“70,000” IN DUBLIN MARCH DEMAND GOVERNMENT ACTION AGAINST GENOCIDE

On July 22, 2025July 22, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Uncategorized, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4 mins.)

The fact that the Irish Times reported ‘tens of thousands’ on Saturday’s march in Dublin was telling, avoiding their usual euphemism of ‘thousands’ or even ‘hundreds’ for a demonstration’s great multitude.¹

Even so, it was much larger, the organisers claiming 70,000 participants.

It was huge, without a doubt. From the D’Olier Street northern corner, the front of the march organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign had gone to the gates of Trinity College while the rest of it could be seen northwards the length of O’Connell Street and possibly beyond.

*In the distance marchers may be seen along the length of O’Connell Street. Behind the photographer, a section of the march is proceeding while the front has reached the Trinity College gates.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

This was the 16th national mobilisation in Palestine solidarity since October 2023 organised to take place in Dublin, while many smaller marches, pickets, vigils, public meetings, talks, film shows and other solidarity events have been held weekly across the nation.

BANNERS, FlAGS & PLACARDS

In addition to local branches of the IPSC, banners on the march also proclaimed party, trade union and professional body allegiance, along with specific declarations and calls for actions.

Placards included the professionally-printed but also a wide range of the ‘home-made’ examples and these can be of particular interest, such as the one that declared that “Blaming Hamas for firing rockets at Israel is like blaming a woman for punching her rapist.” Indeed.

*“Gaza is a death camp”.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

As the marchers passed the iconic General Post Office a small group organised by socialist Irish Republican organisation Éirigí held up giant letters spelling SAVE THE GPO.² A group wearing blue tops with PRESS on the back marched and held up photos of individual journalists in Gaza.³

The PBP-Solidarity contingent carried a banner calling for the enacting of the Occupied Territories Bill which seemed a rather tame demand of the Irish State from an organisation claiming to be revolutionary socialist (see Irish State Options section).

*A bagpiper playing amongst the marchers.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The most popular non-party flag on the march was of course the Palestinian one but the Irish Tricolour has been making a greater appearance on these marches of late and not before time.⁴ I noted only one Starry Plough, in green with the Plough design in gold and white stars.

DESTINATIONS AND ROUTES

The IPSC marches tend to begin at the Garden of Remembrance and end near Leinster House,⁵ seat of the Irish State’s parliament, or occasionally at the Department of Foreign Affairs. Saturday’s march also went to Molesworth Street but through a longer circular route.

This route saw the march take in part of Dame Street, then the whole of South George’s St. and Aungier Street, turn left towards Stephens Green and proceed along the Green’s west side, then along part of its southern side before turning down Dawson Street.

Molesworth Street was full of marchers already but IPSC stewards hustled marchers off Dawson Street, eventually giving up their usual endeavour to push the crowd past the Schoolhouse Lane junction so the Gardaí could erect barriers across that section to enclose the marchers.

The unusual route on this occasion avoided the temptation to march up the pedestrianised shopping area of Grafton Street, which the Gardaí do not like and at which there was a confrontation during the previous IPSC march when a number of protesters tried to take that route.

*One of the supporters of the march.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Despite the crucial role of the USA as chief supplier of arms, funding and political cover for the genocidal Zionists of the ‘Israeli’ state, since 2023 the IPSC have approached Dublin’s US Embassy only twice, no doubt respecting the Gardaí wish not to have the main road outside blocked.

On those two occasions the IPSC halted the march in a street behind the Embassy and away from one of the main roads into Dublin from the south (and along which the ill-fated Northumberland Fusiliers marched in April 1916). Marches to the Israeli Embassy were rare during the period too.⁶

IRISH STATE & OPTIONS

Both leaders of the Irish Coalition Government⁷ have built up some kudos with many anti-genocide people around the world for publicly stating that Israel is committing genocide – the first leaders of an EU or indeed Western state to say so.

In addition, the Irish Government joined with those of the Spanish and Norwegian states in a failed attempt last week to have the EU remove ‘Israel’ from its preferential trade agreement for violation of the human rights conditions of the Agreement.⁸

However, as a number of speakers at the IPSC rally and some marchers’ placards declared, the Irish State is in fact complicit in genocide by allowing military equipment for ‘Israel’ to fly through Irish airspace and by not enforcing its neutrality on US military transit through Shannon Airport.

And in allowing the Central Bank of Ireland to process ‘Israeli’ war bonds, which was the target of a number of representations including its huge logo on the march and a speech by Gary Gannon, DCC Councillor of the Social Democrats party.

The glacial progress of the moderate Occupied Territories Bill,⁹ delayed and then attempted weakening of it by removing services from the ban,¹⁰ is another hallmark of the Irish Government’s collusion (notwithstanding expressed Zionist rage and bullying by some US Congressmen).

Next to the USA, the Irish state is the biggest importer of ‘Israeli’ goods and a ban on these would greatly affect the genocidal state not only morally but also practically. In the absence of government action, the trade unions could impose a ban on their members handling those goods.

The contradiction is that the Western state most overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian is the biggest importer of ‘Israeli’ products and having hardly any practical effect towards preventing the genocide against the Palestinians, contrary to what the majority in Ireland actually want.

End.
Note: For the photos in this report I concentrated on the more unusual of those participating.

*Molesworth Street, the destination, is full from one end to the other*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

FOOTNOTES

IRISH MEDIA REPORTING

Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/07/19/this-war-took-my-entire-life-from-me-thousands-attend-pro-palestine-march-in-dublin

RTÉ: Thousands take part in march for Palestine in Dublin

1 https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2025/07/19/this-war-took-my-entire-life-from-me-thousands-attend-pro-palestine-march-in-dublin Nevertheless, that was the national broadcaster RTÉ’s approach.

2 https://www.businesspost.ie/politics/plan-for-gpo-to-house-offices-and-retail-to-be-signed-off-by-government/

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

4The Irish far-Right of fake patriots has been permitted illegitimately to almost monopolise the Irish Tricolour.

5‘Near’ rather than at Leinster House, because the Gardaí set up a crowd barricade at the end of Molesworth Street across the street from the House and that is as far as the march goes and also where the speakers’ platform is set up.

6This was so even before the Israeli Ambassador abandoned her Dublin post in disgust at popular Irish hostility to genocide and prior to the reputed closure of the Embassy (despite which the site has a 24-hour Garda guard).

7Taoiseach (Prime Minister equivalent) Mícheál Martin of the Fianna Fáil party and Tánaiste (Deputy PM equivalent), also Minister of Defence Simon Harris of the Fine Gael party. The Green Party is also a member of the Coalition.

8The European Union as a body and economic area is the largest consumer of Israeli exports https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/22/which-countries-trade-the-most-with-israel-and-what-do-they-buy-and-sell

9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied_Territories_Bill

10 https://www.trocaire.org/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-occupied-territories-bill/

CIVILIAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS: ‘ISRAEL’, USA AND THE BRITISH

On July 13, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, History, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

The Zionist state’s latest genocidal plan involves driving the inhabitants into a densely-packed area in the south of Gaza where they will be examined on the way in and then never allowed to leave unless to emigrate to another state.¹

This plan was announced recently by ‘Israeli’ Minister of Defence (sic) Israel Katz and has been enthusiastically approved by a number of ‘Israeli’ politicians, including Finance Minister Smotrich.

It’s being suggested Katz’s plan is to be run by the GHF food-and-bullets organisation and to connect to Trump’s earlier remarks about turning Gaza into a seaside resort once the Palestinians had left. However, Trump and his administration have declined to comment on this latest plan.

*The* Gaza Humanitarian (sic) Foundation, responsible for the deadly food traps in Gaza, has been suggested as the organisation to run the concentration camp (also being called Humanitarian Camp). (Image: *Cartoon by D.Breatnach*)

But wasn’t Gaza previously a concentration camp? Well, it has been called “the largest open-air prison in the world”² due to its intensified blockade since 2007 with Israeli control over who went in or came out.³ The intention was to make living intolerable but the Palestinians managed.

The refugees who came there from the Nakba in 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli War built houses, shops, community centres, mosques and churches, shops and markets, schools, colleges and university, farmed land and grew produce in polythene tunnels, dug wells, desalinated sea-water …

The IOF have destroyed nearly all of that (even roads and sewage treatment facilities) and now of course with water, fuel and food blockaded and frequent forced internal displacement, Gaza conditions are much much worse, with starvation andcontagious disease spreading.

This new plan however, is to compress the population into a smaller and smaller area, a concentration camp within that prison.

CIVILIAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS

The plan announced by the Zionazis is a concentration camp for civilians and this was in fact admitted by an Israeli journalist on one of their news channels. It’s fascist and racist but it’s not a new idea, having been practised by others including the British, USA and the Turks previously.

Concentration camps for civilians were used by the Nazis and Spanish fascists4 for example; in those cases their punitive function was clear. But during WWII the British interned Germans (including Jewish refugees) and allowed the Poles to run camps for dissidents in Scotland.

‘Concentration Camp’, drawing by David Ludwig Bloch. (Image sourced: *Internet*)

The British too built two Jewish concentration camps in Germany to prevent them from emigrating to the British Protectorate of Palestine, where the Zionists, encouraged to emigrate there by the British originally, were now destabilising British control and antagonising the indigenous people.⁶

The British also held Jewish civilians in a concentration camp in Cyprus, many of them Holocaust survivors who had tried to enter Palestine without British authorisation.⁷

During their war in Malaya (1948-1960) also the British ran civilian concentration villages, a model which the USA were to adopt later in Vietnam. These British measures were under the Briggs Plan and formed part of widescale repressive measures including forced deportations of Chinese.⁸

Those interned by the British in Frongoch concentration camp after the 1916 Rising were not all military personnel but included civilian members of Irish nationalist organisations.

The USA interned Japanese ethnic minority people during its war with Japan, allegedly as a purely security non-punitive measure. 1,862 deaths (out of 180,000) were recorded in those camps⁹ for which the USA did not apologise until 1976¹⁰ or pay reparations until 1998.

The Imperial Japanese forces during the same war period established concentration camps in their conquered territories for civilians, mostly Dutch and British colonial settlers, administrative officials and their families. More than 140,000 of those died in the camps.¹¹

Previously the USA had briefly used concentration camps against Native Americans but later shifted to removal and reservations policed by state-appointed officials. They also interned civilians, tens of thousands dying, in the US-Philippines War of 1898-1914.

In its war against the PKK (1978-2025) the Turkish State forced the evacuation of Kurdish villages where it felt unable to prevent guerrilla penetration, forcing relocation of the people and placing them under a collaborator administration in the new residential location.

The Turks also created a paramilitary police force to operate in the local areas but responsible centrally to the State which they called the Jandarma. In fact this was on the model of similar gendarmerie of the British in Ireland, of the Spanish, French and Italian states.¹²

Large rural areas of Turkish Kurdistan villages were cleared and relocated forcibly by the authorities. Arguably, despite the difficult conditions, the final defeat of the PKK was internal through adoption of a pacification process under the orders from captivity of their leader Ocalan.¹³

The village had Turkish-appointed guards and the headman was expected to ensure that the guerrilla forces did not enter and, if they did, to inform the South Vietnamese authorities (and through them the US military). Presumably he was also charged with informing them of ‘disloyal’ villagers.

Of course this put those recruited by the authorities in danger from the insurrectionary forces who viewed the guards and any collaborating headman as traitors. On the other hand, the headman might come under great pressure from the authorities to comply with their plan.

The USA’s version in Vietnam, the Strategic Hamlet Program was practised in 1962 during their War through their proxy, the South Vietnam government.¹⁴ Villagers either had their hamlet fortified or more often, they were forcibly relocated to a fortified location.

The Program was reportedly sabotaged but it is doubtful if it would have succeeded in any case as the forced relocations alienated even those who did not already sympathise with the insurrectionary forces. It marked President Kennedy’s last attempt to fight their war in Vietnam ‘indirectly’.

The living conditions in Israel’s version currently being contemplated for Palestinians in Gaza will be intolerable and the clear intention is for those who survive to want to emigrate – so, once again ethnic cleansing within a genocidal framework.

*Israel Katz, Minister for Defence (sic) in centre of photo on his sally with IOF into Lebanon with IOF occupying troops.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

It will also be very dangerous for those trying to enter, especially men, having to pass the interrogation process at the gate. Those suspected of Resistance activities – or even related to such suspects – will be deeply interrogated and many no doubt interned without trial.¹⁵

Families which have survived the genocidal bombing and starvation will be broken up as some enter and some refuse to enter (or are refused).

Overall, the historical experience of people confined in civilian concentration camps has been oppressive but for many a death sentence also. Despite the suffering, as a measure of repression against insurgency amongst the population, it has largely been ineffective.

Actually, there is one recorded case of the civilian concentration camp being successful in a counter-resistance context and that was of the British (again!) against the Boers of South Africa. In the Second Boer War the British (who had been defeated in the first) killed Boer livestock and burned their farms.

The British constructed a civilian concentration camp¹⁶ in which they placed the abducted Boer women and children in order to get their menfolk to submit. (The IOF are not above using relatives also, frequently arresting relatives in order to coerce a ‘wanted’ resistance person to surrender.)

80,000 Boer civilians were interned and, in separate camps, 115,000 African servants of the Boers. Due to the conditions, between 18,000 and 28,000 Boers died, 80% of them children. The British kept no records of African deaths but their losses are believed to have been similar.¹⁷

However, the British-Boer wars were between one group of settlers and another. So far, for all the suffering it causes, the record of the civilian concentration camp as a repressive measure by an occupying state against a resistant nation is one of failure.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/07/israeli-minister-reveals-plan-to-force-population-of-gaza-into-camp-on-ruins-of-rafah

2David Cameron, Prime Minister UK called it a prison in 2010, as did others, including Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director Human Rights watch in 2022. As late as 2023, so did British-Israeli historian and emeritus professor of International Relations at Oxford University Avi Shlaim who said it had evolved into “an open-air graveyard” at the time of his writing (there are numerous sources for the description by various people).

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

4The civilians in General Franco’ hugely overcrowded camps and jails contained large numbers of Basque, Catalan, Galician nationalists, Republican, Communist non-combatant nationalist civilians in addition to opposition military.

5 https://jacobin.com/2017/05/uk-concentration-camps-wwii-poland-internment-prisoners

6Ibid.

7 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna24457292

8A good account is given in this admittedly anti-communist biased report: https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/vol-15/issue-3/oct-dec-2019/civilians-in-crsfire

9 https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

10Admission by US President Gerald Ford.

11 https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/a-short-history-of-civilian-internment-camps-in-east-asia

12The RIC (later RUC now PSNI in the British colony) in Ireland, the Guardia Civil in the Spanish state, Gendarmerie in France and Carabinieri in Italy. Those forces in the last three named operate throughout the different nations that are incorporated in those states.

13Highly critical analysis https://noria-research.com/ceasefire-and-the-end-of-the-pkk/

14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Hamlet_Program, a hostile source like most I’ve found on line.

15A process the Zionist State calls ‘Administrative Detention’, resulting in six months trial without judicial process, which can be renewed.

16The main reason for the belief that the British originated the practice of concentration camps.

17 https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/south-african-concentration-camps

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

Israeli plan: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/07/israeli-minister-reveals-plan-to-force-population-of-gaza-into-camp-on-ruins-of-rafah

Turkey civilian concentration villages: https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/06/19/assessment-turkish-kurdish-conflict-1984-1999/

British concentration camps for Boer civilians: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/south-african-concentration-camps

and for civilians in Malaya, good account is given in this admittedly anti-communist biased report: https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/vol-15/issue-3/oct-dec-2019/civilians-in-crsfire

USA civilian concentration camps for ethnic Japanese civilians https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment and ‘strategic hamlets’ in their Vietnam War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Hamlet_Program (a hostile source, like most I’ve found on line).

GAZA CEASEFIRE DISCUSSION: A PANTOMIME WITH MANY ACTORS

On July 4, 2025July 6, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Guerrilla Action, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, Uncategorized, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Trump says he convinced Netanyahu to agree to a Gaza ceasefire and the Palestinian Resistance¹ had better take it because it’s the best they are going to get. Does the deal include the IOF pulling out of or an end to bombing Gaza? No, neither.

Mass media speculation abounds that the Resistance are under pressure (by starving Gaza residents in the midst of daily massacres) to agree to the ceasefire promoted by Trump and that it will be announced during Netanyahu’s visit to meet his imperialist backers in the USA.

Netanyahu says he won’t agree to ultimate peace nor even to the IOF pulling out of Gaza. His aim, he declares is the total defeat of Hamas (i.e. all the Palestinian resistance and the expulsion of their leaderships). Details of the deal mention a 60-day ceasefire.

Older now but still holding hands: back on 23 May 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and US President Donald Trump shake hands at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. (Photo cred: *Sebastian Scheiner/AP*)

And Gaza afterwards? All options are open, perhaps even the Israeli seaside resort of which Trump and Netanyahu were speaking earlier.² But not a Palestinian administration by free and popular elections, because that would mean the election of supporters of the Resistance).³

No doubt in order to increase the pressure on the Resistance, the IOF intensifies its daily bombing of civilian housing and refugee centres and food queue massacres. Starvations deaths begin to appear, first of children then of adults too, emaciated bodies and skull-like faces.

The Palestinian Resistance factions led by Hamas have been adamant all along that they will sign up to an end to the war but not to a temporary ceasefire. The IOF must pull out of Gaza and the gates must be opened to let desperately-needed food, medicine, fuel and water in.

The Resistance will release living Israeli prisoners and dead (bodies) and ‘Israel’ will release Palestinian hostages. This has been their position for a long time and was part of the US envoy’s (Witkoff)-approved agreement of 19 January with ‘Israel’ this year which the latter broke on 18March.⁴

Smotrich and Ben Gvir threaten to bring down Netanyahu’s coalition if there is a ceasefire agreement, saying the war should continue without pause until the defeat of the Resistance. But Smotrich and Ben Gvir also shadow-box against one another through the Israeli media.

There are elements of pantomime and farce between some pushing for a deal and those against – “Look out, Netanyahu: Ben Gvir’s behind you!” But Trump and Zionists are playing with real lives, primarily those of the Palestinians but also those of their own IOF on the ground.

Funeral of IOF Captain Elkana Vizel in Mount Herzl Military Cemetery Jerusalem 23 January 2024. Vizel was killed with 20 other IOF when the Resistance fired a rocket into a house where the IOF had stored explosives intended for demolishing Palestinian houses. (Photo: *Getty*)

The armed Resistance, fighting in areas of Gaza cleared of civilians by the IOF have been hitting the latter hard, Israeli media reporting “a security incident” (its shorthand for fatalities of their soldiers by Resistance action) every second day or so (sometimes a number in the same day).

This after 20 months of attack by the strongest and best-supplied military force in the region which has undisputed air cover over Gaza.

Jon Elmer, in his Resistance Report on Electronic Intifada Updates podcast on Thursday evening said that June had been the worst month for the IOF in a year of battle fatalities and injuries. He recorded nearly 200 Resistance operations with IEDs, snipers, RPGs, rocket and mortar attacks.⁵

The IOF are being hit in areas they have invaded before and claimed to have ‘cleared’ of the Resistance. In approaching two years Netanyahu has failed to achieve his two declared war objectives: to defeat Hamas (Resistance leading faction) and recover the captives.

By any sober assessment Netanyahu and his coalition government have lost the Gaza war so far but he wants to cover that over and knock out the Israeli opposition which demands a deal with the Resistance to free the Israeli prisoners held by the Palestinians.

Netanyahu and his wife face a trial for corruption as soon as he can no longer use the war in Gaza (or with Iran!) as an excuse not to stand trial. So peace is not a good option for him personally. A deal releasing the prisoners of the Resistance followed by renewal of the war might be best for him.

The Resistance is taking heavy toll of the IOF whenever they try to move forward in Gaza. But in the limited area of the Resistance, possibly the IOF can defeat them eventually by massive continuous bombing with ordnance supplied by the USA, the UK and some EU states.

But who knows what other factors might develop in the meantime and whom they might favour?

The resistance of the Palestinian people and the operations of their armed Resistance factions have challenged not only the actions of the Zionist colonial state but its very legitimacy to a degree not seen before, across the world and among the people of the Zionist-supplying heartlands.

The desperation of the ruling classes of the colonial state and of its principal backer was behind their short recent war against Iran, leading to a danger of World War. They were defeated for now but in the logic of imperialist power must try again.

The world is changing but whether that will favour the Palestinians in the short or medium-term is not certain. However that the question can even be asked is the result of the long cultural and political resistance of the Palestinian people and of their armed resistance movement.

End.

FOOTNOTES & SOURCES

1Trump, Netanyahu and the western mass media generally identify the Resistance as Hamas, whether to avoid the legitimising term, as a shorthand or to conceal the fact that the Palestinian resistance is composed of a number of factions, some of them Islamist (e.g. like Hamas and Islamic Jihad and others secular (such as the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, perhaps the longest-surviving Resistance organisation.

2 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2006/1/26/hamas-wins-huge-majority and https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/if-palestinian-elections-proceed-hamas-may-have-upper-hand

3 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-gaza-riviera-echoes-kushner-waterfront-property-dreams-2025-02-05/

4 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5klgv5zv0o

5The Resistance in Gaza have made June the worst month for the IDF in a year (mostly in just one area, Khan Younis). “180 (resistance infantry) operations in Khan Younis in one month alone plus 60 artillery operations” (discussion at end of Jon Elmer’s Resistance Report @ 3.16 minutes mins.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4nuYJp5RC0&t=11283s)

AFTER A 12-DAY WAR – HOW DOES THE BALANCE LOOK?

On June 27, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Middle East, Political Analysis, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins)

Both the USA and its proxy Israel carried out an unprovoked attack on Iran, both attacking nuclear facilities and Israel, as per their playbook, bombing civilians and their public facilities.

Iran targeted every category in Israel (generally not civilians) matching those the IOF bombed in Iran, assassinations excepted. And replied to the USA’s attack by hitting their most forward base in a Middle Eastern state, Al-Udeid in Qatar.¹

The objectives of the US and of Israel were ostensibly to wreck Iran’s nuclear program. But more than that, to achieve a change of regime to one amenable to the western powers, such as is the case with most of the Middle Eastern regimes.

The regime change was to take place internally by subversion, terrorism and uprisings as it was fighting bombing by Israel.

Neither the US nor Israel achieved those listed objectives.

Iran’s objectives were to maintain its sovereignty and independence in general and, because of the US and Israeli public focus, defend its sovereignty with regard to uranium enrichment to improve its nuclear energy and by-products.

Iran achieved those objectives,² at least for the time being and it will probably now leave the IAEA with justification³ so western powers will know very little of what is going one with Iran’s nuclear program, which is to Iran’s benefit.

Iran however also wanted the lifting of sanctions and it has not achieved that.

Once the Israeli attack started, Iran’s objectives were a) to recover from the initial external and internal assaults and assassinations; b) defend the state from internal subversion and terrorism and from Israeli bombing; b) strike back at Israel and punish it so thoroughly as to prevent repetition.

Iran successfully and quickly recovered from internal assaults and assassinations; b) put up a strong defence but was unable to down enemy planes other than drones, which was not a success;⁴ c) punished Israel very severely, to an extent that will become clearer as time goes on.

*Scene of Iranian missile damage in ‘Israel’, June 2025* (Photo sourced: *Telegram*)

But the level of Iran’s attack was not enough to ensure Israel will never attack it again and the Zionist entity’s political and military leadership is probably even now concentrating on how to rebuild itself to strike again.

Once the USA attacked, Iran had to show that it was capable of eliminating US bases across the region and would do so if attacked again. The strike on its evacuated Al-Udeid base in Qatar was largely symbolic but in fact proved Iran’s point and willingness to go that far if necessary.

In that, Iran was resoundingly successful. No other state has attacked a Middle Eastern US base, albeit warned and evacuated at the time, without serious repercussion.

This conflict ended overall as a draw but with the preponderance of success on Iran’s side.

It is more difficult to assess the political wins and losses but in so far as there is any change in the overall political situation one would have to say it has shifted in Iran’s favour.

One process of assessment is to investigate what the antagonists think:

Iran is celebrating nationally before turning to the funerals of their martyrs, in particular state funerals of victims of assassinations;
Israel is full of recriminations against its leadership but also against the US⁵ for not going further and imposing a ceasefire;
The USA leadership seems divided but opinion is increasingly mounting that Trump is mistaken in his assessment of ‘obliteration’ of Iran’s enriched uranium production sites.

Another measure is the relative financial expenditure and loss.

Although this picture is far from clear from either side we know of over 39,000 insurance claims in Israel so far⁶and the state spent $5 Billion in the first week of the war.⁷

They lost a prominent military science development site and lost or sustained damage to military and military intelligence sites too but it will be some time before the true level or even approximation will escape Israeli military censorship.

Israel also lost presumably a great deal of its Mossad-run sabotage and terrorist network in Iran which exposed itself as part of Israel’s attack, much of which is now under interrogation, on trial or already executed.

U.S. spending on aid for Israeli military operations in Gaza and elsewhere in the region between Oct. 7, 2023 – Oct. 7, 2024 was calculated at over $17.9 billion; spending on related U.S. operations in the region at over $4.86 billion.⁸
Iran produces missiles much more cheaply than Israeli munitions and has greater productive capacity; its greatest loss was the human cost (the disparity in civilian deaths shows who was really targeting civilians) and it lost a lot of scientists through Israeli assassinations.

On the political-psychological level, an extremely important one:

Iran emerged as a strong state with popular support in defence of sovereignty that cannot easily be defeated. Internally this has led to greater unity, at least for the moment.

Externally, Russia and China will see it not only worthwhile but important to support Iran and possibly even to part-arm them (which Pakistan too may do).

Iran’s western-friendly neighbours will be wondering whether US airbases brings them greater security or the opposite and also whether any alliance with Israel is a good idea, even though pushed by the USA and other Western powers.

Israel has seen its image of military superiority and even invincibility destroyed, internally by its war in Gaza and externally by its recent war with Iran and this process will increase as those from other areas view the damage in ‘Tel Aviv’ for example.

For a decade the state has been seeing a steady exodus of dual-nationality Israelis, particularly among its technocrat population and during this war mass evacuations by boat and land after the Israeli State closed its airports.¹⁰

The degradation of the IOF through mental fatigue, injuries and deaths (totalling more than 10,000 since their Gaza offensive), along with damaged armour, will continue in a deeply divided body politic.¹¹

The USA’s population will continue to see protests not only against the wars in the Middle East and genocide in Palestine but also against the increasing decrees and police repressing free speech and the right to organise and participate in protests.
Western capitalist companies will continue to reduce or even end their investment in – or relationships with – the Israeli state,¹² pushed in part by targeted protests and probably more largely by doubts about how financially safe Israel really is, even in the mid-term.

IN CONCLUSION

Iran is the overall winner, Israel definitely the big loser and the USA somewhat also (not forgetting that any Israeli loss is ultimately one for the US also). But the Zionazis will rearm and increase spying, sabotage and probably covert assassination operations in Iran.

Iran will rearm also, possibly even in nuclear terms and will intensify its intelligence war against subversion and spying and always viewing future attacks on it as inevitable.

The US will continue to view Iran as its primary adversary in the Middle East, in terms of its sovereignty and military capabilities.

Also viewing Iran as a necessary obstacle to remove before its future full confrontation with China, a state financially and economically already ahead of the US and a strong proponent of a multi-polar world against the existing unipolar version with the US as its head.

The world geopolitically-militarily will not be a better place as the result of the outcome of this 12-day war and may even be worse for it – after all, Israel and the US were permitted by the rest of the western alliance to bomb nuclear installations while continuing to support genocide in Gaza.

But with the weakening of US Imperialism and Israeli Zionism, it will offer opportunities for reversing damaged sovereignty, for anti-imperialist revolutions and for social progress.

End.

FOOTNOTES & SOURCES

1 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjxdgjpd48o

2 https://thecradle.co/articles/european-intel-says-irans-enriched-uranium-survived-us-attacks

3 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/25/irans-parliament-approves-bill-to-suspend-cooperation-with-iaea

https://thecradle.co/articles/russian-fm-warns-new-iaea-inspections-of-iran-can-lead-to-sensitive-leaks

4Sharmine Narwani on the Cradle podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK8tYo3jdIk pointed out that none of the many Israeli photos taken from the air over central Iran could be ascertained as typically originating from IOF planes and were instead likely taken from drones. This raised the possibility that all the air-launched missiles of the IOF were all from airspace outside Iran (and we know that the Iraqi Government complained about the US violation of its airspace by opening it to the IOF). This also seems to answer a question that was bothering me: What happened in this war to the sophisticated radar that allegedly caused enemy planes to veer away from Iranian airspace in the attack last year, with some leaks alleged from pilots claiming that the Iranians were able to ‘see’ and target the latest stealth fighter planes. However ‘seeing’ fighters is not the same as ‘targeting’ them and may not even be possible at all with US B2 bombers – see interesting short presentation from this hostile source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz6cd9tHiyM No doubt scientists are working on the problem and technology will develop further so that stealth bombers may be detected and fighters and bombers targeted, with US technology developing technology to confuse the targeting and so on … and on.

5Including reported tweets and comments calling for Israel to bomb the US!

6 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-receives-nearly-39-000-compensation-claims-for-damages-caused-by-iranian-missiles/3611868 and https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-multi-billion-shekel-price-tag-iran-war

7“The David’s Sling system, used to intercept short- and long-range threats, costs around $700,000 per activation when firing its minimum of two interceptors.” https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/12billion-a-month-the-cost-of-israels-daily-strikes-and-defence-against-iran-war-at-a-premium/articleshow/121979978.cms

8 Costs of War

9 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/world/middleeast/gulf-states-iran-attack-us-qatar-base.html

10Even before the retaliation by Iran https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/over-550000-israelis-flee-country-amid-gaza-war-data-shows-18176225 and during the war reported leaving by sea and land, after Israel closed airports https://www.newarab.com/news/israelis-quietly-flee-europe-yacht-escape-iran-missiles

11 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/over-10-000-israeli-soldiers-killed-or-wounded-in-gaza-war-says-military-officer/3587606

12The largest European consumers’ cooperative with 2,700,000 members (Wikipedia) joins boycott of Israeli products European retailers drop Israeli goods in solidarity with Gaza – TRT Global

The feminist call to war

On June 26, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-War, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, US Imperialism, WomenLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 24 June

Reprinted in full from G.Ó.L’s substack and formatted for the Rebel Breeze blog.

Feminism used to be associated with pacifist anti-militarist movements, but times have changed and now there are feminists who call for war, whilst they still continue to blame all wars on men. It is an enormous contradiction.

For the last two years Gaza has lived under a siege and a genocide, supported by some sectors of feminism and in the midst of the conflict with Iran, once again feminist voices come out with a clamour for war. The reason is their supposed rush to free the women of Iran.

Four female political prisoners in Evin prison in Tehran (before it was bombed by Israel), conscious of the cynicism of some feminist groups in the West issued a communiqué denouncing the war and those who support it.

They stated that Israel wanted a submissive and weak Middle East and they opted to continue their own struggle against the government in Tehran without allying themselves with Yankee imperialism.

Our liberation…from the dictatorship ruling the country is possible through the struggle of the masses and by resorting to social forces – not by clinging to foreign powers or placing hopes in them.

The powers that have always brought destruction to the countries of the region through exploitation and colonisation, by inciting wars and killing in pursuit of greater benefits, will have no way out for us except for new destruction and exploitation.[1]

The four women are pro-Kurdish and also women detained in the protests following the death of Masha Amini at the hands of the Morality Police in 2022. One of them fought against ISIS in Syria. They are not coffee house feminists.

*Women ‘of colour’ probably of the Combahee Collective with banner in what seems to be a general women’s liberation demonstration in the early 1970s.* (Photo sourced: Internet)

They branded as traitors those Iranian who have called for war, amongst them the son of the despotic Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah imposed by the USA in 1953 following the CIA coup.

He ruled with an iron hand murdering and torturing the opposition, both the Left and Right, men and women. His son wants to go back to robbing the country’s coffers.

Traitors to Iran and traitors to the peoples of the Middle East and traitors to the people’s years of freedom-seeking struggles against oppression will know that their betrayal and disdain will be recorded in the memory of the Iranian people and in history.

Future generations will remember with shame those who stand on the corpses of defenceless people and trample them.[2]

Whilst these women who did actually rise up against the regime are opposed to the war, in the West there are those bourgeois feminists who in between their macchiatos ask for more attacks on Iran, in order to “free” the women.

They only think of Iran when a US president or the Nazis in Tel Aviv want to attack the country. They believe that the sexual predator who acts as US president is going to fight for the women. Maybe the way he did in Syria by installing ISIS.

One of the first to invoke the repression of women was none other than Netanyahu,[3] a man who has bombed maternity hospitals in Gaza killing women and children all around.

The US said something similar about Afghanistan and various bourgeois feminists came out to justify the war, deliberately ignoring that without US support the Taliban would never have existed.

It was Jimmy Carter and then Reagan who started to finance the troglodytes of the Mujahadeen and later the Taliban i.e. the bourgeois feminists too.

I should clarify that many of those feminists are not bourgeois in the sense of their social class, they have no capital, they are not rich, though there is no lack of those who are.

They are bourgeois in an ideological sense, although they use terms such as liberal, radical, separatist etc., but what unites them is their defence of capitalism and the bourgeoisie.

You could say right wing feminists but many of them like to present themselves as progressive when they are bourgeois, or in the case of the less wealthy ones, acolytes of the bourgeoisie.

Hillary Clinton, a bourgeois feminist (both in the ideological sense and also in terms of her bank balance) who has her hands stained with the blood of women in Libya and other parts is one of the spokeswomen for bourgeois feminism.

Much though they may shout, down with patriarchy! Their favourite slogan is Long Live Capitalism and Imperialism! This includes feminist intellectuals like Julie Bindel.

They kept silent about the genocide in Gaza and now believe that whoever criticises the war against Iran supports the regime. I suppose this includes the political prisoners who don’t sip macchiatos in their cells.

Bindel writing in The Sun said that those who criticise the war support Iran and the oppression of women. She repeated the usual lies about October 7th, mixed with some truths about Iran with the aim of supporting the war.[4] Bindel has kept silent about the massacres of women in Gaza.

She doesn’t support the women of Iran, but rather the West. It is worth pointing out that the owner of the paper, where she writes, has supported reactionary governments around the world, including in Great Britain where Bindel lives.

It is a misogynist, homophobic paper that frequently runs campaigns against the poor and migrants. Bindel is not alone, Kelly Jay Keen shares videos of the son of the Shah, perhaps to indicate that she supports the monarchy.[5]

The bourgeois feminists, like all of the bourgeoise in practice see other cultures as inferior ones. They use the same imperialist language to justify wars as did Rudyard Kipling, the author of the infamous poem The White Man’s Burden. They boast about the White Woman’s Burden.

It should be remembered that Kipling wrote that poem to seek and to justify the US invasion of the Philippines.

Take up the White Man’s burden
The savage wars of peace
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Then they say that men are to blame for wars and not their dear capitalist system. Over and again the bourgeois feminists call for war.

But if they want wars and invasions, well why not ask for the US to be invaded, where women are pursued fleeing from one state to another to obtain an abortion, or where access to sex education is restricted and deficient as is access to contraceptives,[6] where women earn less than men and are under-represented in a wide range of fields.

Afghanistan is a country where women are more repressed than in any other part of the world. Throughout the conflict the US financed the Mujahadeen and later the Taliban.

They had the option of supporting organisations such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a women’s organisation that opposed the Islamists and also the Russians and later the US invasion.[7]

No, between one macchiato and another our dear bourgeois feminists let the men in the Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton support the Taliban troglodytes.

They said the same in Iraq. I am sure more than one reader is asking themselves what Iraq has to do with it all. It was a secular country, that promoted women’s education and participation.

However, one of the reasons bandied about by Bush was that he was rescuing and defending women and he compared their situation to that of Afghanistan, despite Saddam promoting women’s education.[8]

In fact, under Saddam, 30% of faculty staff were women, trained in Europe and the USA with full funding from the government. It is no longer like that, in fact there is no intellectual world in Iraq, the bombs the bourgeois feminists asked for, put paid to that.[9]

In the US the bourgeois feminists paid to go to universities, but Iraq promoted women as a state policy, something the Yanks have never done. In Britain, just 31% of the lecturers were women.

Iraq almost beat them, but in-between macchiatos the bourgeois feminists called for a war to improve the situation of women in Iraq and of course their investment portfolios.

Now the drums of war are beating again and the bourgeois feminists once more give themselves over to the war, despite believing that wars are a male product rather than a capitalist one.

They are not going to analyse their own participation, whilst a refugee from one of their wars prepares another macchiato for them.

As the female political prisoners in Evin said, it will be the Iranian people and the Iranian women who will free Iran and the Iranian women and not the bourgeois with the macchiatos, wine and caviar.

They are just as much the enemy of the women of Iran as the male bourgeois and are as deserving of our contempt.

There is no lack of Iranian voices asking for war and not just the son of the despot Pahlevi. Masih Alinejad is an exiled journalist. She took part in the movement against the obligatory use of head coverings in Iran and other things.

So far so good, unlike others she has fought against the oppression of women in the country.

But in exile, she turned out to be a Zionist and in the first Trump government met with the hawk Mike Pompeo and also worked at the official US propaganda radio station, Voice of America, transmitting programmes in Farsi.

*Masih Alinejad & Jake Sullivan, Intelligence Adviser to US President Biden 2021 2025.* (Source: *Wikipedia*)

Now she criticises Netanyahu, but not for bombing Iran and killing civilians but because of his bad timing. She believes he should have waited for protests against the government and attacked at that time. Of course the bombs were not going to fall on her, safe in New York.

Those feminists who keep silent about the genocide in Gaza do not seek the liberation of women in Iran, but rather a geopolitical reorganisation of the region and the victory of Zionism.

But that slogan doesn’t sound too good and you can easier convince the dozy in the world by talking about the rights of women in Iran. Meanwhile they have little to say about why their governments installed and recognised the Islamists from ISIS in Syria.

It is an exercise in public relations rather than real concern for the future of women in Iran. At the end of the day bourgeois feminists defend the bourgeoisie more than they defend women.

End.

NOTES

[1] Middle East Eye (19/06/2025) Iran: Jailed women activists issue letter condemning Israeli attacks. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jailed-female-activists-iran-issue-letter-condemning-israeli-attacks

[2] Ibíd.,

[3] See https://link.sbstck.com/redirect/ab68f07d-68ef-4e79-9561-0c8062663882?j=eyJ1IjoiMzBqYW1wIn0.0Y_uIvVCiPFxQqpA0lVO04u7LmUWrBGajjuhH6mjvNk

[4] The Sun (23/06/2025) Stupid ignorant lefties who support Iran when it stones women for adultery are mad and immoral. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/35536772/support-iran-death-cult-opinion-julie-bindel/

[5] See https://x.com/Mylovanov/status/1937201198370549828

[6] The Guardian (23/01/2025) As Trump returns, state lawmakers pursue bills that would treat abortion as homicide. Carter Sherman. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/23/abortion-homicide-bills

[7] See http://www.rawa.org/index.php

[8] The New Arab (22/10/2021) Colonial feminism and the un-liberation of women in Iraq. Jyhene Kebsi. https://www.newarab.com/opinion/colonial-feminism-and-un-liberation-women-iraq

[9] Al Jazeera (01/10/2013) The Destruction of Iraq’s Intellectuals. Matthew Schweitzer. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2013/10/1/the-destruction-of-iraqs-intellectuals

MEANWHILE, IN GAZA, THE OTHER WAR: RESISTANCE OPERATIONS EVERY DAY

On June 24, 2025June 24, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Cartoon, Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

As Israel and Iran slug it out with some criminal interventions from the USA, the older war continues in Gaza – the one that’s been ongoing since the late 1940s and has intensified sharply since 8^th October 2023.

The antagonists in this war are the Israeli Occupation forces, supplied not only by the USA, the UK, and the EU but to practical purposes by the whole western imperialist alliance, against the Palestinian resistance, now reduced to their existing stockpiles and own inventions.

But the IOF is not fighting the armed resistance in Gaza – it is rarely fighting at all. It is killing unarmed civilians in GHF food traps, in bombings of homes and refugee centres and targeting media workers, first responders, security personnel. And arresting hundreds.

The IOF has destroyed huge areas of Gaza by air bombing, demolition charges and bulldozing by machines built in the USA. Areas are declared unsafe where Palestinians may be sniped but nowhere is safe really, whether from random missile or shell strikes or targeted assassinations.

But there IS armed resistance and it IS fighting, even if we are not told of it, unless by some well-connected sources outside the heavily-censored and biased western mass media. There are Resistance operations almost daily – 50 reported the week before last alone.¹

*Israeli tank in Gaza after hit by the Resistance, presumably with the tandem Yassin. Date unknown.* (Cred: *Palestine Chronicle*)

Several times a week the Zionist military or public media reports “a serious security incident” in Gaza, their usual code for an event in which either a very senior IOF officer has been killed or more usually, one in which two or more IOF have been killed or injured.

Many of these operations are Resistance ambushes or traps by previously-laid IED² either detonated electronically or by pressure of the heavy tanks or armoured bulldozers. These may be followed up by ambush of rescuing force or attack on survivors, then a fast evacuation from the scene.

And it needs to be fast because the IOF has control of the sky and the ordinance from which to blast whole areas in the hope of killing a couple of fighters.

The IOF also take over Palestinian buildings as sniper and observation posts and sometimes the Resistance has pre-mined the building. The IOF soldiers and dogs check for hidden explosives but rarely find them before they explode around, underneath or above them.³

Or their post may get hit by Resistance rocket with thermobaric warhead. Again, the detonation of the building⁴ may be followed by ambush of the rescuing IOF forces, such battles sometimes lasting for considerable time, occasionally in close combat, despite the IOF control of the sky.

There are also Palestinian bombardments by light and heavy mortars or missiles from hidden positions targeting IOF infantry and vehicle concentrations, after which the firing positions are concealed and the vicinity quickly abandoned in advance of IOF artillery or missile targeting.

Resistance sniping operations continue and, where possible, commanding officers are targeted. The Palestinians have developed their own Al-Ghoul single-shot sniper rifle, effective up to 2,000 metres.⁵ Tanks, armoured bulldozers and troop carriers may be hit by shoulder-launched rockets.⁶

Incredibly, video exists of fighters emerging from a ruined building carrying a bomb, placing the explosive device at an IOF tanks’s most vulnerable spot and racing back to shelter before the explosion.

*A Palestinian Resistance fighter (PFLP by headband) firing a medium mortar shell in Gaza.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

What are the weapons of the Resistance and where from are they obtained?

The Resistance has many weapons, mostly automatic rifles, which they were supplied by allies in the past but none of those supply routes are probably open now. They have also taken weapons from dead IOF⁷ and constructed their own.

Aside from the Al-Ghoul, there is also the tandem Al-Yassin⁸ in which the Resistance has developed a shoulder-launched rocket of limited penetration strenght into a deadly armour-penetrating missile, seen on occasion blowing the entire turret off an IOF tank.

The IEDs employed as mines or carried to place against tanks contain high explosive donated by the IOF in their hundreds of unexploded bombs littering Gaza. With a failure-to-explode rate estimated as high as 20%⁹ the Resistance looks unlikely to run out of source for years.

Recently too the Resistance filmed themselves removing sacks of high explosive from an IOF stack intended for the demolition of homes. Both missiles and mortars are developed and produced in engineering shops below ground, as are bullets and IEDs and they too are filled with explosives.

*The Tandem Yassin, manufactured in Gaza by the Resistance.* (*Sketchfab*)

Where are these operations taking place? In the areas of Gaza which the IOF and Netanyahu boasted of “clearing of Hamas” over a year ago, mostly now devoid of civilians, into which the IOF moves tentatively — and have recently been instructed to move even more cautiously.

Where from are the Resistance fighters coming? Sometimes from still-standing fractured buildings but mostly from the network of tunnels which they have been constructing for years. Here they live frugally, waiting the chance to attack the Occupier of their land,¹⁰ the killer of their children.¹¹

Who are the armed Resistance in Gaza? They vary in history and in ideological basis, religious or secular but all unite in resistance and often take joint actions. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, of course are the main force but not the only ones.

Next in size and influence are the Al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad. Other factions include the Al-Nasser Salah Ad-Din Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees¹² and the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades of the marxist-leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.¹³

Representatives of different Palestinian Resistance factions posing for photograph to show their unity against the Zionist Occupation as the ceasefire approached in March 2024, soon after breached and abandoned by ‘Israel’. (Photo cred: *Workers World*)

The IOF collects their dead and wounded by helicopter, rushing them to some of the World’s most up-to-date war trauma treatment facilities. They drop smoke cannisters to obscure surveillance, not to protect from snipers: the Palestinian resistance never fires on those ‘copters.

Perhaps they should – the IOF — “the most moral army in the world”¹⁴ – certainly has no qualms about firing on Palestinian ambulances, paramedics, first responders and they hold the world record for destruction of hospitals and medical facilities. But clearly the Resistance has higher standards.

All military matters in the Zionist Entity are subject to military censorship and this includes numbers of dead and injured IOF, which allows them to conceal the numbers; they have military liaison officers stationed at hospitals to deal with queries.

Analysts have concluded that the IOF masks the numbers of killed and injured¹⁵ while wildly expanding the numbers of Palestinian Resistance fighters killed. Of course in war both sides engage in propaganda and it is said that Truth is the first casualty.

However, while there have been a great many videos of the Resistance in action filmed by themselves, there are none of the IOF fighting the Resistance at anything like close quarters. Clearly this is not due to modesty or even less to delicacy – it is due to absence of occasion.

While the Zionist state continues its daily genocidal actions in Gaza (and in the West Bank) and its aggressive actions in Lebanon, Syria and now in Iran, in 19 months they have failed to defeat the armed Resistance factions in Gaza. And now they have admitted to arming criminal looters.¹⁶

The IOF is unfit for standard military combat, even against insurgents and specialises only in assassinations, usually from the air and in genocidal operations against unarmed civilians, from air, sea and on the ground. Oh, and in destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, infrastructure, wells …

According to increasing number of reports, it is becoming unfit even for those.¹⁷

End.

FOOTNOTES

REFERENCES

Resistance operations over six months: https://electronicintifada.net/blog/503891

A hostile source reports briefly on Gaza Palestinian domestic weapons engineering: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/11/middleeast/hamas-weaponry-gaza-israel-palestine-unrest-intl-hnk-ml

IOF casualties: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/heavy-israeli-casualties-in-gaza-as-resistance-ambushes-intensify/

1Elmer, Jon, Resistance Report, Electronic Intifada YouTube podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXvvCOjdgjI

2Improvised Explosive Device

3Nine IOF were injured, four fatally in such an ambush on 7^th June. Report from hostile source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/4-idf-soldiers-killed-5-wounded-after-booby-trapped-south-gaza-building-collapses/

4A daily experience for Gazans but a rare one for Israelis, until the retaliation from Iran in the more recent ongoing war.

5 https://www.presstv.ir/doc/Detail/2024/05/29/726456/whats-story-behind-advanced-ghoul-sniper-rifle-used-hamas-fighters

6 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240125-haaretz-the-missile-that-killed-21-soldiers-in-gaza-was-produced-by-hamas/

7 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-weapons-rockets.html

8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasin_(RPG)

9 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/thousands-of-unexploded-israeli-bombs-have-become-key-resource-for-hamas-wing-in-gaza-report/3559371

10Israel declared itself the Zionist state on the land of Palestine in 1948.

11The IOF has killed at least an estimated 17,400 children (15,600 have been identified) since 7^th October 2023,; at that rate Israel kills a child in Gaza every 45 minutes. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/3/26/gazas-stolen-childhood-the-thousands-of-children-israel-killed

12Many sources including this one, non-supportive of the Resistance: https://www.newsweek.com/not-only-hamas-eight-factions-war-israel-gaza-1841292

13They are the only organisation of the Gaza resistance which is also part of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which bars Islamic-ideological organisations from membership. The PFLP has called for unity of all Palestinian resistance (as have the Islamic organisations) but the PLO is dominated by the Fatah party and holds only internal functions to formally approve its own manoeuvres. It also controls the undemocratic, repressive, corrupt and Israeli collaborator Palestinian Authority under Fatah nominee Mahmoud Abbas.

14 https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1745501858611786029

15 https://www.palestinechronicle.com/heavy-israeli-casualties-in-gaza-as-resistance-ambushes-intensify/

16 https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250607-israel-admits-support-anti-hamas-armed-group-accused-looting-gaza-aid-bedouin-abu-shabab

17 https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-close-israeli-army-collapse/49851

UNPROVOKED, UNJUSTIFIED IMPERIALIST-ZIONIST ATTACK

On June 16, 2025June 19, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Anti-War, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Mass Media Criticism, Middle East, Political Analysis, US Imperialism, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

On Friday the ‘Israeli’ state launched an unprovoked and unjustified attack on Iran. Apart from any any liking or disliking of either attacker or attacked, this is a fact. And if this be acceptable, then it can happen to any country.

Of course, in this century and in the last it has already happened to many countries – and in general, it is imperialist states or their proxies who have been responsible. Also in the case of ‘Israel’ in Lebanon and Syria while practising genocide in Gaza.

The western mass media could not deny that Iran’s attack is retaliation to an attack by ‘Israel’, nor could they just omit that context in their reports. So instead, they called the Israeli attack a ‘pre-emptive’ strike,¹ which usually means that one had to act first as was just about to be attacked.

But no, that is completely misleading; any time Iran has attacked ‘Israel’ it’s been in retaliation to an ‘Israel’ attack on them first. And in fact the Zionist regime was overdue a retaliation due to their attack on Iran in October last year.

There are many regimes around the world of which I do not approve and some which I detest but that does not give me or others justification for attacking their countries. Stopping genocide does provide justification and, according to international law, actual obligation but only Yemen acted.

*Iranian retaliatory missiles striking Haifa (‘Tel Aviv’) 14th or 15th June 2025.* (Image sourced: *Online*)

The ‘Israeli’ ‘justification’ for their attack is that Iran posed a threat to their state. This was based on the often-stated belief of the Iranian authorities that the Zionist settler colony is a threat to the whole Middle East and should be eliminated. But is an expression of an opinion a real threat?

It is not, unless followed by action (such as for example the genocidal and racist statements of Israeli Government ministers as the IOF carries out their wishes in practice).

And in fact the Zionists have themselves verified the correctness of the opinions of the Iranian authorities by their history since 1948 (and for some time before that too). But how was this alleged threat to be carried out? By Iran developing nuclear weapons, claimed the Zionists.

Netanyahu has been claiming over ten years, against all the evidence, that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, despite numerous Iranian denials and official inspections. The Western powers are apparently also very concerned about the possible development of nuclear weapons by Iran.

Wait a minute! France, UK and the USA are concerned about Iran possibly having nuclear weapons some day? All of those are nuclear weapon-holding states! What gives them the right to decide who should and who should not have nuclear weapons?

We could ask too what gives the Israeli State, which has secret nuclear weapons, such a right?

Yes, the Zionist State has had nuclear weapons since the 1960s, although it keeps it secret and its nuclear weaponry is not open to any inspection. Israeli peace activist whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear scientist, confirmed this to the British press in 1986.²

Vanunu was lured to Italy by Mossad, drugged, kidnapped and flown to the Zionist state where he was tried in secret. He has spent 18 years in jail, 11 of them in solitary confinement (despite there not being any such sentence in the ‘Israeli’ penal code) and is not permitted to leave the country.

Leaders of the USA have expressed the fear that Iran may one day develop nuclear weapons and attack Israel with them. This worry is being expressed by the only state that has used nuclear weapons to attack another state – and did it not once, but twice!

In August 1944 US bombers exploded atomic bombs over two cities of Japan, with which the US was at war. One study estimates the number of dead, mostly civilians at 199,000³ but many continued to die from radiation poisoning in following years.

ALTHOUGH IRAN HAS THE RIGHT TO DEVELOP NUCLEAR WEAPONS – THEY WEREN’T DOING SO

Not only was there no evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, and that they repeated many times that they were not and a number of observers and investigators had confirmed their statements – but the Supreme Leader of Iran had issued a fatwa⁴ against such development!

Trump in his many statements seemed to confuse the terms enrichment with nuclear weapon, using them alternately. Now we can see that it was never about nuclear weapons: it was the enrichment that the western allies wished to stop, in order to cripple Iran’s nuclear energy development.

What we are seeing in this conflict is international bullying in which threats, economic sanctions, assassinations, bombing and war (not to mention genocide) are fine with the western powers as long as they (or their proxies) are committing them.

This is the alliance that the Irish gombeen ruling class wants us to join, either through an imperialist EU ‘defence’ (sic) force or through NATO. And the supreme irony is that they will use the very wars they start as ‘evidence’ of the need for us to join them!

As I write, Iran is hitting back, completely justifiably. A number of waves of missiles so far, striking Zionist regime buildings and military establishments. Of course, it is not a sneak attack and most of leaders and ‘Tel Aviv’ residents are in bomb shelters.

The Zionists cannot be paid back in their own preferred coin of leadership assassination. At the moment, it’s not certain where war criminal and child-murderer Netanyahu is but he did visit one of the sites hit by Iran from where he poured out further threats.

So far, Iran has not attacked US bases in West Asia although the US is clearly complicit in the attack on Iran, for which no further evidence is required than that the missiles came through Iraq’s totally USA-controlled air space. And Trump has been boasting about US involvement too.

Recent news is that the Genocidal State has asked for help from its allies in its defence against just retribution and that the UK responded positively. The western imperialist bloc is about to reveal its collusion with the genocidal state even more openly than recently.

What will happen next? How will the rest of the world act over the coming months? It is hard to predict but we can definitely say that the world is in a different place from now on.

WHERE DO WE STAND?

So far the population of most of Ireland has managed not to be recruited into the western imperialist bloc but the government of the Irish state continues to be complicit and the six-county colony is under UK occupation — and therefore officially part of US/ NATO.

Simon Harris, Tánaiste, Irish Government Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and for Defence was reported today saying that “Iran has consistently been a danger to the world.”⁵

Er … Iran? Not the aggressor (and genocider) Israel, which attacked Iran first, also attacking Syria and Lebanon and in the past Jordan, Libya and Egypt?

Not the USA (201 military actions in 153 countries after WW2)? Not the UK or France, colonial masters and currently major imperialist states?

I suspect that some socialists will find it difficult to stand in solidarity with the people of Iran; they found it impossible to do so with the people in the secular regimes of Libya and Syria – and Iran is a theocracy with many social regulations to which they would be strongly opposed.

On the other hand, Iran is being attacked by imperialist-backed Zionism because of its insistence on sovereignty and support for anti-imperialist struggles in West Asia. Apart from the Ansarallah regime of Yemen, Iran is the only state to stand up to Zionism in the region.

For genuine anti-imperialists and anti-Zionists then, for all democratic people, our stance and demand is clear: HANDS OFF IRAN!

End.

Footnotes

1Even this ‘background explanatory’ piece, which starts off recounting a decades-long list of ‘Israeli’ sabotage and assassination operations against Iran, later turns to defend ‘Israel’ by referring to the Hamas-led 7^th October breakout and tenuously connecting Iran to that operation through their solidarity with Hamas. For context of that solidarity the journal would need to go back to all the attacks on the Palestinians by ‘Israel’ but of course it does not do. https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/timeline-of-tensions-and-hostilities-between-israel-and-iran-1773045.html

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu

3 https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/med/med_chp10.html

4A religious and legal injunction according to Muslim law.

5 https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/harris-says-world-on-brink-of-extraordinary-destabilisation-1773627.html

PERFORMATIVE ANTI-ISRAEL MEASURES FROM PETRO

On June 9, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Colombia, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, Internationalist Solidarity, Massacres, Middle East, PalestineLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (reformatted entire for Rebel Breeze from article in his substack: Petro Announces Another “New” Measure Against Israel

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Petro’s government announced another measure against Israel, or to be more precise the Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia, who despite all the criticisms we made of her seems more trustworthy than the erratic Petro, made the announcement.

Colombia will require an entry visa for Israeli citizens.

Before celebrating another blow to Zionism and a gesture of solidarity with the suffering people of Palestine, we have to read the reasons behind it. It is not a response to the genocide, but rather because Israel unilaterally imposed a visa on Colombians from May 14th of this year.[1]

*Laura Sarabia, Foreign Affairs Minister in the Petro government, at work.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

When Colombia broke off diplomatic relations with Israel last year, at the very least it should have required a visa from Israelis travelling to the country. But Petro learnt very well the lesson of the nuns in the schools that it more important to appear to be than to be.

And he and his government appears to be the most progressive on the planet and an adversary of the Zionist state. But it is not true. It is not the case in migratory issues nor on economic issues and despite Colombia announcing it would no longer export coal to Israel, it continues to do so.

What is the point of requiring a visa from Israelis when many have double nationality and can enter with another passport? We have to be more radical.

Firstly, Colombia should state that those who have Israeli nationality automatically lose their Colombian citizenship. There are many countries in the world that do this, amongst them Nepal and India.

There are others that do not accept double nationality, you can only have one passport, though the loss of citizenship is not automatic. And further still there are countries, such as Ireland, that accept triple nationality.

Colombia should not recognise double nationality when the second nationality is Israeli. It could go even further.

Some countries, especially the USA, restrict visitors who have travelled to countries such as Iran or Cuba. Colombia could deny entry to anyone who has an Israeli passport, regardless of whether they enter with that document.

There are certain difficulties when it comes to implementing this, but there are legal implications for the person that uses another passport to enter Colombia if they are an Israeli citizen. With that alone they would close the brothels in Taganga and the sex tourism of Israeli soldiers in Colombia.

But neither Petro, nor Sarabia, when she stands in for the drunkard, aim to do anything like that. What they are about is appearances and this is to be seen in the economic measures taken against the genocidal state of Israel.

*Gustavo Petro in handshake with Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, the repressive Israeli and US proxy regime in the Palestine West Bank.* (Photo source: *WAFA*)

With great showmanship they announced the end of coal exports to Israel.

But a recent communiqué from a group of trade unions and social organisations, amongst them the oil workers union, USO and the coal workers union, Sintracarbon, show that they continue to export coal to Israel.

According to the communiqué, based on data from Colombian Customs and Tax Office (DIAN) they exported 905.666 tonnes of coal to the tune of US $90 million since August 2025 when Petro issued his decree.

It is worth pointing out that Petro’s statement gained him fans in many parts, the Progressive International that includes personalities such as Walden Bello and Jeremy Corbyn reproduced an article from the US social democratic magazine Jacobin.

The article pointed to Colombia as a model to copy and that 60% of Israeli coal came from Colombia and that

…the Israeli power grid depends on coal for 22 percent of its output. The same grid supplies electricity to Israel’s illegal settlements and arms factories as well as the infrastructure used by the Israeli military in perpetrating genocide…

…this decision is not only a victory in symbolic terms but shows the enormous impact that a wider energy embargo could have in ending Israel’s genocide in Gaza.[2]

In fact, according to data from the DIAN, between January and April 2024, i.e. before Petro’s decree US $101,658.000 worth of products were exported to Israel and in 2025 for the same period US $ 75,247,000 was exported.

This represents a reduction but it is clear that Colombia not only continues to export coal but many other products to the Zionist genocidaires.

So, what does it matter if Israelis are required to have a visa? What the government says is that it is going to impose a visa on Israelis because they did it first.

But the Zionist soldiers can come on other passports or even on an Israeli passport, providing they have a visa, i.e. the response to the genocidaires is a bureaucratic inconvenience when what we really need is to ban the entry of all Israelis to Colombian territory.

And to close all the brothels in Taganga and other places that function as places for the “rest and recreation” of the murderers after their “exploits” in Gaza.

End.

NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

NOTES

“RECOGNITION OF THE PALESTINIAN STATE” IS A TRAP

On May 30, 2025June 2, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Mass Media Criticism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The declared preparedness of a number of states, including the Irish one, to give formal recognition to the State of Palestine is widely seen as a step in favour of the Palestinian people and generally opposed by the Israeli state.

So on that basis many people who support the Palestinians may think that recognition of the State of Palestine is a good thing. How can it be otherwise? And yet …

Recognition of the Palestinian State is predicated upon the “two-state solution” (sic), in which the Zionists and the Palestinians supposedly get to live in separate states as neighbours, everybody happy. Except that the Zionists get most of the land and water while the indigenous get the least.

Effectively “Recognition of the Palestinian State” as advocated is to agree to

Zionists occupying 80% of Palestinian land
Palestinians getting 20% of their land
With least water
Forever under Zionist surveillance
and Zionist guns.

*Area in pink shows territory notionally available to the “Palestinian State” in a “two-state” proposal; however the Zionist state is not in agreement and nor are many Palestinians.* (Image: BBC)

In any case, Zionism is a colonial settler project and inherently expansionist; even in the unlikely situation that the two-state proposal were accepted by Zionists and Palestinians, the Zionists would always be looking to expand as even now they are extending further into Syria.

Currently the ‘State of Palestine’ is represented by the Palestinian National Authority,¹ widely seen as the Israeli occupation’s proxy, run by Mahmoud Abbas and backed by the Fatah party. Its police force attacks solidarity demonstrations, arrests and even kills resistance fighters and critics.

The PA was created as part of the Oslo pacification process² and supposed to hold elections every five years thereafter. The first elections³ saw the Fatah party elected to govern the West Bank and Gaza. But as the Second Intifada⁴ erupted against Oslo, the popularity of Fatah plummeted.

The Fatah administration was widely considered corrupt, repressive, violent and collusive with the Occupation.

The next elections, in 2006 saw Hamas win most seats across both areas. But Fatah would not accept the popular verdict and in 2017 Hamas removed them in Gaza after a brief struggle⁵ but however did not do so in the West Bank. Abbas has not held another election since.

At a special conference allegedly of the PLO (which was attended by none of its organisations apart from Abbas’ lackeys), Abbas called the leading organisation of the Palestine national resistance, Hamas, “Sons of Dogs.” (Cartoon: *D.Breatnach*)

The PA kept the grants it was getting from other states including those intended for the administration of Gaza, western powers cut off funding, Israel and Arab states initiated punitive economic sanctions against Gaza and Israel began a siege with periodic massacres.

In the West Bank, the PA’s security forces have suppressed demonstrations in solidarity with the Resistance and also against the PA’s brutality. They have jailed Resistance activists and fighters, including killing a number of them. This year they began and then colluded in the siege of Jenin.

Recognising the State of Palestine means supporting this corrupt and brutal Israeli State proxy and also accepting 80% of the land of Palestine going to the Zionist colonial occupation which, with the ‘two state proposal’ is also the policy of the PA.

There may be some, including probably some Palestinians, who think to accept it would be better than nothing, especially if it stops the genocide. But genocide is the basic program of the colonial invader: to take the land, the indigenous must be enslaved and if not enslaved, removed.

How else is a colonial minority to rule in security? The other option is not to rule but to share, in a democratic secular state of Palestine with equal rights for all of whatever background. Yes, but that is not ‘the Palestinian State’ being promoted.

The Zionists say they are in an existential fight and in a sense they are right. The Palestinians are in a fight for their life as a people too. A huge difference is that the Zionists have the option to stop being racist colonial occupiers oppressing the indigenous people.

For a few years also the PA has been mooted as the ‘Palestinian’ governing force for Gaza to replace the elected choice of the people, Hamas, with a proxy of the Occupation. This has been suggested by envoys of the US and also more recently by Egypt (although opposed by ‘Israel’).

This would find favour with some Arab client states and all of the European imperialist states who can’t see any other way of stability for the Middle East in particular and for their exploitation of the world in general. Without that ‘peace’ their whole imperialist world could be endangered.

The option of a democratic, secular all-Palestine state is not going to be supported by the imperialists because such a state would encourage the masses of Arab states to carry out their own revolutions. However it is the option for all democratic and revolutionary people to support.

To support ‘the Palestine State’ is to encourage the continuation of colonialism, genocide and ethnic cleansing, enable the current specific Zionist plan for Palestine and to support the US imperialist and Egyptian proxy plan to have Gaza run by the traitorous Palestine Authority.

End.

Sources:

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

Notes:

1Usually referred to just as The Palestinian Authority.

2With South Africa’s, this was the beginning of a wave of imperialist pacification processes starting in the 1990s that went around the word wherever national liberation struggles had strong popular support. Those who had succumbed to it were used to encourage others to do so too: the ANC and Fatah attended annual congresses of Sinn Féin to recommend it to Irish Republicans; Sinn Féin and S. Africans in turn ‘sold’ it to the Basques and to the FARC in Columbia; there were attempts to get the Kurds in Turkey, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and some of the Philippines fighters to accept it. Wherever the process took hold the resistance split first between those who would collaborate and those who would not but the latter also fragmented further. None of the movements that embraced the process won anything more than the partial release of prisoners, with the exception of S. Africa where the people won universal suffrage (but also experienced increased imperialist exploitation and poverty).

3The first legislative elections were held in 1996, won by Fatah; the next in 2006, won by Hamas; there have been none since.

4In 2000, against the Zionist Occupation, the collusion and corruption of Fatah, against denial of the right of return to the refugees.

5Represented in most Western mass media and online history sources as “Hamas seized power in Gaza”.

TO BE LIKE BONO OR KNEECAP?

On May 14, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn Censorship & Witch-hunting, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Song, ZionismLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh

NB: Edited by Rebel Breeze for formatting purposes

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

Kneecap, the Belfast Irish language rap group, have found themselves at the centre of what is an artificially contrived furore dreamt up by people with little sense of real moral outrage.

The basics of the story are well known. They finished off their act at the Coachella event projecting pro-Palestinian statements. Given the band’s history and well-known politics, it could hardly have come as a surprise. Perhaps it was more that the fans welcomed it that upset some.

They were denounced by the non-entity known as Sharon Osbourne, a reality star famous for being the wife of Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne and also the mother of another reality star, her daughter Kelly Osbourne.

Kelly to her credit did carve out a brief musical career on the back of her reality tv exposure.

Sharon as part of the wider Zionist attempt to silence all those who criticise the genocide called for their visas to be cancelled, which in effect happened following the decision by their promoter and sponsor to drop them.

She also called for them to be more like Bono. Kneecap responded with a humorously devastating comeback that they would rather be Rangers fans than emulate Bono.

Bono still has some credibility in certain parts, mainly where they haven’t a clue about the man’s actual politics and obviously amongst the clueless, witless, gutless glitterati like Sharon Osbourne. But what would it mean to be like Bono?

Is he actually some sort of reasonable counterweight to Kneecap?

Well, first of all, in relation to Palestine, Bono is a Zionist, so even before the genocide began, he, unlike them, was already on the wrong side of history. Not for the first time, mind you. Bono has a habit of cropping up where he is not wanted like an ugly cold sore (my apologies to the virus).

He has, as Harry Browne, the author of The Frontman: Bono in the name of power, pointed out dedicated a lifetime to the service of imperialism and was rewarded with a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Genocide Joe.[1]

I am sure it will go well on his mantle piece alongside his KBE (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire), for which he was fulsome in his praise of Her Majesty’s Ambassador, as he put it, and grinned like a cheshire cat during the ceremony.[2]

The claims made by Blair and others about Bono’s achievements were exaggerated, of course. But he is, if nothing, an equal opportunities imperialist and will get around to doing his bit for the others.

The idea that Kneecap would prostrate themselves before the British king is laughable and they wouldn’t be the first artists to reject one, were the Brits ever to mistakenly consider them for it.

The late black poet Benjamin Zephaniah was offered the lesser award of OBE (Order of the British Empire) by the same Tony Blair. He turned it down stating:

I get angry when I hear that word “empire”; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised…

Benjamin Zephaniah OBE – no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire…

If they want to give me one of these empire things, why can’t they give me one for my work in animal rights? Why can’t they give me one for my struggle against racism? What about giving me one for all the letters I write to innocent people in prisons who have been framed? I may just consider accepting some kind of award for my services on behalf of the millions of people who have stood up against the war in Iraq. It’s such hard work – much harder than writing poems.[3]

He also referred to his brother’s death in police custody and to Lizzie II as Mrs Queen, not Her Majesty. A display of dignity.

He pointed out that those who accept such awards, the Queen’s Shilling, though he didn’t use that archaic military expression for those who enlist in the British armed forces to put down uppity types in the colonies, always sell out.

However, calling Bono a sell-out, presumes he was ever anything other than a fan of empire. He tied his mast to the pro-British politics of the Irish chattering classes in the 1980s.

His song Sunday Bloody Sunday was always introduced with the line This is not a rebel song, lest someone think Bono actually had something interesting to say.

The song is quite vacuous though clear in saying he “won’t join the battle cry,” i.e. denounce those who had massacred 14 people on the streets of Derry. The British army is not mentioned once in the song.

You wouldn’t know who had done what, but you know not to point the finger “Cause tonight we can be as one”. John Lennon on the other hand, shortly after the massacre did not hold back.

Is there any one among you
Dare to blame it on the kids?
Not a soldier boy was bleeding
When they nailed the coffin lids![4]

Bono couldn’t bring himself to condemn the British army for a televised massacre, so it comes as no surprise that he has little to say about a live-streamed genocide.

He hobknobbed with neoliberals such as Jeffrey Sachs, various presidents of the World Bank, promoted pharmaceutical companies in Africa and of course was on the side of Bush in the Iraq War, at least in practice and helped whitewash the reputations of many of those involved.

He hedged his bets a bit on Iraq, not wanting to seem too hawkish, saying the war was justified but the US should get UN backing for it. He then went on to endorse Clinton and Blair time and again. Jim Kerr from the Scottish band Simple Minds put it succinctly at the time.

How can Bono, having graced concert stages for over two decades, draped in the white flag of peace and screaming ‘No More War’ [sic] at the top of his lungs contemplate praising and back slapping Tony Blair? … I can’t believe that anyone could fail to identify that no matter what gesture Blair may make towards African debt relief, his slippery hands are currently dripping in the fresh warm blood of Iraqi men, women and children.[5]

Bono of course, could and did, and wined and dined with such hawks as Senator McCain. There were no depths to which he would not plummet, which brings us to Palestine.

Shortly after October 7th he endorsed the Zionist genocide by changing the lyrics of his song about Martin Luther King, Pride (In the name of love)[6]to “Early morning, Oct 7, the sun is rising in the desert sky… Stars of David, they took your life but they could not take your pride.”[7]

As part of the introduction to the reworked song he state “our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence… But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed.” Not at the Zionist occupiers was the answer. Roger Waters lambasted him for it.[8]

Not only that, he was criticised by Irish singer Mary Coughlan for his links to Israeli companies.[9] He did not fly out to Gaza as he had done in Ukraine, nor did he have much to say.

When he eventually did mention Gaza, he was always careful to lay the blame on Hamas for starting it all, ignoring history since the Nakba in 1948.

A good example of that is his piece in The Atlantic after receiving his Medal of Freedom from Genocide Joe.[10] An exercise in saying nothing, whilst attempting to sound profound, something Ireland’s most famous poisonous dwarf never pulls off.

Kneecap on the other hand have been clear from the word go about their support for the Palestinian cause. It didn’t take a genocide for them to take note. They have consistently been on the side of the oppressed, in this case the Palestinians, against the oppressor the Zionists.

So, Sharon Osbourne should probably stick to what she knows best, which is precious little.

As for Bono, as Harry Browne points out, perhaps nothing sums him up quite so succinctly as a piece of graffiti in Dublin that appeared following the scandal when they moved one of their companies to the Netherlands for tax purposes, “Bono is a poxbottle”.

We need more like Kneecap who stand with the oppressed, and a lot less of Bono and the likes who can’t condemn the powerful ever.

At best you can expect some “We are all guilty type” of fudge, which was the preferred slogan of the Irish trade union bureaucracy when the British or their proxies in the UVF or UDA ever did anything, coming as no surprise that they have also done next to nothing on Palestine other than issue the occasional banal statements.

I fully expect them to turn up with Bono somewhere to chastise Kneecap.

End.

NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

NOTES

[1] Rebel News (07/01/2025) This Song is not a Rebel Song. Harry Browne. https://rebelnews.ie/2025/01/07/bono-this-song-is-not-a-rebel-song/

[2] U2 (29/03/2007) A Knighthood for Bono. https://www.u2.com/news/title/a_knighthood_for_bono_2110/

[3] The Guardian (27/11/2023) ‘Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought’. Benjamin Zephaniah. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/27/poetry.monarchy

[4] See https://link.sbstck.com/redirect/de82dedc-5090-458f-9212-e894fa53ed21

[5] Browne, H. (2013) Bono The Frontman: In the name of power. London. Verso. Para 8.116

[6] See https://link.sbstck.com/redirect/9b7d1452-8d25-4992-8f18-9e29589b6ce4

[8] The Independent (21/02/2024) Roger Waters brands Bono ‘disgusting’ over Israel speech. Kevin E G Perry. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/roger-waters-bono-israel-gaza-b2498979.html

[9] The Sunday World (13/05/2024) Mary Coughlan ‘lost all respect’ for Bono over alleged links to Israeli companies. Eugene Masterson. https://www.sundayworld.com/showbiz/irish-showbiz/mary-coughlan-lost-all-respect-for-bono-over-alleged-links-to-israeli-companies/a2101784646.html

[10] The Atlantic (04/01/2025) The Gorgeous Unglamorous Work of Freedom. Bono. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/the-gorgeous-unglamorous-work-of-freedom/681212/

[7] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6sD5Lnh4YY

[8] The Independent (21/02/2024) Roger Waters brands Bono ‘disgusting’ over Israel speech. Kevin E G Perry. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/roger-waters-bono-israel-gaza-b2498979.html

[9] The Sunday World (13/05/2024) Mary Coughlan ‘lost all respect’ for Bono over alleged links to Israeli companies. Eugene Masterson. https://www.sundayworld.com/showbiz/irish-showbiz/mary-coughlan-lost-all-respect-for-bono-over-alleged-links-to-israeli-companies/a2101784646.html

[10] The Atlantic (04/01/2025) The Gorgeous Unglamorous Work of Freedom. Bono. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/the-gorgeous-unglamorous-work-of-freedom/681212/