Around 80 people attended a concert in the back room of Dublin’s Cobblestone pub launching an initiative to “build a community of solidarity and resistance through culture”. Flags of Irish and other struggles around the world decorated the venue.
The evening’s entertainment consisted of five musical acts and one of poetry. The MC for the evening, Diarmuid Breatnach, told the audience that Irish struggles had always found an expression in culture and that culture itself encouraged further resistance.
He gave the example of Thomas Davis who founded with others the patriotic newspaper The Nation in the mid-1800s, publishing contributed songs and poems and his own, including The West’s Awake and A Nation Once Again, songs still sung in Ireland nearly two centuries later.
The first act of the evening was the folk duo The Yearners, specialising in harmonies around renditions of song covers and their own song about the Mary of the New Testament, as a woman pressured to bear a child because “How can you say no to God?
The audience joining in on Pearse’s Gráinne Mhaol was followed by some songs with hard satirical edges like the Kinky Boots song from the Irish Republican repertoire and their own Save A Landlord.
The Yearners during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)Dúlamban during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
The MC introduced another all-female duo, Dúlamban, recently formed from two individual singer-musicians. Among their material, Sinéad on violin played two compositions of her own while Aisling sang her adaptation and translation of the Rising of the Moon: Ar Éirí na Geallaigh.
The one poet of the evening, Barry Currivan, performed a number of shorter and longer pieces of his repertoire. He was particularly applauded for his “anti-othering” piece Those People and his humorous concluding piece comparing himself to a good cup of tea or coffee.
After the break, the MC spent a few minutes outlining the Solidarity Sessions collective’s project and encouraging the audience to take part in it by spreading word of its events and supporting them in person, in addition to stepping forward to assist in organisation and in poster design.
Barry Currivan during his poetry performance at the Solidarity Sessions launch. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)Section of the audience presumably during Currivan’s performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
Another female duo took the stage, Sage Against the Machine on guitar accompanied by Ríona on violin, performing a number of love pop covers and SAM’s own song against patriarchy.
Some remarks about Bob Dylan’s Zionism followed in Sage’s introduction of the former’s Masters of War which she performed with great feeling and followed with El Gallo Rojo, an anti-fascist song from the Spanish ‘Civil War’.
Sage Against the Marchine (right) and Ríona during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)Jimi Cullen during his performance at the Solidarity Sessions launch. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
Breatnach then introduced Jimi Cullen who he said has been hosting a weekly musical protest picket for an hour on Wednesdays (2-3 pm) outside the US Embassy for a great many weeks, in which the MC had sometimes accompanied him amidst the solidarity beeping of passing traffic.
Jimi accompanied himself singing his Housing for All and Guthrie’s You Fascists Bound to Lose, then commenting on Bob Marley’s Zionism while introducing the latter’s One Love song, saying that love above all is what binds humanity together, a theme also of his We Are All Palestinians.
His monologue The Genocide Will Be Televised was much sharper and renewed an earlier Death, death to the IDF!1 chant from the audience.
Trad Sabbath during their performance. (Photo credit with thanks: Dermo Photography)
There was much irreverent comment about the name of the band to conclude the evening, Trad Sabbath, a four-piece band of guitars, banjo, bodhrán and fiddle, apparently in the context of the very recent death of the Black Sabbath band’s lead vocalist, Ozzie Osbourne.
Sardonic cries about “his poor widow”, Sharon Osbourne2 were also heard, a Zionist personality star in a ‘reality’ TV show about the late Ozzie’s family. To fill in the delay in their setting up with the sound engineer, Breatnach sang Kearney’s Down by the Glenside ballad.
The band concluded the evening with traditional melodies and some songs from Eoghan and Hat with others backing on choruses.
Poster advertising the event (Design: Ríona and D.Breatnach)
The MC thanked all for their attendance, performances and technical support before reiterating the Solidarity Sessions’ objective and encouraging participation. His comment that “Repression is here and more is coming down the road” was underlined by the presence there of a prominent victim.
In the audience was Richard Medhurst, the Britain-based journalist specialising in Middle Eastern coverage who was recently detained under anti-terror (sic) legislation and charged by British police as he returned from abroad and again later detained though not actually charged by Austrian police.
Richard Medhurst’s tweet during the evening at the event.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Made famous by the Bob Vylan duo at Glastonbuy getting the audience chanting the slogan. The IDF is what the Israeli Occupation Forces call themselves.
2Who had called for the banning of the the Irish rap group Kneecap.
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.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
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
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
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
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
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.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
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.
(Photo: D.Breatnach) (Photo: D.Breatnach)Molesworth Street, the destination, is full from one end to the other. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
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.
In recent days we have seen the far-Right mobilise people to allegedly defend the GPO and protest homelessness, not against its causes but instead against migrants. In defence of ‘Irishness’ they also menaced an annual religious Muslim procession.
Participants in these and similar events wave the Irish Tricolour and Irish Republic flags and claim to be ‘Irish patriots’ standing up for ‘the Irish nation.’ However, it’s far from that they are in reality as we can see.
They
disgrace the Proclamation
The far-Right claim to honour our national history of resistance to colonialism and occupation and even display copies of the 1916 Proclamation of Independence.1
Yet they are often also seen and heard denouncing Muslims, in direct contravention of the Proclamation’s words: “The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty … to all”; similarly they held protests when use of Croke Park was hired to celebrants of the Eid festival.
disgrace the GPO as HQ of the 1916 Rising
They have and do disgrace the very symbolic building they claim to be trying to protect.
They have often held racist gatherings outside it; one of their organisers2 (e.g. of weekly protests during the Covid crisis) leading a chant of support for British fascist Tommy Robinson, who defended the Paratroopers who carried out the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry.
Their recent protest at the GPO featured as speaker a man known for his active membership of the sectarian UVF murder gang, who admitted working for British Intelligence and who called for the strengthening of the colonial British Border – and was cheered for saying so.
Cartoon by D.Breatnach
disgrace the flags
The far-Right disgrace and misuse the very flags they wave so keenly.
The Tricolour was presented to the revolutionary Young Irelander republicans3 by French revolutionary republican women in 1848. It signified peace and unity between the descendants of settlers and the indigenous Irish in revolutionary struggle against the British colonial occupation.
The flag with the words “Irish Republic” painted in white and gold on a green background was made on domestic material of socialist Republican Constance Markievicz (see next section) in her house and delivered by her to the GPO.
It was installed and flown on the roof at the Princes St. corner by Eamon Bulfin4 (see next section), a migrant from Argentina.
disown but also misappropriate real patriots
In dishonest manipulation, the far-Right claim to honour our patriots and even invoke them in their campaigns. In their agitation against migrants they hide the fact that Constance Markievicz, Thomas Clarke and James Connolly were all migrants (Connolly and Clarke no less than three times).5
Also a migrant was Eamon Bulfin (see previous section) along with many others who fought for Irish freedom and even sacrificed their lives (including Erskine Childers)6.
Placards on an anti-racist rally on Custom House Quay some years ago. The text placard quotes the 1916 Proclamation: “The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty to all”. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Of the Seven Signatories of the 1916 Proclamation (see earlier section), two – Pearse and McDonagh7 – were children of migrants and two were themselves migrants (Connolly and Clarke).
Among many such examples, the father of Young Irelander Republican patriot Thomas Davis (author of the song A Nation Once Again) was a migrant.
join with Loyalists and British fascists
A far-Right organiser calling for three cheers for British fascist Tommy Robinson was not the only such example and outside the GPO this week far-Right elements welcomed as speaker Mark Sinclair, a member of the UVF, a British colonial sectarian murder and terrorist squad.8
Prominent Irish leaders of fascist organisations have also shared a platform with Scottish fascist and Loyalist Jim Dowson.9 And of course how can we forget the desecration of the Tricolour unfurled among Union Jack and Loyalist flags in Belfast by some Dublin far-Right activists!10
Admitted UVF/ MI5 Sectarian Loyalist UVF murder gang member Mark Sinclair. (Photo sourced: Internet)
don’t act against British occupation
With all that background, it’s hardly surprising that the far-Right “patriots” don’t organise against the British occupation of the Six Counties or in support of Irish Republican political prisoners in jails on either side of the British Border.
burn buildings
Apart from misleading people and distracting them from the real sources of problems to Irish working people and seeking to intimidate refugees, what do the far-Right actually do? Ah, yes, they burn buildings that might be used as accommodation. A great help to the homeless indeed!
attack homeless refugee and migrant tents
But no, that’s not all. No, the brave ‘patriots’ slash tents and threaten migrants and refugees who are sleeping on the streets. They don’t take on the big landlords, bankers, property speculators and vulture funds – no, they strike down at people poorer and in worse conditions than themselves.
cover for the property speculators and vulture funds, big landlords, bankers
So with all this whipping up fear and hatred of migrants, the far-Right obscure the actual cause of the problems, which is not only Irish capitalism but its total subjection to foreign capitalism. The only ones to benefit from this activity are those who are the real causes of the problems.
are not patriots, nor nationalists
Despite their claims and flag-waving, the far-Right in Ireland are neither patriots nor true nationalists. They do not organise in defence of Irish sovereignty and against British occupation nor against foreign capitalist exploitation of Irish natural resources, labour or infrastructures.
Or the contrary, they work to distract attention away from these centrally-important issues for the Irish nation and raise false issues to divide the people. And usually their concept of ‘Ireland’ ends at the British border which the recent far-Right rally at the GPO called for strengthening!
are a sub-class of deprived individuals allowing themselves to be manipulated by fascists, MI5 and NATO
Many of those being mobilised against migrants come from parts of the cities neglected for generations, often associated with low educational level, substance misuse, unemployment and unresolved mental health issues.
The ideological fascists will recruit those elements to fight, not against the cause of their deprivation, the neo-colonial ruling class or the flooding of foreign capitalist companies into Ireland, assisted by banks and political decisions -but instead against migrant workers and refugees.
are filling a vacuum left by the Republican and Socialist movement
WILL WE LEARN FROM OUR FAILURES?
Many of those participating, while some are also unfortunate victims of Irish capitalism, will be recruited as the boot boys of fascism.
While it is true that historically capitalism in crisis turns to fostering fascism and that capitalism, including the neo-colonial variant in the Irish state is running out of other options, we must evaluate our own role in this development, examine our own failures, learn from and remedy them.
The ground was largely ceded to the Far-Right in the period of their initial growth during the Covid crisis. The socialist Left and Republican movement, in particular its organisations, had little response to the early FR mobilisations or to responding creatively to state-imposed restrictions.
Throughout that period and subsequently the socialist Left sector, despite its protestations of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, completely ceded the ground of Irish national sovereignty and its symbols to anyone who wished to occupy it.
They did not, for the most part, protest the use of State repression against Irish Republicans both sides of the British Border, whether through police harassment, special legislation and special no-jury courts, nor stand up for the human and civil rights of Republicans, including political prisoners.
Their distaste for the very issue of national sovereignty was reflected in their refusal to fly the Irish Tricolour, which, although now also the official flag of the Irish State, is originally and remains still a potent symbol of Irish Republican anti-colonial struggle over 170 years.
They might argue that they wished to be identified with the struggle of the working class rather than a nationalist one but they also chose not to fly the flag of the insurrectionary Irish working class, the Starry Plough, in among their internationally-recognised red flags.
The Irish Republican organisations in their fragmented movement, on the national question, failed to sustain unity even around opposition to repression of the states or even around solidarity with the movement’s political prisoners.
They also failed and, to an even greater extent, in fighting for universal affordable housing in a crisis which seems to offer no end and is seized upon by the Far-Right to target refugees and economic migrants, who of course have no responsibility whatsoever for the crisis.
This area too has been a notable failure of the socialist Left organisations which, although marching often enough in public demonstrations and participating in a couple of media-orientated occupations,11 failed to organise and lead a state-wide campaign of empty building occupations.
And so, here we are today, when the FR are able to bring Tricolour and Irish Republic flag-waving crowds on to the streets in false claims of patriotism, dividing and seeking to intimidate migrant workers and anti-racists, burning buildings and insisting on their definition of ‘Irish’ being correct.
Our omissions and failures, if we recognise and act to remedy them, also point the way forward.
End.
1In a travesty of frequent Irish Republican ceremonial occasions, it was even read out at the recent Far-Right gathering outside the GPO which was addressed by a known member of the UVF sectarian murder gang.
2Under the name Dee Wall (real name Dolores Webster).
3Including to Thomas Meagher ‘of the Sword’ who later recruited for, joined and fought in the Union Army in the US Civil War against slavery. Meagher unfurled the flag first in Wexford and later in Dublin, both acts in 1848.
4Bulfin came to Ireland around the age of ten with his family and later joined the IRB and the Irish Volunteers. After the surrender in Moore Street he was sentenced to death, later commuted to life sentence, then from Frongoch prison camp deported to Argentina from where he was the Latin American representative for the Movement.
5Clarke and Markievicz were both born in England. Clarke was first a migrant to Ireland, later to the US, then back again. Connolly was born in Edinburgh and a migrant to Ireland, then to England, then to the USA before his return to Ireland.
6Childers was born in England. He captained the yacht that brought the Mauser rifles and ammunition to Howth. Later he joined the IRA, took the anti-Treaty side and was executed by the Free State during the Civil War.
7The father of the Pearse brothers was English, as was McDonagh’s mother.
8During his trial for bank robbery for the UVF in Glasgow, Sinclair declared he had been working for MI5 which was well known to be steering Loyalist organisations. The UVF and British Intelligence bombed Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, causing the deaths of 34 people and a full-term baby, the highest death toll of one day during the recent 30 Years War.
9Rowan Croft, Herman Kelly (Irish Freedom Party) and Niall McConnell (Síol na hÉireann).
10A prominent group among the Dublin far-Right calling themselves Coolock Says No.
12For example, the 27-day occupation of Apollo House, Dublin, from 15 December 2016 by housing activists and homeless people, with speeches and performances by prominent musicians.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
July 2025 cartoon by D.Breatnach
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.
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)
The media and some British politicians have been in a furore about what a performer of one of the acts at the Glastonbury Festival1 called from the stage and got most of the audience to chant with him: Death, death to the IDF!2
The performer was not, for change, one of the Kneecap trio (who also performed at Glastonbury) despite British politician complaints after another anti-Zionist “controversy” (i.e. unlike daily Zionist genocide of Palestinians, supplied by UK weapons, which is not at all controversial).
The latest performer to raise the genocide-proof ire of British politicians and mass media commentators was a member of the Bob Vylan group and the call which caused such anger in pro-Zionist circles was uttered from the West Holts stage during the Festival on Saturday.
Bob Vylan lead singer performing on the West Holts stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset. (Photo cred: Yui Mok/AP)
This call was not only denounced by right wing conservative and social-democratic figures such as the UK’s Prime Minister, Keith Starmer, who dubbed it ‘hate speech’ but also went too far for the liberal Glastonbury Festival management who issued a statement declaring it “appalling”.3
To call for the ‘death’ of an organisation or a power is to call for it to cease to exist, to end. So what is the IDF? Well, the acronym stands for Israeli Defence Force, often and more realistically referred to as the IOF, i.e. the Israeli Occupation Force.
Now this organisation is the military wing of the Zionist European settler colony which is ‘Israel’, and with a history of attacks on the indigenous Palestinians, in addition to the people of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and, the week before last, Iran.4
APPALLING OR MODERATE AND REASONABLE?
On that basis alone, surely it would be moderate and reasonable to call for such a military organisation to cease to exist, i.e. to call for its death?
But there’s more – a lot more! The IOF has since 9th October 2023 been enforcing a water and starvation blockade on Gaza, also depriving it of importation of medicines.5 The IOF ground and air forces have destroyed at least in part but mostly completely every hospital and medical facility in Gaza.6
Cartoon regarding the Israeli water blockade on Gaza (D.Breatnach)
In addition to starving the population of Gaza by military blockade, the IOF has, with the direct assistance of the USA, set up the “killing fields” in which hungry Palestinian people are sniped, machine-gunned and shelled as they queue for meagre GHF food parcels.7
The IOF has assassinated or caused the death of at least 54,607 Palestinians and wounded 125,341 between 7 October 2023 and 4 June this year,8 including hundreds of first responders and civil defence workers,9 over 230 journalists10 and many police and security workers.11
This same organisation is the one primarily responsible for the mass demolition in Gaza of Palestinian residential buildings and the displacement of 1.9 million people,12 along with destruction of water and sewage infrastructure, desalination plants, water tanks and agriculture.
Many massacres by the IOF have been carried out in areas they had declared safe whendisplacing Palestinians from another area. (D.Breatnach)
The evidence of daily genocide by the IOF is incontrovertible and even the weak and hesitant International Court of Justice in the Hague stated that there was a plausible case to answer.13 The court also ordered the arrest of some leading government ministers who control the IOF.14
UNCONTROVERSIAL, A DUTY
To call for the death of an army of genocide is surely not only not controversial but is instead correct, a duty, one which all reasonable institutions and individuals should emulate.
According to the Genocide Convention of 1948, all signatory states have a dutyto act to prevent genocide,15 not only not to collude with it. Bob Vylan is to be commended for their call and those who condemn them should, at the very least, face widespread opprobrium.
Bob Vylan’s call is absolutely correct and humanity awaits its implementation, not only death to the IOF but also to the regime and colonial state that gave rise to and which program it follows. Let us join our voices to the humanitarian call and expand upon it.16
Death to the IOF — and to the Zionist settler colony that spawned it!
End.
Sources:
1The Glastonbury music festival is an annual event of a liberal alternative ambience.
8Gaza health Ministry figures, quoted in https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0r1xl5wgnko (which incorrectly quotes the Israeli figures on Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7th despite a number of Israeli sources indicating that an unknown number of those were killed by the IOF in implementation of the “Hannibal Doctrine”.
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 8th 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
Whoare 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.
Cartoon comment by D.Breatnach
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
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.
I was jarred recently hearing the Irish actor and Palestine solidarity activist Liam Cunningham mention “700 years of British occupation”.1 And I have heard others not from Ireland speak admiringly of the “Irish freedom struggle of 700 years.”
Quite a few of those from other countries who quoted the “freedom” after “700 years” did so admiringly and may not be well acquainted with our nation’s history.
Liam Cunningham in Italy with two of the humanitarian activists about to sail on the Mayleen’s expedition to Gaza.
The foreign occupation of Ireland is normally dated from the Norman invasion of 1169 (although we could add to it the foreign occupation of Dublin by the Vikings from roughly 853 AD to 1170 AD).
I’m aware that I can be somewhat challenged in mathematics but after checking and re-checking I find that 856 years have elapsed since 1169, which means that the British-based occupation of Ireland has continued for well in excess of the 700 years quoted by Cunningham and others.
So where did the “700” years figure come from? It occurred to me that in some people’s heads this might be based on the creation of the Irish State and an assumption that was the point at which we threw off the British colonial yoke. Well, even then it would be 752 years but o.k, that might be it.
So, all of Ireland was occupied for centuries, then after numerous uprisings, in 1921 the British ceded 26 counties to Irish State control. But Ireland has 32 counties – what happened to the missing six counties? Well, we know, they remained occupied.
The Irish State in 1921 abandoned the people of the Six Counties, in particular the 34%+ who were of Catholic background; abandoned them to institutional sectarian religious discrimination in housing, employment and representation — and to repression.2
And in fact, the fairly recent 30 Years War was precisely about that occupation. Inevitably, the people rose up against their repression and oppression. The Irish State formally claimed those Six Counties but took no steps to regain them and cooperated with the colonial forces.3
Clearly we can’t change history but we can choose not to collude with injustice. We can refuse to conceive of Ireland as missing six counties, as only four-fifths of its actual landmass. We used to have a word for the thinking that had a Six-County blind spot – we called it ‘partitionist’.
In other words, an attitude that agreed with, colluded with or merely accepted the partition of the Irish Nation.
The Irish State that was born in 1921 was dominated by a capitalist ruling class which was pro-British and socially conservative, even beyond the social conservatism of Britain. And the social conservatism of the colonial Six County regime was even more extreme.
The agreement to abandon the Six Counties was a good indication of the servile nature of the ruling class of the Irish State which became even more evident as the State developed — and even under a later government of former opponents of the State, the Sinn Féin split of Fianna Fáil.
The Irish economy was neither developed nor diversified. Emigration continued unchecked as it had for centuries under British rule and. Irish State obeisance in turn switched to the USA and then to the EU. Currently the Irish ruling class is trying to eliminate any Irish State neutrality.
In 1845 Ireland was able to feed over 8 million but today in 2025 cannot even feed a little over 7 million in (over 5.3 million in the Irish state, nearly 2 million in the Six Counties). Yes, we must import food in order to eat.
Most large companies and banks within the state are foreign-owned, including such national brands and flagships as Aer Lingus, Guinness (including Harp and Hop House lagers and Smithwicks ale), Jameson and Paddy’s whiskeys,4Erin Foods, our telecommunication system5.
Most financial institutions within the state such as insurance companies in health, life, accident, motors, travel are also foreign-owned, including the now ironically-named Irish Life. The health, transport and mail systems and infrastructures are increasingly penetrated by foreign companies.
Foreign-owned hotels, housing apartment and office blocks are the rule and growing while vulture companies gobble up the properties of people who already paid the construction costs of their homes.
In economic policies and in foreign political policy it is clear that the Irish State remains close to the major Western Powers. Responding to popular feeling over the genocide in Gaza, its political leaders may posture a little away from the pack but in effect?
The Irish State imports productsfrom the Israeli State (US$4.15 Billion in 2024),6 allows genocidal state munitions through the State’s ‘neutral’ air space, US munitions and personnel through Shannon International Airport while maintaining all normal links with the Zionist state.
What we believe and say is important
In his interview with The Group Chat Cunningham, with the agreement of the panel, stated that no state was fulfilling its legal duty to practically oppose genocide. This was an unjustified slur on Yemen, which has shut down Israeli inward or outward Red Sea traffic and hit the state itself.7
It is very interesting that even among the many condemnations of Israel by media commentators and politicians we rarely hear acknowledgement, never mind commendation of the anti-genocidal action and sacrifice of the Ansarallah state and the Yemeni people.
Perhaps the contrast is too painful.
However, in an interview during a Palestine solidarity march in Dublin8 Cunningham referred to 800 years. Was that a slip of the tongue, or were the references to 700 centuries instead the slips? Interestingly he also referred to foreign vulture funds and landlords in the same interview.
Liam Cunningham speaking about the seizure by the ‘Israeli’ navy of the humanitarian mission ship Mayleen. (Source photo: The Irish Star)
It is important that an actor in a popular drama series speaks up for Palestine and also for the Irish people and Cunningham has been doing so for years.
What we say and how we recall history is also important because they have an impact on the present and on the future. On what we aspire to. On how we act and think, on how those around us act and think.
Ireland is partitioned between a colonial ruling class and an Irish foreign-dependent ruling class. We fought the Viking occupation for 300 years and the British occupation for well over 800 years – and we are still fighting it. Without sovereignty we cannot develop our economy.
Without sovereignty we will be dragged into imperial and colonial conflicts but never to our historical and traditional place – on the side of the Resistance.
2It also abandoned the Protestant majority, including many descendants of the United Irishmen particularly in Antrim, to a sectarian, bigoted, racist and colonial ideology that helped maintain them for decades with the worst housing and lowest wages in the UK of which they were part.
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.
For many years the Starry Plough flag in Ireland, associated with socialist Irish Republicanism, was the form of the Ursa Mayor1 constellation in white or silver stars on a blue background, from the time of the Republican Congress (1934-’36).
Somewhat later a different design including an actual plough following the stars and shape of Ursa Mayor on a green background began to be seen. But which was the original? And how, when and why did the other version come into existence?
It is not disputed that the Starry Plough was designed for the Irish Citizen Army, nor that it came to be designed in 1914, as the ICA was reorganising following the defeat of the Dublin workers in the 1913 Lockout. Whatever its colour, that was clearly the original.
It is beyond dispute that the Starry Plough was raised above Clery’s building, across the road from the GPO, during the 1916 Rising. It survived the burning of the building even though one witness spoke of a melted glass stream from its windows running across O’Connell (then Sackville) Street.
The flag disappeared thereafter. A British officer claimed to have taken it as a trophy. If there was more than one copy of that flag at the time, no-one has spoken of it.
When the Republican Congress was founded in 1934 the need for its own flag was felt. The Starry Plough of the ICA seemed appropriate and former members of the ICA were consulted as to the original design and colour and it appears that memories diverged on that issue.
Some remembered the background colour as green, some as blue. Prominent in the latter group was playwright Sean O’Casey, who had been Secretary of the ICA for a brief period in 1914 and presumably was present when the flag design was approved.
Whether or not, between April 1914 and April 1916, surely the flag had been paraded through the Dublin streets on a number of occasions and in any case it had flown over Clery’s in O’Connell Street for five or six days.
Nevertheless when the former members of the ICA were consulted in the 1930s there appeared to be uncertainty about the background colour – was it green or blue? Possibly the majority remembered it as blue or perhaps the opinion of O’Casey, who insisted on blue, was taken as the most valid.
In May 2022 former IRSP comrades of former leading IRSP activist Mick Plunkett stretch the blue Starry Plough version over the coffin containing the remains of the latter. During the 1970s-to the 2000 the blue version of the flag had been particularly associated with the IRSP.(Source photo: Seamus Costello Memorial Committee FB page).
So the flag of the Republican Congress was made a plain blue background with the shape of Ursa Mayor outlined in white or silver stars (and no actual plough design). That design was flown in Irish Republican colour parties from the 1960s at least and adopted too by the Irish Labour Party.2
A problem for the claim that the original was blue arose in the 1950s when an ex-British Army officer offered the Irish National Museum what he claimed to have been the Starry Plough which he said he had removed from the ruin of Clery’s. The background colour was green.
O’Casey was contacted by the NMI and insisted it could not be the original, maintaining that had been blue. To bear this out, he submitted a watercolour of what he claimed was Megahey’s (original artist) design work, in which the background was blue but did include a plough.3
The watercolour submitted by O’Casey which he claimed was the original design of the man who designed the flag, William Magahey. (Copied from article about the conservation of the original flag in History Ireland).
There was no way to prove the provenance of the watercolour. Nor was it impossible that a change of mind had led from a blue background on a design artwork to green on the produced flag. But O’Casey insisted that not only the artwork but the finished product had been blue.
Well then, why not investigate the artefact, the one claimed to be that which had been taken back to England by the British officer?
The original flag in the possession of the NMI back to front prior to conservation work. (Copied from article about the conservation of the original flag in History Ireland).
The NMI curator invited former members of the ICA only4 to view the artefact and although distressed at the state in which they saw it they confirmed that it matched their recollection. For the curator it seems that was the clincher and he then authorised its purchase in 1956.5
Around 2012 (the article does not give a date) an NMI curator charged with preserving the artefact set out to carry out modern method analysis of the material and its construction, paint and the more than 50 holes in it corresponding to .303 machine gun bullet impacts.6
The original Starry Plough flag in correct orientation (Photo sourced: NMI on line)
Former ICA members had remembered a golden edging on the flag, traces of which were indeed found on the green specimen. It all checked out. A clever hoax? Possibly, but for an eventual price of £150, a relatively small amount even back in 1954?
The ICA members viewing the artefact believed it was the original, the British Officer testified as to his having taken it and also produced an Irish Times account by himself dated 11 May 1916.7 The NMI tests all pointed to the conclusion that it was the original flag – and the background was green.
But O’Casey was adamant that it had been blue. And what about the blue watercolour, allegedly the artist’s design?
It’s possible that between the design outline and manufacture, a change in the desired background colour had taken place. But not only colour – the plough design on the watercolour is very different from that on what we must now conclude was the original flag.
We have no evidence to verify that the watercolour was the original designer’s. O’Casey might have painted it himself, from his mistaken memory, for example. Or is it possible that he falsified its origin in order to convince the NMI that the flag had been blue and not green?
Any such effort would not have been about an aesthetical judgement in favour of one colour over another but rather about removing the colour associated with nationalism.
O’Casey resigned from the ICA in a dispute8 about allying with nationalism but more tellingly, he disagreed after the fact with Connolly throwing himself and his forces into an uprising against colonialism9 – a nationalist rather than socialist uprising, as O’Casey would have seen it.
Connolly’s thesis was that the advance towards socialism was not possible in a colony such as Ireland without allying the socialist forces with the most progressive and revolutionary national bourgeois forces, i.e the IRB and the Irish Volunteers.10 O’Casey could not agree with that.
In Innisfallen Fare Thee Well (1949)11 he wrote: “The Easter Rising had pulled down a dark curtain of eternal separation between him and his best friends: and the few that had remained alive and delightful, now lay deep, with convivial virtues, under the smoking rubblement of the Civil War.”
The symbolism of the original green, the colour of Irish Republicanism since the United Irishmen of the late 18th Century would have been anathema to the later O’Casey. Was he indulging in revisionist wishful thinking?
Or perhaps trying to ensure that in any future conflicts, the Irish Republican and Socialist trends would be kept firmly separate?
Two green Starry Ploughs on view among other flags carried by a section of marchers at the Bloody Sunday massacre commemoration March for Justice in Derry in January 2025. The one in centre of photo is a mass-produced reproduction whereas to the left one can see part of a quilted sewn individual one. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
There are others who strive to ensure the exact opposite, who as Connolly did, see in the combination of those two strands Ireland’s only chance for freedom from colonialism, neo-colonialism and an advance towards a socialist society.
For them, the original design and colours of the Starry Plough is their flag and its entire symbolism points the way forward.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1In the USA this constellation is commonly referred to as “the Big Dipper”.
2Rarely used by the Irish Labour Party nowadays. It was popular with the Irish Republican Socialist Party for decades but nowadays a version in white stars on a black panel on a red flag is flown by the organisation.
7‘The rebels, on taking possession of the Imperial Hotel in Sackville Street, hoisted their flag over the building, and there it remained intact on one of the ridges of the front wall while the entire contents of the premises were being consumed by fire. At great personal risk the flag was eventually brought down by second Lieutenant T.A. Williams of the 9th Reserve Cavalry, Kildare Barracks, assisted by Inspector Barrett, Dublin Metropolitan Police.’https://historyireland.com/citizen-armys-starry-plough-flag/
8https://www.dib.ie/biography/ocasey-sean-a6553 O’Casey objected to the enrolment of Constance Markievicz in the Irish Citizen Army because she was also a member of Cumann na mBan, which had been set up as a female auxiliary organisation to the Irish Volunteers. O’Casey proposed that membership of the ICA precluded joint membership with any Irish nationalist organisation. Having had his motion defeated, O’Casey resigned from the ICA in July 2014.
9‘[Connolly’s] speeches and his writings had long indicated his new trend of thought, and his actions now proclaimed trumpet-tongued that the appeal of Caitlin Ní hUllacháin—“If anyone would give me help, he must give me himself, he must give me all”—was in his ears a louder cry than the appeal of the Internationale, which years of contemplative thought had almost written in letters of fire upon his broad and noble soul. Liberty Hall was now no longer the headquarters of the Irish Labour movement, but the centre of Irish National disaffection.’ https://historyireland.com/sean-ocaseys-battle-of-words-with-the-volunteers/
rebelbreeze 