Yemeni Defense Minister Major General Mohammed Nasser Al-Atifi during a commemorative event held by the Ministry of Defence spoke a good lesson for the Irish ruling class:
Hesitation or retreat from Yemen’s supportive stance towards Gaza is impossible and not subject to negotiation or compromise.
Yemen’s powerful and resounding response to the Nazi entity is coming without hesitation or concern, and we will meet Zionist madness with Yemeni strength, which they have tasted in the seas.
We continue to develop our capabilities quantitatively and qualitatively, in accordance with the latest military building concepts we seek.
Major-General Mohamed Nasser Al-Atifi, Minister of Defence in Yemeni Government. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Yemen’s position is central in the Axis of jihad and resistance, in defense of the nation, its sanctities, values, lands, and our national security.
Yemen is on the path of liberation and independence, and will not accept any foreign subordination or domination. It will not be a backyard for any regional regime or subject to international guardianship.
National wealth is a sovereign resource, and we will not allow its waste, corruption, or neglect in its investment, in a way that serves the higher interests of all of Yemen.
We will not allow any threat to destabilize the security and stability of our country, and we will not accept the presence of any foreign forces on our land and islands.
Major-General Mohamed Nasser Al-Atifi in planning conference with senior Yemeni military officers, August 2024. (Image sourced: Internet)
Thanks for those words as an example of national independence from Major-General Mohamed Nasser Al-Atifi. The Irish government on the other hand, as a management committee of the Irish ruling class:
Allows the partition of the country and occupation of six counties by an invader; also our air space and sea to be flown and sailed by UK and US warplanes and warships and our foreign policy dictated by NATO & EU.
And our natural resources and infrastructure sold to foreign companies and our educated labour force to be exploited by foreign companies.
Also, our produce taken by foreign companies and food we used to grow ourselves imported and sold to us in foreign-owned supermarkets, even our national airline sold to another country.
The photo of the massive antifascist rally in London on 28th July following a march from Russel Square shows the recapture of Trafalgar Square from Tommy Robinson and his sea of Union Jacks. Not for the first time, the Irish made their mark upon the place.
There the only two high flying flags were the Irish Tricolours and the Palestinian flags, the Irish contingent being one of the few on the day to see the fight in Britain against the fascists as part of the same fight against the fascist Zionist regime.
Irish and Palestinian flags in Trafalgar Square rally against racism, end July 2024 (Photo cred: PA)
We are mindful of the history of our occupied territories and our 1930s fight against the anti-Semitic Blackshirts1 in London (e.g. standing with the Jewish community at the Battle of Cable Street, 1936) and against the Bridgeton Billy Boys in Glasgow in the 1930s.2
On 28th July our flags sent out a message: We stand against all fascists, at home or abroad. That day we could not but remember all our brave men and women who marched past here from 1971 to 1998 carrying our fight to the heart of government3 in harder times.
We also know that the anti-racist movement now takes its new life from the strength of the Palestinian solidarity movement in Britain and needs to recognise this.
It was strange being in Trafalgar Square again with Tricolours given that we were barred from being there during the ‘Troubles’. Irish solidarity events were banned from using the Square under any circumstances from 1972 to 2001, well after the Good Friday Agreement.
The ban was lifted only once for an Irish event during that period and that was for the Peace Women4 (sic) calling for an ‘end to violence’ (mainly that of the Resistance) and famous US folk singer/ political activist Joan Baez displayed her ignorance of the Irish situation by speaking there.
It was interesting that a reporter for GB News of the British mass media was aware that a picket had been held in Dublin in protest against the assassinations of Palestinian and other Arab resistance leaders. He tried to link the Irish contingent in Trafalgar Square with ‘support for Hamas’.
The linkage was hinted in his broadcast report though he was careful enough not to report a direct link as the Irish group in Trafalgar Square had in fact no connection with the Dublin group. The reporter asked how to pronounce ‘Saoirse Don Phalaistín’ — but still got it wrong in his report.
One of the Irish contingent spoke to the young GB News journalist: He had the stuff from Dublin on his phone and wanted to say that the Irish in the Square were part of the Dublin group.
“Next thing you’d know the Zionists would call for a ban on the Irish for ‘supporting Hamas’”,5 commented one of the veteran Irish activists. “We also get targeted because of the flag and our placards.”
The UK State and the police are all pro-Zionist and the Zionist press tries to trap the Irish into dangerous statements but “We know our history and are well able for them; we just say we support Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation just as we did with the British in Ireland.”
Irish contingent with flags on Palestine solidarity march to Downing Street very recently (not sure whether the SW person is part of it). (Photo sourced from participant).
The Irish Tricolours, often in the company of the Palestinian national flag with Saoirse Don Phalaistín printed on it have been seen on Palestine solidarity marches in London since the current Zionist genocide began but also on anti-fascist rallies and in support of Julian Assange.
This is in keeping with the history and tradition of the Irish in Britain who helped found the republican United Englishmen6, the Chartists,7 many trade unions, a section of the First International8 and also gave the British working class their anthem9 and their classic novel.10
Classic novel of the working class in Britain was written by Robert Noonan, aka Robert Tressell, from Dublin. (Image sourced: Internet)
In later times they were prominent in organising solidarity with Vietnam and of course Ireland, against repressive legislation and fascist organisations, solidarity with Nicaragua, Palestine etc. and in struggles against state repression, including within the jails.
The Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974), forerunner of the current Terrorism Act (2000) specifically targeted the Irish community in Britain with suspension of habeas corpus for a period of up to five days, refusal of access to solicitor, as did also the framing of a score of people.
In the midst of the Irish Hunger Strikes of 1981, the Irish community broke out of the State terror stranglehold and formed the Irish in Britain Representation Group, among its objectives being the abolition of the Labour Government-introduced Prevention of Terrorism Act.
End.
Saoirse don Phalaistín and Irish Tricolour flags on Palestine solidarity march this year photographed against Westminster’s ‘Big Ben’. (Photo cred: being investigated)
NOTE ON AUTHORS
Pat Reynolds is a former trade unionist, social worker, a veteran anti-racist, anti-fascist activist, also for Irish independence and for rights for the Irish community in Britain. He was PRO for the Irish in Britain Representation Group for two decades, founding the Haringey Branch and the Green Ink Bookshop. Reynolds is from Granard in Co. Longford and lives in London.
Diarmuid Breatnach is a former trade unionist, worker with homeless/ substance misusers (manual worker before that), also a veteran anti-racist, anti-fascist activist and campaigner for Irish independence. For a decade he was on the Ard-Choiste of the IBRG, founder of the Lewisham Branch and of the Lewisham Irish Centre. Breatnach is from Dublin to which he has returned to settle.
FOOTNOTES
1The British Union of Fascists led by Sir Oswald Moseley which had substantial support in the British elite, including the publisher of the The Daily Mail with police attacks on anti-fascists.
2The Billy Boys were founded and led by Billy Fullerton, a former member of the British Fascists. Fullerton also later became a member of the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. The Billy Boys adopted a militaristic style of behaviour, marching on parades, forming their own bands, composing their own songs and music, and all dressed in a similar manner.[3] The Billy Boys also formed a junior group whose members were teenagers called the Derry Boys. (Wikipedia)
3From Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster runs a broad thoroughfare, in the centre of which is the Cenotaph and a little further, the entrance to Downing Street.
4The organisation/ campaign was founded by Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan in 1976 after a car driven by an IRA fighter mortally wounded by British soldiers in Belfast crashed into pedestrians and mortally wounded three children of Anne Maguire, sister of Mairead. Branding itself as against all violence the Peace Women in fact targeted primarily the Republican movement, secondarily the Loyalist paramilitaries and hardly ever the Occupation Army. Williams accused the IRA unit of having fired on the Army unit that killed the driver which was untrue (but is repeated on her Wikipedia entry). Both founders received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 and a substantial cash prize. Williams resigned from the group in 1980 and disappeared from Irish-related activities though prominent externally. Corrigan however remained politically active in Ireland and elsewhere against war and has campaigned among other things for the end of the ‘Israeli’ siege on Gaza, being arrested with crew and passengers on the Spirit of Humanity aid ship in 2009 by by the Zionist navy, taken to ‘Israel’ and subsequently deported.
5Hamas is proscribed organisation in the UK since March 2001 and a person promoting it would be liable to prosecution under the Terrorism Act.
6A spin-off from the United Irishmen in Ireland; the English chapter led the Spithead and Nore naval mutinies. The Irish also reformed the United Scotsmen when it was faltering.
7Karl Marx called the Chartists “the true mass movement of the working class” – two of its principal leaders, Bronterre O’Brien and Fergus O’Connor were Irish, as their surnames would suggest.
8The Fenians were accepted into the First International Workingmen’s Association.
9The lyrics of The Red Flag were composed by Jim Connell from near Kells, Co. Meath and set to the brisk air of The White Cockade, later changed to the mournful air of Tannebaum.
10The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists was written by Robert Tressell (real name Robert Noonan) from Dublin.
April 2023: Leaked files reveal that British intel used local Yemeni NGOs and social media in a covert campaign to undermine the Sanaa government and influence the war-torn country’s peace process.
Kit Klarenberg
(Reading time: mins.)
The CradleEditor’s note:All Yemeni NGO employees, journalists, and other private individuals named in this article appear in the ARK documents seen by The Cradle.These Yemenis may be unaware of the UK’s role and/or intent in funding their activities.
Yemen’s civil war, considered the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis, appears to be nearing its end due to a China-brokered detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, who support opposing sides in the bitter conflict.
Early signs suggest that the rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh may not only end hostilities in Yemen, but across the wider region.
The US, Israel, and Britain have the most to lose from a sudden onset of peace in West Asia. In the Yemeni context, London may be the biggest loser of all.
For years, it provided the Saudi-led coalition with weaponry used to target civilians and civilian infrastructure, with receipts running into billions of pounds sterling.
During the entirety of the war, Yemen was struck by British-made bombs, dropped by British-made planes, flown by British-trained pilots, which then flew back to Riyadh to be repaired and serviced by British contractors.
In 2019, a nameless BAE Systems executive estimated that if London pulled its backing for the proxy war, “in seven to 14 days, there wouldn’t be a jet in the sky.”
A Typhoon at RAF Akrotiri, near Limassol in Cyprus, after striking Houthi targets in Yemen (Photo cred: Sgt. Lee Goddard/ AFP)
In addition to supplying weapons, the war also presented a golden opportunity for Britain to establish a military base in Yemen, fulfilling long-held fantasies of recovering the Empire’s long-lost glory days “East of Suez.”
Al-Ghaydah airport in al-Mahrah, Yemen’s far eastern governorate, has for some time quietly housed “a fully-fledged force” of British soldiers, providing “military training and logistical support” to coalition forces and Saudi-backed militias.
There are even indications that this involvement could extend to torture methods, which is a troubling reflection of one of London’s leading exports.
The Cradle has obtained exclusive information about a previously undisclosed aspect of London’s role in the proxy war against Yemen’s Ansarallah-led resistance.
It has been revealed that a multi-channel propaganda campaign, led by the intelligence cut-out ARK and its founder Alistair Harris, a veteran MI6 operative, has been operating in complete secrecy throughout the nine-year-long conflict – one that specifically targeted Yemen’s civilian population.
Anti-Ansarallah ops
Leaked Foreign Office documents have revealed that ARK’s “multimedia” information warfare campaign was designed to undermine public sympathy for the Ansarallah movement and ensure that the conflict would only end on terms that aligned with London’s financial, ideological, and geopolitical interests.
For instance, public acceptance of the UN’s widely unpopular peace proposal required propaganda support from local NGOs and media organizations that “support UK objectives” to “communicate effectively with Yemeni citizens” and change their minds.
It was also necessary to counter “new actors” in the information space that were critical of the Saudi-led coalition’s brutal bombing campaigns and the illegitimate, US-backed puppet government that the aerial assaults sought to protect.
Considering the high rate of illiteracy in the local population, ARK conceived the creation of a suite of “visually rich” products extolling the virtues of a Riyadh-dominated peace plan.
These products would be disseminated on and offline and would “deliberately include different demographics, sects, and locations to ensure inclusivity,” informed by focus groups and polling of Yemenis.
ARK’s campaign even extended to convening “gender-segregated poetry competitions using peace as a theme” and “plays and town hall meetings.”
Publicly, many of these propaganda products appeared to be the work of Tadafur – Arabic for “work collectively and unite” – an astroturf network of NGOs and journalists constructed by ARK.
Its overt mission was to “resolve local level conflicts” and “unite local communities in their conflict resolution efforts.”
The campaign began initially at a “hyper-local level” across six Yemeni governorates, “before being amplified at the national level.” Activities “[in] all areas and at both levels” had unified messaging across “common macro themes,” such as the slogan “Our Yemen, Our Future.”
In each governorate, a “credible” local NGO was identified as a messenger, along with “well-known” and “respected and influential” journalists who served as “dedicated field officers” across the sextet, managed by ARK.
In Hajjah – “a site of strong Houthi influence” – the Al-Mustaqbal Institute for Development was ARK’s NGO of choice; in Ansarallah-governed Sanaa, it was the Faces Institution for Rights and Media; in Marib, the Marib Social Generations Club.
In Lahij, ARK’s choice was the Rouwad Institution for Development and Human Rights; in Hadhramaut, Ahed Institute for Rights and Freedom; in Taiz, Generations Without Qat.
These local NGOs were instrumental in promoting ARK’s agenda and advancing the narrative that aligned with Britain’s objectives in Yemen.
The company’s roster of “field officers” comprised of individuals with various backgrounds, such as:
“Human rights abuse” specialist Mansour Hassan Mohammad Abu Ali, TV producer Thy Yazen Hussain, Public Organisation to Protect Human Rights press official and “experienced journalist” Waleed Abdul Mutlab Mohammed al-Rajihi,
Also producer from Alhadramiah Documentary Institute Abdullah Amr Ramdan Mas’id, editorial secretary of Family and Development magazine and the Yemen Times’ Taiz news manager Rania Abdullah Saif al-Shara’bi, as well as journalist and activist Waheeb Qa’id Saleh Thiban.
A Trojan Horse
Once ARK’s field officers and NGOs “successfully designed and implemented hyper-local campaigns,” coverage of “information around the related activities will then be amplified at the national level.”
A key platform for this amplification was a Facebook page called “Bab,” launched in 2016 with tens of thousands of followers who were unaware that the page was created by ARK as a British intelligence asset.
Under the guise of a popular grassroots online community, ARK used the Bab page to broadcast slick propaganda “promoting the peace process,” including videos and images of “local peacebuilding initiatives” organized by its NGO and field officer nexus.
“Campaign content will highlight tangible, real-life examples of compelling peacebuilding efforts that all Yemenis, regardless of their political affiliation, can relate to,” ARK stated.
“These will offer inspirational examples for others to emulate, demonstrating practical ways to engage with the peace process at a local level. Taken together, these individual stories form the broader campaign with a national message: Yemenis share a collective desire for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.”
When “high engagement levels” with this content were secured, Bab users were invited to submit their own, which demonstrated “support for the peace process.” They were explicitly asked “to mirror content ARK has produced, such as voxpops, short videos, or infographics.”
This was then “shared by the project and field teams through influential WhatsApp messaging groups, a key way of reaching Yemeni youth.”
ARK’s “well-connected communications team” would then “strategically share packaged stories with broadcast media or key social influencers, or offer selected journalists exclusive access to stories.”
Creating a constant flow of content was a deliberate ploy to “collectively be as ‘loud’ as partisan national political and military actors.” In other words, to create a parallel communications structure to Ansarallah’s own, which would drown out the resistance movement’s pronouncements.
ARK’s role in Yemen’s peace process
While one might argue that the non-consensual recruitment of private citizens as information warriors by British intelligence was justified by the moral urgency of ending the Yemen war quickly, the exploitation of these individuals was cynical in the extreme.
It amounted to a Trojan Horse operation aimed at compelling Yemenis to embrace a peace deal that was wildly inequitable and contrary to their own interests.
Multiple passages in the leaked files refer to the paramount need to ensure no linkage between these propaganda initiatives and the UN’s peace efforts. One passage refers to how campaign “themes and activities” would at no point “directly promote the UN or the formal peace process.”
Another passage says concealing the operation’s agenda behind ostensibly independent civil society voices “minimizes the risk” that “outputs are perceived as institutional communications stemming from or directly promoting the UN.”
Yet, once ARK’s campaigns began “performing successfully at the national level,” the company’s field officers planned to “build a bridge” between its local foot soldiers and national “stakeholders” – and, resultantly, the UN.
In other words, the entire ruse served to entrench ARK’s central role in peace negotiations via the backdoor.
Diminished western influence
At that time, the ceasefire deal proposed by the UN required Ansarallah and its allied forces to virtually surrender before Riyadh’s military assaults and economic blockade of the country could be partially lifted, along with other stringent requirements that the Saudis refused to compromise on.
Newly recruited Houthi fighters gathered for training outside Sana, the capital of Yemen – they became the Ansarrallah Army. (Photo credit: Yahya Arhab/EPA, via Shutterstock)
The US aggressively encouraged such intransigence, viewing any Ansarallah influence in Yemen as strengthening Iran’s regional position.
However, these perspectives are no longer relevant to Yemen’s peace process.
China has now encouraged Riyadh to offer significant concessions, and as a result, the end of the war is within sight, with critical supplies finally allowed to enter Yemen, prisoners returned, Sanaa’s airport reopened, and other positive developments.
Evidently, Washington’s offers of arms deals and security assurances are no longer sufficient to influence events overseas and convince its allies to carry out its agenda.
The failure of ARK’s anti-Ansarallah propaganda campaigns to coerce Yemenis to accept peace on the west’s terms also highlights Britain’s significantly reduced power in the modern era.
Whereas wars could once be won on the coat-tails of well-laid propaganda campaigns, the experiences of Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan show that the tide has turned. Subversive information campaigns can confuse and misdirect populations but, at best, can only prolong conflict – not win it.
On Monday 2nd September the largest ‘Israeli’ trade union, along with a number of other organisations have called a strike in support of the ‘Hostages’ relatives’ organisation1 in order to force Netanyahu to stop blocking a ceasefire agreement.
Two months ago, the Palestinian Resistance leadership accepted the 3-stage terms for an end to the current war in Palestine proposed by then US President Joe Biden, which he claimed to have been agreed by the Zionist Government.2 However Netanyahu sabotaged the negotiations.
The Resistance is clear that a) no IOF can remain within the Gaza strip, b) there must be no impediment to the return of displaced people, d) the gates have to be opened to allow food, medication etc. to enter and those requiring special medical treatment to leave.
In addition, the Palestinian prisoners nominated for release in exchange of the ‘Israeli’ prisoners held in Gaza cannot be vetoed by Netanyahu, nor can the war resume once the ‘Israeli’ captives have been returned, two essentials with which the Zionist Prime Minister disagrees.
Netanyahu has also stipulated that it’s essential for State security that the IOF must remain in the ‘Netzarim Corridor’ in Gaza, which crosses a red line for the Resistance and which the IOF intelligence sector deny is necessary for security.
At the same time, Zionist government Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has called on military chiefs to resign and some high-rankers of the Intelligence sector of the military have indeed already done3 while another is reportedly about to do so.
Some ‘Israeli’ media commentators have reflected the dissension and openly criticised their government, not only because of the failure to prevent the October 7th Palestinian breakout but also to defeat the armed resistance and rescue the ‘hostages’.
The latter has been one of the major drivers of huge protest demonstrations, including some against Netanyahu himself and some against his more fascist cabinet supporters, such as Benny Gantz.
Also adding to the dissatisfaction are the many ‘Israeli’ settlers who are in hotels or camps at Government expense, having left the northwestern occupied region due to Hezbollah bombing (mostly) the military there in support of the Palestinians facing genocidal IOF attacks.4
Northwestern occupied Palestine was also the producer of significant amounts of food for the general ‘Israeli’ population which it must now do without.
Seen from Lebanon, Hezbollah rockets hit IOF installation 15 December 2023but could be a scene from almost any day since October 8th. (Photo cred: AFP)
Then there’s the problem of replacing the numbers of dead and injured IOF, the true extent of which has been concealed by the Zionist state. This has led to the June removal of the exemption from military service of Haredi Jews , resulting in their protest demonstrations.5
One of the state’s main ports, ‘Eilat’ has declared bankruptcy6 due to radical reduction in shipping as a result of Yemeni targeting and Haifa is also suffering. In addition Zionist-friendly companies abroad are being boycotted and some have abandoned the Zionists as a result.7
This cannot be seen as any kind of opposition to Zionism within ‘Israeli’ society but rather as a reflection of deep divisions within Zionism itself; the state and the occupation project remains one of European settler colonialism, fundamentally expansionist and genocidal at its core.
Running alongside these elements is that of declining military confidence, both among the general population and in the IOF itself. This is a state that once felt itself invincible in the Middle East with its air force, intelligence services and ground forces – and of course huge US backing.
Despite all this, it has been unable to prevent the October 7th breakout or subsequently in 10 months of genocidal bombardment and military invasions to defeat the Palestinian resistance nor to curtail Hezbollah’s attacks on the northwestern region from Lebanon.
The settler population is aware its much-vaunted air defence systems were unable to prevent Iran’s retaliation8 on 13th April from hitting three military bases,9 or Hezbollah from hitting a number of military targets in its recent retaliation for the assassination of its senior officer Fouad.
Large numbers of ‘Israeli’ citizens, many of which hold dual citizenships are also leaving the Zionist state and reportedly the highest proportion of these are of Ashkenazi background, i.e eastern European rather than middle Eastern, African etc.
The monolith of Zionism in the Middle East is disintegrating but it will yet require some further pushing and blows to collapse it completely. This is the time for escalation of all kinds of activities to push the process to its logical and desired conclusion.
CAUSES OF THE EFFECT
What has brought about this state of affairs? Certainly a number of things but first and foremost we must applaud the Palestinian Resistance, comprising both its armed factions and the determination and resilience of a population in the midst of ten months of genocidal attacks.
The resilience of the population across the age and gender profiles, the resistance of the prisoners in the face of daily torture and slow starvation and the work of social and medical services have formed a solid background to fighters and development of effective weapons matching their targets.
To that has been added innovation in planning ambushes and in methods of attack, along with daring and sacrifice in carrying them out.
Secondly, the active support of the rest of the Axis of Resistance, first Hezbollah in Lebanon and the armed forces in Yemen, followed by the state of Iran and resistance groups in Iraq.
Next we must also acknowledge the solidarity front in particular in western states demonstrating, boycotting and sabotaging Zionist businesses and businesses and states colluding with Zionism.
In particular in the latter front stand the radical and revolutionary youth who have continued and even escalated their resistance in the face of state and Zionist violence, arrests and trials, fines and imprisonment, restrictions on and expulsions from their studies and loss of accommodation.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1The recent recovery by the IOF of the bodies of six of the Israeli prisoners taken by the Resistance on October 7th seems to have been the impulse to convert months of protest demonstrations into a general strike. The bodies were found in a tunnel and original reports said they had died from suffocation, assumed to be from IOF bombing. Later a Resistance statement said they had been shot by the IOF in a rescue attempt while the IOF said the prisoners had been executed by the Resistance. It seems now that the Resistance’s statement was a metaphor as they say that since the Nusserat Massacre when in order to rescue four ‘Israeli’ prisoners the IOF bombed and shot nearly 300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, the Resistance guards now have different instructions in the event of an IOF attempt to rescue the prisoners.
8For Israel’s air strike on the Iranian Consulate in Beirut, Lebanon. Another Iranian retaliation is expected daily, for the August 4th assassination of Hamas leader (and peace talks negotiator) Ismail Haniyeh on diplomatic visit to Iran.
The image of freedom of the press in Western society has been undermined by the biased reporting of the corporate media and yet further by the wave of censorship of social media in recent years, including blocking media platforms.
Time and again readers have seen that the version of events reported is that which favours the western powers and if and when the latter’s enemies are reported it is done perfunctorily and often with an air of doubt.
In war zones, the reporters for western media tend to be embedded among western military and rarely among their opponents.
Media censorship was already rife on reporting the war in Ukraine but has spread higher and wider during the current ‘Israeli’ genocide in Palestine, causing increasing numbers of people to resort to social media news and commentary platforms. But these alternatives too are targeted in turn.
The Western powers have attacked social media platforms such as Telegram, arresting its founder a few days ago1 and this week blocking to subscribers throughout the European Union the Resistance News Network, which reported throughout the day on events in the ‘Israeli’ genocide on Telegram.
Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, currently under French State arrest. (Image sourced: Internet)
Earlier this month the FBI raided the homes of two US citizens, Scott Ritter and Dimitri K. Simes, journalists whose broadcasting has been hosted by Russian media,2 in alleged concern over possible Russian interference in the Presidential elections (!).
Both men have been critical of US foreign policy, which is likely the reason for intimidation through house searches, the same going for the UK police ‘welcome home’ upon Heathrow arrival of Richard Medhurst, an independent journalist and his arrest under ‘Anti-Terrorism’ law.3
Censorship in Reporting the War in Ukraine
Ukraine war news censorship has been running since 2014 but it really ramped up when Russia invaded in 2022. Any prominent individual or site, whether pro-Russia or just NATO-critical that challenged or did not follow the western imperialist line, was soon subjected to censorship.
Pablo González, a dual-nationality Basque reporter, was threatened by Ukrainian intelligence agents and then arrested and jailed in Poland, allegedly for spying for Russia. No evidence was produced during the 886 days he was jailed but now he’s released4 they claim they have a lot.
The Russia-based site RT America was closed down in the USA in 2022,5 as was RT UK in the UK.6
Oliver Stone’s documentary Ukraine On Fire was removed from YouTube7 and veteran conflict reporter and author Christopher Hedges, who left his post as Middle East reporter for the New York Times because of the paper’s censorship, was censored again by YouTube.8
Oliver Stone’s acclaimed documentary on Ukraine prior to Russian invasion was removed by Youtube.
The Grayzone electronic media outlet was characterised as a ‘pro-Russia’ site and veteran anti-imperialist and celebrated linguist Naom Chomsky was accused of being naive or also biased towards Russia.
To what would be their shame if they were capable of such a saving grace, much of the western Left and liberals, both reformist and revolutionary-claiming sections, rowed in behind the censors and labelled all who didn’t swallow their line, including Chomsky9 as “Putinistas”.
The reporting of the western mass media was accepted uncritically while any alternative reporting was attacked, some being characterised as Russian-backed media (in contrast with the corporate media, which of course is free of bias!).
Challenging journalists have also disappeared in Ukraine, where regime-critical journalist Gonzalo Lira died in Ukrainian jail,10 whereas in Palestine, the Israeli Occupation Force had killed at least 116 journalists as August drew to a close.11
In their acceptance of western censorship, those sections of the Left helped to ideologically prepare the ground for the wide-scale censorship around Palestine about which some of them complain bitterly now.
6‘The UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality and on one occasion found it had broadcast “materially misleading” content.[3][4][5] On 18 March 2022, Ofcom cancelled RT’s UK broadcasting licence “with immediate effect” after concluding the outlet was not “fit and proper” or a “responsible broadcaster”’(Wikipedia). The unconscious irony is staggering.
The Palestinian Authority had a small protest against it in Dublin on the afternoon of Friday 23rd August 2024. This seems to be the first protest that has taken place outside the Palestinian Embassy at 66 Lower Leeson Street.
It would perhaps have been the first protest against the PA in Ireland, were it not for the Palestinian solidarity activists who attempted to convey the Palestinian reality in contrast to the Ambassador’s speech at a public meeting in Belfast in February, before being evicted by Sinn Féin supporters.
Palestinian solidarity activists protesting the Palestinian Authority and Embassy?
At first sight that seems bizarre but as some solidarity activists and most people of Middle Eastern origin know, the PA is not only widely considered unrepresentative and corrupt – and in fact has not held elections since 2006 – but also represses protests in the West Bank against ‘Israel’.
However, the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign says that its main purpose in calling the protest was to raise awareness of the harm the PA is doing to the Palestinian Resistance, in arresting Resistance fighters and disrupting resistance defence against ‘Israeli’ army incursions.
Photo of placard being displayed outside the Palestine Embassy today. (Photo: R.Breeze)
The IAIC’s leaflet handed out at the event points out that the PA’s security force shot and wounded and even killed Resistance fighters, also attempting to enter hospital in force to arrest fighters on two occasions recently, their attempts being frustrated by large mobilisations.
Could a picket on the Palestinian Authority and its Embassy be considered divisive? “Not with justification,” replied an IAIC spokesperson. “It’s the actions of the PA that are divisive. We are supporting the broad resistance there, not one faction or another.”
He points out – as did their leaflet – that 14 Resistance factions including Fatah met in Beijing recently and agreed that the Palestinians have a right to resist, including with weapons and called for unity of all the resistance organisations. “The PA is acting against that unity”, he said.
But why is it that the IAIC called this protest and not one of the Palestinian solidarity organisations? “You’d need to ask them that,” says the spokesperson. “We regularly fly a Palestinian flag on our anti-internment in Ireland pickets; the PA was overdue to be done but nobody else was doing it.”
(Photo: R.Breeze)
The IAIC was founded a decade ago to raise awareness about ongoing internment of Irish Republican activists by revoking ex-prisoners’ licence and through refusal of bail by special no-jury courts. In those cases it can take two years for a case to come to trial.
However the IAIC has organised or participated in other events also, such as those around framed prisoners like the Craigavon Two in the Six Counties and the Munir family in England. It has also called two of its pickets since October 2024 to specifically highlight Palestinian prisoners.
Will the group be regularly picketing the Palestinian Authority now? “Probably not. It’s not what we were set up for but we felt the ice needed breaking on this. Others need to step forward now,” replied their spokesperson, though signalling that they would support others in doing it.
Photo of copy of the leaflet being distributed outside the Palestine Embassy today. (Photo: R.Breeze)
It is probable that a representative of the PA will be welcomed soon by the Irish Government as part of its recognition of the ‘Palestinian State’. One wonders how this reception of a corrupt and Occupation-collusive organisation will be mediated in the Palestinian solidarity sector in Ireland.
The Governments of the EU, including Ireland’s, formally recognise the PA but not only that – so does Sinn Féin in Ireland, EH Bildu in the Basque Country and Esquerra Republicana in Catalonia. This corresponds across the board also to support for ‘the Two-State Solution’ (sic).
What that entails is allocating the Palestinians less than 20% of their homeland weaving around illegal zionist settlements, with least water and some of the worst land, under the permanent watchtowers and guns of their genocidal neighbour.
Organisations and individuals within the broad Palestinian solidarity movement will need to decide exactly what their solidarity with Palestine actually means, especially for the Palestinians themselves.
Most people in the Western world will have experienced being stopped at a checkpoint, usually feeling irritated at the delay to their journey, commonly afraid only if driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Or curious perhaps – what is this stop about? In many parts of the world however, apprehension or fear are the normal emotions for drivers approaching a checkpoint. The mind wonders: Might I be arrested, beaten, robbed, raped, killed?
For people in a country invaded and occupied, those are rational fears; the people staffing the checkpoints are occupying soldiers or police; or perhaps auxiliaries, locals working for the occupation, perhaps from a different ethnic group. Which can sometimes be worse.
Many Palestinians have been arrested at checkpoints and certainly some have been killed there, while arrest does not mean one will not be killed anyway, or not be used as a human shield under threat of death, or even killed despite doing what their captors asked.
In those situations there are other negative experiences not necessarily including physical harm: humiliation, harassment, the display of power imbalance in how people are treated, delayed, mocked, insulted. An everyday experience for Palestinians passing through IOF checkpoints.
A busy checkpoint, the Palestinians packed worse than cattle. (Photo source: Internet)
It was so also for many people going through British Army and colonial police checkpoints in the occupied Six Counties of Ireland. Cars with Irish registration plates might be held up for half an hour or longer. Or people who answered that their destination was Derry, instead of “Londonderry” (sic).
People have had their children upset by searches, cuddly toys ripped open, intimate adult clothing in luggage inspected, been body-searched, intimidated by loaded weapons pointed at them and, if known as activists, or even related to activists, been threatened with murder.
All of this happens to Palestinians at checkpoints where Israelis can pass through, hardly stopping. And there are LOTS of checkpoints throughout the West Bank or on the way into “Israel” (i.e. the lands seized and occupied by the Zionists since 1948).
Map of established Occupation checkpoints in the West Bank, illegally occupied according to the UN. Temporary checkpoints in addition are often established. (Source: Internet)
The guards on checkpoints are often bored or irritated and take out their feelings on those trying to pass through. But the oppressing power wants that to happen: the checkpoints are part of the control structure, physical and mental in effect.
The structural effects and attitudes of the checkpoint guards affect Palestinians travelling to and from their jobs inside ‘Israel’ in addition to Palestinians travelling between one place and another in the occupied lands outside official ‘Israel’.
Those journeys can be for medical treatment (including emergencies), to work or apply for work, to school or university, shopping, to visit friends or relatives, to attend weddings, births, funerals, to support the elderly or disabled, to assist in community work, to take a break, attend festivals …
Apart from anything else, for the Palestinians queuing it may mean a long time in stifling heat in close proximity to other bodies, without water or with a limited supply, no access to a toilet, possibly in direct sun or, in winter, exposed to cold wind and rain …
An Occupation soldier at a pedestrian checkpoint examines the IDs of Palestinian children accompanied by an adult for their protection. (Source: Internet)
VULNERABLE
Temporary checkpoints however are also vulnerable. A soldier or policeman approaching a vehicle or even pedestrians on foot has only his body armour and firearm standing between him and attack, even if having done this four hours a day for weeks without a single misadventure.
Because one day, just that once, it might be different.
In the past, a Palestinian might blow himself up at a checkpoint. More recently another who’d had enough drove his car through a checkpoint at speed, fatally wounding one of the guards and then shot another. On another occasion, a Palestinian seriously injured two guards by stabbing them.
A long line of Palestinian vehicles await clearance to proceed through IOF checkpoint (Photo sourced: ARU)
Now, more and more frequently, IOF checkpoints are coming under fire. An incident might last no more than a minutes or two but how long does it take a bullet to travel and enter a body? And even without killing or wounding the body, what is the affect on the mind to feel like a stationary target?
These might seem easy operations but no armed action against the Zionist state is free from danger, especially with IOF drones to record or even fire at Palestinian fighters, to say nothing of artillery shells, bombs and missiles. Success rate in killed or injured IOF in such operations tends to be low.
But their psychological effects are quite significant and wars are not fought just by and on bodies; they are fought by and on minds too. The checkpoints, instruments and symbols of power and oppression have become vulnerable and targets … like the repressive forces staffing them.
End.
A Palestinian youth being arrested by Occupation soldiers at a checkpoint. (Photo cred: Zain JAAFAR / AFP)
Over recent months threats have been exchanged between ‘Israeli’ leaders and Hezbollah in Lebanon and also between leaders of Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The former reached its hottest pitch recently and seemed to be heralding open war.
Hezbollah and ‘Israel’
Hezbollah is an Islamist anti-imperialist resistance organisation of an estimated 50-100,000 trained fighters1 and has been characterised, in numbers and equipment, as “a medium-sized army”. Its artillery units have been firing into ‘Israeli’-occupied territory since October 8th last year.
The resistance organisation has taken action in solidarity with the Palestinians facing genocide and daily massacres and has vowed to continue it until the ‘Israeli’ Occupation Force ceases its attacks on the Palestinians.
Vast areas of Israeli settlements have been temporarily abandoned by settlers (or permanently by at least 60) as a result,2 the genocidal state accommodating former residents in camps and hotels, while the IOF occupies some buildings in the regions, enduring constant Hezbollah bombardments.
IOF base hit by Hezbollah strike during during the current conflict. (Photo source: Internet)
As the genocidal assault continues, Hezbolah has begun to shell settlements which it had previously excluded from its regular bombardment. In addition, the organisation has been repeatedly hitting IOF surveillance equipment and parts of the ‘Iron Dome’ air defence system.
One might say that the ‘Israeli’ army was responsible for the creation of Hezbollah; the organisation came into existence fighting the IOF’s occupation of Lebanon and its facilitation of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp by its Christian Phalangist allies.3
Hezbollah fought the IOF occupation of Lebanon in 2000 and the re-invasion in 2006, forcing the settler state to recall its army with substantial losses. They were the first campaign defeats inflicted on the IOF since its creation.
Hezbollah stages a military parade in Beirut, Lebanon in April 2024 (Image credit: AP Photo/Hussein Malla/Alamy)
Threats
Recently Yoav Gallant, the Occupation’s Minister of Defence (sic) threatened Hezbollah with war and claimed that it would be “quick, surprising and decisive”, also that they could shift the focus of their war from Gaza to Hezbollah in an instant.
Yoav Gallant, ‘Israeli’ Minister for Defence (sic), meeting some IOF personnel. The Purple beret is one of the signature uniforms of the Givati Brigade (84th), one of the five infantry brigades of the IOF and is one of the two infantry brigades under the Southern Command. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Certainly the most nazi part of Netanyahu’s fascist coalition threatens to resign unless the IOF attacks Hezbollah; it’s been speculated for some time that ‘Bibi’ himself would like that to draw the USA into it and as a distraction from his failed war against the Palestinian resistance.4
But it was almost certainly empty bluster from Gallant, to which Hezbollah replied, in case he were serious, that while the IOF could of course cause damage in Lebanon, that Hezbollah’s damage to the ‘Israeli’ state’s military bases and civilian infrastructure would be much greater.
Had Gallant been talking about aerial bombardment only there could have been some reality in his threat — but a land invasion? Having to cross the buffer zone they themselves created,5 meanwhile under fire from Hezbollah’s missiles? And how many undamaged tanks does the IOF have left?6
And then fighting Hezbollah on the ground? Gallant’s words might also have been bravado in the face of the shock settler society received with Hezbollah’s publication the day previously of the photographs of ‘Israeli’ military and civilian infrastructure taken by undetected drone.
Last Saturday evening, Hezbollah published more photos from a new undetected “flight of the hoopoe”7 which must have given the Israeli ruling class even more pause, this one picking out military targets including its “secure” air force base and naming commanding officers.
Indeed, Shin Bet8 was recently reported shocked to find that Hamas has an extensive database of IOF personnel at all ranks, including combat history and current addresses; they tracked the IOF commander of the Al Shifa Hospital massacre,9 field-executing him two months later.
Hezbollah published the material as a warning (and also to coincide with butcher Netanyahu’s visit to address the USA’s Congress in the Capitol, Washington DC). “If we can photograph it, we can hit it” Hezbollah said and it is known that their missiles can reach any part of the ‘Israeli’ state.
As this goes to publication we read that two Hezbollah M90 missiles were targeted at ‘Tel Aviv’. Though apparently intercepted it will be unsettling for the regime to say the least to learn that the missiles were launched from an area of proximity to a concentration of IOF vehicles invading the Gaza strip.
Recently, ‘Israeli’ threats escalated following an explosion which killed 12 children playing football in the ‘Israeli’-occupied Syrian Golan. In shocking hypocrisy considering the massacres of thousands of Palestinian children, Israeli and US representatives went into paroxysms of rage.
Aside from patently untrue claims that the victims were “Israeli children”,10 Hezbollah has also denied responsibility; it’s much more likely that the explosion was an accidental IOF Iron Dome missile strike, given the haste with which the missile remains were rushed off-site (and out of sight) by the IOF.11
But with the ‘casus belli’ established, real or not, on Tuesday the IOF sent an explosive drone on an apparently assassination attempt to a southern part of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, killing a woman and two children, injuring 68 and perhaps more inside the collapsed building.
The strike also killed Fuad Shukr, leader of Hezbollah military wing, veteran of the resistance in Lebanon to the IOF invasions and until now, sole survivor of the leadership of those days, all killed in battle or in assassination.
Hezbollah at the very least will continue its bombardment and may feel it necessary to hit some part of “Tel Aviv”. Then the USA and the UK may step in. Meanwhile the Islamist Resistance in Iraq has recommenced its attacks on US bases there, Yemen’s return serve is awaited …
And Iran is in the game, inevitably bound to respond after ‘Israel’s’ assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas and chief ceasefire/ peace negotiator for the Palestinians, who was in Tehran to speak at the inauguration of the new President of Iran..
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Many with battle experience rather than killing civilians, like most of the IOF. Hezbollah’s leader claimed 100,000 fighters in Lebanon three years ago while a western agency puts the figure at 50,000. However the genocide in Palestine and the response of Hezbollah, combined with punitive ‘Israeli’ bombing and assassinations, is likely to have brought many more recruits to the organisation. It can also call on its fighters who are in Syria helping to defending the country from ISIS and US proxies.
3 16–18 September 1982, killing of between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias.
4Netanyahu has his personal reasons too; the minute the war is over he will face his postponed trial for corruption.
5By pulling back from their borders to make it more difficult for Hezbollah to hit them, ironically.
6From Israeli analysis sources it seems that not only does the IOF not have the necessary tanks (admitted to 500 damaged) or soldiers but even the munitions for a real war against an opposing army (see short discussion on this and the source in Electronic Intifada recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loHMeAfmnxY)
7The name Hezbollah gave the drone – the hoopoe is the national bird of Palestine.
10All of the children were of Syrian Druze families in a community in which around 90% have refused to accept citizenship in the state of their armed occupiers, holding on instead to Druze and Arab Syrian identity.
11Israeli Ministers were denounced on their visits to the site with cries translating as “child-killers” and demands they “Get out! Leave!”, Netanyahu having to leave within 15 minutes of his arrival.
Prominent among the many words quoted from Theobald Wolfe Tone, ‘the father of Irish Republicanism’, are that ‘Our Strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property’.
The interpretation of those words has led to some confusion between socialism and republicanism.
Wolfe Tone, as he is normally known historically, co-founded the Society of United Irishmen in 1791, which led a mass armed uprising in 1798 against British Rule in Ireland, as a speaker said at the Anti-Imperialist Action’s oration at their annual commemoration at Tone’s grave last month.1
Tone himself was arrested on a French ship captured by the British Navy and despite his French Army officer rank, tried on treason charges and sentenced to death upon the gallows … but died instead in prison of a wound to his throat.
Wolfe Tone Monument, Stephens Green, Dublin (Photo cred: National Built Heritage Service)
An important part of the leadership of the United Irishmen, most of the Leinster Directorate was arrested in Dublin but the Rising went ahead in other parts of Ireland, notably Antrim, Wexford and Wicklow, and another with French troop reinforcements, too few and too late, in Mayo.
The Rising was crushed, the leaders executed or exiled, along with many of their followers. A large body of Irish traditional and folk song, mostly in English and much of it composed in its centenary, commemorates the struggle and sacrifice of the United Irishmen.
The AIA speaker: “Tone’s most important belief was that we must ‘break the connection with England’ by any means necessary – one of the most important teachings for the Revolutionary Republican Movement today,” to work “for National Liberation by any means we decide necessary”.
No-one who has even the most cursory acquaintance with the historic figure of Wolfe Tone can deny that he was determined to break away from English colonial rule and, once he became convinced there was no peaceful way to do so, was determined to do it by force or arms.
“Tone was also clear that the revolutionary struggle could only be successful,” continued the speaker, “if it was based on the masses of the Irish People, stating that, ‘Our Strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property’.”
From that, the speaker went on to claim that “we learn from Tone that the fight for our Republic is a class struggle and that the driving force of that struggle will be the working class fighting for their own liberation.”
I do not believe that the writings or recorded words of Wolfe Tone justify that interpretation. Indeed, it would have been strange if they had; the 1798 Rising was what Marxists describe as a “bourgeois revolution”, i.e. one led by a section of the capitalist class in its own class interests.2
Such also were the Revolutions in England of 1649 and 1688, of the French in 1789 and the American in 1765-1783, the Italian of 1848, the Chinese of the early Kuo Min Tang and the Latin American revolutions against the Spanish Empire, along with the Mexican 1910-1920.
Yes, the capitalist class, which is always telling us to employ only constitutional means to get what we need or want, tries to conceal that they themselves came to power by revolution.
Colorised illustration by unknown artist of the storming of the Bastille in July 1789 (Source: Wikipedia)
The leadership of the United Irishmen was almost totally of the established Anglican church or of Protestant sects – “Protestant and Dissenter”, in Tone’s words. They were descendants of settlers from Britain and they were of bourgeois social strata.
This section of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie were fed up with restraints imposed from England on developing the colony’s potential, on a taxation system they considered unfair, on corruption in the Irish Parliament and in management by the Monarch’s representative in Ireland.
Being only a very small minority of the Irish population3 they were aware that they needed the mass behind them in order to build an independent national economy, for which they tried to gain Catholics admission to the Irish Parliament, which at the time only admitted Anglicans as MPs.
When Henry Grattan, who had earlier led quite a rebellious Irish Parliament,4 failed in the attempt to make Parliament more representative, Tone and many others became convinced that only revolution could progress society in Ireland and from then on he strove to bring that about.
Grattan
Statue of Henry Grattan, failed reformer of the Irish Parliament, situated in Dame Street junction with Grafton Street and facing Trinity College. (Photo cred: Trip Advisor)
A revolution against England, a great European naval power, even with the help of revolutionary France, would require mass participation and support, as the AIA speaker remarked at the commemoration. So Tone aspired to the unity of “Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.”
The section of the religions that most fell into the category of the “men of no property” were of course the Catholics, dispossessed of their lands and under Penal Laws of the Occupation. Without the support of the Catholic majority there was no chance of a successful revolution.
Tone may well have been a most democratic Republican in favour of all kinds of progressive social reform but nowhere in his writing does he advocate the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, seizure of private property and the setting up of a socialist system to be run by the working class.
united men
Reenactment of the United Irishmen in battle, depicting the “men (and women) of no property. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Theobald Wolfe Tone was a courageous democratic revolutionary, anti-colonial and a martyred patriot but was not nor could have been a socialist leader. That which he was, was the best of his time and among the best we had to offer and there is no need to try to make him something else.
The United Irishmen represented a section of the Irish bourgeoisie that was truly Republican and revolutionary. That section of society was mostly of settler descent since the mass of the native and Catholic population had been ground down and oppressed.
Thereafter most of the native Irish bourgeoisie developed as a subservient client class, “Castle Catholics” ag sodar i ndiaidh na n-uaisle,5 up to whatever “cute hoor”6 and gombeen7 tricks they could get up to but without a fraction of the spine necessary to fight for real independence.
A successful Irish national revolution does indeed need to be led by the Irish working class as demonstrated by what James Connolly – rather than Wolfe Tone – observed: “Only the Irish working class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.”
The reason for that, as outlined by Connolly, is quite simple: the working class is the only social class of any size that has nothing to gain from compromise and betrayal of the revolution.
Some other key points laid down by Tone, continued the speaker, include that Republicanism is Anti Imperialist and it is Internationalist. Our struggle in Ireland is part of a wider international struggle of oppressed people against occupation, colonialism and imperialism.
Tone understood this when he looked to Revolutionary France to support the 1798 uprising.
This was well understood by Irish Republicans of Tone’s time who celebrated the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and the defeat of the English by the settlers in America. The United Irishmen also helped the creation of the United Englishmen and led two of the British Navy’s most serious mutinies.8
Today, continued the speaker, Republicans must fight our struggle while also supporting Liberation struggles around the world in the belief that every blow struck against imperialism brings our victory closer.
So from Palestine to the Philippines and from India to the Basque Country, and everywhere people take a stand against NATO, the Revolutionary Republican movement must raise our cries in solidarity.
End.
Footnotes
1The event was organised by Anti-Imperialist Action, a socialist republican organisation, with the oration being given on behalf of the organisation. A pilgrimage to Wolfe Tone’s grave in Bodenstown is a fixture on the calendars of most Irish Republican organisations.
2This should not be taken as a criticism since Marxists agree that many bourgeois revolutions were progressive in their time.
3Tiny, in the case of the Anglicans in particular; the Presbyterians were much more numerous.
6An admiring description in Ireland for one who manages to benefit by dubious means.
7Corruption of an Irish language term for the ‘carpet bagger’ types who benefited amidst the disaster of the Great Hunger in the mid 19 Century, snapping up land in particular at the lowest of prices.
The Irish Tricolour has been in the news recently in an unhappy circumstance. The flag was featured borne in a group of anti-immigration racists carrying a banner declaring Coolock Says No,1 next to Union Jacks2 and Loyalist flags at a Belfast riot.
This was a bizarre juxtaposition given that Loyalists are hostile to any signs of Irish Republicanism, of which the Tricolour is chief among its historical symbols. Furthermore, the Unionist state banned its public display in most situations between 1954 and 1987 leading to resistance and arrests.3
In the sectarian society created by the British in its occupied Six County colony, the Tricolour is burned annually on British Loyalist bonfires and is reviled by Unionism and its more extreme progeny, Loyalism, which in turn is associated with state-sanctioned sectarian murder gangs.4
The strange juxtaposition was remarked upon in mass media not only in Ireland (both sides of the Border) but even in Britain — and Irish State Taoiseach (prime minister) Simon Harris remarked that he found the flag in association with racism to be “repugnant”.5
But does Harris have the moral right to make that comment?
Origin and History of the Irish Tricolour
The Tricolour as we know it and its use dates from its sewing in silk by revolutionary women in Paris in 1848 and presentation to a delegation of the Young Irelanders, a revolutionary Irish Republican group of that period and its subsequent unfurling in Ireland by Thomas Meagher.
Thomas Francis Meagher as captain in the Union Army (Source: Drawing in Library of Congress, USA)
Irish revolutionary Thomas Francis Meagher was convicted by the English Occupation of sedition during trials around the planning and carrying out of the Irish Rising of 1848 and, with death sentence commuted, transported to Australia as a felon, from which he escaped to the USA in 1852.
As the American Civil War approached, Meagher, along with most of the Irish in the USA took the side of the Union, leaving only a rump following Mitchell, formerly a comrade of the Young Irelanders, to side with the slave-owning Confederacy in the conflict.
Meagher not only fought in the Union Army in the American Civil War against the slave-owning Confederacy, gaining the rank of Brigadier but he and his wife raised a regiment, the 69th New York Infantry, unofficially called The Irish Brigade or even Mrs. Meagher’s Own.
Plaque in Lower Abbey Street (opp. side of Abbey Theatre) to the first unveiling of the Irish Tricolour in Dublin, 1848. (Source: Internet)
The Young Irelanders were Republicans and the Tricolour was always seen not only as embodying the unity of all in Ireland, regardless of origin, against the British occupation but also for national liberation, against Monarchy and for complete separation of Church and State.
In addition, it had a strong internationalist element in that it was associated with revolution throughout Europe, presented to us in solidarity by French revolutionary women and flown alongside French Tricolours in Ireland at celebrations of the French revolution of 1848.
It was the principal flag of Irish anti-fascism too in the 1930s when Irish Republicans fought the fascist Blueshirts on Irish streets and a number of them went to fight in defence of the Spanish Republic against the fascist military coup of Franco and his Nazi German and Italian Fascist allies.
More recently when Irish Republicans and socialists mobilised against the attempts of the Irish ruling class to promote NATO and to ease cooperation with that alliance of Western imperialism, Harris also ranted against supporters of Anti-Imperialist Action flying of the Irish Tricolour.
The Tricolour among Loyalists was of course newsworthy and was covered by Irish mainstream media and Unionist mouthpiece The Belfast Telegraph along with photos by The Guardian on line. But all without comment on its presence in Palestine solidarity events in London.
Irish Tricolours have been flown at every current Palestine solidarity march in London (ten of them at the most recent London march) and, along with Saoirse Don Phalaistín printed on the Palastinian flag, have been seen also at university solidarity encampments and at events to free Julian Assange.
Section of Palestine solidarity protest at Barclays Bank, Tottenham Road, London on 24th April this year, showing Irish Tricolour and Saoirse Don Phalaistín flags. Zionists and British fascists are united in opposition to them across the road. (Photo cred: Northern Times)
The Tricolour Flown by Racists and Fascists?
Given its origins and history, why is the Tricolour being flown by fascists?
In recent years it seemed that whenever one saw a crowd with Tricolours among them, it was most likely a fascist or at least racist-led event. One reason for this is that the fascists historically try to portray themselves as nationalists, i.e organising ‘for the nation’.
In all cases historically, the “nation” represented by the fascists turned out to be that of the ruling class, the financial and industrial elite – never that of the working people, not even of those sections of the lower middle class that supported the rise of fascist movements.
Fascists however have also frequently colluded with the invader of their nation, for example with the Nazis in Europe, particularly in France, Greece, Yugoslavia, Ukraine.6 The fascists in Ireland today represent the neo-colonial,7 colonial and imperialist financial-industrial interests in Ireland.
Racist group from Dublin suburb finds common cause with British Loyalists in Belfast anti-immigration demonstration and riots 3 August 2024 (Photo cred: Irish News)
In that context, the unity of fascists from the Twenty-Six Counties with Loyalists from the Six Counties is not surprising, nor even with notorious English fascist Tommy Robinson. Prominent Irish fascists have had friendly interactions with Loyalist Jim Dowson and British fascist Farrage.
Portraying themselves as saviours of the nation, as moral guardians etc., just as the German Nazis did in the 1930s is hypocritical but absolutely necessary for them. If they revealed the class interests they represent and the kind of regime they really want, where would they get supporters?
The fascists are few and need those supporters, their easily-led mobs and stormtroopers. It is among sections of the down-trodden in society that they will find them, the ignorant, marginalised, abandoned by the capitalist system but all too often by the liberals and the Left also.
Substance addiction, mental illness, crime and cultural poverty is rife in these communities and it is sections of those who are presented with false enemies – migrants, LGBT people, muslims – by false saviours masquerading as patriots. Many in those communities are ripe for manipulation.
But the attempted takeover of the Tricolour and subversion has not occurred by Fascist manipulation and through historical and political ignorance alone.
When antifascists mobilise, rarely is the Tricolour seen amongst them, assisting the impression that it is the racists and fascists that are representing the nation. Understandably, Anarchists may not wish to fly the flag of a state and socialists may feel that the flag is representing a capitalist state.
Often too in the past, Republicans have been absent from antifascist mobilisations but on occasion too went to them ready for physical confrontation and therefore without flags. But what message do antifascists think is presented by Palestinian flags among them and Tricolours on the other side?8
Invited to speak at a conference on anti-fascism in Dublin some years ago, I raised the question of the appropriation of the Tricolour by fascists and how it was necessary for the antifascists to show it among themselves also but my recommendation did not win approval9.
It is depressing to see that the situation has not noticeably improved in this regard some years later.
A welcome recent exception to the rule: a number of Irish flags including the Tricolour among antifascists outnumbering fascists and racists in Dundalk, Co. Louth on 4 August 2024 (the day following the Belfast racist riots). The fascists and racists had to be escorted out of town by the Public Order Unit of the Gardaí (Source photo: Anti-Imperialist Action FB site)
The Irish state and the Tricolour
It took some time for the Tricolour to be adopted as the national flag in the Republican movement until its fluttering above the GPO at the Henry Street Corner during the 1916 Rising.10 Thereafter it represented the forces of national liberation in the War of Independence (1991-’21).
The Irish Tricolour (Photo cred.: Getty Images)
Facing treason and counter-revolution in 1922, it was the flag of the Anti-Treaty forces, the neo-colonial traitors only flying it in order to deny it to the Irish Republicans. Despite that fact it has remained the flag of Irish Republicanism, irreconcilable with neo-colonialism, racism or fascism.
Republican women activists of Cumann na mBan designed ‘Easter Lilly’ paper lapel pins to raise funds for dependants of Republicans imprisoned or killed during the Civil War and they did so in the colours of the Irish Tricolour: Green, White and Orange. The emblem is worn to this day.
The counter-revolutionary faction that spawned the fascist Blueshhirts11 did not formally adopt the Tricolour as the State flag in law, that was done by the next wave of counter-revolution, Fianna Fáil,12 while in government, situating it in the 1937 Constitution.
The Tricolour is in a sense the flag of everyone in Ireland who does not reject it or defile it but evidently too, in its origins and among those who bore it forward, it is anathema to racism.
Furthermore, it is symbolically anathema to colonialism, loyalism, neo-colonialism and monarchy. Clearly the Tricolour is not legitimately the flag of racists and fascists but neither is it of the gombeen regime that flies it; Harris and the neo-colonial State claiming it is also repugnant.
Effigy of Simon Harris showing the bloody hands of collusion in the ‘Israeli’ genocide against Palestinians at a Palestine solidarity protest last weekend (organised by Mothers Against Genocide, North Wicklow Against Genocide, Arklow Against Zionism) at the annual Bray Air Show which features UK Military fliers. (Photo cred: Aisling Hudson)
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Coolock (from the Irish place-name An Chúlóg) is a Dublin city suburban district that has seen riots and arson recently against plans to house refugees in a disused factory building there.
2Common name for the flag of the United Kingdom, more derogatorily known as ‘The Butcher’s Apron’, featuring heraldic cross and salterres of the nations of England, Scotland and Ireland (Wales had already been conquered and incorporated into the Kingdom of England).
4Such as the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force (see also ‘the Glennane Gang’) which targeted most of their victims on the assumption of their being of the Catholic faith but also occasionally those from the Protestant community they considered disloyal (see ‘the Shankill Butchers’) or with which they were in competition around gang crime. All operated with colonial police and British Army assistance.
6These fascist groups supplied police and auxiliary units to the Nazi occupation, collecting information on the antifascist Resistance and on fugitive Jews and Roma. In some cases, as in Ukraine, they also acted as prison and concentration camp guards (but their chief leader, Stepan Bandera, was nominated as a national hero by the current Kiyv regime).
7Sometimes called ‘comprador capitalist’ or ‘client regime’, a term describing a state that is nominally independent but is under the actual domination of an external state or states. The Irish state has been in turn dominated by Britain, the USA and the EU imperialists.
8This is an issue on Palestine solidarity marches and pickets upon which I have also commented before.
9A speaker from a very sectarian migrant group ridiculed the idea but no-one else spoke up in support.
10Incidentally, at the other corner of the GPO above Princes Street in 1916 flew the green flag with the words “Irish Republic” inscribed upon it in white and gold letters, which had been created for the occasion in the home of Constance Markievicz, socialist revolutionary of a settler landowning family and born in London. And the man who erected it was Argentinian-born-and-raised Eamon Bulfin. It is ironical in the extreme that this flag also is sometimes brandished by Irish racists opposing immigration.
11Irish fascist organisation officially called the Army Comrades Association (later The National Guard), led by former Gárda Commissioner Eoin O’ Duffy which later joined with two conservative parties to form the current Fine Gael, currently in the Coalition Government with its erstwhile opposition Fianna Fáil and the Green Party.
12A major split from Sinn Féin in the early 1930s, currently in the Coalition Government with its erstwhile opposition Fine Gael and the Green Party.
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