwing stones, statements written for them in Hebrew, told to sign them, sufficient “evidence” for jail.
Ms Nasir said that 80% of the prisoners are held under “Administrative Detention” without trial and no defence is possible since the “reason” for it is secret and neither the accused nor their lawyer may see the allegations. The six months detention is automatic and can renewed repeatedly.
Prisoners must buy their own food from the canteen but after October 7th it was closed for periods. Child prisoners told Adameer: “We wake up hungry and go to sleep hungry”. Typically adult prisoners have lost 15-20 kg from their previous weight when released.
The prisoners were prevented from going out of their cells which also meant they were unable to shower for many days and also had to wear the same clothes every day. They were also humiliated through being blindfolded and strip-searching, sometimes by male, sometimes female soldiers.
Beatings are common and prisoners have commented on their transport vehicles not only smelling awful but seeing the floor covered in blood. Sixteen prisoners have been killed in the last 6 months and though autopsies have recorded bruises and broken bones, Israeli investigations are closed.
All but one of the Israeli prisons are in the “Israel” area and the lawyer is not permitted to visit the prisoners there without special permission, which is why, she said, so many of the Palestinians are transferred to those prisons, which she maintains is a war crime.
Declaring her greater trust in and dependence on the solidarity of the people of the world, “in particular the global South” who have had similar experiences to those of the Palestinians, the Palestinian lawyer nevertheless said that she has to practice diplomacy at times.
Tala Nasir called for the widest possible support for Adameer’s Call For Action, which is the simple task of sending text supplied emails to two specified officials responsible for prisons and prisoners telling them they will be held answerable for war crimes.
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign have a march booked in Dublin for this coming Saturday 23rd April, commencing at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm.
A spokesperson for IAIC stated they would be on the streets again in order to proclaim the continue existence of political prisoners in Ireland and that Republican activists are essentially being interned without trial from no-jury political courts to spend two years or more in jail awaiting trial.
“The IAIC is a democratic non-sectarian independent organisation,” the spokesperson said “and welcomes support from concerned democratic people and we’ll continue to fly the Palestinian flag. If people follow our page they should receive adequate advance notice in order to attend.”
The past six months of an almost incredible level of Israeli genocide and Palestinian resistance have taught the world some valuable lessons but particularly perhaps to those of us living among the Western powers.
The Palestinians have taught us the strength and value to an occupied and oppressed people of resistance, from generation to generation, maintaining and developing culture and nurturing historical memory while the occupier tried to erase it all and make the endeavour seem hopeless.
Palestinian woman in Gaza defiant, January 8, 2009 (Photo cred: Eric Gaillard/Reuters)
Without a navy, air force, tanks, armoured vehicles or standard artillery (apart from home-made rockets and missiles), they faced what is often called the “strongest military power in the Middle east”. Despite periodic massacres they have regularly risen against the oppressor.
In truth, it was a lesson that at one time we hardly needed in Ireland, learned even earlier than the Palestinians. But we needed reminding of it.
It is also important for the morale and dignity of the resistance that it shows itself capable of striking at the enemy.
We’ve been reminded of the importance of long-term preparation. The Palestinian resistance built kilometres of tunnels underground in which they also set weapon production factories, developing their own weapons and repurposing existing weapons, including unexploded Israeli Army bombs.
In their Al Aqsa Flood attack on October 7th and fighting since, the Palestinians taught us the value of not only of daring and prior preparation but of coordination and unity, as a number of resistance organisations cooperated in struggle, some secular and some Islamic fundamentalist.1
Palestinian resistance fighters from different organisations displaying their unity in struggle in this photo (Photo sourced: Internet)
In meeting the subsequent genocidal rage of the occupier, the Palestinian resistance have taught us that all the technological might and expertise of the enemy was incapable of crushing a prepared, courageous, united and determined resistance.
The Israeli domination of the air from which it rained down genocidal bombing on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or targeted assassinations of the families of resistance fighters, was not sufficient to defend its ground troops from attack and is itself under attack from GTA missiles.2
The occupier was effective only in genocidal actions against the civilian population and civilian infrastructure for which it will forever be reviled in historical memory. It achieved neither of the objectives it declared as it unleashed its war against Gaza: the wiping out of the resistance and release of captives.
Imperialism
We been shown – if we were willing to see it – the unity of western imperialism in supporting the ‘right ‘of a European settler group to establish itself on the land of the indigenous, creating an ethnocentric and theocratic state founded with an act of ‘ethnic cleansing’.3
We have been taught the willingness of the western imperialist states to tolerate the proliferation of acts and policies which it claims go against its fundamental liberal values: oppression, apartheid, discrimination and repression, while lauding the ‘European liberal values’ of the occupier state.
Betrayal
Another lesson which we should have learned too within the necessity of unity in a broad front is that it needs to be on a principled basis and the dangers in unity without such safeguards, leading to treachery, betrayal and collusion with the occupier.
The secular left-wing Fatah4 organisation may have seemed at one time the ideal one to follow though some would have favoured the further-left People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine.5 But it was Fatah, as leading element in the PLO alliance, that signed up to the Oslo accords.6
In return for limited autonomy in a fraction of Palestinian land and without consideration of the right of return to the expelled Palestinians, the Fatah leadership with Yasser Arafat at its head agreed to this “peace process” while its officials scrambled for the gains of official corruption.
Hence the Palestinian Authority, corrupt, unrepresentative, undemocratic and repressive, working in collusion with the occupying authority. Again, our own history should have taught us that lesson but again, it is good to be reminded.
The Palestinians taught us how to deal with such a poisonous fungal growth with the Second Intifada and their last elections, those of 20067 and the carrying through of the electorate’s wishes in 2007, along with the ongoing resistance since.
Western Mass Media and alternatives
In reporting the events in Palestine over the decades but in particular over the last six months, we have learned the heavy anti-Palestinian and pro-Israeli bias of the WMM, that accepted without question the transparent lies of the Israeli regime and even questioned the massacre statistics.
Never once has the unjust claim of the occupiers to their stolen gains been questioned, never once the fundamentally just claim of the indigenous even mentioned. The Palestinian resistance has been reduced to one organisation in reporting, to be held up as a bogeyman monster.
(Image sourced: Internet)
If atrocities from across the Palestinian people were reported in the media, they were framed as of dubious provenance, while the most outlandish and illogical claims of the occupier were reported as reasonable fact.
We have, in fact, been taught not to trust the western mass media when reporting on international events and, by extension, not to trust it on domestic issues either. Conversely we have learned to rely more on alternative Internet media but also on the need to navigate those with some caution.
We have also learned that some of the most prominent alternative sources on the war between NATO/Ukraine and Russia, attacked by liberals and sections of the Left as “Russian-controlled” or “Putinistas” turned out to be the most reliable in reporting the realities of the Israeli genocide.
Internationalist solidarity
We have relearned the importance of international solidarity, both as we expressed it ourselves and saw its outpouring across the globe. We have been taught the existence of an alternative world of human solidarity in opposition to one based on expropriation, exploitation and competition.
We saw Hizbolah in Jordan and Syria come to the assistance of the Palestinians and pay the price for doing so, as did Ansar Allah (“Houthis”) in Yemen and as has also Iran — what the Electronic Intifada has called “the Axis of Resistance”.
Chilean football team players May 2021 (Photo sourced: Internet)London, January 2024 (Photo cred: PA)
And we have learned to use internationalism as a measuring stick also in evaluating institutions, political parties and politicians in our own countries. We have seen the meaning of anti-semitism twisted and employed in repression with a stifling censorship across public life – academic, political and social.
Downing Street (containing home of the UK Prime Minister) 29 December 2023 (Photo sourced: Internet)
Political parties and politicians have revealed either their complicity in and collusion with the criminal Israeli genocide or alternatively their inability to resist and effectively oppose it. That has exposed their lack of fitness to lead us in our domestic struggles too.
Teachers and others in Palestine solidarity demonstration in Dublin, March 2024 symbolically carrying infant school chairs in protest against the Palestinian children murdered by the Israeli armed forces. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
IN CONCLUSION
The need for revolutionary resistance
The Palestinian resistance has taught us important lessons, including the need of revolutionary resistance in addition to revolutionary organisation and preparation.
It remains to us to learn those hard-earned lessons, to internalise them and to apply them externally. We owe that to the Palestinians and to ourselves.
End. (Read alsoPart B – What the Israeli Zionists have taught usfollows.)
FOOTNOTES
1Hamas – Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades; Palestinian Islamic Jihad – Al-Quds Brigades; Popular Resistance Committees Al-Nasser Salah ad-Din Brigades; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command Jihad Jibril Brigades; Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) – National Resistance Brigades, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades; Palestinian Mujahideen Movement and its Mujahideen Brigades.
3The expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians and massacres such as the one in the village of Dir Yassin.
4Fatah wasfounded in 1957 and was the majority party in the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
5The PLO was founded in 1964 and the PFLP in 1967, next in size of organisation in the PLO to Fatah (Islamic organisations were excluded from the PLO; Hamas recently proposed the reconstruction of the PLO open to all resistance organisations).
6The Oslo Accords were the result of a number of conferences, overseen by the USA and was part of the second of the current“peace processes” which include Ireland, the Basque Country and Colombia.
7Hamas won the elections throughout the accepted Palestinian territories but Fatah tried to continue to keep control, being dislodged from Gaza in 2007 by Hamas, which held back from doing the same thing in the West Bank which has remained under the undemocratic, repressive and colluder control of the Palestine Authority.
Despite how distasteful the task it is nevertheless useful to subject media reports to a truth-and-lies analysis, which what I have done to this Reuters report in Breaking News ie.
Israel’s allies demand answers after airstrike kills aid workers in Gaza.
It is true that 1) the Israeli military killed (seven) aid workers in Gaza and 2) that allies of the zionist state have been obliged to protest strongly.
But the first lie appears in the first sentence of the report: “Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu confirmed Israel mistakenly killed seven people …” How can it be a ‘mistake’ when THREE VEHICLES ARE EACH HIT, ONE AFTER THE OTHER?
And how can Reuters report “confirmed” as though it were true?
One of the aid agencies’ vehicles showing the missile penetration hole actually through part of the logo and text identifying the agency. (Photo cred: Reuters)
WCK… said its staff were travelling in two armoured cars emblazoned with the charity’s logo and another vehicle, and had coordinated their movements with the Israeli military. Not much chance of accident then, was there?
“Unfortunately, in the past day there was a tragic event in which our forces unintentionally harmed non-combatants in the Gaza Strip,”Mr Netanyahu said in a video statement. Unintentionally? See previous paragraph.
The Israeli military pledged an investigation by “an independent, professional and expert body”. What body could that possibly be? The Israeli government has refused to cooperate with the EU investigation of events on October 7th and instructed medical staff not to talk to them.
In fact Israel does not facilitate external investigations and accuses any organisation that does not agree with the conduct of the state of bias and even of ‘anti-semitism’.
At least 196 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza since October, according to the United Nations, and Hamas has previously accused Israel of targeting aid distribution sites. True – but not only Hamas has accused the Israeli state of that but many aid organisations and other states.
So report the list of accusers? Nope!
And they weren’t just “killed” as though by unknown persons – they were all killed by the Israeli military. Reporting commentators have noted that when it’s victims of Israel they are reported as just ‘being killed’ while if killed by Palestinians then it’s ‘Hamas has killed’ etc.
In a call on Tuesday, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak told Mr Netanyahu that UK was appalled by the deaths, which included three Britons, and demanded a thorough and transparent independent investigation, Mr Sunak’s office said.
Again, what body could possibly carry out such an investigation in Israel? If it were truly independent and intending to be “thorough and transparent”, Israel would not cooperate with it. All its own investigations conclude with a ‘not guilty’ or at best ‘inconclusive’ verdict.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, said there was no evidence Israel deliberately targeted the aid workers but that it was outraged … etc. From any logical assessment, three strikes on three vehicles seems pretty conclusive evidence of “deliberately targeting.”
Israel has long denied accusations that it is hindering the distribution of urgently needed food aid in Gaza, which it has besieged in a war since October, saying the problem is caused by international aid groups’ inability to get it to those in need.
This would seem an appropriate spot to report on the few times the Israeli authorities allow supplies to pass from the long, long line of parked aid lorries outside the Rafah crossing gates, which Israeli protesters are impeding with no action by Israel police or army and. But no mention.
Or the times the Israeli military has opened fire on deliveries or on civilians approaching aid supplies that have gone through, or Israel’s execution of the Chief and Deputy of Gaza Police who organised a recent delivery of flour without food riots or Israeli gunfire. But no mention.
The aid convoy was hit as it was leaving its Deir al-Balah warehouse after unloading more than 100 tons of food aid brought to Gaza by sea, WCK said. So it was clearly identified by logo, by prior announcement to the Israelis and by its departure point.
“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organisations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war,” WCK’s chief executive Erin Gore said. A rare and very true statement but not by the media.
The US-based charity said it would pause its work in Gaza, and the United Arab Emirates, which has financed the seaborne food deliveries to Gaza that WCK distributed, said it was putting the shipments on hold pending safety guarantees from Israel and a full investigation.
Anera, a US-based aid group that works in part with WCK, said it too was pausing operations in Gaza because of safety concerns.
In other words, another step in the starvation of Gaza achieved by the Israeli state.
The conflict began after Hamas attacks on southern Israel on October 7th that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures.An outright lie which does not become truth no matter how often repeated by the western mass media (which it is in every single report).
The conflict began many decades before October 7th with the zionist settler program which intended and proceeded to carry out a program of ethnic cleansing and, from the moment of the creation of the State in 1948, an expansionist and genocidal program.
Nor was it just Hamas that attacked, nor were all the 1,200 killed by the Palestinians but that is a different discussion.
Conditions in Gaza remain extremely precarious with fighting going on in several areas on Tuesday and 71 people killed in Israeli strikes over the past 24 hours, according to Gaza health authorities.
Yes, the Palestinian resistance continues to resist heroically, with innovation and in principled manner (for example not targeting Israeli Army medical evacuation helicopters) and the Israel military continues to kill civilians, even in hospitals.
But you have to go to other sources to get that kind of information, never in the western mass media.
A final thought: If the victims had been seven Palestinians, would we be even reading about it in the western mass media?
There is a belief around that the reason that Israel is being supported by the US and getting away with genocide as far as the Western powers are concerned, is because the Palestinians are dark-skinned and that it wouldn’t happen to ‘whites’.
Those who believe that are mistaken: it would and it did. It is only marginally about skin colour but rather about where the Palestinians are.
Palestine sits in a strategic spot in the heart of the Middle East, with borders to Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, with the Red Sea to the South-east and a Mediterranean coastline to the west, connecting by sea to Europe, Africa and Asia. That made it important to old and to new empires.
The historic land known as “Palestine” in the 19th and early 20th Century was that which up until 1917 was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, now occupied by the zionist Israeli State and those areas recognised as Palestinian by international law including Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem.
After WWI, during which the Ottoman Empire, along with Germany had been on the losing side, in the divvying up of the colonial spoils, Palestine (occupied by the British since 1917) was given by the League of Nations in 1922 to one of the War’s victors, the UK.
The UK began to invite Ashkenazi Jews to settle there as part of a European colonial and partly anti-semitic1 project. Of course in those days “semitic” was understood to apply to the Arabs as well as to the Jews and the latter were often referred to by Europeans as “oriental”.
The British, as is the wont of colonisers in general and of them in particular, played the settlers off against the Arab majority.
And of course broke promises about restricting the number of settlers. But after WWII, a high influx of Holocaust survivors organised by Zionists began to head for Palestine and the British, fearing the destabilisation of their colony, tried to prevent unapproved Jews from landing.
The zionist terrorist militias (Irgun, Haganah, Stern Gang) began to attack the British colonial forces and Arab villages. In July 1946, Zionist group Irgun killed 91 people and injured 46 in an explosion at the King David Hotel, location of the British administrative and occupation army HQ.
Damage to the King David Hotel after bomb planted by Zionist terrorist group Irgun in 1946. (Photo sourced: Wikipedia)
The British pulled out in 1947, reneging on all their promises to the native Palestinians. The Zionists began their genocidal settler project with threats to and massacres of Palestinians and the expulsion of 700,000, mostly Muslims — and declared a Jewish State in 1948.
Thereafter the Israeli State began a program of repression and oppression of Palestinians and of colonial expansion. Naturally, this project required ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinians and aggression against Israel’s neighbours.
The USA and the USSR quickly recognised the Zionist State, the USA increasingly funding the state and supplying it with weapons while the USSR permitted its Ashkenazi Jewish citizens to emigrate to the settler colony.
In October 1956, eight years after the founding of the Zionist state, in response to Egyptian nationalisation of the Suez Canal, the Israeli air force attacked Egyptian airfields without warning while British and French Army and Naval forces invaded the country.
The invaders were forced to retreat and the USA admonished France and the UK for, in effect, not realising that the USA and not the old European colonial powers was now the boss of most of the world.
The zionist lobby (both Jewish and Christian) in the USA is often blamed for that imperialist state’s continual support for Israel’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinians.
But the US imperialists have their own reasons for supporting the only state in the Middle East that is susceptible to neither internal national liberation struggle or muslim fundamentalist uprising. It gives the US a safe foothold and also a guard dog to watch the neighbours (e.g Syria and Iran).
RACISM
The Nazis had a racist view of the Ashkenazi Jews, who were mostly fair-skinned. But they also considered the Slavic people (the majority European and light-skinned) as “untermenschen” (i.e ‘subhuman’). It’s estimated they killed at least 1.9 million Polish non-Jewish civilians.2
The Nazis also murdered millions of Russian non-Jewish civilians in genocidal ethnic cleansing of territory, in labour concentration camps, near sensitive battle formations and in reprisals for partisan resistance.
Fair-skinned and even blonde children victims of Nazi racism and genocide. (Source: New Zealand Holocaust Centre “Button project”)
The South African settler racist regime discriminated against all non-European people, in their official categories of “Native”, “Coloured” (mixed race) and “Asian” (mostly from the Indian sub-continent). Nevertheless, they also made some groups “honorary whites”.3
Racism isn’t primarily about skin colour anyway: It is a discriminatory social ideology based on ethnicity and the marker for ‘difference’ can be ‘racial’, national or religious. The Anglo-Norman invaders of Ireland in the mid-12th Century racialised the Irish, who were generally fair-skinned.4
The rational reason behind the racism is to unite in opposition to the targeted groups, whether in order to wage war against them or so as to repress their resistance as slaves or as occupied people. The racists colonise their own minds and attempt to colonise the minds of their targets also.
Not quite two centuries after the initial invasion and part-occupation of Ireland, the British-based Anglo-Normans, now describing themselves as “English”, criticised most of their people settled in Ireland for ‘going native’ and passed laws against their social acclimatisation.
The Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366 attempted to prevent “the degenerate English” from speaking Irish, adopting Irish customs and laws, dressing in Irish style, patronising Irish cultural performance, intermarrying with the Irish and becoming “more Irish than the Irish themselves.”
The main purpose for the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland had been occupation by feudal lords to gather rents from the natives but it soon became a question of replacing the natives with settlers. This was not always successful since the Irish people and many clan chiefs resisted.
The cities became fortified centres of colonial occupation, administration and garrison, the colonial city of Dublin known as “the Pale” in reference to the original earthworks surmounted by a palisade; hence “beyond the Pale” signified the native Irish and barbarism to the colonists.
The earlier occupation settlements were in or around fortified constructions, castles and ‘keeps’. Later, town and villages were established with a central square or diamond, i.e in a good defensive shape and entry by natives forbidden. Settler churches were also built as defensive structures5.
Pseudo-scientific racism from white Anglo-Saxon Harper’s Weekly magazine 1899 in the USA. (Sourced: Nothing But the Same Old Story, Liz Curtis).
With the creation of Irish Republican Brotherhood (or the ‘Fenians’) in the 19th Century and their activities in Ireland, the USA and in Britain, the British elite combined anti-Irish racism with pseudo-evolutionary ‘science’ representing the Irish as not quite human or childlike – but violent.
Cartoons in some British popular periodicals, in particular Punch, Fun, Judy(and Puck in the USA) represented the Fenians as monsters, in particular ape-like creatures and racist jibes and ‘humour’ were popularised, a practice which sprouted new variants during the recent 30 Years War.
Updated British anti-Irish racism by cartoonist Cummings, Daily Express, London, 12 August 1970, depicting the colonial British Army as “keeping the peace” between the colonised Catholic/ Nationalist population and the British Loyalists. (Sourced: CAIN)
ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE
All European settler projects imply ethnic cleansing accompanied by genocide to one degree or another: in Africa, Latin America, North America, Australia, New Zealand … but this was practiced by a European power against a European nation also: Ireland.
The British elite used atrocity stories from the 1641 uprising of the Irish to justify and encourage the genocide by Oliver Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland in 1649. Through ethnic cleansing, battle and starvation, Cromwell killed nearing 40% of the Irish population.6
British atrocity propaganda image about the Irish uprising of 1641 to justify Cromwell’s campaign of ethnic cleansing, genocide and enslavement. (Sourced: online).
These figures do not include those he had sent to British colonies in the Americas as slaves.7
The Great Hunger (1845-1848) wiped out, through starvation, well over 2 million of the Irish population of around 8 million and during that and the following decade, probably another 2 million emigrated (many of those too dying on the way or on arrival8).
Monument on the Liffey quays in Dublin to the Great Hunger (1845-1852) genocide of the Irish by the British ruling class. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
DOES IT MATTER WHETHER IT’S DRIVEN BY RACISM OR BY COLONIAL EXPANSION?
Yes, it does. The difference between the two does not change the situation of the Palestinians but it does affect how the genocide may be understood and what the targets of our actions may be.
Liberals would probably prefer the issue to be primarily of racism. If that were the source of the problem we could still be pushing for economic and isolation pressure as was the focus with the anti-apartheid campaign against the South African racist regime.
That is being done now and that’s fine. But the assumption would be that with enough pressure, Israel would be obliged to change its ways and the US leaders would feel pressured to advise it to end its racist discrimination (as they did in the case of white South Africa).
But if the project is colonial expansion, presupposing ethnic clearing and genocide, it is a different situation completely.
No arguing with Israeli zionists, boycott or isolation culturally and in sport is going to change that or get ‘liberal’ Zionism to act against their Right; as Finkelstein recently pointed out, the Nakba and all the settler expansions were carried out under ruling periods of the ‘Left’ side of zionism.
Also, if this settler expansion (or supporting such at least) is part of a US imperialism project, then no amount of campaigning to expose the behaviour of the Zionists is going to be effective in persuading the ruling class of the USA to apply corrective pressure to the zionist regime.
The fact that the basic source of the problem is zionist settler expansion means that genocide and ethnic cleansing will continue as long as the Israeli zionist state exists. And US and Western imperialism will continue to support that as long as they believe it benefits their regional interests.
This makes it clear that the long-term solutions can only consist of ending the zionist project or the ending of imperialism which supports it. The former is of course a smaller objective but at the moment western imperialism is energetically defending the zionists.
A whole neighbourhood in Gaza wiped out by Israeli bombardment months ago (Photo cred: WAFA agency)
It is doings so politically and culturally, with armaments, also with propaganda from its mass media, by repression of its own populations where these are protesting in solidarity with the Palestinians – and in the course of that it is endangering all its facades of justice and objectivity.
In the longer term that is probably a good thing, helping to create the subjective conditions for the overthrow of imperialism and monopoly capitalism.
But we need to help that process along in our own struggles while also making their continued support for zionist genocide of Palestinians as costly for them as we possibly can. While we act in solidarity with the Palestinians we are acting also against our own immediate enemies.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1This may surprise some but the British ruling class was deeply anti-semitic even before Shakespeare wrote his Merchant of Venice script. Not only that, but Balfour, infamous for his eponymous Declaration that Palestine was suitable for Jewish settlement, was personally strongly anti-semitic (I am thankful to Ali Abunimah for pointing that out in one of the youtube discussions of the Electronic Intifada)
4I keep telling people struggling against colonialism and imperialism that they should study Irish history. It’s practically all there: racism, invasion, division, settlers, plantations and ethnic cleansing, recruitment of native enforcers, undermining of native culture, religious oppression, genocide (twice), partition, recruitment of sections of the elite and nationalist political parties.
5Though this also had a history in medieval Europe. The administrators of the Ulster Plantation at the start of the 17th Century allocating grants of land specified that those who got parcels of land had to be English-speaking, be Protestant, build defensive structures and not employ Catholics.
7This has become something of a controversy, with racists of Irish diaspora background claiming parity with the slavery experience of Africans in the southern USA and some anti-racists denying it, saying the Irish were indentured servants. Both are mistaken: Irish were sent in slavery by Cromwell but subsequent Irish were sent in indentured servitude which, bad as it is, is not chattel slavery and the historical slavery period of the Irish in the USA was nowhere near as long as it was for the Africans.
8Over 3,000 are buried on Grosse Isle alone, an island in the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada.
rebelbreeze 