6,000 March to Commemorate Derry’s Bloody Sunday and in Solidarity with Palestine

On January 31, 2024February 1, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History commemoration, Human Rights, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, National Liberation, Peace Process, Popular Resistance, Song, Song in StruggleLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 7 mins.)

Led by four Republican marching bands and containing a number of organisations, around 6,000 people supported the annual march in Derry on Sunday commemorating the 1972 massacre by the British Parachute Regiment in the city.

This year a special focus on solidarity with Palestine had been called for by the organisers of the Bloody Sunday massacre commemoration and Palestinian flags mixed with ones of Irish Republican organisations decorated the march route.

The march begins at the Creggan Heights, overlooking Derry, a steep walk up from the Bogside, the city’s centre near the river and winds its way down (with a great view of the Foyle river and surrounding area) but then up Westland Street again and along Marlborough Terrace.

*Rear banner of the AIA contingent on the Bloody Sunday commemoration march Sunday.* (Photo source: *AIA*)

For a number of years this commemoration has taken place in heavy rain and high winds, or snow, or sleet but it was dry this year – until the march started! However after a short period of strong gusts driving rain it stopped for the rest of the march.

Down Creggan Road to the Bogside once more and past the Bloody Sunday and H-Block memorials to the rally at Free Derry Corner where Kate Nash, one of the main organisers of the march for years and a sister of one of those murdered in the massacre, welcomed the marchers.

The Bloody Sunday 52nd commemoration march makes it way along Lone Moor Road towards the Brandywell on Sunday afternoon. (Photo: *George Sweeney via Derry News.*)

RALLY AND SPEAKERS

Nash condemned the punitive EU/ UK/ USA cutting of funds to the UNRWA organisation carrying out relief and educational work in Gaza following an Israeli State intelligence allegation¹ and also called for no Irish politicians to attend the annual US Presidential St. Patrick’s Day event.²

Kate Nash’s brother Willie was murdered by the Parachute Regiment during the massacre and her father was wounded by fire while trying to reach his fallen son. Kate called for a minute’s silence for the dead and wounded that day but also for those in Gaza, in particular the children.

Kate Nash also mentioned the Noah Donohoe case as being close to everyone’s heart.

The names of the dead and wounded by the Parachute Regiment were read out by Damian Donaghy,³ son of Damian Donaghy one of the survivors on that day. Paddy Nash performed the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” which was popular among marchers of the time.

*Section of the rally to the right as facing Free Derry Corner with a mural based on an iconic photograph from the massacre.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Kate Nash introduced Huda Ammori, a Manchester-based Palestinian activist and one of the Elbit Eight,⁴ who said she felt at home in Derry because of the people’s solidarity with Palestine.⁵ The State in Britain failed to convict all but one of any charges arising out of direct action against the arms company.

Ammori drew parallels between the Irish and Palestinian struggles against colonialism and stated that her grandfather had been assassinated for rising up against the British colonisation of Palestine in 1936, when it was a British “Mandate”.

*Mural on a wall in the Bogside, Derry; the words “don Phalaistín” are obscured by a vehicle.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

AIA Short Video with Music Bloody Sunday Derry 2024 AIA Video.MP4 (viewable on FaceBook)

“The British signed away the land of Palestine in 1917,” Amori told the rally, “they colonised our lands and then they armed and trained the Zionist militia to commit a Nakba, to displace over 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, over half the indigenous population.”

Huda Ammori said weapons were used on Palestinians in Gaza and then marketed as ‘battle-tested’. She also praised those who had taken direct action in Derry against arms firms (e.g Raytheon).

*Section of crowd gathering in front of the stage for the rally.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Geraldine Doherty, niece of Gerard Donaghy, youngest of the Bloody Sunday victims, also spoke from the platform, saying it was ‘sad’ but ‘heartwarming’ to see so many people attending the march.

“More than half a century since British troops committed this massacre on these streets, innocent children like my murdered uncle Gerard and hundreds of others as well are still being denied justice”, she said and denounced the British State attempting to prevent the trial of legacy cases being tried.

Doherty spoke of the remaining “trauma for Derry and for Ireland” from which many families have never recovered, with long-term post-traumatic damage such as depression, addiction and divided families.

“But while the people of Derry were battered and imprisoned, we were never broken,” she said to cheers from the rally participants. “Derry has rediscovered its … voice and we are using that voice to oppose the murder of children and women and men, and we stand with the people of Palestine.”

*Section of crowd to the left of the stage at the rally.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

ON THE MARCH

Over the years since I returned to Ireland, I have marched in that commemoration many times, either as an individual or as a member of a solidarity committee and this year was glad to be welcomed as part of the Socialist Republican contingent, with Anti-Imperialist Action.

The bloc carried two banners: the one at the front was a new one in which the AIA called for anti-imperialist revolution and socialism, while at the rear the banner celebrated the Palestinian resistance. In between the banners marchers carried flags and placards.

*New banner of the AIA in the organisation’s contingent on the march on Sunday.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

In the bloc men and women marched with a flags of the AIA, the Starry Plough, Palestine and Cumann na mBan. From the contingent on many occasions could be heard slogans of solidarity with Palestine and some equally applicable to that nation’s resistance or to Ireland’s.

“In the face of occupation – Resistance is an obligation!” and “No justice – No peace!” were in the latter category while “From the River to the Sea – Palestine will be free!”, “Free, free – Palestine!” and “Saoirse don – Phalaistín!” were specifically supporting the Palestinian struggle.

Most Republican organisations and some Irish socialist organisations attend the annual event, along with campaign groups and on occasion solidarity groups from abroad or Irish ones in solidarity with struggles abroad. Sinn Féin no longer attends but some supporters would as individuals.

Giant Palestinian flag displayed below the Derry Walls above the rally below. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

THE MARCH ROUTE AND HISTORY

The Bloody Sunday march covers the same route as the anti-internment march in January 1972 when the British Paratroopers murdered 14 unarmed marchers and injured so many others. Preceded by the Ballymurphy Massacre in August 1971, it was followed by another in Springhill in July ‘72.

The British military claimed that the Derry victims had been armed and fired first and an inquiry tribunal headed by Lord Justice Widgery exonerated the Army and blamed the victims although the Derry Coroner, an ex-British Army officer had called it “sheer unadulterated murder”.

In 1998, presumably as part of the Good Friday Agreement deal, the British State began a new inquiry which however did not deliver a published verdict until 2010,⁶ stopping short of accusing the Army of murder but exonerating all the victims except one about which it was equivocal.

At that point, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness said that the march should not be continued; however not one British soldier had even been charged, to say nothing of the commanders and Government Ministers who had either given the orders or arranged the cover-up – or both.

*Banner of the organisation combining representation of trade unions in Derry.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

A small group of veterans of the original march and relatives, Kate Nash prominent among them, however decided to keep the march going and have done so every year, often in the face of accusations and disparaging remarks from supporters of Sinn Féin and others.

In 2022, the Massacre’s 50^th anniversary, 20,000 marched in it while the Bloody Sunday Trust, an institution and museum supported by the colonial state and Sinn Féin, organised a small “memorial walk” and indoors event in the Guild Hall – the only one reported by the mass media.⁷

*An independent group, badly needed since the Coiste na nIarchimí is controlled by the Provisionals.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*Display below Derry Walls created by the Saoradh Irish Republican organisation, according to their social media.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Although veterans of the massacre and of the annual commemoration often meet one another only once a year at the commemoration, some having come from abroad, there are always new young people to be seen among them and hundreds come out to watch the march.

The march is an important commemoration of a massacre by British colonialism which still holds the colony of the Six Counties, a reminder no doubt inconvenient to unionists, neo-colonialists and those who have left the struggle, either through lack of will or for personal advancement.

In its championing and giving voice to other conflicts too, the commemoration march and other related events during the week are a strong expression of internationalist solidarity.

*Wreath of the Bloody Sunday Commemoration Committee among others at the Bloody Sunday Monument.* (Photo source: *Bloody Sunday Commemoration Committee*)

End.

FOOTNOTES

1The Israeli state intelligence agency reported that 12 out of 13,000 employees of UNRWA in Gaza had been implicated in the 7^th October Palestinian raid following which at least some, possibly all, were sacked by UNRWA, apparently without any hearing or appeal process. The US, UK, Germany, Italy followed this up by suspending all funding to the relief organisation catering for 2 million people in dire circumstances.

2Traditionally, leading politicians of the main Irish political parties, both mainstream and Sinn Féin, have sent representatives to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with US Presidents, many of whom are of Irish descent. This year a campaign has arisen calling on them not to do so but spokespersons of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin have insisted they will attend, which the SDLP has declared it will not.

3Not to be confused with the family of Gerard V. Donaghy (20 February 1954 – 30 January 1972), sometimes transcribed as Gerald Donaghey, a native of the Bogside, Derry who was murdered by members of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment on Bloody Sunday.

4Eight activists of British-based Palestine Action, a direct action organisation, who as a result of their actions against the Israeli-based military technology company Elbit in Britain, were charged with a total of 12 charges which included criminal damage, burglary and encouraging criminal damage. The trial, which commenced on November 13th, related to a series of actions taken during the first 6 months of Palestine Action’s existence from July 2020 to January 2021. In December last year, one activist was convicted on one charge by 10-2 majority, two were completely cleared and jury failed to reach a majority verdict on the rest of the charges on six remaining activists.

5That would be true of the majority ‘nationalist’ population of the city but not so much of the unionist minority, where support for Israel is more dominant, due in part to susceptibility to British propaganda and also simply out of sectarian hostility to anything favoured by the ‘nationalist’ community.

6At a cost of nearly £200m (€227.7m), half of which went in legal fees, a lawyer’s bonanza, to arrive at a decision that just about everyone in Ireland knew and many abroad knew already and which established no safeguards against a similar massacre being carried out by British military in future.

7Browser searches throw up report after media report, including Al Jazeera’s, of “hundreds” attending the early event, without a mention of the many THOUSANDS who marched later in the day.

SOURCES

https://www.derryjournal.com/news/people/when-im-in-derry-i-feel-like-i-am-home-palestinian-activist-tells-bloody-sunday-rally-4496030

Elbit Eight trial and verdict: https://www.palestineaction.org/elbit-eight-verdicts/

The Saville Bloody Sunday Inquiry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_Inquiry

Cost of: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30477561.html

IRISH SHAMROCK TO SOAK IN PALESTINIAN BLOOD?

On January 24, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, History, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, irish history, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, US Imperialism, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 10 mins.)

A call has gone out for Irish politicians, as part of pressure on the USA to stop supporting Israeli genocidal attacks on the Palestinians, not to attend friendship ceremonies with the President of the USA on St. Patrick’s Day this year.¹

With the US Presidential election scheduled for September, “Genocide Joe” Biden will still be in office on March 17^th, a man who apart from representing the major imperialist power in the world, ordered his state’s veto in the UN against a call for a humanitarian ceasefire.

A man who repeated ridiculous Zionist propaganda against the Palestinians of beheading children and rapes, who said that if Israel had not existed the US would have had to invent it, who received more Zionist lobby for his campaigns as Congressman than any other in the whole USA.²

Even without his personal history, after a US-supported slaughter so far of 25,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children and displacement of 85% of Palestinians, you’d think that this would be what UStaters call “a slam dunk”, that Irish politicians would feel too disgusted to make the trip.

*Placard carried by a Palestine solidarity marcher in Dublin on 28 October.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Sadly this revulsion is not felt among most politicians in Ireland, who from from Varadkar in the Government to Mary Lou MacDonald of Sinn Féin in the Opposition have indicated that they have no intention of foregoing this annual pilgrimage to the Boss of the World

What is this strange Irish obsession with the United States of America anyway? Yes, of course, it is a (or the) major world power and yes, a number of people of Irish antecedence have become its Presidents – including the first Roman Catholic to reach that office.³

But really, what has the US concretely done for Ireland? Did it send us troops to help drive the English from our land? No, the Spanish Kingdom did that once and the French did it twice, once as Kingdom and again as Republic. But the US? Never.

It might be protested that the USA permitted Irish to emigrate there but a) it did so for many others too and b) only in order to populate its European colonisation of the Indigenous land and c) to compete against other European colonial powers – in particular the Spanish, French and Dutch.

It is true that it has on occasion served as a haven for Irish ‘on the run’ from British jurisdiction but so did France and in any event, those cases were nearly always when the USA was at war or in diplomatic conflict with the United Kingdom in the USA’s own interests.

WHEN THE USA COULD HAVE REALLY HELPED THE IRISH STRUGGLE

When the US-based Fenians raised an army to invade British colonial Canada in 1866⁴, they had hopes that the government of the US would at least not impede them. The British had supported the Confederacy in the American Civil War which had cost 650,000-800,000 lives.⁵

That number represented the highest number of US dead in any military conflict before that (or since), fought to eliminate slavery, which the UK had abolished 50 years earlier⁶ – yet it supported the Confederacy⁷ in a number of ways including building warships for them.

The charge of the Fenians (wearing green uniforms) under Colonel John O’Neill at the Battle of Ridgeway, near Niagara, Canada West, on June 2, 1866. In reality, the Fenians had their own green flags but wore a very mixed bag of Union and Confederate uniforms (if they still had them, or parts of them left over from the Civil War), or civilian garb, with strips of green as arm or hat bands to distinguish themselves. (library and archives canada, c-18737)

The USA closed the border with Canada and arrested Fenian war veterans under arms⁸ waiting to cross but only after (perhaps to make a point with the British) an advance Fenian force had already entered British Canada, seized Fort Erie and defeated British soldiers of the line and militia.

The US President, Andrew Johnson issued the border closure and arrest of Fenians by Executive Order on June 5^th 1866, which was enforced under orders from General Ulysses Grant⁹ and put an end to the operation, as the US did to subsequent attempts.

The British subsequently paid $15.5 million in 1872 for damage caused by the British-built Confederate warship, the Alabama, after which both states entered into friendly relations.¹⁰

The USA did not support the Irish insurrection of 1916 nor the War of Independence. After WWI, while the victorious imperialists held their “Peace Conference” to discuss the new world order and re-divide up the world, US President Wilson declined to meet the Irish Republican delegation.¹¹

The USA did not support the Irish in the War of Independence (1919-1921) nor support the Republican side in the Civil War (1922-1923). Nor again during the Border Campaign, nor during the Civil Rights Campaign followed by armed struggle (1968-1998).

In 1992, after a long legal and political battle, IRA Volunteer Joe Doherty, in the US since 1983 was finally extradited to the Six Counties despite a) the political nature of his charge and b) the well-known low proof standards of the political courts in the British colony.¹²

It is true of course that, in deference to the feelings of its large Irish-American population and their representation in the US polity, that it has permitted certain Irish solidarity activities on US soil and, at times, issued statements of concern over British actions in Ireland – but nothing more.

The Irish-American political representation is for the most part US first and Irish second, i.e US Imperialist first and foremost. Ireland is also used by US monopolies as a side door into the markets of the EU and, through registering head offices in Ireland, for avoiding taxes in the USA.

NEO-COLONIAL ASPIRANTS TO THE GOMBEEN CLUB

So what is all this US homage in the Irish official polity about — and in particular among Sinn Féin? How can leaders of the party correctly criticise the genocidal actions of the Israeli State and yet speak no word against the main backer of the zionist state, i.e the USA?

It’s a new SF – two of the party’s leaders, Mary Lou MacDonald and Michelle O’Neill, smiling in joint photo with the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces occupying part of Ireland (and engaged in imperialist actions elsewhere) and a hereditary monarch. (Photo cred.: *Irish Times*)

The answer is simply that the new SF, which was never overall socialist nor even particularly anti-imperialist throughout the Provisionals phase, is now neo-colonialist and knocking on the doors of the established gombeens,¹³ asking for admittance, which they are sure to receive in time.

They are not the first to make the transition from revolutionary Irish Republicans to gombeen party. Fianna Fáil, representing some of the leadership of the losing IRA side in the Irish Civil War, was an Irish ‘constitutional’ party and became the preferred choice of the gombeen ruling class.

Fianna Fáil has been in government more often than any other party in the history of the Irish State and is there now, sharing government with their former binary opposition party, Fine Gael, along with the Greens. The FF party too considered the friendship of the USA to be important.

For the SF party leadership however the US is important also based on their perception of it being a guarantor in the Irish pacification process. In their twisted reality, US imperialism is forcing British imperialism and colonialism to do – what?

Remove the British colonialists? Remove the sectarian colonial government? Stop the penetration of the Irish economy by foreign multinationals, including those of the USA?

Of course not and in the unlikely event that thoughts of doing so ever crossed the minds of US imperialists, they would discard them instantly in favour of the continued alliance with the imperialist UK as their junior partner.

NO SOAKING THE SHAMROCK IN PALESTINIAN BLOOD

Although there are many other complicit states, the USA is the major supporter of the Israeli State, financially, militarily and politically, using its position as one of the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council to veto resolutions proposed against the Zionist state.

The Israeli State represents a western imperialist foothold for the USA in the Middle East, the only one that is entirely safe from either internal national liberation or fundamentalist islamist uprising and it has continued to support Israel throughout the state’s genocidal history.

The role of the US in this conflict is to defend and supply the Zionist state but also to manage client states in the region and around the world get them to support ‘Israel’ (or at least to limit their opposition to the state), alongside preventing or hampering assistance reaching the Palestinians.

*Placard produced in support of the demand, seen on recent Palestine solidarity march in Dublin.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Sinn Féin called recently for the Zionist Ambassador to be expelled from Ireland but initially, Mary Lou had declined to do so, saying it would not be helpful. She came under strong pressure from within the party’s membership and had to join the call for the person’s expulsion.

However, that’s easy to explain to Biden as the necessity of staying on top of a troublesome horse in order to bring it eventually under control. After all, the Government wasn’t going to expel the Ambassador, no matter what anybody said, was it?

There is a statement applicable here from the Christian Bible which has since become a proverb (if it was not already one at the time of writing), that “one cannot serve two masters”. One of the ‘masters’ is usually understood to mean money but that’s not what I mean here.¹⁴

The SF leadership cannot serve both Palestinian solidarity and US imperialism but there’s no danger of their even trying to do so – they know who their real master is. The Palestinian solidarity posturing is for their supporters and to show they can play their required role in the world.

Their President, Mary Lou did so when she offered the Irish pacification process as an example for the Palestinians¹⁵ and the whole of the SF leadership does so in supporting the imperialist “two-state solution” (sic) in which a colonial Palestinian state is to be set up under Israeli guns.

And on 40% or less of their original land, with the least water.

Neither the SF leadership nor the other politicians have any intention of missing the event in the USA in March when they offer their allegiance along with the symbolic tribute, the bowl of leaders’ shamrock which now, however, is soaked in Palestinian blood.

We should at least make it difficult for them by signing the petition and in other opportunities as may arise between now and that date.

End.

end.

Footnotes

1In three weeks, this has received 5,000 signatures so far https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern-ireland/petition-calling-for-white-house-st-patricks-day-boycott-surpasses-5k-signatures. The petition was originated I believe in Derry by PBP supporters and the IPSC has backed the call publishing their own statement on their media.

2“During his 36 years in the Senate, Biden was the chamber’s biggest recipient in history of donations from pro-Israeli groups, taking in $4.2 million, according to the Open Secrets database.” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/i-am-zionist-how-joe-bidens-lifelong-bond-with-israel-shapes-war-policy-2023-10-21/

3John F. Kennedy, elected in 1963. Biden, current US President has an Irish Catholic background and Obama and Reagan both had Irish antecedents.

4The Civil War ended that year and many Fenians were War veterans, mostly of the Union but with some of the Confederacy.

5 https://www.history.com/news/american-civil-war-deaths

6 https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/britain-slavery-abolition-act/

7 https://www.military-history.org/feature/american-civil-war/it-was-british-arms-that-sustained-the-confederacy-during-the-american-civil-war-peter-tsouras.htm and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_and_the_American_Civil_War

8And many in US Army uniforms, for it was straight after the end of the American Civil War.

9 https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2021/03/25/celebrating-irish-americans-the-fenian-brotherhood/ Grant’s mother and grandfather were from Co. Tyrone, as was Johnson’s grandfather. https://epicchq.com/story/us-presidents-with-irish-heritage/

10 https://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/alabama

11Or even to reply to their correspondence although interestingly he did reply to that of a young Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam in ‘French’ Indo-China (according to research presented in Dublin some years ago and noted by me)

12He had been a member of a unit in Belfast that killed a captain of an SAS undercover unit attempting to surround them.

13From the Irish language “gaimbíneachas”, a pejorative term describing the practice of those Irish with capital who took advantage of the hardships of the Great Hunger to appropriate land holdings and businesses, something similar to the disdained “carpetbaggers” in the defeated states of the American Confederacy. The term is now applied to Irish politicians and business people who facilitate foreign exploitation of Irish natural resources, labour, infrastructure and housing need.

14Although in that sense too the saying is applicable to the SF leadership.

15 https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41308273.html

Sources

https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern-ireland/petition-calling-for-white-house-st-patricks-day-boycott-surpasses-5k-signatures-BXEYUDQHH5GDBHMUBJZOYRZNGE/

American Civil War viewpoints: It was British arms that sustained the Confederacy

Fenian invasion of Canada: https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2021/03/25/celebrating-irish-americans-the-fenian-brotherhood/

Petition: https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/boycott-st-patrick-s-day-celebrations-at-the-whitehouse-2024

OVER 100,000 MARCH IN PALESTINIAN SOLIDARITY WHILE IRISH GOVERNMENT PARTIES COLLUDE WITH ZIONISM

On January 16, 2024January 17, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Language, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, US Imperialism, ZionismLeave a comment

By Clive Sulish reporting from the march in Dublin

(Report reading time: 5 mins.)

On a day when the Israeli state killed more than 30 Palestinians, as usual including children,¹ millions around the world gave physical expression to the slogan: “In our thousands, in our millions, we are ALL Palestinians!”

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, along with organisations in many countries,² chose Saturday 13^th to display Palestinian solidarity, calling a national demonstration to march in Dublin on Saturday afternoon.

*“Galway stands with Palestine” banner in O’Connell Street on Saturday.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

In Dublin, on a cold Saturday after periods of icy drizzle, the event commenced from the Garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square in the north city centre and set off marching to rally at the Irish Dept. of Foreign Affairs on Stephens Green in the south city centre.

In a tightly-packed mass, the end of the demonstration was just leaving the vicinity of the Garden of Remembrance when the head of the march had crossed O’Connell Bridge and reached the end of Westmoreland Street, a distance of one kilometre.

*Women carrying a giant Palestine flag in O’Connell Street on Saturday.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

From Cork at the southern end of Ireland, from Tyrone and Belfast in the North, from Wicklow and Wexford in the South-east and from Galway in the West, groups and individuals had travelled to Dublin to participate in the nation’s statement of solidarity with the Palestinians.

One hundred thousand marched in Dublin. Despite this, other demonstrations took place in towns and cities across Ireland too, including large ones in Derry in Cork, with other smaller ones in Carrick-on Shannon, Clonakilty, Cashel, Ennis, Kilorglin, Longford and Tipperary.³

*Seen in O’Connell Street Saturday.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The Dublin march was striking in its cross-gender composition with women perhaps even in the majority. Accompanied children were in evidence and youth, the latter in particular female of ages ranging across the teens to young adulthood, vocal in condemnation of Israel.

Many participants were apparently migrant or of migrant background, both female and male, there too many were young, even to children and teens.

The slogans shouted were for the most part the regularised call-and-answer chants of Palestinian solidarity: Free, free – Palestine! From the River to the Sea – Palestine will be free! In our thousands, in our millions – we are ALL Palestinians!

Some regular slogans also targeted Zionism and its supporters: One, 2, 3, 4 – occupation no more! Five, 6,7, 8 – Israel is a terrorist state! Netanyahu, USA – how many kids have you killed today? Zionist Ambassador – out, out, out! Joe Biden, you can’t hide – you’re supporting genocide!

*Another section of the crow in O’Connell Street Saturday.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Boycott – Israel! was of often heard and the common cry of Ceasefire now! was subtly altered in at least one location to End the bombing – end it now!⁴And End the Occupation – end it now!

Less widespread but supported here and there was: There is only one solution – intifada revolution! Also: Resistance is an obligation – in the face of occupation.

*Seen in O’Connell Street on Saturday* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The Irish language, an Ghaeilge, was visibly sprinkled throughout the march, with chants of Saoirse don Phalaistín! but much more often seen on placards, occasional Palestinian flags and T-shirts. That slogan is clearly taking some root among the indigenous Irish and migrant communities.

One group of solidarity marchers was evidently organised around expression of solidarity through Irish, with banners, placards and slogan-chanting in the national language.

Translation: *(You are) the shame of the world, Netanyahu! Placard photographed at the rally along Stephens Green.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

When the march reached the rally outside the Department of Justice, the area in front of the speakers’ stage was soon packed and people still arriving or stopped further back had difficulty in following the speakers even with the PA full on.

There would seem scope for smaller meetings with speakers further away from the main stage and it seems curious that this has not been attempted, at least in Dublin, to date. Many participants began to drift away, whether for refreshments or to connect with their transport mode homewards.

“Put your Action where your Sympathy is” placard to extreme left of photo while centre right a partly-obscured “Seasann muid leis an Phalaistín” (We stand with Palestine) placard may be seen. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Naturally, many chose to walk through Stephen’s Green, where a person in a hi-viz jacket was observed locking one of the gates on the park’s southern side, to angry comments from some of the exiting marchers.⁵

In Grafton Street, people also chanted Boycott Starbucks! as they passed the Seattle-based café chain and a little further, passing a fast food chain business: MacDonald’s, you can’t hide – you’re supporting genocide! Both businesses have been documented supporting Israeli zionism.

Over the 24 hours, Israel had killed another 135 Palestinians in Gaza.

*The march underway in O’Connell Street heading southward.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*Meanwhile the end of the march is still making its way out of Parnell Square.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

THE COURT OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The march took place at the end of a week in which the South African government at the International Court of Justice had accused the Israeli State of genocide against the Palestinians and millions watched the case presentation by a team of barristers including an Irishwoman.⁶

The case listed well-established genocidal acts and words of the Zionist polity against the Palestinians, in particular but not exclusively since October last year. In addition, relevant case history in which the ICJ had adjudicated on genocide was quoted.⁷

*“Grandfathers against the slaughter of the innocents” banner in O’Connell Street on Saturday as the march gets underway*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

South Africa sought an early interim Court instruction for cessation of Israeli bombing of and ground assault on Palestinians. The Israeli team’s response was to state that ending their bombing would be to hand victory to Palestinian resistance⁸ and an existential threat to the Zionist state.

The Israeli team’s arrogance was clear in that they turned truth on its head, presenting themselves as the victims, repeating their propaganda lies and disdaining to quote case law or to explain how the appalling death toll of Palestinians and destruction constitutes necessary defence.

*Placard seen at the rally along Stephens Green on Saturday.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The Zionist Prime Minister, Netanyahu, seemed to indicate that the Government would not obey any restriction to the killing ordered by the ICJ and boasted that no-one could force compliance upon the Zionist state⁹ (which, as long as it is supported by the USA, is a disturbing fact).

The death toll now stands at 23,843 with another perhaps 9,000 missing (most of them believed buried under rubble of buildings collapsed by Israeli bombing).¹⁰ The number of injured is quoted as surpassing 60,000 while 85% of the Palestinian population are displaced refugees.¹¹

*“One child killed every 10 minutes in Gaza” placard seen on Saturday in this section of the rally along Stephens Green, outside the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

According to a new data set from the Israeli military on its operations in Gaza, it claims killing “about 9,000” Palestinian fighters in the enclave since its assault began. Even if true that would be about 37% of the total number of 23,968 people killed there since October 7.¹²

In other words, the Zionist state is de facto, based on its own numbers, admitting to the killing of nearly 15,000 civilians!

*Part of a campaign asking Irish politicians not to do their usual junket this year of going to the USA to mix with politicians for St. Patrick’s Day.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Whatever the true figure of Palestinian fighters killed, it has not been without cost as the spokesman for Hamas’s Qassam Brigades says that since October 7, they’ve “destroyed or disabled 1,000 Israeli military vehicles, and carried out hundreds of operations against the occupation”.¹³

“All the weapons we use are ones Qassam has made itself,” he added and a video released earlier showed projectiles and weapons being constructed in what seems to be an underground workshop, using modern milling and drilling machinery.

“Resistance is not terrorism” placard seen in O’Connell Street on Saturday. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The Irish parliamentary opposition parties of Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit and the Labour Party last week publicly called on the Irish Government to support the South African case in the Hague, which Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has declined to do.

That the Irish Government coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens feels under pressure from the public response to the Israeli genocide in Palestine is indicated by the statement of Eamon Ryan that points in the “South African genocide case against Israel are irrefutable”.¹⁴

*Social Democrats party flags in O’Connell Street on Saturday.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Meanwhile a huge portion of the population and nearly a generation of young people in Ireland have been exposed to horrific crimes abroad, to impressive internationalist solidarity and to the shameful collusion of the Irish ruling class and its political representation in Leinster House.¹⁵

end.

FOOTNOTES

1 https://www.breakingnews.ie/israel-hamas/more-than-30-reported-dead-in-israeli-air-strikes-on-gaza-strip-1574903.html

2 Massive rallies took place in world capitals including London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Amman and Washington DC. In Jakarta in Indonesia also, where the Government stated it would no longer permit Israeli ships to dock in its harbours and would undertake a program to educate people about the history of the zionist occupation of Palestine https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/13/pro-palestine-demonstrations-around-the-world-as-gaza-war-nears-100-days

3 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=772202341615110&set=a.481247497377264

4Some argue that the call for a ceasefire a) suggests that this is a war between equally-armed antagonists and b) that a ceasefire is laid on all combatants whereas, they say, no-one has a right to limit Palestinian resistance against their genocidal occupiers.

5They were heard remarking that this had occurred also during a Palestinian demonstration in Merrion Square

6Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh

7None before now have been against a Western or Western-allied power; terrible though they were, none approached the severity of the case in point.

8Throughout, in common with earlier statements in collusion with many heads of state and persistent misrepresentation in most mass media reporting, this was presented only as “Hamas”, which is only one of a number of Palestinian resistance organisations actively fighting the Zionist attack. In addition, the Palestinian death and injury statistics and visual evidence of the destruction visited upon Gaza (a city approximately the size of Dublin but twice as densely populated) illustrate that the Israeli state’s attack is largely on Palestinian non-combatants.

9 https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/no-one-can-halt-israels-war-to-crush-hamas-says-netanyahu-1575008.html

10Hamas: 8,000 Gaza people missing ‘under the rubble’ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/12/16/israel-hamas-war-live-demands-for-justice-after-israel-kills-aj-journalist

11 https://www.breakingnews.ie/israel-hamas/more-than-30-reported-dead-in-israeli-air-strikes-on-gaza-strip-1574903.html

12“Israel says 9,000 of nearly 24,000 people killed in Gaza were fighters”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/14/israels-war-on-gaza-live-100-days-of-war-in-gaza-as-more-children-killed

13“In 100 days, ‘we carried out hundreds of operations’: Abu Obaida” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/14/israels-war-on-gaza-live-100-days-of-war-in-gaza-as-more-children-killed

14 https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/south-africa-has-made-irrefutable-points-in-gaza-genocide-case-against-israel-eamon-ryan-says/a1747707908.html Eamon Ryan is Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications and Minister for Transport since June 2020 and Leader of the Green Party since May 2011.

15Home of the Irish Parliament in Dublin.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

https://www.breakingnews.ie/israel-hamas/thousands-join-pro-palestinian-march-in-central-dublin-1574962.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/01/13/march-for-gaza-dc-rally-israel-hamas-war/

https://www.breakingnews.ie/israel-hamas/more-than-30-reported-dead-in-israeli-air-strikes-on-gaza-strip-1574903.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/13/pro-palestine-demonstrations-around-the-world-as-gaza-war-nears-100-days

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/13/israels-war-on-gaza-live-un-fears-mass-transfer-of-palestinians-from-gaza

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/no-one-can-halt-israels-war-to-crush-hamas-says-netanyahu-1575008.html

“Israel says 9,000 of nearly 24,000 people killed in Gaza were fighters” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/14/israels-war-on-gaza-live-100-days-of-war-in-gaza-as-more-children-killed

“In 100 days, ‘we carried out hundreds of operations’: Abu Obaida” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/14/israels-war-on-gaza-live-100-days-of-war-in-gaza-as-more-children-killed

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/south-africa-has-made-irrefutable-points-in-gaza-genocide-case-against-israel-eamon-ryan-says/a1747707908.html

Opposition calls on Irish Government to join South African Case against Israeli genocide.

On January 10, 2024January 10, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

News & Views No. 16 Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

The main political opposition parties in the Irish parliament have made a united call on the Irish Government, a Coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Greens, to join in the genocide case against the Israeli state at the International Court of Justice.

The original case was opened recently by the South African government and the Israeli Government, to some surprise, indicated it would attend and defend itself. It is due to begin public hearing 11-12 January.

The Irish Opposition parties represented in the call on the Irish Government represent a cross-section politically: Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, the Irish Labour Party and People Before Profit. Other smaller parties have one TD¹ and there are many Independent TDs of varying hues.

Accompanying the party representatives at a press conference were Frances Black, independent Senator who moved the Occupied Territories Bill to ban products from those regions, also Fatin al Tamimi, from Palestine and Chairperson of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Some of these parties have moved motions in Leinster House, home of the Irish Parliament, for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador to Ireland. The Irish government successfully opposed that motion and also opposes joining the South African motion.

The motivation of the concerned party representatives may well mirror their own personal or political feelings, some more than others but it is undeniable that it reflect the feeling across most of Ireland (with the notable exception of Loyalist areas in the British colony).

That has been the general case for decades but has grown enormously since the Zionist State’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza. Every week has seen large marches, rallies and smaller pickets in solidarity with Palestine in Irish cities and towns.

The Department of Foreign Affairs’ main office was paint-bombed in red, the company leasing the Israeli Ambassador’s offices was occupied, as was a hotel bought with a loan from an Israeli bank and also Axa Insurance, the Embassy was briefly occupied and is regularly picketed.

MacDonald’s and Starbucks have also been picketed in various areas and supermarkets have seen regular protests over their sale of goods from the Zionist State. Drivers regularly beep their horns in support as they pass Palestinian solidarity demonstrations.

Photographed at the press conference announcing their joint call, from left to right: Senator Frances Black (Independent), Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Fatin al Tamimi (Chair IPSC), Matt Carthy (Sinn Féin), Gary Gannon (Progressive Democrats), Ivana Bacik (Labour Party). (Photo from: *Breaking News report*)

THE PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES SUPPORTING THE CALL

The number and pitch of the protests and the numbers involved have definitely pushed some of the parties forward in parliamentary action, in particular Sinn Féin, widely expected to form the next Irish government coalition (though with whom remains to be seen).

Though the party was quick to ride the earlier anti-Russian publicity and call for the Russian Ambassador’s expulsion, it initially balked at doing the same with regard to the Israel one; however it had to support the call in answer to popular opinion and no doubt within its own membership.

The position of the Social Democrats on the question has been surprisingly strong and it was their leader who moved the Ambassador expulsion motion in Leinster House.² The Labour Party³ has not been generally vocal on the issue though supported the expulsion call.

People Before Profit⁴ has always had a strong pro-Palestine stand but one of its leading members and TDs⁵ also attacked the Palestinian incursion on October 7^th. Later the party developed the slogan for demonstrations that “In the face of occupation, resistance is an obligation!”

The South African case of genocide against the Israeli State seems to be gaining some support but few governments have so far joined it, despite the Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium and others advocating its support. The EU itself has hardly blinked in its support for the Israeli State.

THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE

The ICJ is an organ of the United Nations and, like the International Criminal Court, with which it is often confused, is based in the Hague, Netherlands. There have been criticisms of its effectiveness and its likelihood of bias according to the state origin of each Judge.

At this moment, the main benefit of the legal charge against is the Zionist state is of public opinion against its genocidal bombing but the ICJ can also impose interim restrictions. Whether the Israeli State will obey those or indeed accept an eventual ruling against it is another matter entirely.

The Israeli state’s founding philosophy of Zionism is a genocidal one as is also its very nature of a white European settler occupation of a land already occupied by indigenous populations. It is difficult to imagine how it can tolerate condemnation of its very essence.

Nevertheless, for the moment the case and increased support for it has publicity value. However, the solidarity movement cannot afford to relax on iota and in fact needs to up the pressure on the Zionist entity and all its supporters, be they states or corporations.

End.

Footnotes

1TD = Teachta Dála, elected Parliamentary representative.

2Her speech to the rally outside Leinster House the evening of the debate was more militant than Sinn Féin’s representative.

3The party, though founded by militant syndicalist Jim Larkin and revolutionary James Connolly, has been in coalition government a few times, mostly with the right-wing Fine Gael and was noted for attacks on the working class, despite its trade union support base.

4Like its namesake in Britain, it is mainly a version of the Irish iteration of the Socialist Workers’ Party, founded in the UK.

5Richard Boyd Barrett.

Reference

https://www.breakingnews.ie/israel-hamas/irish-opposition-calls-on-government-to-join-south-african-case-against-israel-1573295.html

https://www.thejournal.ie/varadkar-rules-out-joining-gaza-genocide-case-south-africa-israel-6266230-Jan2024/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/9/which-countries-back-south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel-at-icj

Criticism of ICJ: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/13/law.features11

LEGACY OF MANDELA AND THE ANC – A BROKEN SOCIETY

On January 8, 2024January 8, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Africa, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Massacres, National Liberation, peace processes, Police Violence, Political Analysis, South Africa, Sud AfricaLeave a comment

News & Views No. 14 Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

We need to be careful when elevating people from our ranks to the status of heroes – especially if they are alive and can renounce or betray the principles they originally fought for.¹

And we have the right to be suspicious when those heroes are also acclaimed by the capitalists and imperialists, those who are certainly not our friends. But most of all, it is by their fruits that we can best evaluate people, whatever their past actions.

The society bequeathed after years of heroic struggle to the South African masses is broken. Housing and homelessness crisis,² unemployment, poverty,³ prostitution, lack of medical care, inadequate sanitation and soaring crime, including violent crime – is not what the people fought for.

And this is occurring in a country rich in natural resources⁴ which are being extracted daily by imperialism, while the few on top — the earlier white settler bosses now joined by the corrupt black bourgeoisie – live in luxury.

CRIME & POLICING

Anton Koen, a former police officer who now runs a private security firm that specialises in tracking and recovering hijacked and stolen vehicles believes that “It’s not getting better, it is getting worse”, with the murder rate the highest it’s been in 20 years.

In crime-ridden societies, the poor suffer the most and are of course also recruited into crime.

There were 27,494 killings in South Africa in the year to February 2023, compared with 16,213 in 2012-2013. South Africa’s homicide rate in 2022-2023 was 45 per 100,000 people, compared with a rate of 6.3 in the US and around one in most European countries.

Those who can afford it, hire private security, which is a booming business with South Africa’s security industry — one of the largest in the world, with more than 2.7 million registered private security officers registered in the country, according to the regulating agency, the PSIRA.⁵

“People with money make up a very small percentage of South Africa, said Chad Thomas, an organised crime expert who has worked more than 30 years in police work and now in private security.⁶

“That means that the vast majority of South Africans don’t really benefit from this security industry … If you live in a traditional township environment, or if you live in an informal settlement …⁷ security patrols in those areas are few and far between because they don’t have paying customers.”

Thomas, like many, ties the high levels of violent crime in South Africa to anger over the country’s deep problems of poverty.⁸

Private security companies are paid a monthly fee to patrol neighbourhoods and for providing armed response to their clients’ alarm systems. Tracking and car recovery can be part of the service, often resulting in getting involved in high-speed chases of car thieves and hijackers.

According to the PSIRA, the number of security businesses in South Africa grew by 43 per cent in the past decade, while the number of registered security officers has increased by 44 per cent. Meanwhile there are 150,000 police officers for the country’s 62 million people.

It is hardly surprising that the SA police force has difficulty in recruiting numbers. It is a force used to violently repress people⁹ and culpable in the worst massacre of working people in South Africa’s modern history, killing 40 striking miners over a couple of days.

That slaughter occurred in 2012 at the British-owned Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana, when miners wished create a new union and to leave the National Union of Mineworkers which, they said, was more in favour of their employers than the workers.¹⁰

Cyril Ramaphosa, the millionaire ex-President of the NUM was widely suspected of having organised the massacre and he’s now President of the ANC and of the South African Government. At the time, Jacob Zuma was President, now in the process of being tried for financial corruption.

But Mandela was still alive and at liberty when the massacre occurred and did not condemn the atrocity nor those responsible. Long-time anti-apartheid campaigner (and Mandela’s friend) Bishop Tutu once famously commented that “The ANC stopped the gravy train – long enough to get on it.”¹¹

IMPORTANT

Is it important whether this person or that were truly the heroes they are reputed to have been? I think it is, not only because we tend to erect them as models for our behaviour but also because their lives and their choices present us with historical lessons.

The South African regime during the struggle was a white European settler state and like all of those, undemocratic and racist too. The masses rose up several times against it but people did not risk beatings, torture, imprisonment and death merely for the right to vote.

The struggles were so strong and the minority settler regime so emphatically opposed to reforms that its imperialist partners felt it vulnerable to revolution. They eventually convinced the regime to enfranchise the majority black population.

But what if the black masses went on kick out the imperialists?

The change had to be managed and the leadership of the ANC, the NUM and the Communist Party of South Africa proved willing to control their supporters. However, something else was needed, as in similar circumstances: a known face, a hero, to be the figurehead before the masses.

*Representative of USA, chief imperialist country and Nelson Mandela after latter’s release.*

Mandela proved to be that man, not only for his long imprisonment for guerrilla action but because he had been tested among the political prisoners on Roben Island and was judged the most suitable, so he had been separated from the other political prisoners to a new jail for grooming.

Mandela, after a huge publicity buildup around the world, was released in 1990 and began a series of negotiations with the settler minority’s leadership. In 1994, with universal suffrage, Mandela was easily elected head of the ANC and of the new government of South Africa.

Of the wave of pacification processes that swept around the world starting in the very early 90s with Al Fatah in Palestine, the South African process turned out to be the only one that delivered any of the objectives of what was promised¹² — and that was the vote for everyone.

But it had the potential beyond that gain: of national liberation, the possession of all its natural resources and of a progressive social order, a beacon for the rest of Africa. It was important for imperialism to prevent all that and, with the help of the leaders of the ANC, NUM and CPSA, they did so.

The immediate result was a drop even further in the standard of living of the masses and an increase in the rapacious grip of imperialism on the natural resources, while municipal services declined further and crime at the bottom took off, matching corruption at the top.

The broken society there now is the cumulative result and should serve as a lesson about pacification processes, negotiations during struggle and our choices of heroes – or those chosen for us.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1As we in Ireland can testify, with the lionisation of Michael Collins, for example, for his role in the War of Independence (1919-1921) but who, a little later, acted on behalf of the Irish colonial bourgeoisie and their British masters to launch the Civil War (1922-1923) to prevent the establishment of a 32-County Republic.

2 https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/fire-engulfs-illegal-housing-block-killing-73-in-south-africa-4353926

3 As of 2023, around 18.2 million people in South Africa are living in extreme poverty, with the poverty threshold at1.90 U.S. dollars daily (see Statista in Sources & References).

4See Sources & References

5The Private Security Industry Regulatory Agency.

6 https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/private-security-firms-fill-void-in-crime-riddled-south-africa-1572546.html

7Ibid.

8Ibid.

9For examples see series of articles in https://www.saferspaces.org.za/understand/entry/police-brutality-in-south-africa

10It was notable that those popular organisations deeply implicated in pacification processes either reported with great restraint on the massacre or failed, like the Left-Nationalist Basque trade union LAB, to comment on it at all (to say nothing of sending a solidarity message to the striking workers or denouncing the State).

11 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/anc-boards-the-gravy-train-john-carlin-in-johannesburg-on-the-underdogs-who-have-become-fat-cats-in-a-few-months-1379001.html

12For example Palestine, Ireland, the Basque Country, Turkish Kurdistan, Colombia, Sri Lanka …

SOURCES & REFERENCES

Crime and private security firms: https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/private-security-firms-fill-void-in-crime-riddled-south-africa-1572546.html

SA police: https://www.saferspaces.org.za/understand/entry/police-brutality-in-south-africa

SA Housing: https://rebelbreeze.com/2023/09/30/pacification-kills-too/

https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/fire-engulfs-illegal-housing-block-killing-73-in-south-africa-4353926

SA Poverty: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1263290/number-of-people-living-in-extreme-poverty-in-south-africa

Click to access 15%20Mineral%20Resources.pdf

ANC corruption: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/anc-boards-the-gravy-train-john-carlin-in-johannesburg-on-the-underdogs-who-have-become-fat-cats-in-a-few-months-1379001.html

YOU DIDN’T LISTEN THEN … AND YOU’RE NOT LISTENING NOW.

On January 6, 2024January 7, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

Yes, you peace-loving liberals, we told you but you wouldn’t listen. Told you that Zionism means racism, colonial settler expansion and, ultimately, genocide. But you wouldn’t listen. And you’re not listening now.

There just had to be a way of resolving things so everyone got something and then there would be peace, you all said.

People like you think all that has to happen for peace is that both sides sit down and talk. But what if what one wants is irreconcilable with what the other wants? Well, then you say, they both have to give up something.

The problem with that is that it’s always the oppressed who have to give up the most – or even everything. However, that’s necessary, because that’s how we get peace, you say. But would you apply it to yourselves as easily?

If a thief got your wallets, would you suggest sitting down and talking it over with him or her? Maybe suggesting s/he only stole half the contents? Well, you might, I suppose. But what if they got your cars, your houses and emptied your bank accounts?

You’d very quickly resort to violence! Oh, not you personally, of course not! You’d get the police to use force for you and a judge to use force to put them in jail and prison officers to use force to keep them in jail for an allotted time, to try and ensure they didn’t steal from you again.

We told you that the only peace the Zionists could achieve would be the peace of the Palestinian cemetery; but as many graves as the Zionists dug for the Palestinians, more would rise up fighting and they would never give up their land or agree to be kept down.

Every time the Zionists carried out a massacre or another atrocity, we told you: the only solution to this conflict is a unitary democratic state of Palestine, “from the River to the Sea”. But you wouldn’t listen.

And even now, as you begin to talk about “peace again” “after Gaza”, it’s clear you haven’t learned. The massacre of 22,600, including over 9,000 children, the ruins of Gaza, refugee camps, hospitals, mosques, water and sewage treatment plants have taught you nothing.

Because here you are again, proposing something other than the rational solution, in this case re-marketing the two-state plan. All the imperialists agree and you’ll get Abbas and the corrupt Al Fatah to go along as before of course but the Palestinian people as a whole will never do so.

The irony is that by pushing your kind of ‘peace’ measure and avoiding real peace, you are effectively advocating the conditions for war without end – or wiping out/ expulsion of the Palestinians. Really, it would be better if you just shut up and stop trying to ‘help’.

Because the only ones you’re helping are the genocidal Zionists and their imperialist backers.

End.

THE LIFE OF RILEY IS AN EGOTISTICAL DENIAL OF HUMANITY

On January 3, 2024December 3, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Mass Media Criticism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine1 Comment

News & Views No. 13 Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins)

British TV personality Rachel Riley shared with the media that she is feeling sombre on New Year’s eve with reference to the conflict in Gaza. We could all empathise with that were it not for her further elucidation.

So, what makes you “somber” Rachel, is the number of Israeli settlers killed on October 7^th – not the genocidal slaughter of thousands of Palestinian civilians, including women and children?

From some points of view, it is entirely understandable that should be making you somber three months later. But what is not understandable in any sense of humanity, Rachel, is that you are not in the least somber about the genocide being carried out every day.

A genocide that in just three months has taken the lives of tipping at 23,000, destroyed refugee camps, clinics, hospitals, ambulances, mosques, schools, bakeries, water treatment plants, whole neighbourhoods, fishing boats, and left a dislocated 1.9 million to starve and die from disease.

It is recorded that you give talks on a genocide committed nearly a century ago – for which you have been awarded an imperialist honour — but apparently the one occurring now does not move you.

Even for someone with Zionist credentials¹ that seems shocking — but perhaps we shouldn’t be shocked, for genocide is both the excuse, the aim and the practice of Zionism.

In an Instagram post on Sunday, you wrote that “Holocaust education feels present and urgent” since the attack by Hamas on October 7th. We agree — but not in the way you meant it, which was as a justification for the holocaust being visited upon the Palestinians.

Which would be bad enough if they had been the ones who carried out the other genocide, the one (the only one, apparently) which concerns you, but they aren’t. No, in fact, many of those states that carried out the genocide against the Jews are the very ones endorsing and supplying this slaughter.

Yes, the Palestinian offensive on 7^th October last year was brutal – it was a military operation. But how does it compare in scale and number of occasions to the brutal massacres carried out by the ‘Israeli’ state in the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their very land and ever since?

You claimed that “As a result (of the Palestinian attack), incidents of anti-Jewish hate are surging around the world”. Of course, we know that Zionists constantly try to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, even accusing anti-Zionist Jews of being “self-hating.”

But if anti-semitic incidents are indeed on the rise, do you not think that the bestial genocidal acts of the Zionist state might be a more likely source for such incidents? Along with the feeling of powerlessness engendered by the complicity of the major powers in the genocide?

You expressed a wish “for an end to the violence in Gaza and the region as soon as possible that allows for stable and safe home for everyone there to be able to live in peace.” We might be able to join you in that wish, “as every decent person” might, if we didn’t know what you really mean.

What homes remain to the people in Gaza, Rachel? What you mean is the ‘peace’ in ‘Israel’ before 7^th October last year.

What you want is the ‘peace’ of the end of Palestinian resistance to the wholesale robbery of their land, to the expulsion of refugees, to the thousands of indignities heaped upon a people made second-class denizens in their own land, where they cannot even be citizens.

Expelled from houses in Jerusalem, houses elsewhere demolished, water and sewage treatment plants ruined, fishermen forbidden beyond their polluted shores and harassed even there. Prisons full of Palestinians, even children, sentenced by military courts and many not even convicted.

Constantly under pressure from the encroachment of armed zealot European settlers even into the ‘reservations’ the State allows the Palestinians with the Gaza open prison deliberately kept at subsistence level, with no legal way in or out except by Zionist permission under Zionist guns.

We note that you were a forefront campaigner against the left-social-democrat Jeremy Corbyn. As a revolutionary I have more than one bone to pick with him but your campaign and that of the others with you was a complete fraud: there was no more anti-semitism there than anywhere else.

In fact, once again, it was the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism which was the real issue and shamelessly used by Corbyn’s enemies and competition within the imperialist British Labour Party to overthrow his leadership.

MATHEMATICS

It is recorded that you are a qualified mathematician so I have some questions for you around numbers and statistics: how many Palestinians is it justified to kill to avenge the “around 1,200” claimed killed by the Palestinian incursion operation?

Or how many Palestinian civilians is it justifiable to kill for those Israelis killed? The Zionist state improbably claims it has killed 8,500 Palestinian fighters and if we deduct that figure from the overall number of those killed, 23,000, it still means the killing of 14,500 civilians since October.

On the other hand, from an analyst’s estimated death toll of 3,500 Palestinian fighters,² that means that the Zionist death toll of Palestinian civilians is 19,500. How do you justify that as payback for the revised figure of 1,200 Israeli civilians killed in the Palestinian operation of 7^th October?

But even that figure is false, isn’t it? Because many of those killed were Israeli soldiers, right? And most military age Israelis are either serving soldiers or reservists, like the ones called up to take part in the current genocide.

And now Bituah Leumi, Israel’s social security agency on its website lists 695 people killed during the attack, over half of which were Israeli security personnel, with names and the alleged circumstances of their deaths (but of course the media will keep repeating the old numbers).

And then even those can’t all be added to the total Israelis killed by Palestinian fighters on that day, since we know from Israeli civilian and army testimonies that many of the Israelis were killed by the IOF in panic, in crossfire or in deliberate shelling according to the “Hannibal” doctrine.³

So, after a quick “countdown” of which you are surely capable, Riley, how many indigenous Palestinian lives may justifiably be taken for each Israel settler in the Zionist colony? And what would happen, though I do not encourage it, if the Palestinians were to reverse the ratios?

End.

FOOTNOTES

1In case of confusion let me state clearly that has everything to do with your political outlook and next to nothing to do with your ethnic group or your mother’s.

2 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/1/analysis-is-the-israeli-army-as-militarily-successful-as-it-claims

3 https://electronicintifada.net/content/evidence-israel-killed-its-own-citizens-7-october/41156

SOURCES

https://www.breakingnews.ie/entertainment/rachel-riley-reflects-on-new-years-eve-feeling-sombre-amid-gaza-conflict-1570698.html

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

European Complicity with Zionist Genocide

On December 28, 2023December 30, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

(28/12/2023) (Reading time: 6 mins.)

It has been said that with one phone call from Joe Biden to Netanyahu the genocide in Gaza could be halted.

Comparisons have been made to Reagan doing just that with the Irgun terrorist, Menachem Begin, who was the Israeli Prime Minister during the siege of Beirut in 1982 or Obama in later years.

Little has been said of the European Union’s equal capacity to make a similar call and bring an end to the slaughter. The EU is not a minor player in the region, and Israel is as much dependent on the EU as it is on the USA, though in a slightly different manner.

From the start the EU decided to support Israel, come hell or high water, and hell it was to be, for the Palestinians. Ursula von der Leyen stated that Israel had the right to defend itself against what she termed terrorism and that “Europe stands with Israel”.¹

*Ursula von der Leyen, taken at a time when EU staffers complained about her bias in favour of Israel* (Photo credit: *EPA-EFE/JULIEN WARNAND*)

A month later, as the gravity of Israeli plans were clear for all to see, she continued to talk about the Hamas attack on October 7^th, much of which has now been proven to be false (there were no decapitated babies, many of the dead were Israeli military not civilians and furthermore Israel itself killed many of the civilians).

She made no condemnation of Israeli bombings of civilians. She and the EU still stood by Israel.²

But on October 20^th 842 staffers at the EU signed a letter condemning her position and pointing out she was legitimising a war crime in Gaza, and pointed to her support for the blockade of food and water in Gaza.³

But Von der Leyen continued as before and still stands by Israel and its “right to self-defence”, despite the evidence that what Israel is engaged in, is genocide and multiple war crimes.

Some have made reference to the Nazi past of her family, and though interesting, it is not the reason for her support nor that of the EU, though it may affect the tone of her statements.

In evaluating her behaviour we should, of course, bear in mind her aristocratic and Nazi past, of which she is apparently very proud of and has made reference to.

But they are just anecdotes, others with a clean family tree have also supported Israel.

The reason why the EU supports Israel is one of naked self-interest. Like the USA, the EU has decided that Israel is also its very own Forward Operating Base to keep in check the Arab masses and ensure the flow of oil.

The EU was in a position to halt the genocide from the word go. Von der Leyen could have told Israel to back off and it would have. Without the EU, the Israeli economy collapses.

A ban on exporting to or importing from Israel would see the modern-day Babylon collapse overnight with little effect on Europe itself. Israel is the EU’s 25^th largest trading partner, way behind Turkiye which is the EU’s sixth largest trading partner.

However, the reverse does not hold. The EU is a significant trading partner for Israel.

According to the European Commission’s Office in Israel (Von der Leyen & Co.) 31.9% of Israeli imports come from the EU and 25.6% of Israel’s exports go to the EU with total trade amounting to €46.8 billion in 2022.

Israeli imports of services amounted to €16.7 billion in 2021 with exports representing €9.8 billion. Further the EU invested €60.5 billion in 2021. Israel depends on the EU.⁴ One phone call is all it would have taken to put Netanyahu in his place and stop the genocide.

European complicity in the genocide is not limited to its economic role. Between 2012 and 2022, Israel received just over 5.4 billion US dollars in arms transfers, from three sources. Unsurprisingly, the USA was the primary supplier.

But Germany supplied Israel with $1.475 billion and Italy supplied a further $261 million. In the same period, Israel exported $7.458 billion to a range of countries, including the UK, bastions of democracy such as Azerbaijan ($854 million), Turkiye ($60 million).

But by far the biggest recipient was India which received $2.879 billion.⁵

The type of weaponry received is important. Israel received $2.734 billion in aircraft, $609 million in armoured vehicles, $752 million in missiles, just the type of weaponry it has used to reduce Gaza to rubble and carry out its genocide.

Israeli Merkava 4 tank in exercise on occupied ground in the Golan Heights 2016; it and other armoured vehicles carry German engines, according to arms watch organisation SIPRI which believes them to be in operation in Gaza now. (Photo: *Ariel Schalit/AP*)

All of those regimes who supplied Israel with weaponry are as guilty as the Israelis. After Operation Cast Lead (December 2008 – January 2009) it was obvious what type of regime held sway in Tel Aviv.

They have repeated this type of operation on many occasions since then, with major interventions and also a number of smaller, though still deadly attacks.

The nature of the Zionist regime was laid bare to the world, and yet the EU continued to export the type of weapons needed to carry out a genocide.

Hopefully, some day in the future we can hold a Nuremberg-style tribunal to judge those responsible. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, places obligations on states and gives them the authority to try people for the crime of Genocide.6

To be clear about what genocide is, the convention to which most states are signatories defines it in Article II as:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.⁷

Israel was one of the first signatories to it and has made no reservations on any aspect of it, unlike the USA which has placed some caveats on its jurisdiction in relation to the USA.8

*Photo of Nuremberg defendants during the Nuremberg Trials. Will there one day be such a tribunal sitting on the Israeli war criminals and their international accomplices?* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Following WWII not only were the Nazis tried at Nuremberg, other Nazis were tried by individual states in the subsequent years. Countries such as France, Germany, Israel, Norway and others brought Nazis to trial after the Nuremberg Trials.

In Hungary alone, around 26,000 people were tried for treason, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Czechoslovakia around 32,000 people met a similar fate. Some 100,000 Germans and Austrians were tried in Western Europe and in the Soviet Union another 26,000 were also tried.⁹

Any nation can place those accused of genocide on trial. To date it has been a question of power. The US won the war in the East and so were not charged for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nearly all those tried for crimes against humanity have been on the losing side of a conflict in which the US and Europe wished to punish one side.

It is entirely conceivable that the powers that make up the BRICS10 could detain war criminals and place them on trial in a national or supranational court convened by them. It is possible though unlikely.

It is however necessary. International law is dead, buried under the rubble of churches, mosques and hospitals in Gaza.

Netanyahu and the entire High Command of the IDF should stand trial like Göring and others did and should face the same consequences as Eichmann who the Israelis tried and executed by hanging.

Ten top ranking Nazis were executed, with Göring committing suicide the night before his scheduled execution. Others should meet another fate as did those lower ranking Nazis in subsequent trials. Various EU leaders should also be tried.

Von der Leyen is a key case and should meet the fate her Nazis family escaped from. Keir Starmer, Macron, Merkel, Rushi Sunak and others should all be put on trial and at the very least imprisoned. Europe is as much to blame for the current genocide as the USA and Israel itself.

NOTES:

1 Press communiqué (13/10/2023) Statement by President von der Leyen with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/STATEMENT_23_4986

2 Von der Leyen, U. (09/11/2023) Speech by President von der Leyen at the International Humanitarian Conference for the Civilian Population in Gaza https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/news/speech-president-von-der-leyen-international-humanitarian-conference-civilian-population-gaza-2023-11-09_en

3 Irish Times (20/10/2023) EU staff members express fury over von der Leyen stance on Israel-Hamas conflict. Naomi O’Leary. https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2023/10/20/eu-staff-members-express-fury-over-von-der-leyen-stance-on-israel-hamas-conflict/

4 Figures taken from the European Commission’s page https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-country-and-region/countries-and-regions/israel_en

5 Figures taken from https://www.sipri.org

6 See Article IV Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
Article V
The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.
Article VIII
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.

7 See Convention at https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/genocide-conv-1948?activeTab=undefined

8 See https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/genocide-conv-1948/state-parties?activeTab=default

9 See Postwar trials and denazification https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/survival-and-legacy/postwar-trials-and-denazification/

10 For information on BRICS see https://infobrics.org

The Martyrdom of Gaza: A Never Ending Saga

On December 2, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Imperialism, Irish Left, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, Trade unions, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

16 November 2023

Israel uses white phosphorus munitions in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

Norman Finkelstein published a book a number of years ago entitled Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom.

In it he looked at various major episodes in the long bloody onslaught on the people of Gaza, amongst them Operation Cast Lead and also the attack on the boat Mavi Marmara and the Goldstone Report, amongst other issues.

He could have written it yesterday about the current genocidal plans of the Israeli state.

The Israel Defense Forces fired at least three white phosphorus shells above this UN-run school in Beit Lahiya on January 17, 2009, killing two and wounding 14. The school was housing about 1,600 displaced persons at the time. *The IDF have used these munitions a number of times since.* © 2009 Getty Images

The current Israeli offensive is just one more in a long line of massacres. This is not a review of Finkelstein’s book, though any book by him is worth reading and should be read. Rather I just want to use the book to show that what is happening now is not new, it is just more intense.

Israel has murdered before, it has lied, it has committed war crimes and it has always received the support of western states.

Above all we should be clear that we are where we are partly due to the Oslo Accord and also the role played by the Palestinian Authority and the PLO. They cannot wash their hands of the affair.

“One of the meanings of Oslo,” former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami observed, “was that the PLO was . . . Israel’s collaborator in the task of stifling the intifada and cutting short . . . an authentically democratic struggle for Palestinian independence.”

Rabin (left) and Arafat shake hands on the Oslo Accords under the management of then US President Clinton. (Photo sourced: Internet)

In particular, Israel contrived to reassign to Palestinian surrogates the sordid tasks of occupation. “The idea of Oslo,” former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky acknowledged, “was to find a strong dictator to . . . keep the Palestinians under control.”

“The Palestinians will be better at establishing internal security than we were,” Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin told skeptics in his ranks, “because they will not allow appeals to the Supreme Court and will prevent the Association for Civil Rights in Israel from criticizing the conditions there. . .

They will rule by their own methods, freeing, and this is most important, the Israeli soldiers from having to do what they will do.”(1)

In other words, Gaza has bled under the passive gaze of the bureaucrats of the Palestinian authorities and of course of the reactionary Arab regimes that have never lifted a finger to help their Palestinian brothers and sisters.

They have not even threatened to cut off the supply of oil to the West, something they could do right now, but won’t. It has also happened under the gaze of those on the Left who run around shouting Implement Oslo! Two State Solution!

They ignore the fact that Oslo represented an ideological, political and military defeat for the Palestinians. The PLO accepted its role as puppet, administrator of a small urban city-like council and as chief repressor of those who continued to fight for Palestinian freedom.

A look at the Oslo II Accord, signed in September 1995 and spelling out in detail the mutual rights and duties of the contracting parties to the 1993 agreement, suggests what loomed largest in the minds of Palestinian negotiators.

Whereas four full pages are devoted to “Passage of [Palestinian] VIPs” (the section is subdivided into “Category 1 VIPs,” “Category 2 VIPs,” “Category 3 VIPs,” and “Secondary VIPs”), less than one page—the very last—is devoted to “Release of Palestinian Prisoners and Detainees,” who numbered in the many thousands…

The barely disguised purpose of Oslo’s protracted interim period was not confidence building to facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace but collaboration building to facilitate a burden-free Israeli occupation.(2)

However, Israel is now militarily weak. Finkelstein points to a number of attacks where it has shown its weakness. Its predilection is for attacks on the civilian population that can’t fight back.

In 2006, it opted to bomb civilians in Lebanon rather than engage in a proper fight with Hezbollah “terrorizing Lebanese civilians appeared to be a low-cost method of “education.”(3)

In Gaza in Operation Cast Lead in 2008/9, it followed a similar path of aerial bombardments of civilians rather than land invasions, that would see its troops face the wrath of Hamas and other armed organisations. So first they relentlessly bombed Gaza before any troops went in.

When the troops went in, the civilian population was their preferred target then as it is now. The murder of civilians is not new. It is part of an Israeli strategy of claiming easy victories.

An Israelicombatant remembered a meeting with his brigade commander and others where the “rules of engagement” were “essentially” conveyed as, “if you see any signs of movement at all you shoot.”

Other soldiers recalled, “If the deputyBattalionCommander thought a house looked suspect, we’d blow it away. If the infantrymen didn’t like the looks of that house—we’d shoot” (unidentified soldier); “If you face an area that is hidden by a building—you take down the building.”

Questions such as ‘who lives in that building[?]’ are not asked” (soldier recalling hisBrigadeCommander’s order);

“As for rules of engagement, the army’s working assumption was that the whole area would be devoid of civilians … Anyone there, as far as the army was concerned, was to be killed” (unidentified soldier);

“We were told: ‘any sign of danger, open up with massive fire” (member of a reconnaissance company); “We shot at anything that moved” (Golani Brigade fighter); “Despite the fact that no one fired on us, the firing and demolitions continued incessantly” (gunner in a tank crew).

“Essentially, a person only need[ed] to be in a ‘problematic’ location,” a Haaretz reporter found, “in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to be ‘incriminated’ and in effect sentenced to death.”(4)

In all around 1,400 Palestinians were murdered in Operation Cast Lead, with 80% of them being civilians including 350 children. Israeli casualties were risible in comparison, just 10 combatants were killed, four of whom were killed by friendly fire.(5)

Then as now, Israel wheeled out the old trope of “human shields”. Amnesty International found no evidence of that,(6) in fact, it found evidence of Israel using children as human shields.(7)

It also found that Israel used then, as it does now, white phosphorous against schools, hospitals and even the UNRWA.(8) Furthermore, 99% of the air attacks were accurate.(9) If they murdered civilians, it is because the civilians were the target.

Following the operation, the Goldstone Report was published. It surprised no-one when it found evidence of Israeli war crimes and to a lesser extent of Hamas. It is a salutary lesson for those who now place their confidence in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Goldstone made various recommendations.

Individual states in the international community were exhorted to “start criminal investigations in national courts, using universal jurisdiction, where there is sufficient evidence of the commission of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

“Where so warranted following investigation, alleged perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with internationally recognized standards of justice.”(10)

We know that nothing of the sort happened. In fact, the western governments paid little heed to the report. Goldstone was forced to recant on the conclusions to his report.

Netanyahu for his part announced that he wanted to amend the rules of war leading to Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell asking “What is it that Israel wants … Permission to fearlessly attack defenseless population centers with planes, tanks and artillery?”(11)

Exactly.

And here we are today, with Israel unilaterally amending the rules of war, with the green light from the EU and the USA, amongst others. They murder civilians and no one proposes doing anything.

In Operation Cast Lead, the harshest sentence emitted by an Israeli court was seven and a half months to a soldier who had stolen a credit card!(12) Minor financial crimes are of greater concern than war crimes or crimes against humanity.

After this genocide in Gaza, we can’t expect much from the ICC.

Throughout its history the ICC has opened just 31 cases, including one for genocide. All of them against African leaders. This does not mean that those leaders did not deserve to be judged for their crimes, but that the ICC is just the legal arm of imperialism.

It has never attempted to put on trial the powerful in the West and despite everything even less so Israel. This year it issued a communiqué announcing that it would issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for war crimes and did so on its own initiative.(13)

In the case of Gaza, it will do nothing of the sort. Those who place their trust in the ICC or in the Palestinian Authority are fooling themselves. This situation is the result of turning a blind eye to Israel for many years whilst it commits all sorts of crimes.

It didn’t act before and it won’t do so now. Neither will the Arab regimes do much, unless their own populations force them. They fear the Palestinians and their own people as they know that the struggle against Zionism is also a struggle against them.

The more revolutionary Palestinian groups used to say that the path to Jerusalem went through Amman and Damascus. They were right, it does pass through those capital cities and also Beirut, Riyadh, Cairo and all the others and not through the ICC.

In fact, one day the judges and prosecutors of that body should be put on trial for their complicity in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity through their inaction and omission.

It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with the role of Amnesty International in its own reports on Palestine.

They are what Finkelstein refers “as far from being the exception that proved the rule, Amnesty actually constituted a variant of the rule: instead of falling silent on Israeli crimes during Protective Edge, Amnesty whitewashed them.”(14)

I will leave it to the reader to look at the book for more information on that particular betrayal. Suffice to say, we can expect little from such organisations. At best they gather data we can sometimes use.

Notes

(1) Finkelstein, N. G. (2018) Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom. California. California University Press. pp 6 & 7

(2) Ibíd.p.10

(3) Ibíd. p.26

(4) Ibíd.p.45

(5) Ibíd. p.70

(7) Ibíd. p.71

(8) Ibíd., p. 75

(9) Ibíd., p. 204

(10) Ibíd., p. 91 & 92

(11) Ibíd., p.93

(12) Ibíd., p.101.

(13) See https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and

(14) Finkelstein, N.G. (2018) Op. Cit. p.238

The International Criminal Court: The judicial branch of imperialism

On November 27, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Massacres, Political Analysis, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

27 November 2023 (Reading time: 5 mins.)

The international criminal court in The Hague.

In the context of the Zionist genocide in Gaza, a number of personalities and Palestinian solidarity organisations have asked that Netanyahu and others be put on trial by the International Criminal Court.

This will not happen, that court has been described in vulgar but accurate terms as a stinker. It is true, its putrid stench is nauseating and the history of international tribunals is full of hypocrisy, even when they judge people who should be tried and punished.

We all know of the Nuremberg Tribunal where the Nazis were put on trial. A correct decision, but Harris the man responsible for the fire-bombing of Dresden that killed 30,000 civilians was not tried, nor were other Allied criminals.

In Tokyo, the Indian judge, Radha Binod Pal argued that the USA should be tried for the atomic bombs used against purely civilian targets. But they didn’t. In more recent times we have seen international tribunals try one group of people but not another.

*Radha Binod Pal, dissenting jurist at the Tokyo War Crime trials* (Image sourced: *Internet*)

One of the first tribunals in recent times was the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. That tribunal tried a significant number of war criminals, amongst them people as vile as Ratko Mladić, the butcher of Srebrenica, where they murdered more than 8,000 men and boys.

In all, 111 people were tried, but there were those who they never ever considered putting on trial. Following the war, two high-ranking British officials took advantage of their contacts in the Serbian government and in the name of the British Natwest Bank facilitated the privatisation of Serbian Telecom.

It has been said that not only did that save Slobodan Milosevic but that he used those funds for his later war in Kosovo.

The British officials who collaborated with someone who was nothing more than a war criminal were none other than Pauline Neville-Jones, Britain’s key diplomat in the Yugoslav crisis, seen by many as appeasing Milosevic and her boss the Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd.(1)

Of course, no one ever proposed trying them for facilitating the war in Kosovo.

Perhaps a clearer example of not trying Europeans is the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

That tribunal decided upon various despicable crimes such as murder, rape and sexual slavery. It also decided upon another issue, particularly in the case of Charles Taylor, that of what are termed Blood Diamonds. Though in reality it did no such thing.

The tribunal rightly tried Taylor, but never looked at the role of the Belgians or the South Africans in the trade of Blood Diamonds. Any black person would do, but no whites, no businesspeople from the sector.

The company De Beers is a key player in the market, not only as far as production is concerned, but also in the sale of diamonds from other companies, controlling 80% of the market. But in the Sierra Leone tribunal, they didn’t even think of looking at the role of companies such as those.

They also set up a tribunal for Iraq, though it was supposedly set up by the “new government”. They tried various high-ranking officials from the Saddam Hussein regime, amongst them his once upon a time minister of defence, due to his use of gas against the Kurdish people, known as Chemical Alí.

The regime massacred thousands of Kurds, wiped off the face of the earth whole towns, displaced the Kurds and tried to repopulate those areas with Iraqis. Something similar to what Israel does with the Palestinians.

There can be no doubt about the regime’s responsibility for war crimes and also for the crime of genocide. But who sold them the gas they used against the Kurds?

Up to 40 German and European companies were involved in supplying the raw materials and know how to Saddam.(2) Yet this was not an issue for the West.

A Dutch court eventually sentenced one person to 15 years in jail.(3) However, Frans van Anrat was arrested and tried after the Saddam regime had been destroyed, not before. No one sought to arrest him and imprison him when the regime was an ally of the West.

In 2023, another Dutch court ordered a Dutch company to compensate five Iranians injured in those chemical attacks.(4) But the use of chemical weapons is a war crime, so why were the directors of the company not charged?

Previously, in 2013, a group of Iraqi Kurds tried to sue a French company that had supplied chemicals to Saddam.(5) So far, they have made little progress on that matter.

However, recently the French courts saw no problem in issuing arrest warrants for the Syrian president, Assad over the use of chemical weapons.(6) US involvement in the supply of chemicals has not been subject to such judicial investigations, nor will it ever be.

The US, however, did not just supply chemicals, it actively participated in their use.

According to Foreign Policy, a magazine that could hardly be described as progressive or opposed to US foreign policy in general, in the war with Iran, Iraq repeatedly used chemical agents, with the US providing satellite imagery to help Iraq target Iranian forces more successfully.(7)

So, evidence is not a key factor in deciding who gets tried by international tribunals and who doesn’t. Political expediency is the key factor, trumping all others. Justice is not what is sought, though it may be an unintended consequence in some cases.

Justice would see all those involved being brought to trial. But many of them pay the wages of the prosecutors and the judges and even pay for the logistics of these tribunals.

The ICC is no different. Its wages are paid by the states who carry out the greatest human rights violations in the world. The refusal to arrest Tony Blair or Netanyahu is not an oversight. They will never bite their master’s hand.

To date the ICC has dealt with 31 cases, including one for genocide. All of these cases were against black African leaders, some of whom relied on western complicity in their crimes. Their western accomplices will never face charges.

*Judges and staff International Criminal Court* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

If western generals, politicians and companies don’t face charges when they are directly involved in war crimes and genocide, they are not going to face charges when they are murky figures in the shadows.

It is highly unlikely that Israel will be brought before the ICC, though sacrificing some lower ranking officers is not beyond the realm of possibility, though it is also highly unlikely.

Placing our faith in an international court which has shown itself to be nothing more than the judicial branch of imperialism is a mistake. In principle there is nothing wrong in taking a case, but believing you will get justice at the court is a criminal level of naivety and gullibility.

It dismissed cases against US allies such as Colombia, but immediately opened a file on Venezuela after the deaths of some protestors. When the Colombian police murdered over 80 protestors in 2021, the ICC looked on passively, just as it does now in the face of a Zionist campaign of genocide in Gaza.

One day it is to be hoped that the prosecutors and judges of that court are put on trial for their own role in facilitating the repression and murder of people around the world. But it won’t be the current western regimes that do that.

Notes

(1) The Guardian (13/05/2010) Pauline Neville-Jones: diplomat who did business with Milosevic. Ian Traynor and Richard Norton Taylor https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/may/13/pauline-neville-jones-conservatives

(2) GfvB (13/03/2008) German and European firms were involved. https://web.archive.org/web/20130806082700/http://www.gfbv.de/pressemit.php

(3) BBC (23/12/2005) Saddam’s ‘Dutch Link’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4358741.stm

(4) AP (15/11/2023) Dutch court orders company to compensate 5 Iranian victims of mustard gas attacks in the 1980s. https://apnews.com/article/iraq-iran-mustard-gas-netherlands-court-compensation-aeaca7355d8a7417749d9216d9dae5ca

(5) RFI (11/06/2013) Iraqi Kurds sue French companies for Halabja chemical attack. https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20130611-iraqi-kurds-sue-french-companies-halabja-chemical-attack

(6) Reuters (15/11/2023) France issues arrest warrant for Syria’s President Assad – source https://www.reuters.com/world/france-issues-arrest-warrants-against-syrias-president-assad-source-2023-11-15/

(7) Foreign Policy (26/08/2013) Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran. Shane Harris & Matthew M. Aid. https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/