The Nazis Never Went Away: Israel, Allianz and Holocaust Companies.

On March 13, 2026March 17, 2026 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Fascism, History, Human Rights, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Palestine, Popular Resistance, World War Two, ZionismLeave a comment

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

(Reprinted from author’s substack on 01/03/2026 and reformatted for WordPress. All graphic images created or chosen by R. Breeze editor)

The English band Chumbawamba recorded a song called The Day The Nazi Died about how the Nazis never really went away.¹

The song references the Nazi leader Rudolf Hess, who was not executed following WWII but was instead held a prisoner in Spandau Prison until he took his own life at the age of 93.

The song asks why when we were told that the Nazis had died did they all come out on the day Hess died and points to the boardrooms of companies as maggots getting fat on the decaying flesh of capitalist society.

The band were not wrong. Some of the Nazis and boards of companies that did not go away are now involved in the genocide in Palestine.

Goosestepping as a military parade practice has gone out of fashion in most Western countries, but stomping on the peoples of the world is very much in fashion.

Many companies such as Porsche, Mercedes, Volkswagen and even IG Farben – the manufacturers of the gas used to murder millions in the camps – went unpunished after WWII. Some companies were even compensated for the damage to their factories.

Lots of other German companies passed under the radar.

Hugo Boss was never taken to task for making the Nazis look so sexy in their murderous swagger and Allianz the German insurance company that insured parts of the camps and the ghettos against fire and damage to their installations survived intact.

Apparently, they didn’t specifically insure the ovens or gas chambers, but the camps were a whole unit. Any part insured contributed to all of it running smoothly.

Of course those who died in the gas chambers and were pushed like peat brickettes through the ovens were not covered, just the Nazi property.

Hugo Boss can make no claims to being pressured, he was a member of the Nazi party before Hitler ever took power. He wasn’t betting on which horse won the race, he was the horse in the race.

Allianz likes to present itself as just another company that did business with the Nazis in order to continue functioning and that they had no choice, Krupps makes similar claims about its use of slave labour, saying they had to.

That is a dubious claim, when you look at their history. But also morally there is no basis to it. You always have the choice, some Germans lost their lives fighting the Nazis, not losing your money is hardly an excuse.

What companies such as Allianz did is make a cost benefit analysis. They calculated that not doing business with the Nazis would affect their profits, so they insured the camps but not the people pushed through the ovens.

The company claims a certain naivety on its part about what was happening.

But you can only take that at face value if you ignore that the director general of the company the antisemite Dr Kurt Schmitt resigned his post with Allianz in 1933 to become Hitler’s first Reich Minister of Economic Affairs.

He had previously turned down the post when it was offered to him by the Von Papen government before the Nazis took over.

He had to step down for health reasons, but when he recovered he went back to Allianz to administer it. It also claims it made no money from the camps contract.

This does not mean there was no money to be made, it means it wasn’t as profitable a contract as it thought, but it managed to get other contracts from the Nazis.

If you read the company’s website you come away with the distinct impression that they would like us to think they were a victim of the Nazis and we should pity them.

It turns out because they were on the losing side and because the war didn’t go ahead as planned with Hitler steamrollering his way to Moscow, the war was not as profitable as it should have been for insurance companies.

In the following quote it is clear that 1943, following the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad, the tide turned not only in the war but in the accounts ledgers.

After Germany overran Poland in 1939, the business of the insurance sector became characterized by the risks associated with the war.

Doing business in wartime meant obeying the principle of “minimizing new dangers and taking maximum advantage of new business opportunities.”

The repercussions of the war were detrimental to business as a whole and at the end of the war, Allianz was on the brink of ruin. Even so, until 1943 the company had managed to increase its profits by a considerable margin.²

Even today the company whitewashes its record and states in glowing language that:

Kurt Schmitt’s energetic course of expansion in the 1920s had made Allianz the largest insurance company in Germany. In 1933, Schmitt became Minister of Economic Affairs in Adolf Hitler’s government.

In 1935, he resigned from this post as he was unable to implement his political ideas and his health was failing. After his recovery, he returned to Allianz and in 1938 became General Director of Munich Re.³

No, not true, the Nazi stepped down because he had a heart attack, not over disagreements about economic policy and though it is not stated, there is a sleight of hand which leaves you wondering whether he had disagreements over the treatment of Jews.

This antisemite had no such disagreements with the Nazis at all. He was well known to them before they ever took power. He knew who and what they were.

The company’s site is not that detailed about the period and there are lots of sleights of hands in how it presents information. For example, it is mentioned that the company opposed Nazi attempts to nationalise the insurance industry.

But not because they opposed the Nazis, but because it might affect their profit margins.

But not even Allianz can completely deny reality. Their site does acknowledge that it began to come clean about its role following a lawsuit in the US against insurance companies and set up a study into its activities.⁴

It did it, because it was forced to. Had they really been forced to insure the Nazis against their will they wouldn’t have waited till 1997 to start publicly owning up.

They commissioned Dr Feldman a Jewish historian to look at their history. He quotes Schmitt as talking about the Nazi position on Jews as explained to him by Göring that:

I must honestly say, that I had no reservations about this line, for it cannot objectively be contested that in our public and intellectual life, beginning with the Reichstag, in the press, and also in many scientific faculties, in the legal field and above all in the Berlin banking business, the Jews had too strong and too loud and also an unhealthy influence.⁵

Feldman goes on to say of this that:

…it is important to recognize that the responsibility for the evils that he [Schmitt] and his organization [Allianz] were to experience and perpetrate during the coming years lay to an important extent in the fact that he (and others like him) shared a political culture and an anti-Semitic posture that made the coming and installation of the Third Reich possible.⁶

Of Schmitt he says that:

Schmitt was rather more enthusiastic and active than his colleagues in pandering to the new order at this time.

Not only was he prominently on display at the aforementioned Hitler birthday festivities, he also catered to the “socialistic” side of the regime while playing the public defender of employer interests with the new rulers as well.⁷

Now we have come full circle. The people who tried to profit from the Third Reich and the camps are once again involved in a genocide, not only as an insurance company but also as a direct investor.

Allianz has invested USD 960 million in Israeli war bonds, or genocide bonds as they are more accurately known. I

n 50 years’ time, they might hire some Palestinian historian to write the history of collaboration in yet another genocide and their website might just say they had no choice but to maximise profits in line with their legal duty to their shareholders or some such rubbish.

Last time, none of the Allianz board were sent to the gallows. They all did very well out of the war and the company went on to become not just Germany’s largest insurance company but a major player in the global insurance industry.

It is as the Chumbawamba song says:

The world is riddled with maggots; the maggots are getting fat
They’re making a tasty meal of all the bosses and bureaucrats
They’re taking over the boardrooms, and they’re fat and full of pride.

This time, should we ever get a day of reckoning to cite the much abused quote from Karl Marx we should make no excuses for the terror. They should have all their assets confiscated and they should meet their end hanging from a rope.

So if you meet with these historians, I’ll tell you what to say
Tell them that the Nazis never really went away.
They’re out there burning houses down and peddling racist lies
And we’ll never rest again until every Nazi dies.

End.

Note: You may wish to read other articles by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh on his substack https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com/

Note: If you found this article of interest, why not register with Rebel Breeze for free, so that you will be notified by email of subsequent articles. You can de-register any time you wish.

1 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLkPwxcIji0

2 See https://www.allianz.com/en/about-us/company/history/allianz-in-the-nazi-era/world-war-ii.html

3 See https://www.allianz.com/en/about-us/company/history/allianz-in-the-nazi-era/humans.html

4 See https://www.allianz.com/en/about-us/company/history/allianz-in-the-nazi-era/insurance-compensation.html#tabpar_6554_1Tab

5 Feldman, G.D (2001) Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933-1945. Berkley. University of California Press p.58

6 Ibid., p.59

7 Ibid., p.66

Iran’s Resistance Sparks Hatred in the Spanish Left

On March 8, 2026 By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, National Sovereignty, Palestine, Political Analysis, Spanish State, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Translated by R. Breeze from Spanish-language post in Bultza, Basque Marxist-Leninist Telegram channel, 2 March 2026

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The armed resistance of the Palestinian people—the vast majority of whom are Muslim—has stirred up a kind of “neither-nor” sentiment. The “progressive” left refuses to take sides.

They labelled the acts of armed resistance on October 7, 2023, as terrorism and equated them with the genocidal policies of the State of Israel. Was terrorism that which the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto waged in their guerrilla operations against the Nazi occupation army?

This is not the first time we have heard the hackneyed rhetoric against the Muslim religion. A discourse cloaked in a “progressive” mantle, where they speak of human rights, freedoms, women’s rights, and so on.

Some even compare it to the Franco regime in a display of “intellectualism.” A comparison that cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny of logic. Did the Franco regime confront the greatest empire on the planet? Quite the contrary.

The fact that Francoism and its entire cultural and political apparatus existed was thanks, among other things, to the largest empire in the world today: the United States.

Trump has spoken, on several occasions, about how the Iranian government oppresses its people through Islam, that “the regime of the ayatollahs” must be overthrown, etc. This discourse has also been echoed by several European leaders, including the “progressive” Pedro Sánchez.

A few weeks ago, we heard Gabriel Rufián¹—the future leader of the “re-establishment of the Left”—saying that the burka and the hijab should be banned. But there is one aspect they all have in common: they all say this from NATO countries.

Countries that exploit the wealth of every continent, including Muslim countries where religion is not conceived in the same way as it is in imperialist countries. Yet, they say absolutely nothing about the Atlanticist organization. They do not question its crimes.

In addition to discrimination based on religion, there are two more forms: discrimination based on belonging to a culture different from Western culture (imperialism and colonization) and class discrimination.

The “progressive” Left only mobilises when the oppressed are portrayed as victims, not when they gain strength and resist the assaults. In other words, if you are massacred by the empire, they will offer you alms. If you resist, you become the target of their criticism.

We’ve already seen this with the constant denunciations of the Palestinian armed resistance, or the scant impact the resistance of the Shiite armed movement Hezbollah, which has repeatedly halted Israeli Zionism, has had on the Spanish population.

We’ve also seen it when the Shiite movement Ansar Allah fired rockets at the US Sixth Fleet, cutting off the Red Sea and Israeli communications.

In other words, the “progressive” left supports you if you die, not when you fight.

It’s the practical application of putting money into the coffers of the missions. If you’re a sovereign country seeking liberation from imperialist yokes and you fight with all your might, you’re labelled a terrorist and an oppressor.

And the media plays a significant role in this, the same media on which progressives occasionally complain of not being given as much airtime as before.

In the words of the African American leader Malcolm X: Beware of the media; they will make you hate the oppressed and love the oppressor.

In the world of social media, we easily lose our memory. Therefore, it’s necessary to remember that the Algerian separatists of the National Liberation Front were Marxist-Leninists. And this didn’t prevent them from also being Muslim.

The People’s Republic of North Yemen—Muslim—along with the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, supported the anti-fascist armed movements in the Spanish state.

In other words, Islam and anti-imperialist (and anti-fascist) resistance are concepts that have gone hand in hand on numerous occasions.

The USSR itself not only maintained but also promoted madrasas, or Islamic schools, in Muslim-majority territories. Was the USSR—the world’s first secular state—the same as Francoist Spain? But perhaps this doesn’t mean much to the progressive, or the purist of the moment.

In the 1960s, there emerged in Latin America a concept called Liberation Theology. This movement led to the creation of armed groups of Catholic origin whose demands included socialism and social justice.

Movements like the Montoneros in Argentina and the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) emerged from this context. It is important to remember Father Carlos Mugica, the priest and guerrilla leader.

These armed movements caused considerable headaches for Washington’s Operation Condor and all the dictatorships imposed by the School of the Americas—dictatorships that, incidentally, sympathised with and admired Francoism.

Were these guerrilla priests the same as their enemies in the White House and their puppets?

These movements resonated in Spain. This theory spread throughout the Basque Country and the working-class neighbourhoods of major cities like Madrid and Barcelona, as well as regions like Andalusia.

The parishes of Vallecas, Carabanchel, Moratalazo, and Vicálvaro² became meeting places for numerous anti-Francoist movements and groups, where these same worker-priests were active.

A very recent example is that of Father Diamantino García: one of the founders of the Andalusian Rural Workers’ Union (predecessor of the Andalusian Workers’ Union). Were these worker-priests the same as Francoism?

Fr. Diamentino Garcia Acosta (1943-1995) addressing a worker’s rally.

Let’s remove once and for all the veil that prevents us from seeing the reality of Third World countries. Who are we to tell oppressed countries what to do? Isn’t that just another form of imperialism? Do we fight in the same way they do?

We cannot view the processes of decolonization and liberation of those who are fighting with all their might against the West and its empire through Western eyes.

To paraphrase our Asturian comrades from La Clase Trabayadora:³ we must put an end to the left wing of imperialism and all that it entails. Even in the cultural sphere.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1MP and spokesperson of the Ezquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Catalan Republican Left) in the Spanish Congress, also active in left-social democratic coalition Súmate and the grassroots National Assembly of Catalunya. (R.Breeze)

2Particularly working-class areas of Madrid (R.Breeze)

3Anti-NATO and anti-rearming organisation based in Asturies. (R.Breeze)

“REGIME CHANGE AT HOME!”

On March 1, 2026March 3, 2026 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-War, Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Political Analysis, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The title paraphrases the concluding words of Jane Fonda, actress and veteran anti-war campaigner, speaking yesterday¹ at a downtown Los Angeles rally against the USA’s current war against Iran, in reference to current US President Trump’s regime.²

It is slogan the oppressed and exploited around the world might well adopt for ourselves, though Fonda may have meant only the replacement of Trump with a milder representative of US Monopoly Capitalism.

Though a long-time campaigner against US Wars, it is unlikely that Fonda was advocating the overthrow of the capitalist-imperialist system currently in power in most of the states around the world. But we might well invest that meaning in the call amongst ourselves.

History shows us that capitalism exploits our labour power and the fruits of our toil, even as it evolves into monopoly capitalism, squeezing hundreds of its weaker competitors out of business before going to war with other monopoly capitalists and states that resist being dominated.

OUR REGIME DRAGGING US INTO WAR

This is the kind of system in power in Ireland, though our ruling class is, unlike the rest of the European states, a client state. Typically, client states have one master – ours has three: British colonial-imperialism; US imperialism; EU imperialism.

The dominant states of British imperialism and EU imperialism, viz. the UK, France and Germany, issued a joint statement at the outbreak of this war. Not to condemn the US and Israel assassinations and other bombing attacks on a non-aggressing country but instead, the victim of aggression!³

The same states the leaders of which justified Israel genocide against those it oppresed as Israel’s “right to self-defence”, failed to accord the right of the Iranian people to defend themselves through the action of their state against unprovoked Zionist and imperialist attack.

These are the powers to which the Irish ruling neo-colonial class wants Ireland subsumed, to join our exploiters and colonial occupiers, states with a long history of colonial occupation and genocide, including ours, against people who do not threaten us and have never done us any harm.

It is their alliance into which our neo-colonial rulers are attempting to drag us, by lies and deceit and by scaremongering about danger from other states that have never threatened us.

WHAT THIS WAR AGAINST IRAN IS ABOUT

There must be very few people on this Earth who believe that the aggression against Iran is about restricting the state from developing nuclear weapons. The religious leader of Iran, Khamenei (assassinated by the USA), has long opposed the development of weapons of mass destruction.⁴

In fact, according to the Omani intermediary at the US-Iran talks on nuclear energy, Iran volunteered not to amass enriched nuclear material, to convert its stock of highly-enriched uranium to fuel, putting it beyond any possible use of weaponisation and submitting to inspections.⁵

In addition, the intelligence services of the USA and the monitoring by the IAEA⁶ have never found any evidence of such development.⁷ But in any cases, who are the USA and Israel, both states with nuclear weapons, to dictate to anyone else what weapons they may or may not have?

The USA is actually the only state in the world that has used atomic weapons against people, not once but twice: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with an estimated death toll through initial explosion of up to 140,000,⁸ with more dying of subsequent radiation.

Iran signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreed to inspections by the IAEA, whereas Israel refused to sign it or agree to inspections (or indeed to even admit to the well-known fact it has nuclear weapons, the only state in West Asia to possess such).

France and the UK, endorsing the current USA and Israeli war, also have nuclear weapons and the only reason Germany does not have one of its own (though many of the US on its territory) is that its European partners can’t trust it after two wars against them within only four decades.

Israel, the most warlike and expansionist state in the region, also demanded that Iran scrap its ballistic missiles and end its support for resistance organisations. Yet Israel and the USA support subversive organisations around the world, wherever they find their wishes obstructed.

More than that, the resistance organisations are fighting for the freedom of their people and, where they have one, the sovereignty of their state, whereas the terrorist organisations supported by the US and Israel seek fragmentation,⁹ collapse of independence and sovereign national resistance.

There is too a longer-term purpose in the attack on Iran, as on Venezuela, also recently attacked by the USA, and on Russia, currently in a war as a result of NATO encirclement Eastern Europe. All three are suppliers of oil and gas to China, an opposite poll to the bloc dominated by the USA.

As to Iran’s ballistic missiles, the fate of Syria once the Assad regime was overthrown – and Lebanon currently — illustrates starkly what happens to West Asian states that do not possess strong weapon defences against Israel (and its backer, the USA).

SOLIDARITY AND RESISTANCE

In the face of such naked aggression against a state merely for insisting on its sovereignty, our clearest path is that of solidarity. But also against our own state enlisting us in imperialist wars, making us accomplices and our children burnt offerings to place on the pyres of those wars.

Initially that path involves resistance to neo-colonial propaganda and measures of the State to remove the triple-lock from State legislation. But more, we need to remove the RAF from our skies, US military from our airports, UK Navy from our seas and NATO from the Six Counties.

The US and Israel have shown us the future cost of neglecting to undertake these measures. The colonial and gombeen neo-colonial system in Ireland needs to be overthrown. It is over time for REGIME CHANGE HERE!

End.

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FOOTNOTES

SOURCES & OTHER RELEVANT MATERIAL

Jane Fonda speech: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DVUoBZzjwG_/ and https://www.facebook.com/thejamiatimes/videos/jane-fonda-joins-los-angeles-protest-against-war-on-iran/857532880656063/

https://asiatimes.com/2026/02/before-trump-bombing-oman-fm-called-us-iran-deal-within-reach/

Solidarity call from Action for Palestine Ireland: https://www.instagram.com/p/DVUOeeGjNit/?igsh=Zm8zMGV5MTQ1M21r

Solidarity call from Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122303334872064879&set=a.122104218050064879 also on Telegram https://t.me/aiaireland/4517

128 February 2026

2 https://www.instagram.com/reels/DVUoBZzjwG_/ and https://www.facebook.com/thejamiatimes/videos/jane-fonda-joins-los-angeles-protest-against-war-on-iran/857532880656063/

3 https://www.deutschland.de/en/news/merz-macron-and-starmer-condemn-iranian-counterattacks

4His removal may strengthen the hand of any Iranians who wish their state to develop nuclear weapons.

5 https://asiatimes.com/2026/02/before-trump-bombing-oman-fm-called-us-iran-deal-within-reach/

6The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an intergovernmental organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. It was established in 1957 as an autonomous organization within the United Nations system;[4][5] though governed by its own founding treaty, the organization reports to both the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations, and is headquartered at the UN Office at Vienna, Austria. (Wikipedia)

7 https://www.aljazeera.com/video/talk-to-al-jazeera/2025/6/19/iaea-chief-no-evidence-iran-is-building-a-nuclear-weapon

8 https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/counting-the-dead-at-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/

9As has been done to Syria and as Israel has called for in Iran.

AGENDA ITEM: BOMBING HOSPITALS

On February 3, 2026February 4, 2026 By rebelbreezeIn Creative writing, Current Affairs Comment, Health Service, Human Rights, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Sovereignty, Political Analysis, Public Health, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

Written some time ago but never posted: Now, while the IOF once again threatens to bomb a hospital seems like an appropriate time for publication.

(Come for a quick peek into an ‘Israeli’ intelligence agents’ meeting as they get to the agenda item “Bombing Hospitals”. Names have been eliminated for the protection of the guilty)

Chairman: We all agree, whatever international law on conflicts says, that destroying the healthcare system of the enemy is important. However, X has requested a discussion on the current bombing of hospitals in Lebanon. X, over to you.

X: Thank you, Chairman. That was not clever, in my opinion, claiming the Lebanese hospitals have Hezbollah bunkers containing gold and weapons. Now the hospital administrators have brought the media on a tour around them so they can see for themselves that what we said was a lie.

Y: But your people agreed to bombing them – we had to have some reason for that. And anyway, that’s what we did in Gaza – bombed, sniped, invaded every one.

*Hospital Bombsight* (Cartoon by *D.Breatnach*)

X: Yes, but in Gaza WE controlled press foreign media access. And WE could make OUR videos, plant weapons etc.

Y: Wait a minute! Your videos showed maintenance shafts that didn’t look anything like Hamas tunnels. And planting weapons for media video? AFTER some media had ALREADY photographed the area WITHOUT weapons?

X: Did it matter? Did any international agency step in to stop what we were doing? Do you see the UN Security Council even bringing us to court in Brussels?

Y: Well then, why are you getting all steamed up about it?

X: Are you really that thick? Don’t put out lies that can and will be checked immediately! Either get some of our agents in Lebanon to plant stuff or … or just bomb the hospitals anyway. Nobody who matters will do anything. But don’t have us caught out lying, again and again!

Y: You’re not making sense. One minute it doesn’t matter what we do, then the next it matters what we say.

X: (Clap, clap). Congratulations. You finally get it!

Y: Don’t you patronise me! Your agency fucked up big time over October 7. Don’t think we’ve forgotten!

Chairman: Gentlemen! Decorum, please! We are all colleagues here …

(We leave the discussion at this point, the sound of raised voices fading behind us …)

end.

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SOME REFERENCES

BBC team debunks Israeli claim: https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c9818n8v7d8o

Amnesty calls for war crimes investigation on Israeli attacks on health facilities: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/03/lebanon-israeli-attacks-on-health-facilities-ambulances-and-paramedics-must-be-investigated-as-war-crimes/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/17/mapping-israeli-attacks-on-lebanons-healthcare-system

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1598748161065029

JUST BECAUSE SHE’S PALESTINIAN DOESN’T MEAN SHE’S RIGHT

On January 9, 2026 By rebelbreezeIn Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Personal Blog, Political Analysis, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

A lesson today: an important truth was demonstrated to a number of us protesting by visible presence and song outside the US Embassy (at the weekly Wednesday afternoon Palestine solidarity event there organised by Jimi Cullen).

We were accosted by a woman who said she was Palestinian, didn’t agree that we were supporting Palestine and insisted we should be pushing for peace.

‘Peace with Zionism?’ someone asked.

‘What is Zionism – do you know?’ she responded.

‘Yes, it’s a belief that Jewish religion gives them the right to occupy someone else’s land and kick the indigenous out.’

‘No, that’s not what it is!’ (but failed to elucidate for us what she claims it is).

Then: ‘That flag is not for freedom for Palestine! Do you know when it was created?’

We were saying ‘Yes’ when she started running down Hamas (which didn’t even exist when the flag was designed and popularised).

She kept saying: ‘I’m a Palestinian!’ (as though that meant she must be right and also that we had no right to contradict her).

Just in case we were confused about her wider ideology, she began to attack Venezuela under ‘communist rule’ (sic).

Most of those attending on 7th January, some time after our encounter with the person under discussion. (Photo source: J.Cullen)

THE LESSON

Her intervention and her manner were annoying but she underlined an important point in political discourse: Nobody’s nationality, ethnicity or residency status gives them guaranteed possession of the truth, nor the right to assert that other opinions must for that reason be wrong.

In every country there is a variety of people, including social classes and a range of opinions on important political and social questions. It is likely that some will have very progressive ideological positions, some less so but still progressive, some conservative and some others, reactionary.

It is more complicated even that that, for some might be progressive on some issues but conservative or reactionary on others – and vice versa.

Of course we fight for the right of Palestinian voices to be seen in print and heard on mass media, as a question of justice and also as the voices of witnesses, those who have experienced the genocide at first hand, or at close second hand through family and community.

We disagreed with silencing Palestinian voices objecting to the Palestinian Ambassador (she was a Palestinian too!) addressing a Belfast meeting organised by Sinn Féin in February ‘24 not because they had to be correct as Palestinians but because their objection was an important one to be heard.

The Ambassador does not represent Palestine but rather the Palestine Authority, which in turn cannot claim to represent the Palestinian people, if for no other reason than that it has not held elections for its Presidency in twenty years.

In fact there are many other reasons including financial corruption, nepotism, repression of any kind of criticism, collusion with the Zionist Occupation, jailing Resistance fighters and actually killing some. Those critics – even had they not been Palestinian – should have been heard instead of being ejected.

It would have been instructive, educational even, to listen to the condemnation by Palestinians of an official who claimed to represent them. But of course, the Sinn Féin party, like nearly all states and all western political parties of any size, supports the Palestinian Authority and its Embassy.¹

In this case, it appears from what they were saying and what we can verify, that the Palestinian critics were correct and we know too that the Ambassador is wrong and in fact illegitimate, both in representation status and also in terms of national sovereignty.

But when people claim possession of the truth and immunity from criticism solely on the basis of where they are from or to what ethnic or other group they belong, we need to oppose that undemocratic cloak very resolutely as they use it to close down debate and education.

It’s not only the person claiming a kind of ethnic certainty we must beware of but often also the one who claims to speak for them, who takes a position as their defender and therefore their spokesperson for the truth. Apart from being patronising, such a position is wrong in principle.

And usually opportunist in essence.

This general principle holds true with regard to individuals or groups from any social or ethnic group or community, whether Palestinian, West Asian, Muslim, Six-County, 32-County, homeless, Traveller, working class, disabled, migrant, Irish speaker … etc.

end.

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SOURCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Palestine

https://www.omsac.org/post/mahmoud-abbas-and-corruption-in-palestine-the-real-obstacles-to-democracy-and-good-governance

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/5/palestinian-authority-suppresses-criticism-of-jenin-operation-in-west-bank

1 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/david-cronin/why-sinn-fein-love-palestinian-authority

https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern-ireland/palestinian-protesters-criticise-sinn-fein-after-being-ejected-from-belfast-rally-ANEZSGBQZFHQZHARJVRANEX5IU/

THE TRUMP GAZA PLAN AND IRELAND PACIFICATION

On December 12, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, History, Imperialism, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Kurdistan, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, South Africa, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4mins.)

It was great to see the Irish pacification process being referenced with regard to the Trump plan for Gaza¹ because that is exactly what the latter is: a plan to pacify the Resistance while ensuring it gets none of what it fought for.²

In other words, exactly like the Irish pacification process.

Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad grew out of previous Palestinian pacification processes. The Madrid Conference (1991) and the Oslo Agreement (1993) were imperialist/ Zionist attempts to pacify the wide-scale militant Palestinian resistance period of the First Intifada.³

Fatah at that time was the leading group in numbers and influence in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (from which Islamic groups were excluded) but also in Palestinian society in general. But Fatah had agreed to recognise ‘Israel’ and also the two-state solution (sic).

In the Oslo Agreement, furthermore, the question of the return to their homeland of the refugees was left aside. It appears that the Fatah leadership had lost faith in the eventual victory of their people’s struggle and had decided to get what they could by using the struggle to bargain.

The Oslo Agreement: US Imperialism’s President Clinton oversees Yitzak Rabin, Premier of Zionist state of ‘Israel’ shaking hands with Yasser Arafat of Fatah, then leader of the PLO.

What Fatah got was Palestinian Authority control in the first elections (1996), with internal control over/ management of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza, but not of the Palestinians in Jerusalem (captured by ‘Israel’ in 1967): a far cry from a free Palestine.⁴

In the Algiers conference of 1988 Fatah had won majority agreement to recognise ‘Israel’ and to accept the two-state solution⁵ (sic), i.e. embodying a Palestinian state on 20% of Palestinian land, under the eyes and guns of their Zionist neighbour).

Fatah’s rule became known for corruption and nepotism, which then had to be protected and defended from the Palestinian masses, leading to authoritarian, repressive and often arbitrary rule. And repression of the Resistance, along with direct collusion with the ‘Israeli’ State.

Continuing ‘Israeli’ repression and settlement expansion in turn led to the Second Intifada; Fatah lost to Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections of 2006 followed by defeat of Fatah’s attempted coup in Gaza in 2007 (but the West Bank remaining under unelected Fatah control).

Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has refused to announce elections since, sitting in unelected control of the PA’s office in the West Bank, collecting the various international grants, presiding over corruption,⁶ repressing Palestinian resistance of deed or word and colluding with the ‘Israeli’ Occupation.

US Imperialism’s then Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine, soon after the start of the accelerated Zionist genocide in Gaza, December 2023

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE IRISH CONNECTION?

Starting with Palestine and South Africa in 1991, an imperialist pacification process spread to Ireland, Basque Country, Kurdish Turkey, Colombia, India, Philippines, Sri Lanka. With some variations the drive has been the same: to give up revolution and join the system.

One of the features of this process was the apparent need of a recognised leader to sell it to the resistance support base and to front it for the world: Arafat (Palestine), Mandela (S. Africa), Adams/McGuinness (Ireland), Ocalan (Turkish Kurdistan), Otegi (Basque Country).

The Provisional IRA was by far the major organisation in the Irish Republican resistance; it gave up armed struggle in return for vague promises and the release of its prisoners under licence.⁷ Another organisation complied also even as new ‘dissident’ fighters were being jailed.

Nearly 30 years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Ireland is no nearer the Provisional IRA’s declared aims Irish reunification, independence and sovereignty. The Sinn Féin party helps run the colony⁸ and is attempting to become part of the neo-colony’s government.

*Sinn Féin representatives Tina Black (Mayor of Belfast) and Michelle O’Neill, First Minister of the British colony, laying a wreath at the British War Memorial in Belfast, July 2022* (Cred: *Liam McBurney/ PA Wire*)

Neither the Spanish, French nor Turkish states were interested in other than crushing the Basque and Kurdish resistance and the corresponding movements disabled themselves without getting anything in exchange other than continued repression.⁹

The resistance movements in parts of India and Philippines continue to resist but in Sri Lanka was wiped out.¹⁰

One feature of the spread was the contagion-like way in which leaders of one infected resistance sought to entice others to follow suit: S. Africa and Palestine to Ireland; S. Africa and Ireland to Basque Country; Ireland to Colombia (where only the FARC but not the ELN accepted it).

In only one iteration of the pacification processes was there a partial achievement of the stated aims of the resistance: South Africa got national enfranchisement but the economy remained under imperialist extractive control and its working people under repression.¹¹

In the course of giving up armed struggle, allegedly just changing the methods, the leaders gave up what they had fought for, the very reason for which they had first come into the struggle. Of course, they could still shout the slogans, just not make them real in any way.

The Irish version (and the Basque one) decommissioned their weapons, which makes it very relevant to the Trump Plan for the Palestinian Resistance, particularly Hamas and PIJ. No resistance movement should even discuss giving up their weapons until the defeat of the enemy.

It will be interesting to see what positions the former parties of Irish and Basque resistance, Sinn Féin and EH Bildu¹² and their supporters take on this US/ ‘Israeli’ plan for the Palestinian Resistance.

One of the features of the pacification process was the apparent need of a recognised leader to sell it to the resistance support base and to front it to the world: Arafat (Palestine), Mandela (S. Africa), Adams/McGuinness (Ireland), Ocalan (Turkish Kurdistan), Otegi (Basque Country).

Who will the imperialists find to play this role in Palestine?¹³

End.

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FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

Referencing the Irish pacification process in Gaza context: https://apnews.com/article/gaza-northern-ireland-peace-process

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

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/how-palestinian-authority-failed-its-people

1 https://apnews.com/article/gaza-northern-ireland-peace-process

2Trump 20-point plan: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles

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

4“This mirrors Israel’s post-Oslo approach to the occupied West Bank in pacifying the population through economic incentives, avoiding political concessions, and entrenching structural dependence. This model, often dubbed “economic peace,” has transformed the Palestinian Authority (PA) into a subcontractor of occupation – flush with foreign funds, but powerless to deliver sovereignty.” https://thecradle.co/articles-id/34757

5 https://ejil.org/pdfs/1/1/1136.pdf

6Which is why the imperialists and their servants keep alluding to the need for a “reformed Palestinian Authority” e.g. https://israelpolicyforum.org/blueprint-for-reforming-the-palestinian-authority

7Those released under licence could be returned to jail (and a number were) at the decision of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland without trial, hearing or details of why the individual was considered to be ‘a threat to public safety.’

8Its representative, Michelle O’Neill, is currently First Minister of the colony’s government. In the Irish State, the party has 33 TDs (MPs), only two behind the party with next largest representation, Fianna Fáil. They Party has abandoned its opposition to the repressive legislation of the State, welcomed British Royal visits to both parts of Ireland, supports recruitment to the colonial gendarmerie and its leader refused to rule out coalition with the neo-colonial political parties of membership of the British Commonwealth. https://www.thejournal.ie/mar-lou-mcdonald-commonwealth-4561600-Mar2019/

9The Basque leadership abandoned armed struggle unilaterally at the time without gaining even the end of dispersal of their jailed fighters throughout the state. The Turkish Kurdish PKK tried to make progress through political electoral means only under continuing repression. But their Syrian version of armed Kurdish forces got a new lease of life with the vulnerability of the Assad regime in Syria but ended up as a NATO proxy in the latter’s war for regime change. The PKK in Turkey very recently agreed to disarm while their Syrian part remains in difficult relationship with the new (formerly ISIS) regime in Syria and some other ISIS elements under Turkish influence.

10 https://www.vice.com/en/article/death-of-a-tiger-0000710-v22n8/

11See The Marikana Massacre of striking miners by the ANC Government’s police.

12Both parties support the Two-State proposal for Palestine.

13Some liberal and social-democratic sections seem to have fixed on Marwan Marghouti in this role, which of course is no reason not to support his release on human rights grounds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6IgjlHaaIs

GOING THROUGH THE SOLIDARITY MOTIONS

On December 9, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, Trade unions, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The week before last in Ireland we were led through motions of Palestine solidarity actions once more, motions without practical effect, first by the Irish trade unions, followed the following day by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

*Seen on the IPSC National march* (Photo by: *Participant*)

On Friday, the unions announced a ‘stand out for Palestine’ day – well, not a day exactly, more like a lunch break. It was not a strike, not even a work stoppage, rather some dedicated employees surrendering their lunch break to stand with Palestinian flags etc in front of their workplaces.

Not even a work stoppage of one day, half-day, or even an hour. The union leaderships, in most cases, organised nothing, leaving it up to their members to get together and to sacrifice their lunch breaks.

More of us went through the motions again on Saturday 29 November. From the Garden of Remembrance, down O’Connell Street, across the river, around by Trinity College, up Dawson Street and into Molesworth Street, facing Leinster House.

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised this ‘National Demonstration’ as it does roughly every month. It is supposed, presumably, to impress the Government with its numbers and pressure them to end their collusion with the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

It has not done so — nor did it in any month or any year in the life of the IPSC, the longest-active Palestine solidarity organisation in Ireland. Nor have the monthly marches brought about any change in Irish Government collusion since the genocide of Gaza began in October 2023.

That is not the fault of the IPSC. What they are to be blamed for is not recognising that and adjusting appropriately to actions of greater pressure. Or, perhaps they recognised it indeed but nevertheless refused to change towards any effective pressurising methods.

The IPSC was for a long time near the ‘middle of the road’ but it has moved further into that position as the genocidal actions of the Zionist colony became worse and as awareness of Israeli crimes spread and grew in Ireland (which it did in part thanks indeed to the work of the IPSC).

*Section of the IPSC National march* (Photo by: *Participant*)

Solidarity work however is not about education in the abstract, raising awareness without using that awareness to bring about change. I am sure the IPSC leadership is aware of that and would wish much change but they do not adapt their actions, rather continuing with the monthly motions.

Probably they do not increase the pressure out of fear of losing their influence with the political class. Which would perhaps be well and good if the political class were delivering on ending collusion with the genocidal state – but they are not, nor is there any indication that they will.

Ireland remains the biggest single importer of Israeli products next to the USA and the biggest in the EU. The Irish Government permits military consignments to fly to Israel through ‘neutral’ Irish airspace and USA aircraft and military personnel to stopover and refuel at Shannon Airport.

*Seen on the IPSC National march as passing O’Connell monument* (Photo by: *Participant*)

Occupying the ground near the middle is only a good thing if it can be used to support action for change; it is a hindrance if the act of being there comes to be more important than the end objective: an end to genocide and the Occupation, with freedom and independence for Palestine.

The IPSC could use its mass base to blockade Dublin Port, through which Israeli products come into the country. It could also blockade other major stocking and distribution points.

The IPSC could organise mass days of action against retail and tech outlets handling Israeli exports and mobilise pickets in support of retail workers refusing to handle Israeli products, such as a Tesco worker currently facing disciplinary procedures (i.e punishment) for that very ‘crime’.

The worker in question, employed by Tesco in Newcastle, Co. Down is a member of the IWW and also of USDAW, main union for retail workers in the UK (as in the colony) but while the word is that his union is defending them, it is not seeking to extend and widen the boycott.

Defending a worker’s right not to act against their conscience is an individual and personal issue.¹ It is understood that the motivation of this worker is one of solidarity with the Palestinian people and against genocide, which is what the trade unions need to be promoting and mobilising.

Union leaderships become bureaucracies with buildings and paid officials, employing administrative staff, growing more and more cautious and afraid of State action (particularly against their funds), moving further away from the ethos that first led to the unions’ creation.

Organised workers in Italy have shown the potential in dock strikes and mass mobilisations but again it was not the mainstream unions that led the action. Canadian provincial trade union Federations have marked all ‘Israel’ goods and services as ‘hot’² and not to be handled.

Union membership in Ireland has declined as union leadership collusion with management and government escalated from the 1980s and resistance actions decreased; an increase in militant action is likely to boost recruitment but in any case organising resistance is the supposed role of trade unions.

Questions around solidarity with Palestine bring many other underlying issues to the fore: media partiality, government collusion, imperialist and colonialist influence, effective means of applying pressure, appropriate leadership, resistance to oppression, solidarity with prisoners.

We have been taught lessons of great importance – but at a terrible cost; we owe it to the Palestinians and to ourselves to apply them.

End.

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FOOTNOTES

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

Tesco worker facing hearing for refusing to sell ‘Israeli’ products

APPENDIX

From The Cradle news updates on Telegram 6 December 2025:

Ontario’s largest labor federation backs ‘hot cargo’ boycott of Israeli goods

The Ontario Federation of Labour has become the fourth provincial labor federation in Canada to adopt a “hot cargo” resolution against Israeli goods and services.

The move designates all trade ties with Israel as products and services workers will refuse to handle due to their connection to exploitation and oppression. The OFL’s decision follows growing momentum across the country as labor groups escalate solidarity actions.

The New Brunswick Federation of Labour first set the precedent in May when it voted to stop handling weapons destined for Israel. Similar resolutions soon followed in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, culminating in Ontario’s endorsement last week.

Together, these federations represent a significant portion of Canada’s organized labor movement.

The OFL’s stance signals a widening labor-led boycott effort, reinforcing a broader push within Canadian unions to apply economic pressure and support calls for accountability over Israel’s war crimes.

1Individual ‘conscience’ can object to many things we consider necessary, for example to give contraception methods information, or about pregnancy termination, to deal politely with migrants, to serving people in the national language, to sending children to integrated education or even to any school, etc. etc.

2‘Blacked’ was a common term for such cases in the recent past, as was ‘tainted’ further back still (á la Larkin and Connolly) – see Appendix.

THE COST IS NOT HIGH ENOUGH

On November 28, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Recently an Irish Palestine solidarity organisation posted a report that 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed in 23 months, an average higher than one child per hour.¹ “Have been killed”? Traffic accidents? Unknown causes?

They were killed by Israel, isn’t that the case? Then why not bloody say so! They were murdered by a genocidal European Zionist settler colony called Israel and it continues to murder them, along with their older siblings, parents, extended families and neighbours.

We can find different ways to present the facts of the ongoing genocide in order to try to shock but it does not alter the fundamental and well-known truth that a genocide is being committed before our eyes. Why is this continuing despite what everyone knows? Well, because it can!

Israel will continue to do what it does because it can and the cost of doing it is not high enough, as Ali Abunimah said three months ago.² Or to turn that a little, the Irish Government will continue doing what it does in collusion with the genocide because the cost of doing so is not high enough.

The EU is the biggest importer of Israeli goods and the Irish state is the highest importer in the EU, also the 2^nd single biggest Israeli goods importer in the world. And still the weapons of genocide fly through our skies. The Irish Government continues collusion because the cost to them is low.

Marches and pickets show solidarity towards a beleaguered people suffering genocide and in that they are very important. They also show us our strength in numbers. But they do not cost our government much. Not even enough to really stop the Central Bank assisting genocide.

In England, Palestine Action raised the cost of collusion in genocide by targeting the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems in Bristol. Activists were arrested but they kept doing it. This Zionist death company has now closed its targeted Bristol factory.

While this was happening, the British Government, in support of Elbit and others and in collusion with the genocide of Palestinians, not only arrested and charged Palestine Action people but designated the organisation as ‘terrorist’ and any supporters as people supporting ‘terrorism’.

People defied that designation and were arrested for holding a placard saying they were opposed to genocide and supported Palestine Action.

Placards in Westminster August 2025 (Photo credit: Mike Kemp In Pictures/ Getty Images)

Following that action and repression, 1,500 gathered in London on Saturday 6^thSeptember 2025 to continue that solidarity and to defeat the attack on civil liberties. By midnight, the last arrest recorded by the police for the day, they had arrested nearly 390 people.

The ‘crime’ of nearly all was to display placards stating “I am opposed to genocide. I support Palestine Action.” The police were unable to arrest them all as it took them 11 hours to arrest the 390. The organisers continued the action in London and other parts of the UK.³

More recently there have been other such acts of public defiance, organised by the Save Our Juries campaigning group and the numbers now arrested on charges of “assisting terrorism” (sic) have reached at least 2,269.

In addition, eighteen arrested Palestine Action activists were jailed, refused bail with some embarking on hunger strike⁴ of whom two were recently admitted to hospital.

The closure of Elbit Systems, the mass defiance of the terrorist categorisation of Palestine Action and the prison hunger strikes are raising the cost of supporting genocide of Palestinians and criminalising Palestine solidarity action, hitting collusion where it hurts, politically and practically.

We in Ireland are the most-pro-Palestine country in Europe … but we are not doing that.

We are not raising the cost high and despite that being clear to us and to our political and solidarity organisations and trade unions, made clear well over a year ago, we are still not doing it. Until we raise the cost high enough to make them stop, our government will continue its collusion.

And until the external cost is raised high enough to make them stop, Israel will continue its ethnic cleansing and genocide. But marchers attempting to blockade Dublin Port in early October were pepper-sprayed without warning and savagely batoned, with some arrested.

*Gathering outside Dublin courthouse in solidarity with two Palestine solidarity activists assaulted and charged by Gardaí during early October attempt to blockade Dublin Port* (Photo: *R. Breeze*).

A trio of activists were arrested in May for invading Shannon Airport to protest the ‘neutral’ Irish State’s collusion with US military flights through there4 and last weekend another three young people were arrested for a similar action.

Activists in Ireland are slowly starting to raise the cost of collusion for the State. However, they are not supported by the leadership of the mass movement which, while aware its tactics are not forcing the Government to end its collusion, nevertheless persists solely in repeating them.

End.
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FOOTNOTES

1 https://www.savethechildren.net/news/gaza-20000-children-killed-23-months-war-more-one-child-killed-every-hour

2Director of the Electronic Intifada, speaking on 29 August at a public meeting organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Dublin and hosted by the FÓRSA trade union. The other guest speaker was Abubaker Abed from Gaza, now studying in Ireland after being a journalist for the EI and threatened with assassination by Zionists.

3The Six Counties are at the moment in the UK but the British colonial gendarmerie went very lightly there in dealing with Palestine Action supporters – the rulers do not wish do have Palestine activists as political prisoners while they contain also Irish Republican prisoners.

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Action accessed at 22.07 on 28 November 2025

Snooping on Palestinians is a springboard to a lucrative career.

On November 25, 2025November 25, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Irish Civil War, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Palestine, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

David Cronin

(Reading time: 3 mins.)
(Reprinted with gratefully-received permission of author of article¹ originally published in the Electronic Intifada, a non-profit online publication covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflictfrom a Palestinian perspective)

Nadav Zafrir – a guru in Tel Aviv’s tech scene – offers a textbook example of how spies can make a killing.

Zafrir has gone from commanding Unit 8200 – an elite division in Israel’s military focused on electronic espionage – to leading Check Point,² a big success story in the business known as cybersecurity.

One element of his rise which has received scant attention is that he has been helped along the way by the European Union.

In 2020, the Brussels bureaucracy issued a research grant worth more than $2.5 million to Illusive Networks, a firm then chaired by Zafrir.

Illusive Networks had developed what it called a “solution that allows early detection of cyber attacks” and the grant was explicitly aimed at enabling the firm to “expand into the EU market.”

As “ethics checks” for EU-funded research projects involve little more than box-ticking, it is a safe bet that Brussels officials did not raise objections to Unit 8200’s activities before approving the grant.

The sinister nature of those activities was summarized in a 2014 letter signed by a few dozen of its veterans.

“The Palestinian population under military rule is completely exposed to espionage and surveillance by Israeli intelligence,” the letter reads. “While there are severe limitations on the surveillance of Israeli citizens, the Palestinians are not afforded this protection.”

A state which discriminates based on race or ethnicity is by definition an apartheid state. Although the 2014 letter did not use the word “apartheid,” the practices it described certainly fit the definition of apartheid.

Those practices did not materialize overnight. As Nadav Zafrir was head of Unit 8200 from 2009 to 2013, he had definitely practised apartheid – a crime against humanity, according to the International Criminal Court.

By issuing a research grant to his firm, the EU was rewarding a spy chief who had served an apartheid system.

Ireland’s dereliction of duty

Profiles of Zafrir in the mainstream press do not call out his crimes. Rather, they celebrate how he has an “X factor” and how he has been offered a “compensation” package worth more than $15 million for 2025.

Since he joined Check Point as CEO last year – a time when his old buddies in the Israeli military were busy inflicting a genocide on Gaza – he has garnered numerous favourable headlines.

Check Point is consolidating its position by either snatching rivals or teaming up with them.

A partnership accord has been inked, for example, between Check Point and another Tel Aviv firm Wiz. “Check Point’s cloud network security tools will be merged into Wiz’s cloud security platform,” The Times of Israel informed its readers in February.

Technology reporters may get excited by what’s happening in the clouds. Back on the ground, activists are raising awareness about Check Point’s inextricable links to Israel’s military.

In Ireland, a protest against Check Point last month grabbed some media attention.

It involved a disruption of a promotional event organized by Check Point and featuring a speech from the former rugby international Brian O’Driscoll, who is regarded as a hero to many following that sport.³

The group behind the protest – Your Tech = Their Deaths – is rightly sounding the alarm about Irish companies and public authorities that use Check Point’s software.

I contacted the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Dublin following reports that it had renewed a contract relating to Check Point technology over the past few weeks. The DPP’s office replied that it “does not comment on any arrangements related to cybersecurity.”

Ireland is a country still grappling with the effects of colonization. Overcoming those effects requires not only the unification of the island but a willingness to stand up for oppressed peoples around the world.

The other kind of Israeli checkpoint, this a temporary one in the West Bank in April 2024. These are in addition to the fixed ones and Palestinians driving or walking may have to go through many in one journey. Israeli checkpoints are some of the areas of confrontation and arbitrary arrest of Palestinians. (Photo: *Times Israel Jaafar ASHTIYEH/ AFP*)

Defending Palestinian rights – through action, not just rhetoric – is surely a moral duty for Ireland. Handing over money to Check Point is a dereliction of that duty.

End.

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Footnotes

1 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/david-cronin/how-eu-helped-israeli-spy-chief-build-lucrative-career

2An ironic name, given that the IOF and even settlers set up checkpoints to harass Palestinians on towns’ entrances and exits and many points along the roads and that their checkpoints are where Palestinians are routinely arrested and sometimes killed. (Rebel Breeze editorial comment)

3According to reports the protest received rough handling by Gardaí and by security personnel and one participant was subsequently threatened by Driscoll’s lawyers but the promotional event nevertheless had to be abandoned (Rebel Breeze editorial comment).

COLONIAL PROXY MILITIAS, FROM IRELAND TO PALESTINE

On November 3, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Ireland, irish history, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Song, Song in Struggle, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

Reading time main text: 5 mins.)

Currently the Palestinian Resistance is engaged in an important struggle to eliminate four Israeli-proxy militias. This type of militias of colonial and imperial powers have a long history, not least in Ireland from the 1800s to the present.

SETTLER AND NATIVE MILITIAS IN IRELAND

The British colonial occupation of Ireland had an army to quell native resistance but many settlers also organised themselves into armed bands (as in Palestine), such as the Hearts of Steel or Hearts of Oak in the late 18^th Century in order to resist the big landlords.

The United Irishmen were successful in uniting a number of these, both native and settler bands such as the Whiteboys and Hearts of Oak, particularly in Antrim but the Peep O’Day Boys went mostly with the sectarian and royalist Orange Order.

The settlers also organised yeomanry militias which they labelled ‘Volunteers’, initially to defend against a feared invasion from Napoleonic France. Some of those contained Republican sympathisers and some quite the opposite.¹

In response to the successful uniting efforts of the mostly Protestant-led United Irishmen, the Orange Order was founded by British loyalists and soon received official support in organising anti-Catholic pogroms and in exposing United supporters, especially among the Protestant communities.

LOW INTENSITY OPERATIONS AND “PSEUDO-GANGS”

During the three-decades war towards the end of the 20^th Century mostly in the 6 Counties, the British Occupation also organised proxies such as the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association. These were recruited among the Protestant/unionist community.

But not only among civilians.

As has been a pattern among colonial possessions, the occupying power organised a gendarmerie, i.e an armed police force under central command of the occupying power. In Ireland that was the Royal Irish Constabulary which came to prominence in the suppression of the 1867 Fenian rising.

After the partition of Ireland by the British in May 1921, the RIC within the remaining direct colony of the Six Counties was renamed the Royal Ulster Constabulary². British Intelligence used this force to channel intelligence, arms and recruits into the Loyalist gangs.

In addition, many members of the disbanded RUC’s semi-militia, the part-time B-Specials, were reorganised into the RUC Reserve of the colonial police or recruited into the British Army as the newly-formed Royal Ulster Regiment, from which the Loyalist militias could be supplied as before.

Brigadier Frank Kitson was a leading colonial counter-insurgency strategist who had served in Kenya and Malaya before he was sent to the Six County colony to coordinate the Loyalist militias and the official armed forces and gendarmerie, no doubt in coordination with MI5.

Kitson published Gangs and Pseudo-Gangs (1960) and Low Intensity Operations (1971³) based on the experience of colonial resistance repression in Malaya and Kenya, going on to introduce these ideas organisationally in the occupation of the Six Counties.

Pseudo gangs give the occupying power deniability and, being generally from the occupied country,⁴ have local knowledge. They can carry on terrorism and assassinations at ‘a remove’ from the occupying power.⁵ In the case of criminal gangs, they have an existing organisation.

Such gangs may have family or other social relationships with some in the targeted community, introducing allegiances and communal fragmentation as has been occurring to some extent in Gaza. However, in Ireland, the gangs were all originating from the unionist community.

Frank Kitson (now Brigadier) in 1971 (Photo source: Internet)

Jeffrey Sluka summarises⁶ “… beginning in 1972, there has been a vicious, continuous campaign of sectarian assassination against Catholics in Northern Ireland waged by Loyalist paramilitary groups (the Ulster Defence Association [UDA] and Ulster Volunteer Force [UVF]) …

“… and their associated death squads (the Ulster Freedom Fighters [UFF], Red Hand Commandos, Protestant Action Force, etc.), who have killed nearly 700 innocent Catholic civilians – the largest category of casualties in the war.

“Thousands of other Catholics have survived Loyalist attempts to murder them.

“The existence of this campaign has never been publicly acknowledged by the British authorities, who have ignored it, downplayed it, and actively misrepresented it …

“… to influence the media and public in this regard, both at home and abroad, as an integral part of their counterinsurgency strategy.

“The official position of the British authorities is that there is no state terror in Northern Ireland, and certainly no death squads. When pressed, they admit that there is Loyalist terror against Catholics, but insist that they have nothing to do with it.

“When pressed with evidence such as the fact that hundreds of members of the Security Forces have been convicted of involvement with Loyalist paramilitaries, they claim that this collusion is informal – individual acts by rogue soldiers and policemen

“- and not a reflection of government policy or military strategy. All of these are political lies.”⁷

SEPOYS

The use of military forces recruited among the occupied people dates back further even than the Roman Empire and the British Empire used them extensively in India, where they called them ‘Sepoys’,⁸ which is what the Basque pro-independence people call the Basque Autonomous Police.⁹

In India, one of the most serious uprisings against British rule was sparked by a mutiny of its Sepoys.¹⁰

In Palestine, the ‘Zipaios’ equivalent are the police of the Fatah-controlled Palestine Authority. They are bad enough, brutally suppressing dissent, spying on and even attacking Palestine organisations in the West Bank, arresting and even killing critics.

The Royal Irish Constabulary in Ireland were a gendarmerie mostly composed of sepoys and of course there were many Irish regiments in the British Army and Irishmen also served in other British Army units, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force.

WORSE THAN SEPOYS

The militias in Gaza are however even worse. Based on criminal gangs and social groups, they have consistently looted aid trucks coming into Gaza before Israel closed all the gates, then selling the goods at high prices to the hungry population as Gaza starved and medicine became scarce.

According to reports there are currently four Zionist-linked militias in Gaza: Abu Shabab around Rafah in southern Gaza; Husam al-Astal in Khan Younis, Ashraf al-Mansi in Beit Lahia in the North, and Rami Heles in eastern Gaza.

*Sourced from The Cradle based on Sky News investigation.*

Their looting, supported by the Zionist state, was even used to try to blame on the Resistance, with Israeli spokespersons claiming that Hamas was stealing the aid. Conversely, as the Resistance strove to counter the proxy militias, the fighters were targeted by the Israeli Occupation Force.

Consequently it was almost impossible for the Resistance to suppress the proxy militias – until the current ‘ceasefire’. Now, able to operate to some extent more openly, the Resistance is settling accounts with the proxy militias. And it is very important that they do so.

Not only for what they have done, the plundering of emergency aid, attacks on displaced persons, torture and murder of famed journalist Salah al-Jafarawi.¹¹ But because they are a serious infection, injected into Gazan society by the Zionazi occupation in order to cause serious harm to the society.

According to reports, undercover operatives of the Resistance have infiltrated the gangs and managed to appropriate a large number of weapons and vehicles of the gangs donated by the IOF or by the United Arab Emirates.¹²

Hamas advertised a truce for gang members to hand over their weapons and surrender themselves to the authorities, which some have done but many have not. The Resistance has operational clashes with the militias and has captured many. Some were publicly executed by gunshot.

Whether full-scale war returns to Gaza after this ‘ceasefire’ (full of IOF bombings, shelling and shooting) or not, their presence in Palestinian society cannot be tolerated, not by the civil government, nor by the broad community, nor by the armed resistance.

End.

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APPENDIX:

A Sky News investigation has revealed that Israel is backing four Palestinian militias inside Gaza to weaken Hamas as part of what militia leaders call “Project New Gaza.” Hossam al-Astal, head of one of the groups, said the militias are coordinating their efforts to remove Hamas from power.

He claimed that Yasser Abu Shabab and Ashraf al-Mansi, leaders of other groups, have also joined the project. All four militias are reportedly positioned along the yellow line in areas under Israeli control.

Astal told Sky News his headquarters is only 700 meters from an Israeli military outpost and that an Israeli coordinator had agreed to establish a “Green Zone” free of shelling or gunfire. Footage reviewed by the outlet showed militia vehicles with Hebrew markings scratched off.

Astal admitted the group receives logistical support and ammunition from outside Gaza and has bought Hamas weapons on the black market. A senior fighter in the Abu Shabab militia also said Israel had enabled the smuggling of guns, cash, and vehicles.

The militias reportedly coordinate their movements with Israeli forces at Kerem Shalom to bring in supplies, while western powers are said to provide indirect material support. Two of the militia leaders are former Palestinian Authority security officers.

While the Mansi militia denied direct contact with the Israeli military, it acknowledged coordination with Israel’s District Coordination Office. Abu Shabab previously told Army Radio he was open to working with Israel, calling Trump’s ceasefire plan “a way to end the war.”

“Soon we will achieve full control of the Gaza Strip,” he told Sky News.

(Summarised by The Cradle online news updates on Telegram 26 October 2025).

FOOTNOTES

1The yeomanry militias deployed in Wexford, such as the North Cork, proved to be the most vicious and indisciplined of the Occupation’s forces and are noted in a number of songs in English and Irish:
“… He led us on against the coming soldiers,And the cowardly yeomen we put to flight…” (Boolavogue, Patrick McCall, 1898);

“… Is go gcuirfeam yeomen ag crith in a mbrógaibh
Ag díol a gcomhair ar Shliabh na mBan.” (Sliabh na mBan, believed by Mícheál Óg Ó Longáin, 1798).

2Since then renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland (sic).

3The same year that mass internment without trial was introduced by the British Occupation and that the Ballymurphy Massacre of protesting nationalist civilians was carried out by the Parachute Regiment.

4Sometimes even from the oppressed native community.

5They are more easily dispensed with too, should they be no longer needed or their relationship become too public.

6In his own chapter For God and Ulster: The culture of terror and Loyalist Death Squads in Northern Ireland in Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror, Ed. Jeffrey Sluka (200), USA.

7Excerpt from ibid, sourced in https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/violence/docs/sluka00.htm

8The term in Persian originally denoted ‘soldier’ but borrowed into Urdu and Hindi and under British rule, denoted native soldiers and their units in the British armed forces.

9The Ertzaintza. The Navarran police (‘Forales’) could also be called ‘Sepoys’ but are more usually called by other uncomplimentary names.

10 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-40528129

11 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/12/palestinian-journalist-saleh-aljafarawi-shot-dead-in-gaza-city-clashes

12 Weapons, warlords, and wasteland: Israel’s new strategy for Gaza

SOURCES

Weapons, warlords, and wasteland: Israel’s new strategy for Gaza

https://news.sky.com/story/revealed-the-plan-for-a-new-gaza-and-the-four-militias-israel-is-backing-to-defeat-hamas-13456416