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 7th– 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 7th 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 7th 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 7th 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.
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 7th, 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 20th 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 25th 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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
There’s a new Wailing Wall … THERE’S A NEW WAILING WALL; It’s in Gaza, and here mothers and fathers wail at the bloody bodies of their children; children wail at the bloody bodies of parents; all wail over the bodies of friends and neighbours; the wailing rises and the tears fall.
At this Wailing Wall … AT THIS WAILING WALL, we wail the mendacity of Israel and the West, we wail the complicity of the media in the West; while rockets, shells and bombs rained down upon us the lies fell faster and thicker than rain, a torrent of lies that never stopped. To surge in flood over the bodies of our slain.
You come now with your flag of peace … YOU COME NOW WITH YOUR FLAG OF PEACE tramping along the bloodstained road and up the mountain of our bones and the rubble of our homes and offer us business as before or – bombardment once more.
Now that the bombs have stopped … NOW THAT THE BOMBS HAVE STOPPED we too stop and look around us: our schools gutted and bloodstained, mosques and hospitals in ruins, so many of our buildings rubble, or with gaping shell-holes, in the hell-hole you have made of Gaza.
We had so little and you destroyed so much. WE HAD SO LITTLE AND YOU DESTROYED SO MUCH!
In the days to come, more will sicken and die, of wounds on flesh and wounds on soul, of lack of medicine, fuel or food as even in pause you take your toll.
Many are numb, some try to forget … MANY ARE NUMB, SOME TRY TO FORGET, some try to live without forgetting, but there is a begetting, for in many hearts too, your phosphorus flakes are snowing, the embers of hate are glowing, their machine guns and bombs are mowing you and your children for generations to come.
Against your Goliath … AGAINST YOUR GOLIATH, our slingshots were of no use; yes, God was with you – he’s no longer Hebrew or English – He’s American now; you shot us down like fish in the shooting barrel you made of Gaza.
You wish us to recognise you? YOU WISH US TO RECOGNISE YOU? Of course we recognise you – the imprint of your boots are upon our necks; we carry them from cradle to the grave.
But we will never agree to accept or agree that you should keep what you have stolen and plundered the land you have sundered or that you can make us second-class citizens in our own land.
While we struggle to endure … WHILE WE STRUGGLE TO ENDURE and to ensure that you never defeat us let it be that we do not learn to treat others as you now treat us.
What did you learn from your oppressors? WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM YOUR OPPRESSORS? If all you learned was how to also do so much of what they did, then truly have the six million died in vain and you mock their memory by invoking them.
Diarmuid, Feabhra 2009
I began to write this just as the December 2008- January 2009 bombardment of Gaza by Israel was coming to an end and I rounded it off in February.
That was the one they called “Operation Cast Lead”, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly non-combatants, including 400 children and injured over 5,300 — again, mostly non-combatants.
I little thought that so few years later Israel would unleash an even worse bombardment upon the beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza, as it did in July 2014, during which it killed over 2,300, again mostly non-combatants and that time nearly 500 children.
The damage to infrastructure is colossal and the Israeli-Egyptian blockade makes significant repair impossible.
The commentary above was written in 2014. Apart from killing in raids, there were more massacres to come: March 2018, more than 700 Palestinian refugees killed at the borders of the Israeli state and in 2021, over 260 Palestinians killed after Zionist provocation at the Al Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem.
In August 2022, over 30 Palestinians, including women and children, killed in Israeli missile attacks and this year, by August, Israel had killed 172 Palestinians. Now, over October-November 2023, they have killed 133 Palestinians in the West Bank and over 9,000 in Gaza, including 3,760 children.
There is no question that this is genocide: “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”
“Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Nor did that genocide begin in October this year, nor last year, nor the year before. It began in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel and has been continuing since.
Changes in the Palestinian territories and Israel.
Occasionally in the “debates” on the Arab world and Palestine in particular statements are made that “they want to destroy Israel” as a criticism or “Israel has the right to exist” as if it were a human being.
The Left abandoned any discussion on the issue following the Oslo Accord where the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) surrendered and agreed to govern some Bantustans(1) in the name of peace.
The Palestinian “problem” was resolved through the half-measure of autonomy where the Palestinian Authority has less power than a small municipality anywhere in the world and the left replicated and took on as its own the right-liberal demand for Two States.
It is worth looking at the question of destroying Israel and its supposed right to exist. We should be clear though that no state has a right to exist. States exist because they exist, through force, popular support, or cunning and guile. States come and go.
In the 19th Century two states came into being, ten years apart, one being Italy through the struggles of Garibaldi and others and Germany, unified under Bismarck. These two states underwent various important changes in their nature, borders and ideological discourse on unity.
In the case of Italy (1861), the Papal States were reduced in size and a significant part of what we now call Italy belonged to Austria. It wasn’t until after the First World War that Italy came to have borders similar to what it now has and changed from a monarchy to a republic.
In the case of Germany, its borders waxed and waned throughout the 19th Century until unification under Bismarck in 1871. Later Hitler would expand them once again under the Third Reich or as it was officially called since 1871, the German Reich.
Following the Second World War, nobody argued that the Nazi state had a right to exist. It was partially dismantled. Poland recovered a part of its land, the Sudetenland, once again, became part of Checoslovakia, Austria recovered its independence.
The great racial nation of Germans was wiped off the face of the earth. The Allies divided the rest into four parts, with three of them becoming the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 and the other the German Democratic Republic, until 1991 when they were united.
Other states such as the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires also disappeared after the First World War.
These were not the only states to undergo dramatic change. There are more interesting examples from the anti-imperialist struggles. The Vietnamese guerrillas wiped off the face of the earth the reactionary (North American) state of South Vietnam.
The Algerian revolutionaries wiped off the face of the earth the French colonial department of Algeria and erected in its place the Republic of Algeria.
So, is the state of Israel immutable? Does it have a right to exist? Should that right be defended? It is easier to answer that question if we ask ourselves what defending that right means.
Israel’s existence is the theft of land, it is the Nakba, the displacement of 750,000 people in 1948. It is the invasion of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. It is also the current genocide the modern-day Nazis are trying to carry out in Gaza.
Israeli destruction 31 October 2023 of Jabalia Refugee Camp, which was Gaza Strip’s largest of 8 camps. 150 were injured in this attack and 50 killed. (Photo cred: Anas al-Shareef/Reuters)
On that point, there are those who don’t propose to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, but rather to set up two states.
Amongst those who sometimes wave that flag is the USA and others who are more serious about it, such as Al Fatah, the dominant faction in what was the PLO, European liberals and the press.
There are also those who believe it is a pragmatic solution, but they are usually people who ignore the question of class as a factor in the Arab world.
Two states means acknowledging and accepting the invasion of 1948, the Nakba, the systematic theft, murder and torture. It also means not accepting the right of return of those displaced in 1948 i.e. to accept and reward the mass violation of the human rights of the Palestinian people.
It was worth recalling that the PLO and the various organisations that formed part of it were founded before the 1967 war, so propose two states is to propose the Zionist victory over the territory stolen in 1948.
It is to accept that if you commit mass human rights violations and crimes against humanity, the solution is to commit even more, so that some liberal or former leftist can come along and say we have to accept some degree of crime and blood.
So, what is the solution? It is not easy, though it is simple, at least conceptually. It is the historic Palestinian demand of One State. The Palestinians themselves proposed this from the word go, knowing that it brought up the problem of what to do with the Jews who had arrived.
One of the old factions of the PLO stated:
However, the DFLP had come to a premature recognition that as well as the Palestinian national question there was also a “Jewish question” which inevitably has to be resolved if one aims to reach a democratic solution to the conflict, emphasising that the resolution of the Jewish question was conditional on freeing itself from the zionist project and the necessary coexistence with the Palestinian Arabs on an equal footing under the slogan of a “Popular Democratic State” which would be built on the ruins of the State of Israel; but, how would this aim be achieved in the light of the overwhelming superiority of Israel and its firm commitment to North American Imperialism?
The answer is to be found in the “prolonged people’s war throughout the all Palestinian and Arab territories”.(2)
Such voices were, back then and continue to be, a minority, but what they say is true. Those millions of Arabs that have come out on to the streets to protest against the Zionist regime face various enemies, one of them being their own bourgeoisies, the Arab states that have betrayed the Palestinian people time and again.
However, a Pan-Arabist revolution is a far way off but not impossible. None of the Arab regimes are progressive and they exist because they repress their own people, their own working class. But what would happen to the Jews who lived in the new state?
Well, many of them, Netanyahu style Nazis would flee to the USA alongside the Yanks that have arrived in recent decades, those from Western Europe, and the Ukrainians, amongst others. Something similar happened with whites when the racist apartheid regime in Rhodesia was overthrown in 1979.
The white population fell from 240,000 to 28,000 now. In Algeria a million Pieds-Noirs fled. Others, those that descend from families that have been in the region for centuries will stay, others will have to negotiate their future in the new state.
But not an inch can be given on the right of return of ALL the Palestinians, not only to the country, but also to their farms, olive and lemon fields, their rural and urban houses in the whole country.
So, should Israel be wiped off the face of the earth? Of course it should, and a new Palestinian secular democratic state should be built on the ruins of Zionism and Apartheid. The Arab states and elites should also be wiped off the face of the earth.
Later the war criminals and those responsible for crimes against humanity will have to be tried. The Zionists rightly put the German Nazi Adolf Eichmann in the dock. It was an act of justice.
Now the Palestinians and the rest of us have to put Nethanyahu and the other criminals in the dock, perhaps with the same consequences.
Though whether they spend the rest of their miserable lives in prison or they go to the gallows may be up for discussion, what is beyond debate is whether they should be tried for crimes against humanity. They should be tried as such.
Long live Palestine Free and United!
Notes
(1) The Bantustans were segregated zones set aside for blacks in South Africa under Apartheid. They were supposedly independent from the regime but in reality had no autonomy. They were governed by black “leaders” that supported the regime, or at least were not very critical in the same way as the Palestinian Authority.
(2) F. Suleiman, (n/d), La Izquierda Palestina Revolucionaria: Tres décadas de exp eriencia de lucha (1969-1999), FDLP http://www.fdlpalestina.org/index.htm
Israel is justifying its bombardment of Gaza as the right to defend the state, effectively in the right to take revenge, with which the western states are in agreement.
Leaving aside the question of whether bombing homes, bakeries, markets and hospitals constitutes ‘defence’, what should we think about the right of a state to defend itself as a principle?
It seems natural that every state should have the right to defend itself; perhaps that right is extrapolated from the generally-agreed right of the individual to self-defence. In bourgeois law, the need to defend oneself can be a valid legal defence even against a murder charge.
The individual is generally understood to have the right of self-defence particularly in their home but also in public places. However, it is important to note that this right, even in bourgeois law, is not considered valid in every conceivable case.
For example, the right of one individual to use violence in their defence can be cancelled by the right of their victim to self-defence if the latter is being seriously harmed by the former, so that violence by the victim might be considered a reasonable response in their own self-defence.
People carrying out a robbery or kidnapping, to take another instance, are not considered to have the right to use violence if attacked in the course of the robbery by the victim or by security forces or even a passer-by.
Proceeding to the question of the rights of states to defence, we might say that the UK had the right to defend itself from Nazi attack during WWII and certainly so did the USSR, so too later with the rights of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from the USA’s invasions and bombings in the 1970s.
But did the Cambodian state have the right to defend itself from Vietnamese invasion when the Pol Pot regime was carrying out mass exterminations of sections of its population? Or the did the states of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy have the right to defence against the Allied forces?
Continuing in consideration of the right of a state to defence, how does that go when the attack comes from within the territory of the state itself?
Most Irish and democratic people outside would probably deny that the English Crown had the right to defend itself against the Irish rebellions of the clans (1167-1690s) or of the United Irish republicans, or against the Fenian insurrections, the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence (1919-1921).
Similarly, most would deny the right of the English or French monarchies to defend themselves against the internal republican uprisings of 1649 and 1789, respectively.
When the “internal” force attacking is a nation, then national rights of self-determination counter and supersede the rights of the state to self-defence. The case of the United Irishmen has already been noted but slave colony Haiti and colonial Algeria against France could be listed there too.
ISRAEL
The Israeli State is a colonial regime sitting on the Palestinian people’s land. It is in addition a state which is deeply religiously sectarian on the basis of Judaeism, in a sense which is far more racial than it is religious and, in many cases, may have no religious aspect at all.
Aftermath of Israeli militia massacre of Palestinian village Deir Yassin (9th April 1948 – five weeks before the the founding of the Israeli state). After the massacre, the Zionists took over the village, and in 1980 the occupation established settlement units on top of the original buildings of the village, and gave the names of the “Argon”, “Etzel”, “Palmach” and “Haganah” murder gangs to places in it. 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee the land. (Source photos: Internet)
Being able to claim Jewish descent is the qualification for Israeli citizenship, not religious practice or even belief. As for the Palestinians, whether Muslim or Christian, Arab or Berber, they are ‘other’, second-class or even third-class at best.
Third-class because the Ashkenazi Jewish colonists discriminate against other Jews too, for example the Ethiopian (because many are black), the Sephardic and Mizrahi (because they are not Ashkenazi). They will all speak Hebrew now but many additional languages are spoken too.
The Zionist trend in the Jewish world insisting that Jews had a right to a state of their own on a land of their own, even if some other people already lived there, was a minority trend among Jews until fairly recently, though it gained dominance in the West over years after the establishment of Israel.
Indeed there are sections of Jewish society that consider the creation of a Jewish state to be contrary to the teachings of the Torah. But as observed earlier, Zionism is not really about religion.
The establishment of the Zionist state was achieved at the price of the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians, the imposition of racist and sectarian laws, apartheid, massacres,1 oppression of the Palestinians and repression of their resistance.
The story of the state of Israel in the land of Palestine until now can be characterised by two images: the murder of Palestinian people along with the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 as the Zionist state came into being – and the genocidal bombing of Gaza these three weeks.
As of some hours ago, over 7,000 Palestinians have been killed in the past three weeks – including nearly 3,000 children.
Medical staff in Gaza treating children and woman injured by Israeli bombing, uploaded 26 October. (Source image: Al Jazeera)
There are many ways to kill, including despair, lack of or obstruction to medical treatment or access to good water and food. But from 1948 to 2021 (i.e excluding the killings since then and this year’s), well over 20,000 Palestinian civilians have been directly killed by the Israeli state’s military and settlers.
To claim that “Israel has the right to defence” is to say that all those things are justified and must be defended, must be perpetuated, that we must be complicit in it and that the best we can do is to ask Israel to practice its racism, colonialism, oppression and repression somewhat more gently.
Israeli bombing wide-scale destruction of Gaza, October 2023 (Photo sourced: Internet)
Israel – which is to say the Zionist project — has absolutely no right to defence.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1When hostilities erupted in 1948, the villagers of Deir Yassin and those of the nearby Jewish village of Giv’at Shaul signed a pact, later approved at Haganah headquarters, to maintain their good relations, exchange information on movement of outsiders through village territory, and ensure the safety of vehicles from the village. The inhabitants of Deir Yassin upheld the agreement scrupulously, resisting infiltration by Arab irregulars. Though this was known to the Irgun and Lehi forces, they attacked the village on April 9, 1948. The assault was beaten off initially, with the attackers suffering 40 wounded. Only the intervention of a Palmach unit, using mortars,[20] allowed them to occupy the village. Houses were blown up with people inside and people shot: 107 villagers, including women and children, were killed. The survivors were loaded on trucks that were driven through Jerusalem in a victory parade,[19][21] with some sources describing further violence by Lehi soldiers.[22] Four Irgun or Lehi men were killed.[23] The incident became known as the Deir Yassin massacre.
On April 10, 1948, one day after the Deir Yassin massacre, Albert Einstein wrote a critical letter to the American Friends of Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (the U.S chapter of Lehi) refusing to assist them with aid or support to raise money for their cause in Palestine.[24][25] On December 2, 1948, many prominent American Jews signed and published an op-ed article in The New York Times critical of Menachem Begin and the massacre at Deir Yassin. (Wikipedia)
Opposition leader Elly Schlein accused the prime minister of “historical revisionism” over her ambiguous language.
08/03/2023 PUBLICO / EFE (Translated by D.Breatnach)
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni completely avoided using the word ‘neofascist’ in her message marking the 43rd anniversary of the Bologna Massacre, a terrorist attack by a far-Right organization that killed 85 people.
Meloni did not go to Bologna to participate in the commemoration.
“43 years have passed but, in the heart and conscience of the nation, the violence of that terrible explosion still resonates with all its force,” said the leader of the Executive and the ultra-right party Brothers of Italy.
Giorgia Meloni, the Prime Minister of Italy. (Photo: Fabio Frustaci / EFE)
In her message, she asked to “get to the truth about the massacres that marked Italy in the postwar period,” an ambiguous phrase that makes no direct reference to the far-right groups that carried out the massacre on 2nd August 1980.
The absence of specific terms in Meloni’s speech to refer to the attack has prompted opposition leader Elly Schlein, a progressive, to accuse Meloni of promoting “historical revisionism.”
“We are here in Bologna together with the families of the victims of the massacre to reiterate that we do not accept any further attempts to rewrite history. The judicial evidence already makes it clear that it was a neo-fascist massacre and also with subversive intent,” Schlein said.
In the message shared by the president, Sergio Mattarella, to commemorate the date, he did refer to “the neo-fascist matrix of the massacre.” Likewise, he recalled that in the subsequent trials “ignoble deviations, in which secret associations and treasonous agents of the state apparatus participated,” came to light.
Meloni has ruled out any anti-democratic nuance of her formation, but she maintains as a symbol of the Brothers of Italy the so-called “tricolor flame”, emblem of the youth organisation of the old and post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) in which she was a member of her youth.
The Bologna Train Station, Italy, following the fascist explosion on 2nd August 1980 (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Bologna Massacre
The Bologna massacre was the most serious terrorist attack in Italy after World War II, in which 85 people died and more than 200 were injured and extreme right-wing militants belonging to the organization Armed Revolucionary Nuclei were convicted for it.
Comment by D.Breatnach: However, parts of the Italian State were implicated in the bombing and/or coverup too, with elements in the Italian police, judiciary and secret service but also with suspicions of CIA/NATO involvement. It seemed that the purpose of that bombing and others in the period was to create fear and confusion in which the State could return to fascism.
On the 49th anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings a number of speakers criticised the Garda closure of its investigation a mere four months after the bombing with the highest number killed in any one day of the 30 years war.
The criticisms were made on 17th May at the annual commemoration of the atrocity in Talbot Street, Dublin, organised by the Justice For the Forgotten campaign, held at the location of the memorial on the site of one of the bombings of that day.
The annual commemoration has been organised for many years by the Justice For the Forgotten campaigning group at the Talbot Street monument to the bombing1. It usually comprises reminiscences, poetry and music and a call for the British State to release its secret papers.
As of rote, an Irish Government Minister is invited to speak who routinely says how hard the Irish Government has been trying to get the British State to release the secret papers revealing the latter’s connection to those who carried out the bombing.
Years after the bombings, a British TV company (!) pointed the finger at the Ulster Volunteer Force, a British Loyalist paramilitary group but believed acting under British Intelligence agency direction, named some of those involved and a week later the UVF claimed responsibility.
In addition to British Intelligence, the British colonial police2 and British Army3 had been widely known to be working in collusion with Loyalists.
But few would have suspected Irish State collusion.
THE BOMBINGS AND AFTERMATH
On 17th May 1974 three car bombs exploded without warning in crowded Dublin city centre streets and another in Monaghan town centre. Thirty-three people were killed along with a full-term baby and a miscarriage with around 300injured. No-one was ever even charged in relation to the atrocity.
Scene post-bombing in Talbot Street, the site where the Monument was erected later is out of shot to the right. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The intention, unlike that of many other city car-bombings in the Six Counties and in England, was clearly to cause maximum death and injury to civilians. The areas chosen in Dublin were full of shops with bus stops and 5.30pm was going home time from shopping and work.
And no warning was given.
In the course of the short Garda4 investigation, in macabre irony the remains of the exploded cars were sent for forensic examination to their very source: the Six Counties, i.e to the colonial police force (at the time, the RUC5). Unsurprisingly, nothing useful came back.
In a war that was already five years old (six years, if the civil rights marches are included) the collusion between the British colonial police and Loyalist paramilitary murder gangs was well known and collusion with the British Army widely suspected.
Floral tributes on the north face of the monument in Talbot Street. (Photo: D.Breatnach)Floral tributes on the south face of the monument in Talbot Street. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
CAMPAIGN OF BOMBING DUBLIN
The Loyalist bombing of two cities in the Irish state in 1974, although by far the worst of the whole period, were not the first in Ireland, not even the first fatal ones.
In 1973 a Loyalist bomb in Dublin city killed Tommy Douglas and the year before that another killed George Bradshaw and Tommy Duffy – all were employees of Irish public transport state company CIE.
Even after the horror of 1974, on 29th November 1975, another a bomb at Dublin Airport killed John Hayes, a worker there.
And there were other earlier ones where no-one was injured, such as the blowing up of the Wolfe Tone monument just outside Stephens Green on 8th February 19716 and the Daniel O’Connell Monument in Glasnevin Cemetery (the round tower) in December 1971.
Pieces of the statue of Theobald Wolfe Tone on St Stephen’s Green. The statue was blown up by a loyalist bomb. A report at the time noted that ‘Huge slabs of the bronze sculpture were hurled 20 feet in the air’. 08/02/1971 (Photo sourced: Internet)The O’Connell Monument in Glasnevin (round tower) seen here at sunset from the Botanic Gardens was a target of Loyalist bombing in 1971. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
If the Irish State had pursued investigations and cross-Border links after the earliest of those bombings, they might have headed off the carnage that followed later.
Not only did they not do so but in fact used the 1972 bombing to blame Irish Republicans so as to get an unpopular piece of repressive legislation through parliament, the Amendment to the Offences Against the State Act, along with the establishment of the no-jury Special Criminal Court7.
The Garda Commissioner at the time of the 1974 bombings was Patrick Malone and Ed Garvey, his Assistant Commissioner, was later exposed as a British Secret Service asset run by Fred Holroyd, a disenchanted British agent who revealed he had visited the policeman in his Dublin HQ.
Garvey, by then Commissioner, denied being a British agent and claimed no memory of the visit.
The Barron Report (2003) concluded that visit had undoubtedly occurred and that he had not informed his superiors, contrary to all rules regarding contact with agents working for a foreign government.8 When Fianna Fáil came into Government again, they sacked Garvey.
Since FF had not subjected him to a regular disciplinary process, probably in order to avoid the sordid story going public, Garvey was able to sue the Irish Government, win damages and ensure he received his former pension entitlements.
THE COMMEMORATION EVENT
Aidan Shields, who lost his sister Maureen in the bombing, chaired the event for Justice for the Forgotten and introduced its Secretary Margaret Unwin who, as all speaking or performing at the event seemed conscious that next year would be the 50th anniversary of the atrocity.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
The regular Government slot was occupied by the current Tánaiste (Dep. Prime Minister) Mícheál Martin who, as has every Government representative since the JFTF commemorations began, claimed energetic diplomatic discussions for release of the papers with their British counterparts.
Martin also criticised the British Government’s widely-criticised intended legislation to prevent official investigations and trials regarding past crimes committed by British forces, while he simultaneously praised the British pacification process.
A young Italian woman played the theme from the Schindler’s List film and another air on violin. A visiting Italian couple had been killed in the bombing also but that was not mentioned when she was introduced.
Rachel Hegarty read from her poetry compilation about the victims, based on testimonies by surviving relatives and friends. Cormac Breatnach on high D whistle and Eoin Dillon on uileann pipes played the Irish air Tabhair Dom Do Lámh (“Give Me Your Hand”).
Poet Rachel Hegarty reciting from her work on the bombing. (Photo: D.Breatnach)Closeup of Cormac Breatnach on high whistle playing at event. (Photo: D.Breatnach)Eoin Dillon playing uileann pipes at event. (Photo: D.Breatnach)Fuller shot of Cormac Breatnach playing at event with Eoin Dillon out of shot to the left. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The Shillelagh North Ukulele Group played and sang The Sound of Silence and Things (we used to do), both appropriate in metaphorical context, the first for the official silence about the perpetrators and their British intelligence organisation, the second about the loss of the victims and to their loved ones.
Dublin City Lord Mayor Caroline Conroy, of the Green Party, spoke about the atrocity and criticised the closing of the Garda investigation a mere four months after the bombing.9
Vincent Browne giving his oration. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Well-known journalist and former TV presenter Vincent Browne gave the oration at the event and went into horrific detail on some of the injuries he had witnessed as a journalist at the scene with his doctor brother as they struggled to help the victims still alive.
Browne departed from the subject of the bombing, as a few had done to speak of the long war and the Good Friday Agreement but in his case also to accuse the Provisional IRA of having killed most of the people during the 30 Years War which seemed not appropriate on this occasion.
Seán Conlon, Cathaoirleach (Chair) of Monaghan Council10 spoke of the bombing and focused on the effect on his town. He also condemned the early closing of the Garda investigation and the failure to pressurise the British State into releasing security papers relevant to the bombing.11
Seán Conlon, Cathaoirleach of Monaghan Council, speaking with part of monument visible to his left. Aidan Shields is standing right next to the Monument. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
A number of speakers referred optimistically to the investigation into the Glenanne Gang by former English police chief Jon Boucher, who was present in the crowd at the commemoration. Boucher is heading a number of other historical investigations, including that of Stakeknife.12
The older age profile of the attendance was noticeable with only two teenagers visible and this in itself must be of concern.
FATAL CONSEQUENCES OF STATE COLLUSION AND COVER-UP
The failure to investigate the earlier Loyalist bombings and apprehend the perpetrators made the planning and execution of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings much easier. The early closing of the Garda investigation of the 1974 bombings ensured the perpetrators would run free.
As well as failing relatives and friends of those murdered and injured in Dublin on the 17th May 1974, the lack of pursuit had repercussions for many other victims of Loyalist murder squads, in particular the over 120 victims of the Glenanne Gang, including the Miami Band Massacre in 1975.
An aspect not normally commented upon was the choice of predominantly working class areas for Dublin massacre victims. It was not the high-end Henry or Grafton Streets that were chosen but the more working-class shopping areas of Talbot Street and Parnell Street.
The fatal Dublin bombings of 1972 and 1973 had also been directed at workers by location: three public transport workers and an airport worker.
Section of the Shillelagh North Ukulele Group playing and singing at the event (Photo: D.Breatnach)
THE GOMBEENS: A CRAVEN CLIENT RULING CLASS
The whole chain of events from the first Loyalist bombing of Dublin points quite clearly to the client nature of the Irish national bourgeoisie, the ruling class of the Irish State. Even if it wanted to, it is too weak to make strong demands of the British State.
What self-respecting national ruling class would allow a foreign power to send terrorists to bomb its capital city? And then collude with that power in drawing silence and secrecy over the atrocity?
None, of course. But the Irish bourgeoisie came into being in a truncated client state and, armed and equipped by its master, went to war for two years (1922-1923) against the very national liberation forces that had brought the British State with offered concessions to the negotiation table.13
To talk of uniting Ireland under such a class, apart from being impractical nonsense, is a travesty. To expect any real change by electing a party or combination of parties to government in such a situation is a pipe-dream.
The 1974 bombing, the subsequent investigation and the record of Irish governments since in relation to the bombing are together a stark illustration of the spineless nature of the Irish bourgeoisie when dealing with their masters.
A client ruling class yes but more accurately, a servant.14
End.
Section of the crowd in attendance viewed from the north-east of the location. (Photo: D.Breatnach)Section of the crowd with the tower of Connolly (formerly Amiens Street) Station in the background. During the British suppression of the 1916 Rising, British Army machine-gun fire was directed from there along Talbot Street towards the General Post Office garrison and North Earl and Henry Streets. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
FOOTNOTES
1There was originally a plaque at the Garden of Remembrance and the Talbot Street monument was erected in 1977 after campaigning by relatives and victims. There is also a monument in Monaghan Town. In Dublin there is also a plaque at the site of another explosion that killed people that day in Parnell Street.
2Now the Police Service of Northern Ireland, formerly the Royal Ulster Constabulary (and before that, up until 1921, the Royal Irish Constabulary, when the whole of Ireland was under direct British rule).
3In particular the Ulster Defence Regiment, which had recruited from the part-time RUC B-Specials when the latter were disbanded but also special units such as the MRF in special operations and more generally across the whole of the occupation forces.
5When the Irish State and colony statelet were created in 1921, the colonial gendarmerie of the Royal Irish Constabulary in the colony became the Royal Ulster Constabulary. In more recent years the force has change its name to the Police Force of Northern Ireland.
6The body of the monument to the Anglican leader of the United Irishmen was destroyed but the head was salvageable and rests on the re-cast body of the monument today.
7The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has dubbed that Court “a sentencing tribunal” but every party in government since has upheld those repressive provisions and Sinn Féin has abandoned its decades of opposition to them as it prepares to enter government in coalition with one party or another.
8Having a Garda Commissioner who was or became a British Intelligence agent might be shocking until we remind ourselves that the current Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris, coming from being Assistant Commissioner of the PSNI, was at least formerly part of MI5 operations in the colony and that must have been known to those who appointed him!
9Mayors of Dublin City are selected for one year from among the elected councillors. It is more of a ceremonial role than an executive one and the choice is usually negotiated in turn from among the represented political parties.
11A number commented that his contribution was so much better in every way than that of last year’s Monaghan Cathaoirleach. Conlon is a member of the Sinn Féin party and some may say his posture would therefore be expected. However, given changes in the party’s public position on many questions in recent years, a hard stand against the British administration no longer seems natural for this party’s public representatives.
13Irish Civil War (or as some see it, the Irish Counterrevolution) 1922-1923.
14It should be noted that the Gombeen class has also been a client in turn of US Imperialism and of EU Imperialism, with all of which it aligns itself on most questions of international policy and to which it opens up its markets, natural resources and infrastructure networks.
Revolutionary greetings on the First of May! It is International Workers’ Day, for recalling of the struggles of working people down the centuries past and of resolution to carry the struggle forward until we succeed in building and defending a socialist society.
On that Mayday too we are aware that in some parts of the world, those wishing to mark the date in public will be subject to intimidation or worse: arrest, baton charge or being fired upon. Possibly even trial and death sentence.
HISTORY OF MAYDAY
The day dates from an incident in Chicago 1886, USA, when trade unions and socialist groups of various kinds organised a campaign in many cities of the USA to exchange the common 10-hour1 working day for the 8-hour day. May 1st was set for the start of the campaign
On May 3rd in Chicago, a city central to the campaign for an eight-hour working day, a demonstration as part of the campaign took place outside the McCormick Harvesting Machine company. The police opened fire on striking workers, killing one of them and injuring many.
The anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists organised a demonstration for May 4th to protest the killing of workers. When the police advanced on the peaceful crowd ordering dispersal, a bomb was thrown at them and police opened fire on the crowd, some of whom returned fire.
Some of the police are believed to have shot some of their colleagues by mistake.
Sixty police were injured and one killed; the police chief gave his opinion that more than that number of demonstrators were injured. The media was mostly hostile and many demonstrators wounded would have feared to attend hospital for fear of arrest or worse by police.
Contemporary engraving of the seven originally sentenced to death (Image: Wikipedia)
Subsequently, amidst a wave of police repression, including raids on union halls and people’s homes, eight Anarchists were framed, charged with conspiracy to murder and convicted. One of them was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
The sentences of Schwab and Fielden were commuted to life imprisonment. Linng took his own life in jail but August Spies, Albert R. Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were hanged by the Chicago State authorities.
Artist’s impression of the hanging of the four (Image: Wikipedia)
In 1889 the (Second) International Workingmen’s Association, a federation of trade unions and socialist organisations, agreed that in memory of that struggle and its martyrs, the First of May should be marked by all socialists around the world as International Workers’ Day.2
The site of the incident was designated a Chicago landmark in 1992 and a sculpture made in 1893 was dedicated there in 2004. In addition, the Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997 at the defendants’ burial site in Forest Park.
THE FIRST OF MAY BEFORE THAT
In European agricultural society the First of May was celebrated firstly as a pagan festival and later as an allegedly secular one or named for a Christian saint. It celebrated the coming of summer, of growing of crops and of livestock.
Industrial workers originated in agricultural societies or, in the case of early miners, were located near to such. It was natural that they should participate in such festivals and also even generations later create their own around a similar calendar.
European settlers in the USA, many of them from agricultural societies3, brought those traditions with them. That was probably one of the reasons for the date of the Chicago demonstration, although certainly there had been others on other dates.
MAYDAY IN IRELAND
My father took me as a child on my first Mayday march in Dublin. He was an active member of the NUJ and some members of his union and of others participated in a small march through the city centre led by a brass band.
Returning to Ireland in 2003 after decades working in England and marching there on May 1st, I was disappointed by the very small size of Mayday demonstrations in Dublin, though I participated in some and on at least one occasion as part of a Basque contingent.
The oppositional movement to the status quo in Ireland, because of our history of anti-colonial struggle, is dominated by Irish Republicanism. And though all of that movement’s parts would claim to be socialist too, the First of May is not of great importance in their annual calendar.
This is unfortunate because the mass of Irish workers who are not members of the Republican movement need leadership for their class and also, as it happens, most Irish Republicans are workers. And practically all immigrants are workers too.
While fighting for an independent Ireland, do we as workers want to exchange one group of exploiters for another? And is a struggle for an independent Ireland even remotely winnable without enlisting the working class fighting as a class in its own class interests?
James Connolly thought not and our history since his day has certainly attested to the correctness of his view.
NATIONAL HOLIDAY?
On 1st of May for years I took the day off work – unpaid, of course and went into the centre of London, the city in which I was living and working. My destination was usually Hyde Park Corner and if I was then in an organisation I met up others and if not, just joined in as an individual.
Thousands of people met there to rally and perhaps to march and I was aware that around the world not just thousands, or hundreds of thousands but millions were marking that day also. As a day to recall struggles in their own particular countries and in solidarity with others around the world.
Generally the various organisations and tendencies marched with those of their own affiliation but in the same demonstration, with the exception of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, which on at least one occasion marched in as everyone was leaving.
The WRP was an extremely internally dictatorial and externally politically sectarian trotskyist organisation that at one time up to the mid 1980s was probably the largest socialist organisation,4 certainly outside the ranks of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
The latter organisation, with the support of some other socialists, many of them left social-democrats, began to push for Mayday to become a national holiday, an objective they achieved in 19785 (followed by the Irish State 15 years later)6.
So now I could go to the demonstrations and not lose pay. Great, right?
No, not really. For a start, the holiday was no longer on May 1st but instead on the nearest Monday to the date. More importantly, people tended to treat it as a holiday rather than a day of international workers’ solidarity. Of course people are entitled to holidays but the essence of the day was gone.
And rather than being larger, the demonstrations grew smaller.
Sculpture made in 1893 known as The Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument (Photo: Wikipedia)
A DAY TO RECALL AND AVOW WORKERS’ STRUGGLE
This is not a day for class collaborationists, politicians or union leaders who try to undermine the struggles, water down demands and act as the ruling class’ police on union activists. It is a date for those at minimum in support of militant resistance.
The essence of the day is what we need to keep. A day upholding our struggle, that of the working class against its exploiters, native and foreign. A day remembering our long history of struggle, of victories and defeats, of sacrifices and why the colour of the workers’ flag is red.
It is a day to remember our internationalist duty of solidarity, not as charity or altruism but as partners in struggle across the world, as on a picket line or demonstration we would shield the person beside us and strike out at the company goon, fascist or policeman attacking us.
And rightfully expect the same from those next to us as we ourselves are the subject of assault.
End.
Current mural in Portugal
Footnotes
1That was for a six-day week and 14-hour days were not unknown and in rural areas, even a seven-day week.
2Five years later, U.S. Pres. Grover Cleveland, uneasy with the socialist origins of Workers’ Day, signed legislation to make Labor Day—already held in some states on the first Monday of September—the official U.S. holiday in honour of workers. Canada followed suit not long afterward.
3That would certainly have included most Irish, Italians, Sicilians and East Europeans in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
4The WRP was the result of a split in socialist organisations and by the mid-1980s was disintegrating in many smaller organisations. It exists still in name but as shade or sliver of its earlier form.
5May Day became an official public holiday all across the UK in 1978 with provisions for it being made in the Banking and Financial Dealings Act. Prior to that time it had been a holiday only in Scotland. The May Day Bank Holiday was instituted by Michael Foot, then the Labour Employment Secretary to coincide with International Labour Day.
6In the Irish State, the first Monday of May became a public holiday following the Public Holiday Regulations 1993 Act. The holiday was first observed in 1994.
