There’s a new Wailing Wall … THERE’S A NEW WAILING WALL; It’s in Gaza, and here mothers and fathers wail at the bloody bodies of their children; children wail at the bloody bodies of parents; all wail over the bodies of friends and neighbours; the wailing rises and the tears fall.
At this Wailing Wall … AT THIS WAILING WALL, we wail the mendacity of Israel and the West, we wail the complicity of the media in the West; while rockets, shells and bombs rained down upon us the lies fell faster and thicker than rain, a torrent of lies that never stopped. To surge in flood over the bodies of our slain.
You come now with your flag of peace … YOU COME NOW WITH YOUR FLAG OF PEACE tramping along the bloodstained road and up the mountain of our bones and the rubble of our homes and offer us business as before or – bombardment once more.
Now that the bombs have stopped … NOW THAT THE BOMBS HAVE STOPPED we too stop and look around us: our schools gutted and bloodstained, mosques and hospitals in ruins, so many of our buildings rubble, or with gaping shell-holes, in the hell-hole you have made of Gaza.
We had so little and you destroyed so much. WE HAD SO LITTLE AND YOU DESTROYED SO MUCH!
In the days to come, more will sicken and die, of wounds on flesh and wounds on soul, of lack of medicine, fuel or food as even in pause you take your toll.
Many are numb, some try to forget … MANY ARE NUMB, SOME TRY TO FORGET, some try to live without forgetting, but there is a begetting, for in many hearts too, your phosphorus flakes are snowing, the embers of hate are glowing, their machine guns and bombs are mowing you and your children for generations to come.
Against your Goliath … AGAINST YOUR GOLIATH, our slingshots were of no use; yes, God was with you – he’s no longer Hebrew or English – He’s American now; you shot us down like fish in the shooting barrel you made of Gaza.
You wish us to recognise you? YOU WISH US TO RECOGNISE YOU? Of course we recognise you – the imprint of your boots are upon our necks; we carry them from cradle to the grave.
But we will never agree to accept or agree that you should keep what you have stolen and plundered the land you have sundered or that you can make us second-class citizens in our own land.
While we struggle to endure … WHILE WE STRUGGLE TO ENDURE and to ensure that you never defeat us let it be that we do not learn to treat others as you now treat us.
What did you learn from your oppressors? WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM YOUR OPPRESSORS? If all you learned was how to also do so much of what they did, then truly have the six million died in vain and you mock their memory by invoking them.
Diarmuid, Feabhra 2009
I began to write this just as the December 2008- January 2009 bombardment of Gaza by Israel was coming to an end and I rounded it off in February.
That was the one they called “Operation Cast Lead”, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly non-combatants, including 400 children and injured over 5,300 — again, mostly non-combatants.
I little thought that so few years later Israel would unleash an even worse bombardment upon the beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza, as it did in July 2014, during which it killed over 2,300, again mostly non-combatants and that time nearly 500 children.
The damage to infrastructure is colossal and the Israeli-Egyptian blockade makes significant repair impossible.
The commentary above was written in 2014. Apart from killing in raids, there were more massacres to come: March 2018, more than 700 Palestinian refugees killed at the borders of the Israeli state and in 2021, over 260 Palestinians killed after Zionist provocation at the Al Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem.
In August 2022, over 30 Palestinians, including women and children, killed in Israeli missile attacks and this year, by August, Israel had killed 172 Palestinians. Now, over October-November 2023, they have killed 133 Palestinians in the West Bank and over 9,000 in Gaza, including 3,760 children.
There is no question that this is genocide: “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”
“Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Nor did that genocide begin in October this year, nor last year, nor the year before. It began in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel and has been continuing since.
We understand the pressure under which news media organisations are under and how easy it is to lapse into descriptions that have become common usage in the profession and so have issued this guide to greater accuracy.
Gaza Hell by Israeli bombing (Photo cred: Ahmed Zakot/SOPA Images/Sipa USA)
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Palestinian militant
OUR CORRECTION
Palestinian
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Hamas/ Palestinian terrorist
OUR CORRECTION
Hamas/ Palestinian freedom fighter
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Hamas rampage into Israel
OUR CORRECTION
Hamas breakthrough into Israeli-controlled territory
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Israel bombardment of Gaza in response to Hamas attack on October 7th
OUR CORRECTION
Israeli attack on Gaza in response to Palestinian response to 75 years of oppression, murders and massacres, including well over 200 Palestinians killed by August this year.3
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Palestinian attack on Israel
OUR CORRECTION
see above
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Israeli civilians
OUR CORRECTION
Israeli armed settlers, military reservists – and civilians
Most capitalist imperialist states around the world
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Israel’s right to defence
OUR CORRECTION
Right of the Zionists to occupy land, massacre and terrorise the inhabitants, treat them as third-class citizens and massacre and terrorise again if they resist.
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Palestinians were killed/ Hamas killed Israelis
OUR CORRECTION
Israel killed Palestinians/ Hamas killed Israelis
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Jewish state
OUR CORRECTION
Zionist state
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Illegally-occupied lands outside Israel
OUR CORRECTION
Part of unjustly-occupied whole of Palestine
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Contested attribution of bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza
OUR CORRECTION
Israeli bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza5 after telling hospitals to evacuate
TERM IN COMMON MEDIA USE
Uncertainty around accuracy of Palestinian casualty figures
OUR CORRECTION
Absolute accuracy of Palestinian casualty figures, accepted by a wide section of international organisations including bodies of the United Nations.
FOOTNOTES
1We’re aware that the term “war” often brings to mind the air forces, armies and navies of two states in conflict and that the Palestinians have neither air force nor navy and that their army is collectively composed of guerrilla groups. Nevertheless, for convenience and in the tradition of naming armed long conflicts of liberation “wars” we consider the term useable in this context.
2Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Elections throughout the territory – not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank. Al Fatah did not accept the results and tried to stage an armed coup in Gaza and in a short and brutal struggle were defeated by Hamas which, however left the West Bank in more-or-less Fatah hands. The then-Fatah choice for President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, remained in power and has not authorised elections since. The PA has a huge number of security personnel (over 80,000) widely regarded as brutal, repressive and colluding with the Israeli regime against Palestinians.
3The massacres by Zionist militias forced 700,000 Palestinians out of Palestine in 1948 as the State of Israel was being founded. Since then, in regular raids, massacres and bombardments, Israel had killed an estimated 65,000 Palestinians just up to 2021, after which there have been a number of bombardments of Gaza and raids into the West Bank at intervals with thousands more deaths in total. The vast majority of those `Palestinian deaths have been and continue to be those of civilians, over half of women and children, the latter over one-third.
4At the end of June 2023, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) was holding 4,499 Palestinians in detention or in prison on what it defined “security” grounds. According to recent reports, since the attack on Gaza, that number has doubled.
Israel is justifying its bombardment of Gaza as the right to defend the state, effectively in the right to take revenge, with which the western states are in agreement.
Leaving aside the question of whether bombing homes, bakeries, markets and hospitals constitutes ‘defence’, what should we think about the right of a state to defend itself as a principle?
It seems natural that every state should have the right to defend itself; perhaps that right is extrapolated from the generally-agreed right of the individual to self-defence. In bourgeois law, the need to defend oneself can be a valid legal defence even against a murder charge.
The individual is generally understood to have the right of self-defence particularly in their home but also in public places. However, it is important to note that this right, even in bourgeois law, is not considered valid in every conceivable case.
For example, the right of one individual to use violence in their defence can be cancelled by the right of their victim to self-defence if the latter is being seriously harmed by the former, so that violence by the victim might be considered a reasonable response in their own self-defence.
People carrying out a robbery or kidnapping, to take another instance, are not considered to have the right to use violence if attacked in the course of the robbery by the victim or by security forces or even a passer-by.
Proceeding to the question of the rights of states to defence, we might say that the UK had the right to defend itself from Nazi attack during WWII and certainly so did the USSR, so too later with the rights of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from the USA’s invasions and bombings in the 1970s.
But did the Cambodian state have the right to defend itself from Vietnamese invasion when the Pol Pot regime was carrying out mass exterminations of sections of its population? Or the did the states of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy have the right to defence against the Allied forces?
Continuing in consideration of the right of a state to defence, how does that go when the attack comes from within the territory of the state itself?
Most Irish and democratic people outside would probably deny that the English Crown had the right to defend itself against the Irish rebellions of the clans (1167-1690s) or of the United Irish republicans, or against the Fenian insurrections, the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence (1919-1921).
Similarly, most would deny the right of the English or French monarchies to defend themselves against the internal republican uprisings of 1649 and 1789, respectively.
When the “internal” force attacking is a nation, then national rights of self-determination counter and supersede the rights of the state to self-defence. The case of the United Irishmen has already been noted but slave colony Haiti and colonial Algeria against France could be listed there too.
ISRAEL
The Israeli State is a colonial regime sitting on the Palestinian people’s land. It is in addition a state which is deeply religiously sectarian on the basis of Judaeism, in a sense which is far more racial than it is religious and, in many cases, may have no religious aspect at all.
Aftermath of Israeli militia massacre of Palestinian village Deir Yassin (9th April 1948 – five weeks before the the founding of the Israeli state). After the massacre, the Zionists took over the village, and in 1980 the occupation established settlement units on top of the original buildings of the village, and gave the names of the “Argon”, “Etzel”, “Palmach” and “Haganah” murder gangs to places in it. 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee the land. (Source photos: Internet)
Being able to claim Jewish descent is the qualification for Israeli citizenship, not religious practice or even belief. As for the Palestinians, whether Muslim or Christian, Arab or Berber, they are ‘other’, second-class or even third-class at best.
Third-class because the Ashkenazi Jewish colonists discriminate against other Jews too, for example the Ethiopian (because many are black), the Sephardic and Mizrahi (because they are not Ashkenazi). They will all speak Hebrew now but many additional languages are spoken too.
The Zionist trend in the Jewish world insisting that Jews had a right to a state of their own on a land of their own, even if some other people already lived there, was a minority trend among Jews until fairly recently, though it gained dominance in the West over years after the establishment of Israel.
Indeed there are sections of Jewish society that consider the creation of a Jewish state to be contrary to the teachings of the Torah. But as observed earlier, Zionism is not really about religion.
The establishment of the Zionist state was achieved at the price of the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians, the imposition of racist and sectarian laws, apartheid, massacres,1 oppression of the Palestinians and repression of their resistance.
The story of the state of Israel in the land of Palestine until now can be characterised by two images: the murder of Palestinian people along with the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 as the Zionist state came into being – and the genocidal bombing of Gaza these three weeks.
As of some hours ago, over 7,000 Palestinians have been killed in the past three weeks – including nearly 3,000 children.
Medical staff in Gaza treating children and woman injured by Israeli bombing, uploaded 26 October. (Source image: Al Jazeera)
There are many ways to kill, including despair, lack of or obstruction to medical treatment or access to good water and food. But from 1948 to 2021 (i.e excluding the killings since then and this year’s), well over 20,000 Palestinian civilians have been directly killed by the Israeli state’s military and settlers.
To claim that “Israel has the right to defence” is to say that all those things are justified and must be defended, must be perpetuated, that we must be complicit in it and that the best we can do is to ask Israel to practice its racism, colonialism, oppression and repression somewhat more gently.
Israeli bombing wide-scale destruction of Gaza, October 2023 (Photo sourced: Internet)
Israel – which is to say the Zionist project — has absolutely no right to defence.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1When hostilities erupted in 1948, the villagers of Deir Yassin and those of the nearby Jewish village of Giv’at Shaul signed a pact, later approved at Haganah headquarters, to maintain their good relations, exchange information on movement of outsiders through village territory, and ensure the safety of vehicles from the village. The inhabitants of Deir Yassin upheld the agreement scrupulously, resisting infiltration by Arab irregulars. Though this was known to the Irgun and Lehi forces, they attacked the village on April 9, 1948. The assault was beaten off initially, with the attackers suffering 40 wounded. Only the intervention of a Palmach unit, using mortars,[20] allowed them to occupy the village. Houses were blown up with people inside and people shot: 107 villagers, including women and children, were killed. The survivors were loaded on trucks that were driven through Jerusalem in a victory parade,[19][21] with some sources describing further violence by Lehi soldiers.[22] Four Irgun or Lehi men were killed.[23] The incident became known as the Deir Yassin massacre.
On April 10, 1948, one day after the Deir Yassin massacre, Albert Einstein wrote a critical letter to the American Friends of Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (the U.S chapter of Lehi) refusing to assist them with aid or support to raise money for their cause in Palestine.[24][25] On December 2, 1948, many prominent American Jews signed and published an op-ed article in The New York Times critical of Menachem Begin and the massacre at Deir Yassin. (Wikipedia)
A three-day period of national mourning began Friday in Syria over the drone bombing of a passing-out ceremony of Syrian soldiers completing their Army training, the death toll so far being 89 including women and children.
The news of events in Palestine over the weekend has overshadowed the Syrian news but nevertheless the events in Syria were very serious.
Thursday’s strike on the Homs Military Academy killed 89 people, among graduating soldiers and proud family members, also wounding as many as 277, according to the health ministry — and the death toll could rise as some of the wounded are in a critical condition.
Women relatives of soldiers in the passing-out parade comfort one another in their grief. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Who did it? and Why? are two questions that spring to mind. The mass media which is usually quick to speculate – or to find some ‘expert’ to speculate for them – are not doing so. In fact, they are not even asking the questions.
But that doesn’t stop the media from slagging off the Syrian state leadership and dropping in a kick at the Russians at the same time.
So Associated Press agency starts off “putting it all into context”, mar dhea, as we can see from a number of quotations scattered throughout the report:
No group immediately claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack as Syria endures its 13th year of conflict that has killed half a million people.
Syria’s crisis started with peaceful protests against Mr Assad’s government in March 2011 but quickly morphed into a full-blown civil war after the government’s brutal crackdown on the protesters. You see, undemocratic regime!
In 2015, when Russia provided key military backing to Syria, as well as Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. You see, Russia and Iran involved!
Russia and Turkey, who support rival sides in the country’s conflict, reached a ceasefire in March 2020, ending a three-month Russian-backed government offensive against insurgents. Russia again and … Turkey? The NATO state in the Middle East?
So how did the Syrian State respond to the bombing? Well, what you expect from a brutal regime that is supported by nasty Russia and Iran?
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, reported that Russian warplanes carried out several airstrikes on the town of Jisr al-Shughour and nearby villages on Friday.
Overnight, Syrian troops pounded the last major rebel-held region in parts of Idlib and Aleppo provinces, killing at least three people and wounding more than 15 in the town of Daret Azeh, according to the opposition’s Syrian Civil Defence, also known as White Helmets.
The area is a stronghold of the Turkistan Islamic Party, a Uyghur militant group, many of whose fighters are Chinese Muslims.
Hey, wait a minute! Quoting “Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor” (i.e pro-NATO)? White Helmets, an anti-Syrian regime organisation? And wasn’t NATO involved in a war in Syria?
Yes, it was: US imperialism with its allies was deeply involved there.
A new U.S. brigade combat team arrives in front of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle at a base in Syria’s Hasakah province in 2019. (Photo cred: Jane Arraf/NPR)
Also in fact there were “peaceful protests against Mr Assad’s government in March 2011” and they were suppressed by the State but, without justifying that suppression, let’s look at the Middle East context of the time.
IRAQ, then LIBYA, then SYRIA – OOPS!
The USA’s plan to encircle Russia from the Middle East1 involved knocking out the regimes that were not allied to it. First step, invading Iraq in2003 with lies about “weapons of mass destruction” and the hysteria following the Twin Towers bombing.2
Then supporting the coalition of forces to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi’sLibya in 2011 and at the same time, those against Assad inSyria. After their overthrow, Iran would have been next, to bring the USA nearly right up to Russia’s border and getting rid of the Iranian regime at the same time.
This is also why the West encouraged a rising against the status quo in Georgia (which Russia and Georgian allies suppressed) and supports the Armenian resistance in Azerbaijan.
Map showing some of the states in Eastern Europe and the Middle East bordering or on the approach to Russia; Libya would be further south on the map (Image sourced: Internet).
Having jihadist3 muslim fundamentalists in a western imperialist-supported coalition against Assad in Syria would have been fine for the USA,4 as it was in Iraq but inconveniently, ISIS was an important part of of the islamic fundamentalist spectrum and it had declared war on the USA.
So the USA had to go to war against ISIS but also to support the SDF,the Kurdish-led coalition in Rojava, who were fighting ISIS. Russia came to the support of Assad against the US-supported NATO proxies and muslim jihadists other than ISIS.
Turkey, although a NATO member, got involved mostly because of its hostility to the Kurdish left-nationalist movement in Turkey5 and that movement’s close connections to the Syrian Kurds which, though working with NATO, were dumped by Trump to considerable US internal disagreement.
The presence of Russia’s forces prevented the USA from invading Syria or enforcing a no-fly zone over it and prevented also Turkey from advancing beyond the section of Syria which it has taken over and where its proxies – particularly among jihadists — are in operation.
And also helped to hugely reduce the threat of ISIS.6
That is the backdrop to the western media’s reporting, pretending that the whole problem in Syria is entirely the regime’s own fault and that Russia and Hizbollah are making it all worse. And not mentioning the USA or NATO even once.
BUT WHO DID IT?
The western media, through emphasising the areas attacked by Syrian military, seems to be suggesting one of the jihadist groups were responsible. But would they have had the capacity for such an attack from 60 kms away? And if they did, were they supplied from outside?
The regime’s military statement accusing jihadists “backed by known international forces” of responsibility hints strongly at a western powers’ axis member and said “it will respond with full force and decisiveness to these terrorist organisations, wherever they exist”.
If the West did plan this attack or supply jihadists who carried it out, it is difficult to see what tactically or strategically they could hope to gain from it.
Funeral march of Syrian Army carrying coffins of victims of the drone attack. (Photo sourced: Internet)
JUSTIFIABLE IN WAR?
The western media, although it included coverage of the grief of relatives of the slain, for the most part did not discuss the question of whether the attack was justified in war, though it would and does do so continually with regard to the war in Ukraine.
Civilian woman injured in the drone attack. (Photo sourced: Internet)
In war it is of course justifiable to bomb the enemy’s soldiers, even those still in training or just successfully completing it. But efforts should be made to avoid causing civilian casualties and hitting a passing-out ceremony is bound to cause many, including women and children.
In that regard the bombing cannot be regarded as a legitimate act of war and therefore must be considered a war crime – but again, that seems a term reserved in the West with which to accuse the Russians in the Ukraine war alone.
1As with NATO in Eastern Europe for years but although coups and insurrections were also encouraged there, seduction of regimes was more prevalent.
2It is well to remember that the Iraqi regime had been an ally of US imperialism and had waged a war against the new Iranian regime from 1980 to 1988 after the overthrow of Western ally the Shah of Iran (1979). At the time the West didn’t care about the Hussein regime’s gassing of Kurds in 1988 (I personally knew people who were trying without success to get it into the news then) but 23 years later it was suddenly “news” when the USA decided that the Hussein regime would have to go.
3Fundamentalist Muslims who claim they are engaged in a ‘Jihad’, i.e a ‘holy war’.
4The USA deliberately encouraged and helped build up jihadists in Afghanistan to overthrow the socialist regime 1978-1992) and its Soviet supporters, in the course of which it helped create Al Qaeda.
6‘On 22 November 2015, Syria′s president Bashar Assad said that within two months of its air strikes, Russia had achieved more than the US-led coalition had achieved in its fight against ISIL in a year. Two days later, the US said: “Russia right now is a coalition of two, Iran and Russia, supporting Assad. Given Russia’s military capabilities and given the influence they have on the Assad regime, them cooperating would be enormously helpful in bringing about a resolution of the civil war in Syria, and allow us all to refocus our attention on ISIL. But I think it’s important to remember that you’ve got a global coalition organized. Russia is the outlier.’”
At the end of December 2015, senior US officials privately admitted that Russia had achieved its central goal of stabilising the Assad government and, with the costs and casualties relatively low, was in a position to sustain the operation at this level for years to come. (Wikipedia)
We are very sincere about defending democracy in the Ukrainian state and particularly so since the Russian invasion of February 2022. This is not easy since increasingly some people are doubting that there is democracy at all in Ukraine.
One of the acts of the Ukrainian Government being quoted as ‘anti-democratic’ was the banning of a dozen different political parties. However, surely being banned is no great problem when the due elections have been postponed indefinitely.
Some people have complained about the cancellation but after all, the country is under martial law, as Prime Minister Zelensky says, so it’s not a good time for elections.
(Martial Law is when all civil rights are suspended and the Government can make laws without parliament and jail people without trial if it needs to).
There have been some accusations about censorship and state control of media but some of those allegations are by journalists hostile to the Ukrainian regime, such as Gonzalo Lira who is in jail for posting material critical of the Ukrainian government.
And Natalie Sedletska reported on former premier Poroshenko holidaying in the Maldives with his family while our country was at war. Obviously he should not have done that but really is this the time to report on such things?
Naturally she got into trouble over that with state security, even when Zelensky took over.
So did her agency, the Ukrainian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. You’d think they’d know better, since the US State funds that radio network and everybody knows that the USA is thankfully supporting our fight against Russian occupation.
However, whilst it is true that all mass Ukrainian media is now under state control, not many Ukrainian journalists complain about censorship. And yes, it is illegal to criticise the memory of Ukrainian national heroes – unless they were communist, of course.
Stepan Banderas is a national hero of Ukraine with annual torchlit parades in his honour but he was definitely not Communist. It is true that Banderas killed many Poles and Jews but at the time he was working with German Nazi occupiers of the Ukraine during WWII against the Soviets.
One of the most frequent slanders on Ukrainian democracy is to suggest that the state is fascist, which is ridiculous. It is true that the Azov Battalion and Right Sector militias were – shall we say – extreme nationalists; but they have now been incorporated into the National armed forces.
Another propaganda attack on the Zelensky government regards recruitment for our valiant armed forces, with accusations of people being grabbed off the street – even sick and disabled people – and forced into the army. Well, not nice if true but the Russians have many more soldiers than us …
Thankfully, not many of these allegations reach the public in the West; if they did, it might lead to emotional demands to cease supplying us with weapons. We know we’re going to get a huge bill for aid at some time in the future but right now we desperately need it to keep fighting!
Of course, there are communists in the West (why are they permitted to even be there?) who spread these allegations, especially through social media, although some of the platforms like Face Book, Twitter and even Youtube do their best to block them.
It may be hard to believe, perhaps, but there are also some socialists in the West who work hard to discredit those communists, calling them “Putinistas”, supporting the social media platforms closing them down and even sometimes demanding they do so!
In fact, anyone who publicises those allegations, if not a communist, is surely some kind of fellow-traveller. Even though the Russian Federation is no longer communist.
Thank you for reading. We must all keep on working hard to continue defending democracy in Ukraine under President Zelensky.
Oscar DíazTranslation from Castilian Spanish by D.Breatnach (Reading time main piece: 10 mins.)
1. What is Herri Ekimena?
Herri Ekimena is an initiative that emerged in March 2022. A series of organizations began to get together due to concern about the offensive of Atlanticist imperialism in Ukraine, in addition to the blatant manipulation of the media to get us to support their war strategy.
We also observed that, in a context of capitalist crisis and with the excuse of the war against Russia, economic measures were being imposed that resulted in greater impoverishment of the working class.
That is why we took to the streets at that time with the slogan “NATO and the EU condemn us to war and misery”, to turn the official discourse around a little and point to these two organizations as the main ones responsible for the increase in international tensions, as well as for the oppression of the working classes of the imperialist bloc itself.
Also in the month of June of that 2022 we called a demonstration in Bilbo, “against the imperialism of NATO and the EU” and calling for the end of the Russophobia that is still being promoted.
In parallel to the NATO summit that was held in Madrid, we also carried out a 48-hour poster campaign in Gernika, a city with great anti-fascist symbolism that the Ukrainian Nazis tried to appropriate, citing it in a speech before the Spanish Parliament by Zelensky himself.
After a short break, we resumed the fight in the streets at the end of the year, with the “Free Euskal Herria out of NATO and the EU” campaign. In March we held a massive demonstration in Bilbo, together with Askapena1 and the Bardenas Ya2 collective.
View of demonstration against NATO and war in Bilbao, June 2022. (Photo source: Bultza Herri Ekimena)
This demonstration was exciting to us as we saw that the work that had been done was already bearing fruit and that the anti-imperialist spirit that has historically characterized Euskal Herria was projected in the streets.
We are currently in a restructuring process in order to be more effective, and give new impetus to the anti-imperialist struggle in the streets, which is where this game is truly played.
2. Why combine anti-fascist and anti-imperialist slogans?
The imperialist offensive, which has to do with the systemic crisis of capitalism and the rise of new economic powers, is being accompanied by a general reduction of rights and freedoms.
Those in power fear popular revolts, like those that have been taking place in the French State in recent months.
In Euskal Herria we know well what emergency laws or illegal practices are employed to put an end to dissent, but these types of measures are spreading and becoming normalized throughout Europe. Concentration camps for migrants, deportations without any type of legal guarantee, electronic anklet tags are also normalized…
And also in the case of the countries bordering Russia, imperialism is responsible for waving old supremacist and anti-Slavic flags, such as is happening in Ukraine or Poland.
We see therefore that capitalism, in its most decadent phase, has little scruple when it comes to reactivating liberticidal policies or inciting openly Nazi military and paramilitary shock forces.
So in effect, we believe that the anti-imperialist struggle and the anti-fascist struggle are inseparable parts of the same struggle for our rights and freedoms.
3. A few years ago one could see Donbass flags in the stands of Atlethic3. Why mix football and politics?
Through various institutions, including football clubs, they want to force down our throats the supposed “depoliticization of public spaces.” It is false, because they are the first to try to control absolutely all areas of our lives that we may become submissive and uncritical people.
The media bombardment is constant, generating false debates among humble people about insecurity, occupying empty properties… They thus try to legitimize, by action or omission, measures of social control and police repression that are very, very worrying.
So when someone puts a poster on the street to denounce any injustice, or puts up a banner, or paints graffiti… They are calling into question that false normality that they want to impose on us.
Banner displayed by Athletic Bilbao FC fans during a match. The text is difficult to see in its entirety but in general it is clearly in solidarity with the Donbas region against attack from the Kiev administration.
It is sad — but this situation also reflects the weakness of the system in terms of political legitimacy. Who explicitly supports them? Who is not fed up with everything that is happening? So they are afraid of the flame that starts a prairie fire.
Sports venues do not escape this logic of imposing false normality, even if the laws have to be twisted or passed directly through the triumphal arch.
A Donetsk flag, for example, ruins their photo and calls into question the story that people agree with what they do. So they impose fines of €3,000 just for displaying the flag of a People’s Republic.
Let’s hope that in not many years we will be able to analyze all this as the blows of a dying regime, but for now it is up to us to organize the response and popular solidarity. Repression should not be normalized, nor should people who step forward feel alone.
We do not believe that the social base of EH Bildu is in favor of NATO. That is, if we asked EH Bildu voters if they were in favor of NATO, surely 99% would say no. The problem is that, for its leaders, opposing Atlanticist imperialism is not currently on the list of priorities.
Regarding the issue of the war in Ukraine, Arnaldo Otegi5 has openly positioned himself in favor of Ukrainian “sovereignty” and against the Russian “occupation.” Is Ukraine now a sovereign state? Or is it rather a puppet of NATO in its offensive against Russia?
Doesn’t Russia have the right to defend itself from NATO attacks? What about the thousands of people killed in Donbass since 2014? Should Russia have been obliged to watch this genocide impassively?
Have the self-determination processes in Donetsk, in Lugansk, in Crimea … not been practical exercises of sovereignty? In this context, we can say that the speech of some EH Bildu leaders has favored and continues to favor the interests of NATO.
Their support for the State Budget deserves special mention, which includes a 25% increase in military spending. A measure imposed precisely by NATO to approach 2% of GDP in 2029, which is truly outrageous.
So… perhaps it is harsh to say that EH Bildu is in favor of NATO so let us put it another way: What is EH Bildu doing to make Euskal Herria break with NATO? What teaching are they carrying out among their social base and at a public level to create a truly anti-imperialist consciousness?
Very little or nothing, we believe, that is the reality.
5. Will it be possible to continue to see reliable information about Ukraine in the Basque Country and the Spanish state now that military juntas have been formed in African countries that have expelled French embassies? They are very different countries and thousands of kilometers away…
The events that are taking place in the SAHEL area are complex processes, and surely have many sides that make it difficult for us to equate them with the decolonization processes that we have known historically.
But we would be committing a mistake if, due to these supposed “imperfections” with respect to the theoretical manual, we stopped supporting countries that are fighting for nothing less than to expel their occupiers (since those are true occupiers who try to impose themselves by force of weapons thousands of kilometers from their borders) and also to gain control of their enormous natural resources.
How can it be that in extraordinarily rich countries, like Niger or Gabon, the majority of the population survives in absolute poverty? We will have to carefully observe all these processes, but in anti-imperialist Euskal Herria we can only rejoice and tell them that they are not alone.
In this land that, to a degree, also knows what it is to fight against armed occupiers and various collaborators, we know very well that solidarity is the love between people.
Regarding the quality of the information that we are able to receive in Euskal Herria or in the Spanish state, we believe that right now it is below minimum.
It is pathetic to see how, every time an event occurs that could undermine the hegemony of Atlantic imperialism, the mainstream media wait to receive instructions before even reporting the event.
The control of capital over the big media is a reality, so we must promote and support alternative means of information and communication. And also to fight openly in the streets, so that they have no choice but to report our demands.
6. Couldn’t the creation of a multipolar world be dangerous on a war level?
Yes, in fact it already is. We had been talking for years about the end of Yankee hegemony and the economic rise of countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the so-called BRICS.
Perhaps we thought that this change of orientation of world hegemony was going to be a calm process, without any surprises…
But nothing could be further from the truth. While it is true that Yankee imperialism is mortally injured (which we believe it is), the truth is that it seems willing to kill as it dies.
Currently it has restructured NATO in a few months, has de facto absorbed the European Union and is reconfiguring its alliance policy on a global scale. It is increasingly easier to identify “which side” the different states are on, which can be the prelude to a conflict on a planetary scale.
We have been able to verify this recently with Morocco. NATO and the EU buy Morocco and abandon the Sahara to its fate.6 What should the Sahrawis do if Algeria, Russia or China offer them help to win their rights and survive as a people?
Of course there may be geopolitical interests in this aid from emerging powers, but it is necessary to analyze whether the agreements, commercial exchanges, donations and aid are produced with mutual respect for sovereignty and benefit the currently oppressed nations.
Of course, from a revolutionary point of view we have to be exacting, and not give a blank cheque to these emerging powers.
In this entire process of multipolarity, whether we like it or not, which is already making its mark upon world geopolitics, there is a class struggle that we must not ignore.
But this critical stance cannot lead us to fall into ninism and evade our own historical responsibility: to combat Atlanticist imperialism from the very heart of the beast.
7. You say “Euskal Herria free from NATO.” And what about the rest of the Spanish state?
We say Euskal Herria should be free outside NATO, but also outside the EU. We believe that this contribution is important, since for many years consideration of leaving the EU has been a kind of taboo, also in Euskal Herria.
Some thought that the EU might even support a possible independence process in Euskal Herria, just as was thought in Catalonia.
“A Free Basque Country out of NATO and the EU”.
But the EU has definitively been revealed as a capitalist lobby, as an instrument at the service of elites with a more than dubious past, even with regard to their support for Nazism.
Úrsula von der Leyen, Josep Borrell… are faithful representatives of the EU of Capital, authoritarian and totally committed to the interests of the US. That is why we say that neither the nation nor as a class have a future within the EU.
We make this statement from Euskal Herria, which is our area of struggle. But of course it extends to the entire Spanish State, as well as to the French State and all the peoples of Europe.
A future in freedom is not possible belonging to these criminal organizations, neither in Euskal Herria nor anywhere else.
8. What do you think of the military administration by Margarita Robles of the PSOE/UP government?7
Margarita Robles is a pit bull of Spanish politics, a woman who knows perfectly the ins and outs of the State from the offices to the sewers. Not for nothing has she been in positions of power for more than 30 years, originally in the shadow of Belloch, later of Rubalcaba…
At first it may have been surprising to see her at the head of a Ministry like the Defense Ministry, she who comes from the judiciary and who, even in relation to the conflict between Euskal Herria and the Spanish State, had adopted a dialogue profile at certain times.
We are missing a lot of information (I wish that we in Herri Ekimena knew what was going on in the Ministry of Defense, haha), but Margarita Robles is probably dedicating herself to doing in the Spanish military what she also did in her day in the Ministry of Justice and Interior.
That was to send the most archaic elements to the refrigerator in a non-traumatic way to perfectly adapt to the current standards and guidelines of NATO and the EU. Change a minimum so that everything remains absolutely the same.
Can anyone imagine Spanish generals standing up for Spanish national sovereignty in the face of Atlanticist imposition? This could happen in the French State, in fact it would not be unreasonable for something like this to happen.
In the Spanish State it is much more unlikely, but it is the responsibility of politicians like Mrs. Robles that nothing should deviate from the script written by Washington and Brussels.
In this regard, it is worth highlighting the role of the PSOE in what has been the process of integration of the Spanish State into imperialist structures. In addition to Felipe González, we could mention Javier Solana (who became Secretary General of NATO), Josep Borrell8…
Whether it is a matter of affinity, or a matter of pragmatism, the truth is that it appears that the PSOE generates a lot more trust among the imperialist powers than any other political party at the level of the State.
9. There were elections this past July 23, 2023. Did any of the political forces propose the departure of NATO from the Spanish state?
We are not aware that this was the case. As we have said before, this government is responsible for the largest increase in military spending in history, and faithfully complies with NATO and EU mandates.
“No to NATO – Out of Bardenas!”
Vice President Yolanda Díaz has publicly supported sending weapons to Ukraine and, as far as we know, no party that supports the government has opposed these shipments as a matter of principle.
We remember that these are weapons that are being used by Nazi soldiers to bomb and murder, not alone Russian soldiers but also the civilian population of Donbass. So we have to organize and fight in the streets, because if we don’t, things will remain exactly the same or worse.
This is the reason for existence of Herri Ekimena, to activate the popular struggle against the imperialism of NATO and the EU. We are working at it and, if all goes well, there will be good news in this regard in the coming weeks.
1Askapena was the internationalist solidarity arm of the broad Basque national liberation organisation but split from it many years ago in concern at the deviation from the path of resistance by the leadership under Arnaldo Otegi.
2Bardenas Ya is an organisation campaiging against the military installation in Bardenas, Nafarroa (Navarre).
3Athletic Bilbao FC, whose fans and many of its players have a strong anti-fascist and pro-Basque independence tradition.
4EH Bildu is the political party of the current compliant ‘official’ leadership of the Basque national movement, replacing the Herri Batasuna of the past.
5Leader of EH Bildu who has led the party into what many consider its collaborationist current stance.
6Western Sahara was a Spanish colonial possession and it abandoned it without decolonisation, which allowed Morocco and Mauritania to invade and occupy it against the wishes of the Saharawi people. As a result of the national liberation struggle of the Polisario Front, Mauritania withdrew but Morocco remained in occupation and carrying out repression against the resistance. Shortly before Trump’s departure from the USA’s presidency, he agreed to endorse Moroccan defiance of the UN-recognised Sahawarwi resistance to occupation in exchange for Morocco reversing its long anti-Zionist policy and formally recognising the Zionist occupation of Palestine, which the Moroccan Kingdom has done.
7The recent coalition Government of the Spanish State, the social-democratic PSOE with the Left-social democratic alliance of Unidas Podemos. Currently, the PSOE is endeavouring to form a government in coalition with a somewhat reconfigured Left-social democratic coalition called Sumar.
8All three have been PSOE politicians, Felipe González a prime minister and widely believed head of the GAL anti-Basque terrorist gang. Borrell was President of the European Parliament (2004-2007) and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Spanish Government from 2018 to 2019. He attacked Catalan self-determination which he characterised as part of a disease, despite his own Catalan origin and he is now the Foreign Minister of the European Union.
A recent article appearing briefly on breakingnews.ie was packed with some of the typical anti-Russian propaganda of the current western mass media but also, unintentionally, revealed the purpose of the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
Whether one is pro-NATO, pro-Russia or of some other position, it can be instructive to dissect this mass media propaganda to which we are subjected daily in western states.
Let’s take the headline first, which serves not just as an ‘attractor’ or ‘hook’ to draw the reader but also as a statement in itself and, in this case, very definitely as propaganda.
“NATO prepares military plans to defend against bruised but unbowed Russia” is the headline. So straightaway we are being told that NATO needs to defend itself against Russia, which is turning truth completely on its head.
Firstly, where in the world is the Russian Federation attacking NATO? In Ukraine? But then the Ukrainian state is not actually in NATO, is it? Unless what is meant is US/NATO’s plans to get the Ukrainian state into NATO, of course, which they’re generally vague about.
But if not there, where? Nowhere, of course.
Who threatens whom?
As to reversing reality, one look at a map of Europe with NATO states indicated makes it clear that it is not NATO that needs to defend itself but Russia — and bears out the Russian line that one of the reasons they went to war was to stop their encirclement by NATO.
Map of European states currently in NATO (Image sourced: Internet)
Then, we need to consider that NATO is not a country or one region in the world that could need defence. No, it is a military alliance of European states with the United States. And if it ever was a defensive alliance, that ‘reason’ for its existence disappeared with the fall of the USSR in 1991.
Far from scrapping NATO or even freezing its expansion then, US/NATO started collecting former USSR states into its alliance until nearly every state on Russia’s eastern borders had joined the alliance or was friendly towards it and hostile towards Russia.
The former Ukrainian regime was friendly towards Russia until the coup in 2014 by pro-NATO elements, which are the regime now in power and responsible for a decade of cultural attacks on – and artillery bombardment of – the ethnic Russian population of the Donbas area.
Moldovan troops in joint NATO military exercise in Ukraine, 2017. (Image sourced: Internet)
Only a propaganda-blinded fool or a liar could deny that Russia has been and is under threat from US/ NATO, rather than the reverse.
We could do with looking at the record of states in invasion of – and interference in – other countries.
The USA is the founder and leader of NATO; since the end of WWII, the USA has beeninvolved in 34 armed actions against smaller nations, not including coups and proxy wars. This includes initiating 81% of all global armed conflicts from 1945 to 2001.
The United Kingdom is a major NATO member and, with direct involvement in 35 armed conflicts since WWI, has exceeded the USA’s tally by one and France’s tally of 33, also an important NATO member, by two.
How many Russian Federation armed conflicts since it came into existence? Thirteen, mostly on or around its own state’s territory, whereas the armed conflicts of the USA, UK and France were mostly outside their own territories and far from their borders.
So who has more reason to fear attack from whom?
“What we see in general is that the Russians are careful around NATO. They are not seeking a conflict with NATO. I think that is a sign that they are very, very busy,” the article quotes NATO Chairman, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer saying. “Busy” with what, is he inferring?
Nuclear weapons
“NATO, as an organisation, does not provide weapons or ammunition to Ukraine and has sought to avoid being dragged into a wider war with nuclear-armed Russia,” states the article.
True, as far as that goes but how many NATO states are supplying the Ukrainian state with military equipment? It would be quicker to list how many are not supplying it!
In that quoted sentence, there is almost an admission that were it not for Russia’s nuclear weapons, the US/ NATO forces would be willing to intervene directly to attack and invade Russia.
Indeed, they may still do so. NATO Chairman, Admiral Rob Bauer, in briefing the press, “laid out the biggest revamp to the organisation’s military plans since the Cold War” (of course for purely defensive reasons!).
“US President Joe Biden and his Nato counterparts are set to endorse a major shake-up of the alliance’s planning system at a summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, next week,” we are told.
“About 100 aircraft take to the skies in that territory each day, and a total of 27 warships are operating in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas, with those numbers set to rise. In new plans, NATO aims to have up to 300,000 troops ready to move to its eastern flank within 30 days.”
Of course, weapons and military transport require funding (a big source of profits for the arms industries). “In 2014, NATO committed to move towards spending 2% of GDP on their military budgets by 2024” (2014 was the year of the US/NATO-inspired coup, 8 years before the invasion).
“At their July 11-12 summit, the leaders will set the 2% figure as a spending floor, rather than a ceiling to aim for.”
“Russia bruised but unbowed”
When wishing to force the enemy to surrender, it may be sufficient to bombard it from the air and sea. But in order to extract its riches, the situation requires either invading troops on the ground or a compliant regime.
In this context it is significant that Admiral Baur commented that of Russia’s ground forces, around “94% is now engaged in the war in Ukraine”, meaning that the state’s principal ground defence forces are already engaged in war and presumably taking casualties.
But Russia’s armed forces are “bruised but by no means bowed” in the war in Ukraine, commented Admiral Bauer, which looks very much like an admission that pushing Russian forces into a proxy war in the Ukraine was intended to sap Russia’s military strength.
So that Russia can be invaded, carved up into US/NATO dependencies, its rich natural resources plundered for the benefit of western imperialist states? No, surely not, the USA, UK and France would never go to war for imperialist plunder, would they?
A packed public meeting in Dublin city centre on Saturday listened to and applauded prominent people speaking against the Irish State becoming part of military alliances, whether PESCO1 (“NATO by stealth”2) or NATO itself.
The high-profile panel of speakers chaired by Irish MEP Clare Daly featured fellow MEP Mick Wallace, Sevim Dagdalen (MP Die Linke), Medea Benjamin (founder of Code Pink) and Anne Wright (ex-US Army Major and opponent of the US-Iraq War).
Celebrated anti-imperialist rapper Lowkey was also a speaker as was Yanis Varoufakis (ex-Syrza)3 who addressed the meeting by recorded video from abroad and applauded the Irish for their long resistance to colonialism and urged them to be proud of their state’s neutrality.
Yanis Varoufakis’ recorded speech video screened at the Neutrality Who Cares meeting on Saturday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
BACKGROUND
There is a constitutional impediment to the Irish state’s participating in a war partnership with another state and during WW2 the state’s official position was neutrality.
However, it was always a pro-Allied neutrality with British downed airmen allowed to cross over into UK territory and US servicemen often crossing the UK border to visit the ‘south’, while German downed airmen were interned for the duration of the War.
The impediment is not absolute and is usually referred to as the ‘Triple Lock’, listing the three conditions which would enable to government to send more than 12 troops overseas:
In recent years some politicians and public commentators have floated the idea that the Irish state could rejoin the British Commonwealth and, since the war in the Ukraine, a discourse has arisen that the State needs to join an external military alliance in order to protect itself from Russia.
Sevim Dagdalen, Die Linke party MP, speaking at the Neutrality Who Cares meeting on Saturday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The Irish Times/Ipsos poll in April, amid criticisms of not following best practice in its design and even accusations of trying to steer respondents towards favouring joining some external military alliance, delivered two thirds clearly against the Irish state doing any such thing.
Russophobic propaganda has speculated on the activities of Russian trawlers in the Irish Sea. This is entirely a whipped-up alarm and discussion without the slightest foundation in fact since Russia has never presented the slightest threat, militarily or politically, to the Irish people.
On the other hand, Britain has invaded and occupied Ireland for over 800 years and is still in possession of one-fifth of its territory and has substantial economic and financial interests in the country as, more recently, have the USA and European Union states.
The UK’s Royal Navy frequently enters Irish national waters and the State has regularly permitted its ships, along with warships of other NATO countries, to dock in Irish harbours. And also the Royal Air Force, it has recently emerged, to patrol Irish territorial air space.
As part of this false alarm and discourse, the Irish Government5 recently founded the Consultative Forum on International Security Policy which was scheduled to meet last week in Cork and Galway, then for two days in Dublin Castle.
The President of the State, Michael D. Higgins, in an unusual intervention during an interview with the Examiner expressed concern at what he perceived as the “drift towards NATO” and criticised the composition of the speakers and chairperson of this organisation as being pro-NATO.
Michael D commented on “the admirals, the generals, the air force, the rest of it” and described its chair Louise Richardson, as a person “with a very large DBE – Dame of the British Empire”.
President Higgins apologised later for what he said was “a throway remark” about Richardson but did not withdraw his remarks about the overall composition of the Forum which has indeed been criticised by others, including Richard Boyd Barrett TD6 and Senator Frances Black.
THE DUBLIN MEETING
Varoufakis referred to Ireland as though the nation had won its independence, as was the case with every speaker that followed (with the exception of Lowkey).
A member of the audience was heard to remark ironically to another that he was grateful he had attended as heretofore he hadn’t been aware of Ireland’s ‘independence’.
Lowkey, the British-based rapper, tore the illusion of Irish state neutrality to tatters by recounting the use of Irish airports not only for US Army flights under Air America through Shannon, but also airlines run by the CIA and others using other airports in Irish state territory.
Lowkey, anti-imperialist rapper from London, speaking at the meeting in Dublin. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The rapper exposed the ‘neutrality’ of the Irish government in training soldiers going to fight in Ukraine and also in its continued support for the Israeli State and was cheered when he declared that, as an Iraqi, he was proud that his country had “kicked the ass of the British”.
In a masterful exercise in research-backed criticism, Lowkey went on to strip the pretence of independence and impartiality from the Government-founded “Consultative Forum”, exposing the imperialist and even NATO background of the main panel members and its chairperson.
All the members of the Neutrality Who Cares panel were effective speakers and made useful points although it was curious to hear one of them denouncing “Russian fascists” without commenting on the fascist units in the Ukrainian regime’s national army.
Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, speaking at the Neutrality Who Cares meeting on Saturday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
It was Lowkey who drove the sharpest and longest nails into the verbal crucifixion of the Irish Government’s drive towards NATO and who brought the loudest cheers from his mostly Irish audience.
Even celebrated speaker Daly did not come very close, though she too exposed the propaganda of the Government and pro-NATO cheerleaders. The MEP debunked the excuse of protecting underground communication cables, pointing out that 25% of them are out of action regularly.
The Irish MEP also lampooned the idea of any underwater cable being protected by NATO, considering where the responsibility for the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipeline lies!7
Finally she warned the audience to be on the look out for an attempt to remove the Triple Lock under some kind of excuse as a first step to permit the Government to enter a military alliance.
Clare Daly MEP speaking at the Neutrality Who Cares meeting on Saturday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
A PART OF IRELAND ALREADY IN NATO
It was left to a youth member of the audience in the Q&A section, reading a statement on behalf of the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation, to point out that a part of Ireland is already in NATO, viz. the Six Counties, occupied by Britain and a part of the United Kingdom.
The youth called for a broad front to unite around opposition to becoming part of an external military alliance and imperialism (see full statement in appendix). Small flyers advocating the same course of action had been distributed inside the meeting earlier.
The People Before Profit party also distributed leaflets against joining NATO to people attending the meeting.
Indeed, it is hard to see why the presence of NATO in a part of Ireland should be so markedly missing from the panel’s speeches. Since it cannot have been accidental we must ponder what the rationale for its omission could have been.
Do those on the panel agree with the colonial occupation of a part of Ireland? That seems hard to believe, at least of some of them. Or perhaps they believe its discussion would be a distraction from the neutrality issue and if so, how can that be?
Or is it that they seek the support of sections of Irish society who are comfortable with the continued occupation and partition of Ireland? If so, they are seeking to build the movement against Irish membership of NATO in terms they think acceptable to timid sections of the middle class.
When resolute action becomes necessary or when reaction starts to bite, those sections will fade out of the anti-NATO movement. For practical as well as for ideological reasons, the campaign must appeal to the working class on an unashamedly anti-colonial and anti-imperialist basis.
Protest banner at Government’s Forum for International Security meeting in Cork while Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister, on far left of photo) was speaking (Photo sourced: Internet)
Wherever the Government’s Forum has gone, it has encountered public opposition. It was picketed at its Cork and Galway venues, while inside the former, an anti-NATO banner was unfolded and many in the audience denounced the Government’s direction.
Even after the protesters had been hustled out, another stood up to denounce the chairperson’s speech before he too was manhandled away.
In Dublin Castle, venue for the Forum on Monday and Tuesday with a long history as administrative centre of British occupation, people against NATO, war or militarism and for Irish independence displayed banners and placards of protest and flew national flags.
Protesters inside a Dublin Castle courtyard against the Government Forum on International Security held inside the complex this week. (Source photo: Anti-Imperialist Action)
AIA Tweet featuring National TV broadcaster RTÉ quoting Irish Government leaders’ ridiculous comments on the display of Irish Republican flags by protestors outside main pedestrian entrance to Dublin Castle in the city centre.
IN CONCLUSION
The general mass media silence on the Neutrality Who Cares meeting in Dublin and in downplaying the protests against the Forum at all its locations is part of the Irish Gombeen class drive to join NATO, despite the well-known opposition of the wide Irish population.
It is not forgotten that when tens of thousands thronged Dublin streets marching against triple water service taxation and privatisation, how the mass media reported participation merely by “several thousand” or even “hundreds”.
Nevertheless the comments of the President of the State and remarks by some journalists in the mass media do reveal that even in their own sections, the Gombeens do not have it all their own way. In the general population, however, the mood is clearly for non-militarisation of Ireland.
If the anti-NATO movement remains active and militant and adopts a generally broad anti-imperialist stance, going to most sections of society but especially to the working class, the Gombeens’ drive towards participation in PESCO and NATO will be decisively defeated.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Permanent Structured Cooperation is the strange name of this proposed European Union-wide military alliance.
3Syriza is a Left social-democratic coalition party that was elected to government in Greece in 2015 on a promise to implement necessary social and economic reforms in the teeth of EU and other imperialist resistance. However, once the EU and the ECB began to tighten the screws, the resistance of the party’s leadership disintegrated. Varoufakis had been appointed finance minister and to give him his due, he tried to rally his cabinet colleagues around a program of non-compliance with EU diktats but was unsuccessful. Although it remains the main social-democratic opposition in Greece, the party has continued to slide in popularity in elections since.
4Irish UN peacekeeping forces exceeding 12 personnel have been sent overseas with those three conditions satisfied to many conflicts around the world, most notably Lebanon, where they have suffered some casualties and to the Congo, where they suffered many.
5The Irish Government is a coalition of two traditional main oppositional parties, Fianna Fáile and Fine Gael, with the Green Party. The Labour Party does not have a noticeably different position on external military alliance and Sinn Féin recently dropped their decades-long opposition to Irish membership of NATO and the EU.
6Barrett is a Teachta Dála (member of the Irish parliament) and member of the People Before Profit left-wing political party. Frances Black, with a successful career in singing, is an independent Senator in the same parliament who has sponsored a Bill to ban products from the illegal Israeli settlements. The Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018 was passed in full by the Senate in 2018, and passed its first vote in Dáil Éireann in early 2019. It was then sent for detailed scrutiny in the Oireachtas Select Committee on Foreign & Affairs and Trade. This review took place over several months, hearing from expert testimony and input, and in December 2019 the Committee also voted in favour of the bill. Since then the Government is delaying bringing it forward.
7Although direct proof is not yet available, circumstantial evidence points towards US armed forces’ responsibility and journalist Seymour Hersh (Pullitzer Prize winner for exposing the US military massacre in Mai Lai, Viet Nam and its subsequent attempted cover-up) has confirmed the US military’s responsibility on the basis of inside knowledge from his contacts.
APPENDIX
Text of statement read out during Q&A period of Neutrality – Who Cares public meeting in Dublin 24 June 2023:
Anti Imperialist Action Ireland hold the revolutionary position that Britain, NATO and any other imperialist power is not welcome in Ireland. Anti-Imperialist Action have been active in opposing all forms of imperialism in Ireland and have been to the fore in opposition to NATO.
NATO is a great threat to Ireland and the Irish People, and in realisation of that, we urge and call on everyone here to vocally oppose the presence of NATO in Ireland whether you be an anti-war activist, a Socialist Republican, an anti-Fascist, a trade unionist, or just against the presence of a foreign power in Ireland, get behind this position and ensure that your sons and daughters aren’t sent off to be slaughtered in illegal wars of conquest.
While all the focus has been about the push towards NATO for the 26 Counties we cannot forget that the Six Counties are already occupied by NATO by virtue of Britain’s illegal occupation. Only a militant broad front of progressive forces all across the 32 counties can make a firm stand against NATO’s presence in Ireland. Everyone has a part to play in such a broad front which Anti-Imperialist Action and others are working hard to establish.
The media announces that “the population of Ireland has reached 5 million … for the first time in 170 years”. Interesting – and a barefaced lie! The population of Ireland passed 5 million some time ago and is actually around 6.5 million now.1
Ireland remained with negative population growth until near the end of the last century – mismanaged for most of the population first by the British occupiers of the whole of the island, then by a combination of the native neo-colonial bourgeoisie and of the settler colonial ruling class.
Filling in a census form from which population statistics can be extracted (Photo sourced: Internet)
For more than a century the population of Ireland stood at around 5 million, static despite a high birth rate. This was mathematically possible only through continual massive emigration – mostly to English-speaking regimes: Britain, USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
But it is true that 170 years ago it was more than 5 million – in fact it was around 8.5 million. And it is worth reflecting on how they were able to produce enough food domestically to feed that entire population while now, with a smaller population, we import as much as 80% from abroad.2
It was the Great Hunger that wiped out much of the earlier population, statistics somewhat hiding the pain and sorrow of millions of Irish in death, disease and emigration — and the great transfer of land for cultivation (and rent) to pasturage, with its dangerous environmental impact.
It provided an opportunity for growth of the Catholic Irish capitalist class, the Gombeens, huckstering money-lenders buying up the lands of afflicted neighbours.
The kind of class that the British could depend on in 1921 to manage the neo-colony and to murder and jail those of national liberation3.
Emigration kept population stats steady and, combined with unemployment, ensured a low internal home market for development. An educated workforce and natural resources could be developed but the Gombeen class opened it all to foreign multinationals rather than develop it themselves.
Even with foreign exploitation of the workforce at home, the education system turned out mostly emigration fodder: the Irish tax-payers funded an education system to provide a literate and numerate English-speaking workforces for capitalist exploitation abroad.
No wonder the Irish political class declined to give the Irish abroad a vote in the Irish state – unlike for decades any other state in the European Market. Yet during the 1930s through to the 1960s, money sent home by Irish migrants accounted for an estimated 30% of the Irish State’s economy.4
The Irish state remains a neo-colony with low taxation and other incentives for foreign companies to take over our few industries5 and local and foreign property speculators to rake in profits out of the despair of homelessness or of struggling to meet rent or mortgage payments.
A neo-colonial market for produce of foreign companies and to plunder not only our labour force, not only our natural resources on land, sea and wind and but even our infrastructures in transport and communication, energy, health service, water supply and even our city sanitation.
TRUNCATED
The announced statistics were truncated, appropriate perhaps for a truncated country, with the history behind those statistics not so much truncated as obliterated.
That is our present and our past but not how the future has to be – we can write our own future but we won’t do it by putting a mark on a ballot paper.
3The Irish Civil War or Counterrevolution, 1922-1923.
4I have read this in the past but am unable now to find the reference; however I have posted some references on the figures of remittances from Irish emigrants.
5 For a few examples of foreign takeover: Irish stout, beer and lagers (Guinness, Smithwicks, Harp); Irish whiskey (Paddy, Jameson, Bushmills); cigarettes (Afton); preserved vegetables (Erin); aviation (Aer Lingus); public transport (Transport for Ireland; LUAS); sugar (Irish sugar beet replaced by subsidised cane sugar from the USA); woodlands (Coillte).
An organisation by the name of Anti-Imperialist Action yesterday held an anti-monarchist march and rally in Dublin, including a mock execution of royalty, where their speaker was arrested by Gardaí.
The protesters met first at the James Connolly monument in Beresford Place and after some words marched up Abbey Street to Dublin’s main street and to the General Post Office building to hold their anti-monarchy rally.
Royalty and guillotine beside James Connolly monument at start of event (Photo: AIA)
At the GPO the gathering of socialist republicans, socialists and anarchists had grown. As the mock-up guillotine carried out mock execution of the dummy representing royalty, a large force of Gardaí arrested the speaker. Participants then went to Store Street Garda station to demand his release.
At Store Street the protesters were met by a line of Gardaí1 drawn up in front of the entrance to the police station. In speeches and slogans, the protestors denounced the police for the arrest of the speaker at the GPO, also denouncing the monarchy and the State.
Line of Gardaí barring entrance to Store Street Garda Station (Photo:Rebel Breeze)View of protesters outside Store Street Garda Station (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Some speakers criticised also the national broadcaster RTÉ which was devoting four hours to the coronation.
The most frequent chants were: When Republicans are under attack – stand up, fight back!2 One, Two, Three, Four – Occupation no more; Five, Six, Seven Eight – Smash the Free State!3 Brit King – Guillotine! No democracy – under a monarchy! No democracy – in the Free State4!
One of the protesters, accompanying himself on guitar, sang the Republican ballad popularly known as “Come Out Yez Black ‘n Tans”, the attendance joining in on the chorus. They displayed a banner with a slogan from Liberty Hall5 in WW1: We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland.
Using a loudhailer, another protester read out James Connolly’s6 1911 denunciation of the monarchy. Yet another speaker quoted Garda Commissioner Drew Harris’ recent words saying the Gardaí were the “biggest gang”, the protester calling them “an MI5-directed gang”.
Eventually news of the release of the arrested man reached the protestors and they marched up Talbot Street with Starry Plough7 flags and a Basque Ikurrina flying, back to the GPO, outside of which they held an impromptu rally.
Along with portraits of Irish hunger-strike martyrs of 1981 there was a portrait of Palestinian martyr Khader Adnan carried also in recognition of the international role of British imperialism and its Head of State.
Many looked on in interest while some applauded them, both in Talbot Street, where a taxi driver enquired the reason for the protest and wished them well and also outside the GPO. Gardaí arrived and stood across from the building to watch the protesters but in smaller numbers than before.
The protestors return to the GPO for an impromptu rally in place of the planned one interrupted by the Garda attack and arrest of speaker (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Another speaker said the protesters were “health workers, working to rid Ireland of a dangerous disease affecting politicians, media and State forces, a disease that makes them go to their knees in front of royalty and a foreign state, extending their tongues to lick a certain part of the anatomy.”
Interest from the pedestrian reservation in O’Connell Street across from the GPO, including much smaller number of uniformed Gardaí (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The speaker said they were working “to rid Ireland of this dangerous disease, to enable the people to stand up straight once more, to claim their Republic, celebrate their history and speak out against foreign domination and monarchy”.
He drew attention also to arrest of a Republican speaker outside the iconic GPO, headquarters of the 1916 Rising8 and which still bears the scars of British bullets9.
Reference was also made a number of times by protesters to the arrests of English Republicans in London who were prevented by from holding a protest against the monarchy.
The victim of the police attack returned from police custody and briefly spoke thanking those who had demanded his release; people who had stopped to listen applauded and the group dispersed without further arrest.
End.
Photo taken at GPO before police attack (Photo: AIA)
2This seems adapted from a slogan often chanted by Irish socialist groups.
3This too seems an adaptation but from the Palestine solidarity movement.
4The new state of 26 Counties (missing six, which are in the British colony) and which fought a Civil War against the Republicans was called “the Free State” and though the name was changed (and to a ‘republic’) Irish Republicans and many nationalists in the British colony call it the “Free State” in irony and in negation of its legitimacy.
5Liberty Hall is a very tall building housing SIPTU but the trade union’s ancestor, the ITGWU had purchased the previous building on the same site which was destroyed by the British during the 1916 Rising. The slogan “We serve neither …” etc had been displayed across the front earlier during WWI.
6Revolutionary socialist leader, trade union organiser, writer and historian who brought the Irish Citizen Army to participate in the Rising, during which he was made Dublin Commandant, afterwards being shot by British firing squad.
7Originally flag of the Irish Citizen Army, the first workers’ Army in the world, formed to defend the workers in 1913 Lockout against police attacks and which also took part in the 1916 Rising.
8The rising 24-29 April 1916 was the first against world war and contained many other ‘firsts’ – six different organisations played a prominent part in it, including women. The Rising is regarded as leading to the War of Independence 1919-1922.
9One of many buildings in Dublin that bear the scars of conflict, this one is an imposing building in the city’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street. With the building in flames from British artillery on Easter Friday, the garrison, including five of the Seven Signatories of the Proclamation of Independence (which was read out at the start of the Rising) relocated to nearby Moore Street, where the decision was taken to surrender.
Useful link and Reference:
"We confess to having more respect and honour for the raggedest child of the poorest labourer in Ireland today than for any, even the most virtuous, descendant of the long array of murderers, adulterers and madmen who have sat upon the throne of England." – James Connolly pic.twitter.com/o8inKRr5Fi
— Anti Imperialist Action Ireland (@AIAIreland) May 6, 2023
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