The efforts of the Zionist tech company Checkpoint to make inroads into the Irish tech sector1 are being dogged by public protests over its origins and connections to the armed and intelligence forces of the Zionist state.
On 15 October last year the company booked a whole day at the Westbury Hotel in Dublin’s city centre in order to promote itself. The protests in the earlier part of the day’s program were sufficiently fierce to force the abandonment of the evening’s presentation.2
There were complaints about the violent treatment of protesters by Checkpoint’s security team, which demonstrators believed Israeli and one British, from their accents.
Former Irish rugby international Brian O’Driscoll had been engaged to promote the event but the company failed to make touchdown.
Checkpoint company’s HQ in ‘Tel Aviv, Israel’. (Image sourced: Online)
The Your Tech, Their Death organisation has had the Checkpoint company in their sights for some time due to the company’s links with the Zionist armed forces.3 For the Westbury protest they teamed up with Action For Palestine Ireland, a direct action Palestine solidarity organisation.
On 25 August this year both organisations joined in action again, this time however also with Anti-Imperialist Action, a revolutionary socialist Irish Republican organisation. The target was another promotional attempt by Checkpoint at Beckett’s Lock Hotel, in Dublin’s north docklands.
A loud protest outside the building prompted the hotel’s management to close public access to their Reception but they also got their staff that the event was not taking place inside. However, some of the protesters were already inside and in communication with those outside.
In the event, the lies became truth as the organisers cancelled their event.
The Zionist tech company has chosen a macabre but appropriate name for itself. Checkpoints operated by the Zionist army in Palestine are locations of daily humiliation, long delays and threat to Palestinians, exacerbated at times by assault, arrest and even death.
There were very recently nearly a thousand Zionist checkpoints which Palestinians have to negotiate inside the West Bank alone, if they dare. Some are gate barriers, some permanent road checkpoints, some ‘flying checkpoints’, i.e temporary no-warning erections.
A very recent report, as this article was being written, documents the many ways in which these checkpoints fragment Palestine not only geographically but socially too and how they restrict access to friends and family, to land, to work and even to healthcare.4
Zionist checkpoints in the West Bank are now also AI-integrated.
That checkpoints are not merely control-and-repression erections for the Palestinian subject population but an offensive weapon in a war of subjugation is evidenced by their export into South Lebanon and Syria by invading Israeli armed forces.
Zionist tech companies and their intrusive surveillance programs have grown widespread around the world, being adopted not only by commercial companies but also by state service departments with concerns raised far beyond the genocide in Palestine.
At the moment it seems that the penetration of this Zionist company at least is being stopped or checked by Palestinian solidarity resistance. Whether the checks will result in checkmate for Checkpoint remains to be seen.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
SOURCES
1 Its head office is in the USA, according to its website.
3The company claims to be committed to making the world a safer and more secure place, and this commitment applies to our work both on the internet and the physical world alike. We promote a safe, healthy, supportive and diverse work environment, with training and development opportunities for all employees. Except for Palestinians of course, who are actually targetted by Zionist tech while their own access to the Internet is simultaneously monitored by Zionist tech and restricted by Zionist power cuts.
An impromptu demonstration in solidarity with Gavin Bazuno, the Ireland team goalkeeper, attracted many participants on late Sunday afternoon 27 September in Dublin. The call-out had only been posted the previous evening.
Irish language poster calling to stand with Gavin Bazuno and the courage to act according to conscience.
24 year-old goalkeeper Gavin Bazuno declined to play against the team of the genocidal Israel state, against which the Irish team were drawn in the UEFA Nations competition, despite the controversial decision of the team’s management and the Football Association of Ireland to go ahead.
Responding to the overwhelming majority sentiment in Ireland and of the members of the Association, the FAI executive in November had requested UEFA to exclude the Israeli team from the competition, which UEFA executives refused to do.1
Until September, long after FAI members’ fears were realised and in February the Irish team had been drawn to play ‘Israel’, the UEFA board had also refused to exempt Ireland from being drawn against ‘Iosrael’ (which they have the power to do)2 in future games.
Attendance at the Dublin rally drew from a broad pool without any clear political party or indeed solidarity organisation dominance. Placards were not plentiful but some home-made ones could be seen and indeed the banner calling for solidarity with Bazuno was sprayed on white sheets.
A placard appeared showing an IOF sniper, referencing ‘Israeli’ player Said Abu Sarchi taking the ‘sniper position’ after scoring against Austria, for which he was sent off, to his apparent great surprise (after all, it’s normal in ‘Israel’ to actually shoot, not just mime shooting Palestinians).3
In order to comply with Palestinian society’s request for a boycott of ‘Israel’ to include sports competitions, a number of groups have been specifically campaigning against firstly ‘Israel’ being permitted to enter the competition and secondly for the Irish football team to refuse to play them.
The main ones have been League of Ireland fans, Stop the Game and Ireland Sports for Palestine. Over 160 Irish sports people signed a letter asking the Irish team not to play and Jacinta O’Keefe, registered to compete in the Pondevedra Triathlon withdrew due to ‘Israeli’ athlete participation.
The Show Israel the Red Card banner seemed the only printed one present at the rally, whereas a number of sheets had been spray-painted in order to together spell out Stand with Bazuno 4 Gaza.
A home-made placard read: Nice Save, Gavin! The flags flown among the crowd were mostly Palestinian with some Irish Tricolours and one Starry Plough.
Section of the crowd outside the GPO with one of the megaphone speakers, chant leaders etc. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
There was hardly a Garda uniform in evidence, nor was any stewarding organised or required: the main group occupied the GPO side while a smaller group stood on the central pedestrian reservation. A street person danced a bit in the road but generally withdrew as vehicles approached.
The ad-hoc nature of the rally and absence of any organisation’s control was illustrated by the lack of printed placards or banners, by much of the speeches from people with megaphones and in particular by the slogans chanted.
Specific slogans included: Don’t play the Game! We Support Gavin Bazuno! FAI, you can’t hide – You’re supporting genocide! There’s Only One Bazuno!
But there were also other chants relating to Ireland more generally, such as against British Unionists and their attempted Orange Order march on the Garvaghy Road4 and the slogan referring to both occupation of Ireland and of Palestine: Irish people understand: No peace on stolen land!
The more usual slogans of Palestine solidarity were also chanted: Free, Free: Palestine! From the River to the Sea – Palestine will be free! From the Sea to the River – Palestine will live for ever! In our thousands and our millions – We are all Palestinians!
There is only one solution: Intifada revolution! 1, 2, 3, 4 – Occupation no more! 5, 6, 7, 8 – Israel is a terrorist state! Saoirse – Don Phalaistín!
A recording of Martin Leahy’s Don’t Play was amplified with the crowd joining in on the chorus, which repeats the title of the composition.
The air of Don’t Play has been used earlier for many songs and chants, first recorded in 1864 as the air for Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, a song composed by George Frederick Root to give Union troop captives of the Confederacy hope of liberation in the American Civil war.
Not long after its USA composition, the air was used for the God Save Ireland! song by Irish nationalist MP, journalist and poet T.D. Sullivan in honour of the Manchester Martyrs, the three Fenians who were framed, convicted and hanged in front of a baying crowd in Manchester in 1867.
The title is taken from the words shouted by the three as they were sentenced to hang and the song became very popular, particularly in Ireland where, for decades it was the unofficial national anthem until eventually replaced by Amhrán na bhFiann.5
The home-made banner made from sections of spray-painted white cloth, displayed on the pedestrian reservation, seen from the pavement outside the GPO. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Wide fallout followed the decision of the FAI that the Irish team would play the fixtures drawn against ‘Israel’. UEFA scheduled the games to take place in Serbia (without any Irish fans) and Hungary. RTÉ€6 declined to accept advertising or to provide commentary on the games.
In the run up to the game, attempting to project the decision to play in a positive light, the Ireland team manager Heimar Hallgrimsson said that rather than playing with genocide, they were ‘playing against Genocide’.This comment drew a tirade of abuse from the ‘Israeli’ Football Association.7
However at a subsequent press conference, Hallgrimsson withdrew the ‘Genocide’ comment, ascribing his use of it to the popular Irish pressure not to sportswash ‘Israel’ and the demand of ‘Don’t play with genocide.’
According to reports, out of the Irish team of 24, eight voted not to play, at a meeting from which it appears that Bazuno was excluded but the rest voted to play. They were then organised to wear armbands mourning the Palestinians killed and to lower their heads during the Zionist anthem.
On the field, the Irish team captain declined to shake hands with the ‘Israeli’ one. The FAI claimed that they had done well apart from their 3-0 win but many felt that to play at all was to lose something more important.
Many of the Bazuno and declining to play Israel at the rally outside the GPO, O’Connell Street, Dublin. (Photo by: Participant)
It may well have been a tactical campaign mistake not to include the players from the outset in the call for boycott of the game, giving them time to realise and prepare for the fact that if the FAI and Irish Government failed to call for the boycott, then it would come down to them.
The call not to target the players for action, even in that way, seems to have been mistaken. All those of sound mental state are responsible for their actions or lack of them. More importantly perhaps, young men and women of principle will be required to build the Irish nation that we need.
And nothing could be worse than genocide.
End.
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3https://www.instagram.com/p/DdvXWXBG6Y4/ Even more horrible is that he is of Palestinian Arab background. The discourse that it’s a harmless snooker game stance does not warrant entertaining (unless the apologists can show how snooker shots are taken by players of the game while on their knees).
4A road in the nationalist area of West Belfast upon which the British-loyal Orange Order are demanding to be permitted to march
5Original title, The Soldiers’ Song; but for the State, it is the air of the chorus alone that constitutes the ‘National Anthem’.
6Radio Teilifís Éireann, the national broadcaster for television and radio.
The last person of the 10 Republican prisoners to die in the 1981 Hunger strikes died on August 20th but hunger strikes continued for a while until relatives began instructing the doctors to give the strikers alimentation.
What can be said about those strikes? Clearly, a tremendous sacrifice requiring immense courage and determination in a non-violent protest by national liberation fighters in jail in a struggle against British colonialism.
Certainly we lost individuals of great worth in that struggle. It may be asked whether the gain was worth the sacrifice or whether the prison struggle might have been fought in some other way.
The medieval Irish society practice of fasting as a means of protest may or may not have been original but it was an important part of the people of India’s struggle against English colonial rule. Palestinian prisoners have used mass and individual hunger strikes on a number of occasions.
The effects of the Irish 1981 hunger strikes were many and wide, most probably far beyond the intentions or expectations of the prisoners. The news went around the world, bringing expressions of solidarity from many regions, including actions by parliaments of various states.
The Islamic Republic of Iran sent delegates to Bobby Sands’ funeral and renamed the street in which stood the British Embassy in Teheran ‘Bobby Sands Street’. The British Embassy to Iran had to give that as their address until they moved their main entrance around the corner.
Bobby Sands Street in Teheran, Islamic Republic of Iran (Photo sourced: Internet)
Hunger strikers stood in parliamentary elections in Ireland on both sides of the British Border, winning some seats and coming very close to winning some others. One result was that the British changed their electoral laws so that convicted prisoners could no longer stand in elections.
In the Irish state there has not been an outright majority government since that year – every single Irish government since then has been a coalition of one kind or another.
In Britain, the hunger strikes made a huge difference amongst the Irish community there. The 1974 Birmingham Pub Bombings massacre had been jumped on by the British Labour Government to pass the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974 (now the Terrorism Act 2000).
Probably already drafted, it was brought before Parliament and passed within days, giving the police power to hold suspects for seven days without charge, wide-scale powers of stop and search and interrogation, usually without legal representation for the victim.
Within the year a score of people from the community had been framed on serious charges, convicted and jailed: Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, Maguire Seven, Judith Ward. Subsequently many Irish people stayed away from Irish solidarity marches and meetings – just in case.
The hunger strikes of 1981 blew away much of that fear and the Irish community came out in their thousands in an attempt to save the lives of the hunger-strikers — and have never been cowed down to the previous degree since.
The Irish in Britain Representation Group was formed in 1981 after the refusal of the Federation of Irish Societies to even pass a motion of sympathy for the family of Bobby Sands, who had died only days earlier; the IBRG provided radical and resolute leadership for the next 20 years.
One of a number of songs arising from the 1981 hunger strikes was the Ballad of Joe McDonnell, by Derek Warfield. It is a good song in general but what is most excellent is its chorus, where it turns the accusation of terrorism away from the Resistance and back to British Imperialism.
And you dare to call me a terrorist, While you look down your guns! When I think of all the things that you have done: You have plundered many nations, Divided many lands, You terrorised their people, Ruled with an iron hand … And you brought the stain of terror to my land.
And it could just as well apply to US Imperialism, EU imperialism and their NATO military alliance.
I have sung the song many times over the years and did so again recently at the weekly Dubs For Palestine gathering outside Leinster House. And more recently still outside the British Embassy. I changed only a couple of words to provide a more optimistic line at the end.
End.
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As we face the possible escalation of an extended regional war in West Asia it is worthwhile to consider what’s at stake for some of the various ‘players’.
‘Israel’ constantly claims existential threats to its state but Iran has stated the same with regard to attacks upon it by the US and ‘Israel’. The Resistance in Palestine and in Lebanon have also spoken in those terms with regard to themselves.
It might seem that the US is the only major participant in the wars in Western Asia which is not itself threatened existentially. However, in a sense it too is facing a kind of existential threat, the threat to its continuing existence as a superpower.
Dr. Mohamad Hasan Sweidan, one of the panel of regular news updates on YouTube for The Cradle online media regularly states that in reality, all of the principal actors are indeed fighting a threat to their existence, though the weight of threat being of varying degrees for each.
The ‘Israeli’ state
The Zionist state of ‘Israel’ came into being in 1948 as a Zionist-led European settler project to impose itself on the indigenous Palestinian people of all ethnic groups. Supported by the USA, Zionism gathered force since 1945 to the full-blown terror and ethnic cleansing of the 1948 Nakba.1
Despite claims of recovering ancestral lands, the culture of Ashkenazi colonisers and their languages were European, not West Asian, in keeping with their origin. Citizenship was opened to any Jewish person around the world but not to the Arab Palestinians who had been driven out.
The Zionist state is of course completely dependent on western imperialism for its defence and its very he existence. But ‘Israel’ is not content with that alone and in the logic of all settler colonialism, is constantly fighting wars of expansion with its neighbours.2
The location of this settler colony makes it of important political and military value to western imperialism and in particular to the USA superpower. It is a dagger at the throat of West Asian sovereignty, let alone socialism and in the region is totally free of both those dangers internally.
The settler colony is never secure until it has either wiped out the indigenous people or totally broken their resistance and scattered them. Consequently the indigenous people will resist and if they can, logically, aided by their threatened neighbours, will overthrow the occupation.
Therefore the Zionist State is truthfully facing an existential threat.
The Resistance
The Resistance to imperialism and Zionism in West Asia is wide and multi-faceted but for the purpose of this examination we’ll look at sum of the factions inside Palestine, both Islamic and secular factions as one Resistance; and Hizbollah and political allies in Lebanon as another.
Because of its practices, its origins and attitudes to the cultures of West Asia, ‘Israel’ is viewed by Palestinians and most people of the region as an occupier. It has functioned as a proxy of imperialism, particularly the US variety, in the region since it came into being.
Like settler colonies in general, the Zionist state has been expanding its territory since its inception.
It has also waged war on its neighbours for most of its existence: 1948 against Palestinians and Arab states, 1950s-1960s against the Palestinian Resistance; with France and UK against Egypt (Suez) 1956; 1967 against Egypt, Jordan, Syria; 1973 against Egypt and Syria.
And in 1971-1982 in South Lebanon.3 In September 2024 it attacked Lebanon with assassinations and exploding pagers and in December of that year, invaded Syria4 (though it had regularly bombed it previously) and attacked Iran (during peace negotiation) in February 2026.
The Zionist military carried out a great number of major attacks within Palestine including against the West Bank and Gaza in between what the Zionists call ‘mowing the lawn’, i.e. regular assassinations, raids, arrests and imprisonment of hostages.
The attitude of the ‘Israeli’ occupation to the Palestinian resistance is typified in its attitude to Hamas, the political party elected by significant majority across Palestine in 2006: it totally rejects the people’s choice and attempts to eliminate it in Gaza through economic and military means.
In the West Bank the Occupation’s proxy, the Palestine Authority refused to accede to the popular vote and collaborates with the Occupation, even though the even more extreme elements in ‘Israeli’ government and society despise it, regularly denouncing it and calling for its elimination.
The PA represses criticism by Palestinians in the West Bank, jails critics and fighters, sets them up for ‘Israeli’ jailing and has even murdered Resistance fighters.
‘Israel’ and the US are in concert attempting to use elements of the Lebanese Government against Hizbollah and political parties close to or friendly with them, attempting to turn the Lebanese Army to that purpose. Were they to succeed this would result in another Lebanese civil war.
It is a fact that the state of ‘Israel’ has no formal borders, except where its present territory reaches the borders of Egypt and Jordan.5 The ‘Greater Israel’ concept6 and Zionist aspiration exceeds far beyond even those,7 including Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and swathes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Many Israeli political leaders including Ze’ev Jabotinsky,8 Menachem Begin9 and Benjamin Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir10 have openly promoted the ‘Greater Israel’ (sic) concept as an objective and seems to have the support of US foreign policy and the ‘Israeli’ opposition.11
In all ‘peace’ proposals the ‘Israeli’ establishment seeks the ‘disarmament’ of the Lebanese and Palestinian Resistance, while itself remaining the most heavily armed state in the whole of West Asia, the only one with a nuclear weapon and a long history of committing massacres and genocide.
Hizbullah and the Palestine Resistance are therefore indeed facing an existential threat.
Image by D. Breatnach
The USA
The USA is the chief world imperialist power and in order to maintain that position has a number of requirements, among which are that it can direct or at least influence events around most of the world and that its military might is seen as impossible to defend against.
The Warsaw Pact bloc, a former impediment to expansion of US dominance has gone, though the Russian Federation remains. However the rising economic power of China already threatens the world dominance of the US imperialist ruling class.
But it has faced a new threat to its hegemony of West Asia. Although the non-compliant regimes there of Iraq and Syria (and Libya in North Africa) have been overthrown, US influence in Iran12 had been defeated by uprisings and founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.
Despite war against the Republic (1980-’88) by then western-supported Saddam Hussein, the Islamic Republic survived and supplied resistance organisations in Lebanon and in Palestine with weapons.
The US failed to subdue Iran with decades of sanctions or to instigate popular or separatist insurrection against the ruling elite during unprovoked attack in February, having to accept the stability of the Republic and to agree to ceasefire terms, losing much of its mythos of invincibility.
Not only were its military installations in West Asia shown to be vulnerable but they became regular targets in retaliation for US strikes against Iran. Client regimes began to wonder whether they could even afford to have such failed protection US military bases on their soil.
The repercussions of that will extend right around the World.
Iran
The Islamic Republic of Iran came into existence in 1979 in a revolution against the Pahlavi monarchy, its repressive Savak secret police and against Iran’s client status of US imperialism (such that the CIA’s head office for the whole of West Asia was located there).
The revolution found the CIA desperately shredding their spy documents (many of which were later painstakingly stuck back together by the Iranian revolutionaries). The revolutionary leadership and its followers were immediately targeted by imperialism, in particular by the USA.
The imperialists instigated Saddam Hussein (at the time their client) to have Iraq invade Iran in a war which lasted eight years during which 188,015 to 217,489 Iranians were killed (about 70 people per day).13 Hussein used gas attacks14 as well as bullets and explosives.
In addition, US imperialism has imposed sanctions on Iran since 1979, which is to say threatened sanctions on any state prepared to sell to or trade with the Islamic Republic and these have had a heavy negative impact on the population, in particular in the area of health treatment.15
In January 2026 the USA manipulated currency trading and the value of the Iranian rial fell. Protest demonstrations took place which Israeli and US intelligence operatives in places turned into armed attacks on police, government buildings and even some place of religious worship.
The Iranian authorities issued figures of 3,117 killed during the disturbances,16 which included civilians and agents acting under foreign direction, without identifying which was which. A significant number of those killed were State employees, including public security and police.
Sources sympathetic to the West have issued a range of fatal casualty numbers, rising to 36,000. It does not seem possible to separate real figures from propaganda, certainly of Western sources and possibly too of the Iranian State.
However the involvement of agents working for foreign powers to destabilise Iran has been established, not only in results of raids by Iranian State security forces but also in statements by US and ‘Israeli’ authorities17 and in admissions of Starlink-linked devices smuggled into Iran.18
Trump admitted that the US had supplied weapons to Iranian Kurdish pro-independence groups at this time also and complained that the Kurds had failed to use them against the US. Probably Baluchistan separatists were similarly urged to rise but did not do so in any numbers.19
The presence of foreign agents in Iran was also evident not only by intelligence possessed by the aggressors during the following war but also by when drones were launched against targets in Iran from within the country.
‘Israel’ accompanied by the USA,on 28 February, during negotiations, assassinated the religious and political supreme leader, Ali Khamenei and others, along with families and launched air strikes across Iran, including killing 124 schoolgirls with their teachers in a ‘double-tap’ strike.
The USA is too far away for a retaliatory strike but their military assets are distributed around the Gulf and Iran’s response struck those hard, US defences proving inadequate in action. Iran also closed the Strait of Hormuz, cutting the flow of essential gas and oil from the region to the West.
The US was forced to negotiate and to agree to Iranian terms in a Memorandum of Understanding for peace talks, most of which the US has yet to carry out in practice and much of which it has violated. But it is difficult to see what final options it has other than compliance.
The intentions of US imperialism to the Islamic Republic of Iran are irremediably hostile, proven in sanctions, assassinations, war, subversion attempts, rhetoric and threats, wishing the Iranian revolutionary regime overthrown and Iran dismembered, i.e. indeed an existential threat to Iran.
CONCLUSION
The mutual existential threats of antagonists do not usually cancel each other out. Rather, one of the antagonists must fall. Liberal solutions of ‘peace’ between them are illusory and chasing such mirages is not only fruitless but diverts attention from the necessary resolution.
In fact, wars where none of the antagonists feel they can afford to give way are complicated and very hard to resolve.
In the short term, for relative peace in Western Asia, both the US imperialists and the Israeli Zionists need to be severely weakened and those who wish for that relative peace must logically wish success to the struggles of the Islamic Republic of Iran and of the Resistance organisations.
In the medium term, the existence of the state of ‘Israel’ needs to cease and the democratic state of Palestine to come into being with US Imperialism weakened further or overthrown.
The ruling class of the strengthened Iran will need to see how they can manage Iran’s new status and the Resistance organisations how they develop and grow their respective nations as independent and sovereign states.
In the longer term, new threats and new conflicts will emerge throughout the world. As long as capitalism exists, parts of it will grow into monopoly capitalism and that in turn will seek to maximise its profits by venturing abroad in competition and/or in coercion.
End.
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FOOTNOTES& SOURCES
1During the 1948 Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”), approximately 750,000 to one million Palestinians were displaced from their homes, and an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Palestinians were killed.
More than 80% of the Palestinian population living in the territory that became Israel was forced to leave.At least 530 villages and towns were destroyed or depopulated.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency reports that this initial displacement grew into an ongoing crisis, with nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees registered today. Historians and organizations generally estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 Palestinians were killed. Deaths occurred during combat, in dozens of targeted massacres, and from the general violence of the war.
3From 16 to 18 September 1982, the IOF’s proxy, the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon, massacred between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias — in the Sabra neighbourhood of Beirut and in the nearby Shatila refugees camp, with the support of the IOF.
4As the Syrian regime collapsed in early December 2024.
14Western media were not interested at the time – Hussein was attacking Iran and was therefore one of ‘the good guys’. Journalists who tried to get western media to cover the wiping out of a Kurdish village Halabja by gas attack in 1982 were getting nowhere. However, many years later, when the Saddam Hussein had switched and started defying the western imperialists, western media suddenly found the story valuable even though years old by then.
Human beings can be amazing and none more so than the Palestinians. Dr. Munir Al-Bursh Director General of the Ministry of Health in Gaza released the following short statement, posted by Resistance News Network on Telegram today. Diarmuid Breatnach.
One thousand days was not just a number on the calendar, but 1,000 days of torment, pages of pain, and stories that were never written.
1,000 days of loss and betrayal, and the worst betrayal is the betrayal of kin. Humanity has stripped itself of its humanity in these days.
Cartoon by D.Breatnach from September 2024 (’04 is an error) and still true today.
Killing children has become fleeting breaking news, bombing hospitals a recurring scene, starving civilians a method of war, and preventing medicine, water, and food a matter discussed without shame.
Since the agreement, more than 1,000 martyrs have been killed, most of them children and women.
We are living through a suffocating medicine crisis; more than 52% of medicines are missing, and more than 59% of medical supplies are missing.
The citizen can no longer find a drink of clean water. The occupation began with killing, and now it kills silently.
Gaza has taught me that victory is only born from the womb of patience, and that peoples who believe in their right cannot be defeated by any power, no matter how intense the siege and how great the sacrifices.
Gaza has taught me that starvation, thirst, bombing, burning, displacement, and forced removal are but tools of helplessness before a people who loved freedom and believed that dignity cannot be bought or sold.
Gaza has taught me that homes may be demolished, hospitals destroyed, and schools bombed, but the will that dwells in hearts cannot be buried under the rubble.
Gaza has taught me that a doctor may treat a wound while bleeding, a paramedic may carry the martyrs while waiting for his turn, and a journalist may write the truth with his blood before his pen.
Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, Director General Gaza Health Ministry. (Photo source: Resistance News Network on Telegram).
Gaza has taught me that all conspiracies break before the unity and steadfastness of the people, and that the most dangerous thing the enemies want is for us to be divided, while the greatest thing we possess is to remain one front.
Gaza has taught me that the world may be silent, the law may fail, and justice may be delayed, but the truth does not die, the rights of peoples do not lapse, and history does not show mercy to those who witnessed the crime and chose silence.
end.
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Two famous people addressed a crowd outside Leinster House, home of the Parliament of the Irish State on 25th May. Rami Elhanan, an Israeli graphic designer, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian scholar, had forged a remarkable friendship.
Section of participants in the Dubs for Palestine noontime event outside Leinster House 27 May 2026. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Bassam Aramin, now a Palestinian scholar, had been sentenced to a 7-year term of imprisonment for throwing a grenade at Israeli soldiers when he was 17 and had lost his daughter later to a plastic bullet fired at short distance by an IOF soldier.
Rami Elhanan, an Israeli graphic designer, had also lost his daughter Smada but to a suicide bomber in 1997. Both men became advocates of peace and dialogue and friends to one another.
Their audience was the weekly Dubs for Palestine gathering outside Leinster House on Wednesdays 12 noon to about 1.00 pm, with speeches, songs and poetry and David Hickey as MC. This week’s was the 113th such weekly gathering and the duo had been invited to speak.
The broad group has of late been concentrating on parting the Gaelic Athletic Association1 from its sponsor and insurance underwriter, the former Nazi and since Zionist-friendly Allianz company, along with now campaigning for the Irish soccer team not to play the ‘Israeli’ team.
Rami Elhanan (L-R) and Basam Araminaddressing the Dubs for Palestine noontime event outside Leinster House 27 May 2026. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Rami Elhanan referenced his descent from Holocaust survivors and outlined the different living standards of the Palestinian and Israeli Jewish communities, commenting on the sickness in Israeli society, that they did not want to know what is being done in their name to the Palestinians.
Basam Aramin’s contribution was against the Occupation and claimed that without that, Palestinians and Israelis could live in peace (it was not clear whether he was referring to the ‘Two State’ proposal2). David Hickey, the MC of the group presented them with an Arum Lily each.3
After their speeches had been applauded, they were asked to comment on the recent Leinster House debate and the Government’s refusal to endorse a boycott of Israel. Rami Elhanan replied that boycotts entrenched opposing sides and that continuing to talk was the answer.
Singer and activist Emma Browne, invited next to the microphone, sang Keep the Little Flame Alive, among the lyrics of which Faye, Dolores, Bernadine, Table grapes and gasoline, Homemade rifles, kitchen knives, Kept the little flame alive riposted the previous speakers.
Soon afterwards, Paul Lynch read a poem of a Palestinian father mourning the killing of his child. Poet and activist Dorothy Collin declared that in order to have peace there must be justice first and that we must support the oppressed in whatever way they choose to resist.
Áine Ruttley reading her poem while addressing the Dubs for Palestine noontime event outside Leinster House 27 May 2026. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Áine Rutley also upheld our duty of solidarity and the right of the Resistance movement to choose its own methods, as did Jimi Cullen who then performed his own song composition The Freedom Fighter about a fighter from Gaza.
As I was called to the microphone, I commented that my views had already been well expressed in song and speech and that one of the forms of resistance is song, of which we had more than probably any other people in the world and sang An Dord Féinne,4 which is banned in Germany.
A little later the event came to an end with another song from Emma Browne, Never Again Is Now and with group chanting for Palestine, against Allianz and against playing the ‘Israeli’ team.
IN CONCLUSION
It is a popular proposition in certain circles that all social conflicts can be resolved by discussion, by understanding our opponents’ view. It is an attractive idea but flies in the face of history and of contemporary reality.
The interests of Occupied and Occupier are opposed and cannot be reconciled through understanding. The Occupier understands that the Occupied wish to be rid of them. The Occupied do understand that the Occupier wishes to continue appropriating their land and resources.
In this kind of situation one must win and the other lose. Far from understanding leading to peaceful resolution, the more the oppressed understand the nature of their oppressor, the more resolutely they are likely to resist and this is surely true of the Palestinians resisting the Zionist settlers.
The false proposition of resolving irreconcilable interests through discussion is usually of liberal or social-democratic origin when applied to anti-colonial, anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggles and though appearing even-handed, always ends up disempowering the victimised.
The journeys of both these men is extraordinary and interesting but it should not be presented as representative of the Palestinian struggle against Occupation, Theft and Genocide. Each father lost a child but the Palestinian is losing a lot more on top.
Furthermore, a just resolution can only come about through the total defeat of the Zionist forces and the dismantling of their State, so that if we really want that kind of resolution we are called to support the Palestinian side, unequivocally and resolutely.
Of course, in reality there is no question of real peace without justice, for ultimately the oppressed (unless wiped out) will rise in struggle again and again. The proposition of accommodation of opposites by discussion can only undermine or distract the struggle of the oppressed.
We cannot take the story of Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, however remarkable, as even a metaphor for a just resolution nor allow ourselves to be seduced from resistance nor our struggle undermined by it.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1The management of the Gaelic games, including hurling and Gaelic football. The GAA has teams in every one of the 32 counties of Ireland, crossing the colonial border and is the biggest community sports association not only in Ireland but also in Europe and perhaps in the world.
2This proposal came out of the Oslo Accords, to give the Palestinians 20% of their land for peace with the Zionist settlers who would own the remaining 80%. Apart from its basic injustice the proposal was never realistic since Zionist settlers continued to construct settlements on additional land. Despite this, supporting that proposal is the formal position of most western imperialist states and the Irish State and of most parliamentary political parties.
3In Ireland these are often viewed as symbolic of the 1916 Easter Rising.
4Also known as Gráinne Mhaol and Óró Sé Do Bheatha ‘Bhaile, an Irish traditional song of some antiquity refashioned into an Irish resistance song by Patrick Pearse, a martyred leader of the 1916 Rising.
(Reprinted from author’s substack on 01/03/2026 and reformatted for WordPress. All graphic images created or chosen by R. Breezeeditor)
The English band Chumbawamba recorded a song called The Day The Nazi Died about how the Nazis never really went away.1
The song references the Nazi leader Rudolf Hess, who was not executed following WWII but was instead held a prisoner in Spandau Prison until he took his own life at the age of 93.
The song asks why when we were told that the Nazis had died did they all come out on the day Hess died and points to the boardrooms of companies as maggots getting fat on the decaying flesh of capitalist society.
The band were not wrong. Some of the Nazis and boards of companies that did not go away are now involved in the genocide in Palestine.
Goosestepping as a military parade practice has gone out of fashion in most Western countries, but stomping on the peoples of the world is very much in fashion.
Many companies such as Porsche, Mercedes, Volkswagen and even IG Farben – the manufacturers of the gas used to murder millions in the camps – went unpunished after WWII. Some companies were even compensated for the damage to their factories.
Lots of other German companies passed under the radar.
Hugo Boss was never taken to task for making the Nazis look so sexy in their murderous swagger and Allianz the German insurance company that insured parts of the camps and the ghettos against fire and damage to their installations survived intact.
Apparently, they didn’t specifically insure the ovens or gas chambers, but the camps were a whole unit. Any part insured contributed to all of it running smoothly.
Of course those who died in the gas chambers and were pushed like peat brickettes through the ovens were not covered, just the Nazi property.
Hugo Boss can make no claims to being pressured, he was a member of the Nazi party before Hitler ever took power. He wasn’t betting on which horse won the race, he was the horse in the race.
Allianz likes to present itself as just another company that did business with the Nazis in order to continue functioning and that they had no choice, Krupps makes similar claims about its use of slave labour, saying they had to.
Cartoon by D.Breatnach
That is a dubious claim, when you look at their history. But also morally there is no basis to it. You always have the choice, some Germans lost their lives fighting the Nazis, not losing your money is hardly an excuse.
What companies such as Allianz did is make a cost benefit analysis. They calculated that not doing business with the Nazis would affect their profits, so they insured the camps but not the people pushed through the ovens.
The company claims a certain naivety on its part about what was happening.
But you can only take that at face value if you ignore that the director general of the company the antisemite Dr Kurt Schmitt resigned his post with Allianz in 1933 to become Hitler’s first Reich Minister of Economic Affairs.
He had previously turned down the post when it was offered to him by the Von Papen government before the Nazis took over.
He had to step down for health reasons, but when he recovered he went back to Allianz to administer it. It also claims it made no money from the camps contract.
This does not mean there was no money to be made, it means it wasn’t as profitable a contract as it thought, but it managed to get other contracts from the Nazis.
If you read the company’s website you come away with the distinct impression that they would like us to think they were a victim of the Nazis and we should pity them.
It turns out because they were on the losing side and because the war didn’t go ahead as planned with Hitler steamrollering his way to Moscow, the war was not as profitable as it should have been for insurance companies.
In the following quote it is clear that 1943, following the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad, the tide turned not only in the war but in the accounts ledgers.
After Germany overran Poland in 1939, the business of the insurance sector became characterized by the risks associated with the war.
Doing business in wartime meant obeying the principle of “minimizing new dangers and taking maximum advantage of new business opportunities.”
The repercussions of the war were detrimental to business as a whole and at the end of the war, Allianz was on the brink of ruin. Even so, until 1943 the company had managed to increase its profits by a considerable margin.2
Even today the company whitewashes its record and states in glowing language that:
Kurt Schmitt’s energetic course of expansion in the 1920s had made Allianz the largest insurance company in Germany. In 1933, Schmitt became Minister of Economic Affairs in Adolf Hitler’s government.
In 1935, he resigned from this post as he was unable to implement his political ideas and his health was failing. After his recovery, he returned to Allianz and in 1938 became General Director of Munich Re.3
No, not true, the Nazi stepped down because he had a heart attack, not over disagreements about economic policy and though it is not stated, there is a sleight of hand which leaves you wondering whether he had disagreements over the treatment of Jews.
This antisemite had no such disagreements with the Nazis at all. He was well known to them before they ever took power. He knew who and what they were.
The company’s site is not that detailed about the period and there are lots of sleights of hands in how it presents information. For example, it is mentioned that the company opposed Nazi attempts to nationalise the insurance industry.
But not because they opposed the Nazis, but because it might affect their profit margins.
But not even Allianz can completely deny reality. Their site does acknowledge that it began to come clean about its role following a lawsuit in the US against insurance companies and set up a study into its activities.4
It did it, because it was forced to. Had they really been forced to insure the Nazis against their will they wouldn’t have waited till 1997 to start publicly owning up.
They commissioned Dr Feldman a Jewish historian to look at their history. He quotes Schmitt as talking about the Nazi position on Jews as explained to him by Göring that:
I must honestly say, that I had no reservations about this line, for it cannot objectively be contested that in our public and intellectual life, beginning with the Reichstag, in the press, and also in many scientific faculties, in the legal field and above all in the Berlin banking business, the Jews had too strong and too loud and also an unhealthy influence.5
Feldman goes on to say of this that:
…it is important to recognize that the responsibility for the evils that he [Schmitt] and his organization [Allianz] were to experience and perpetrate during the coming years lay to an important extent in the fact that he (and others like him) shared a political culture and an anti-Semitic posture that made the coming and installation of the Third Reich possible.6
Of Schmitt he says that:
Schmitt was rather more enthusiastic and active than his colleagues in pandering to the new order at this time.
Not only was he prominently on display at the aforementioned Hitler birthday festivities, he also catered to the “socialistic” side of the regime while playing the public defender of employer interests with the new rulers as well.7
Now we have come full circle. The people who tried to profit from the Third Reich and the camps are once again involved in a genocide, not only as an insurance company but also as a direct investor.
Allianz has invested USD 960 million in Israeli war bonds, or genocide bonds as they are more accurately known. I
n 50 years’ time, they might hire some Palestinian historian to write the history of collaboration in yet another genocide and their website might just say they had no choice but to maximise profits in line with their legal duty to their shareholders or some such rubbish.
Last time, none of the Allianz board were sent to the gallows. They all did very well out of the war and the company went on to become not just Germany’s largest insurance company but a major player in the global insurance industry.
It is as the Chumbawamba song says:
The world is riddled with maggots; the maggots are getting fat They’re making a tasty meal of all the bosses and bureaucrats They’re taking over the boardrooms, and they’re fat and full of pride.
This time, should we ever get a day of reckoning to cite the much abused quote from Karl Marx we should make no excuses for the terror. They should have all their assets confiscated and they should meet their end hanging from a rope.
So if you meet with these historians, I’ll tell you what to say Tell them that the Nazis never really went away. They’re out there burning houses down and peddling racist lies And we’ll never rest again until every Nazi dies.
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Translated by R. Breeze from Spanish-language post in Bultza, Basque Marxist-Leninist Telegram channel, 2 March 2026
(Reading time:4 mins.)
The armed resistance of the Palestinian people—the vast majority of whom are Muslim—has stirred up a kind of “neither-nor” sentiment. The “progressive” left refuses to take sides.
They labelled the acts of armed resistance on October 7, 2023, as terrorism and equated them with the genocidal policies of the State of Israel. Was terrorism that which the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto waged in their guerrilla operations against the Nazi occupation army?
This is not the first time we have heard the hackneyed rhetoric against the Muslim religion. A discourse cloaked in a “progressive” mantle, where they speak of human rights, freedoms, women’s rights, and so on.
Some even compare it to the Franco regime in a display of “intellectualism.” A comparison that cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny of logic. Did the Franco regime confront the greatest empire on the planet? Quite the contrary.
The fact that Francoism and its entire cultural and political apparatus existed was thanks, among other things, to the largest empire in the world today: the United States.
Trump has spoken, on several occasions, about how the Iranian government oppresses its people through Islam, that “the regime of the ayatollahs” must be overthrown, etc. This discourse has also been echoed by several European leaders, including the “progressive” Pedro Sánchez.
A few weeks ago, we heard Gabriel Rufián1—the future leader of the “re-establishment of the Left”—saying that the burka and the hijab should be banned. But there is one aspect they all have in common: they all say this from NATO countries.
Countries that exploit the wealth of every continent, including Muslim countries where religion is not conceived in the same way as it is in imperialist countries. Yet, they say absolutely nothing about the Atlanticist organization. They do not question its crimes.
In addition to discrimination based on religion, there are two more forms: discrimination based on belonging to a culture different from Western culture (imperialism and colonization) and class discrimination.
The “progressive” Left only mobilises when the oppressed are portrayed as victims, not when they gain strength and resist the assaults. In other words, if you are massacred by the empire, they will offer you alms. If you resist, you become the target of their criticism.
We’ve already seen this with the constant denunciations of the Palestinian armed resistance, or the scant impact the resistance of the Shiite armed movement Hezbollah, which has repeatedly halted Israeli Zionism, has had on the Spanish population.
We’ve also seen it when the Shiite movement Ansar Allah fired rockets at the US Sixth Fleet, cutting off the Red Sea and Israeli communications.
In other words, the “progressive” left supports you if you die, not when you fight.
It’s the practical application of putting money into the coffers of the missions. If you’re a sovereign country seeking liberation from imperialist yokes and you fight with all your might, you’re labelled a terrorist and an oppressor.
And the media plays a significant role in this, the same media on which progressives occasionally complain of not being given as much airtime as before.
In the words of the African American leader Malcolm X: Beware of the media; they will make you hate the oppressed and love the oppressor.
In the world of social media, we easily lose our memory. Therefore, it’s necessary to remember that the Algerian separatists of the National Liberation Front were Marxist-Leninists. And this didn’t prevent them from also being Muslim.
The People’s Republic of North Yemen—Muslim—along with the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, supported the anti-fascist armed movements in the Spanish state.
In other words, Islam and anti-imperialist (and anti-fascist) resistance are concepts that have gone hand in hand on numerous occasions.
The USSR itself not only maintained but also promoted madrasas, or Islamic schools, in Muslim-majority territories. Was the USSR—the world’s first secular state—the same as Francoist Spain? But perhaps this doesn’t mean much to the progressive, or the purist of the moment.
In the 1960s, there emerged in Latin America a concept called Liberation Theology. This movement led to the creation of armed groups of Catholic origin whose demands included socialism and social justice.
Movements like the Montoneros in Argentina and the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) emerged from this context. It is important to remember Father Carlos Mugica, the priest and guerrilla leader.
These armed movements caused considerable headaches for Washington’s Operation Condor and all the dictatorships imposed by the School of the Americas—dictatorships that, incidentally, sympathised with and admired Francoism.
Were these guerrilla priests the same as their enemies in the White House and their puppets?
These movements resonated in Spain. This theory spread throughout the Basque Country and the working-class neighbourhoods of major cities like Madrid and Barcelona, as well as regions like Andalusia.
The parishes of Vallecas, Carabanchel, Moratalazo, and Vicálvaro2 became meeting places for numerous anti-Francoist movements and groups, where these same worker-priests were active.
A very recent example is that of Father Diamantino García: one of the founders of the Andalusian Rural Workers’ Union (predecessor of the Andalusian Workers’ Union). Were these worker-priests the same as Francoism?
Fr. Diamentino Garcia Acosta (1943-1995) addressing a worker’s rally.
Let’s remove once and for all the veil that prevents us from seeing the reality of Third World countries. Who are we to tell oppressed countries what to do? Isn’t that just another form of imperialism? Do we fight in the same way they do?
We cannot view the processes of decolonization and liberation of those who are fighting with all their might against the West and its empire through Western eyes.
To paraphrase our Asturian comrades from La Clase Trabayadora:3 we must put an end to the left wing of imperialism and all that it entails. Even in the cultural sphere.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1MP and spokesperson of the Ezquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Catalan Republican Left) in the Spanish Congress, also active in left-social democratic coalition Súmate and the grassroots National Assembly of Catalunya. (R.Breeze)
2Particularly working-class areas of Madrid (R.Breeze)
3Anti-NATO and anti-rearming organisation based in Asturies. (R.Breeze)
The quisling Palestine Authority killed a three-year-old girl and her teenage brother Ali in an ambush to capture their father, Amer Samara, whom they also shot in both legs. The reason? Amer was wanted by ‘Israel’.
If the PA represents the Palestinian people, why would they even try to arrest someone for the Occupation, never mind open fire on the family car? But this is not out of character – Samara is not the first member of the Resistance wanted by ‘Israel’ that the PA have hunted or even killed.
In May 2024, the PA forces shot dead Ahmed Abed-Foul in his car in Tulkarem and in December of that year also killed Yazeed Jayasa’a, a senior member of the Jenin Brigade of Islamic Jihad. In January 2025 they killed father and son Mahmoud and Qasem al-Jalqamousi, also in Jenin.
In March 2025, again in Jenin refugee camp, they added Abdul Rahman Abu al-Muna of Islamic Jihad to their toll, the PA calling him ‘an outlaw’. There are others who were captured alive and fill the PA’s prison while others, after highlighting by the PA, are arrested by the IOF.
Some escaped for awhile, like the wounded Abu Sujaa(Mohamed Jaber), when the community packed the hospital and prevented the PA from arresting him. The PA fired tear gas inside the hospital, pepper-sprayed and batoned people, including women but had to leave empty-handed.1
Photos of Rozan Samara before and in hospital after being shot by PA armed forces. She died shortly afterwards, as had her teenage brother, also shot by the PA. (Photo sourced: Palestine Chronicle)
And not just resistance fighters but also dissenters, critics of Fatah, the PA and its repression like activist Nizar Banat in June 2021, beaten to death.2 Palestinians in the West Bank have to be careful what they post about the PA on social media because people get arrested or beaten up for that too.
The creation of the PA is part of the Oslo pacification process of 1993-2000.3 The secular then-resistance organisation Fatah got elected in the West Bank and Gaza to run it, run by their man Mahmoud Abbas but in the next elections, people overwhelmingly voted for Hamas instead.
The western imperialists couldn’t manipulate Hamas and refused to recognise the people’s wish and so cut their finances. Fatah tried to ignore the election results in Gaza which led to a short civil war which Hamas won, then taking the positions to which they had been elected there.
In the West Bank, Hamas also had the majority of votes but pulled back from civil war, so Abbas held on to his and Fatah’s corrupt and repressive fiefdom, never holding elections again because they would lose them. Even the western imperialists admit that PA needs radical reform.
But they do so for the same reason that they support the two-state solution (sic), as a Quisling neo-colonial administration to buy off while it divides, spies upon and controls the Palestinian people on 20% of Palestinian land under the guns and eyes of the Israeli Zionists.
The Zionists however no longer desire even this, wanting now only the elimination of any idea of Palestine, hence the genocide and holocaust they are committing in Gaza and the further takeover of the West Bank, settler attacks on Palestinians and further expansion of Jewish settlements.
Reluctance to picket or denounce them?
To my knowledge the representative of the PA in Ireland has been confronted publicly and accused of working for a quisling organisation only once and their official residence in Dublin picketed only twice. I am glad to say I was able to attend on those two occasions.4
View of Palestine solidarity marchers picketing the PA’s Palestine Dublin Embassy (building on the top right of photo) in January 2025 (Photo sourced: R.Breeze)
The public denunciation of the PA Ambassador was by a small group of Palestinians at a Belfast Sinn Féin meeting she was addressing a very little over two years ago5. The Palestinians6 were quickly silenced and evicted to cheers from many in the attendance.
Meanwhile, the PA continues to work against the majority of Palestinian society, both inside Israel-occupied territories and in the diaspora, continues its corruption and nepotism and repression against Palestinian dissent with active operations against those wanted by the occupying Zionists.
The PA is getting a relatively free from criticism ride in Ireland and some may say this is in order not to split the solidarity movement. But the split between the people and their traitors is already there and is marked by the actions of the collaborators.
View of section of the crowd protesting the Palestine Authority’s Dublin Embassy (in photo background) in January 2025. (Photo sourced: R.Breeze)
Some may object that exposing the PA will distract from the movement of solidarity with Palestine. How so, do they claim? Collaborators are an important part of occupation and repression and exposing them is an integral part of resistance and solidarity work.
Epstein, Trump, Mandelson etc are all part of the same evil and exposing them, far from being a distraction, shows us the linkages between them, amplifies the call for solidarity with the Palestinian people and educates us in the struggle for a just world.
The representatives of the PA should be shunned by all who are in genuine solidarity with the Palestinian people but furthermore their representatives and offices should be picketed frequently in order to expose them and what they represent.
We need to ask ourselves whether we really support the Palestinian people or do so while somehow also tolerating its quislings and traitors. Have we learned nothing from our own history and our cultural hatred, expressed in song and story, of collaborators, traitors, agents and informers?
End.
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6The protesters were also calling on SF not to attend the US Presidential St. Patrick’s Day party; SF did so that year (as in all years previously invited) but felt obliged to skip it in 2025.
Through three events on Saturday, New Year’s Eve in the city centre, Dublin sent a solidarity message to the Palestinian people and also to the solidarity activists on hunger strike in British jails, referencing also those of the Irish Resistance in 1981.
The Millennium Bridge on New Year’s Eve. (Photo: IPSC)
Chronologically first was a protest in the Starbucks café1 in Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre obliging the management to close for hours and a balcony walkway banner drop calling for solidarity with the Elbit accused on hunger strike, referencing also the Irish hunger-strikes of 1981.2
I had not read the poster carefully and arrived at the Starbucks at the north end of Grafton Street, where there were a few other confused people also. By the time I made my way up to the southern end of Grafton Street, the protest there was about to leave and I was about to head elsewhere.
Two main banners present at protest outside the Stephen’s Green Centre on New Year’s Eve, after closing down the Starbucks café inside. (Photo: Bas)
The solidarity crowd continued to demonstrate in the shopping centre’s main doorway before marching away, then went into the Zara3 big shop and demonstrated there awhile before heading on to MacDonald’s in Grafton Street where the Gardaí began to let their nasty side show a little.
Palestine solidarity protesters leaving the Stephen’s Green Centre on New Year’s Eve, heading down to Zara to protest there (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Then another Starbucks, this one on Dame Street got a Palestine solidarity visit before the demonstrators went on to the iconic pedestrian Ha’penny Bridge, where the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign holds a Palestine solidarity protest every New Year’s Eve.
Closeup of banner-drop inside the Stephen’s Green Centre on New Year’s Eve, during protest after closing down the Starbucks café inside. (Photo: G.O.L)
There the demonstrators thronged the Ha’penny and Millennium Bridges and spilled out along the quays. I was elsewherefor the first time in years as it was a Wednesday and therefore Jimi Cullen’s weekly protest with songs at the US Embassy in Ballsbridge, this one to be his 97th straight.
As usual there were police on guard there and one in uniform approached myself and Jimi as we were talking and asked Jimi how long the event would be, how many attending etc. Then she suggested I removed my bike which was leaning against a bollard.
Conducting the protest inside the Stephen’s Green Centre on New Year’s Eve which obliged management to close down for some hours the Starbucks café inside. (Photo: G.O.L)
I told her I was happy with where it was, thank you. Then she said that it might fall on someone (but not, of course, if across the road!), then that someone might steal it, all of which was nonsense of course then said: ‘I am asking you to remove it’ to which I replied ‘And I am declining.’
She was getting quite angry but decided to walk it off. I have attended supporting Jimi’s protest perhaps a score of times and in the early days had a similar approach from a Special Branch4 officer who accused me of causing ‘a security risk’ to the Embassy’s ‘curtilage’ (on a public footpath)!
The Ha’penny Bridge on New Year’s Eve. (Photo: IPSC)
Some police just like to throw their weight around even with regard to things that have nothing to do with the law or causing harm to anyone and over which they have no legal power.
Anyway we unfurled the flags, Jimi had a placard displayed, got out his guitar and we sang through week 97 to frequent waves, clapping, thumbs up, clenched fists, shouts and horn blowing of appreciation and solidarity from passing motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.
Section of northern quays/ Boardwalk on New Year’s Eve, during protest after closing down the Starbucks café inside. (Photo: IPSC)
Jimi began this weekly protest outside the Israeli Embassy but when they left Ireland he moved up the road to the nearby US Embassy, representative of the world leader in terrorism and biggest supporter, politically, financially and militarily of the world’s leading genocider entity.
Usually there are more supporters present. Jimi has a fine stock of protest and solidarity songs, some of which he composed himself and performs them well. Today we did mostly Irish songs of struggle but also one from the black civil rights struggle and Jimi’s own about Palestine.
Jimi Cullen and myself at Jimi’s weekly event outside the US Embassy on New Year’s Eve. (Photo: J.Cullen)
We had a number of Palestinian flags there but also two Starry Plough flags and there were some Irish Tricolours to be seen on the other protests among the many Palestinian ones. It is from our own struggle that we stand in solidarity with Palestine.
End.
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2Ten Irish Republican prisoners, seven IRA and three INLA died on hunger-strike in a British jail in 1981 in a struggle against criminalisation and for political status
