Around 30 people demonstrated outside Dublin’s Criminal Court on Thursday, many of them displaying Irish flags (Tricolour and Starry Plough) along with those of Palestine in solidarity with three activists before the court.
The activists were charged under Public Order legislation arising out of protesting a British war ship at Dublin docks in November last year, in solidarity with Palestine and against NATO’s support for the Israeli state’s slaughter in Gaza.
It was alleged that the activists (variously from Saoirse Don Phalaistín and Anti-Imperialist Action organisations) had entered a restricted part of the Dublin Docks and, holding a Palestine flag, had approached a British warship docked there and then occupied the gangway.
British military displaying firearms on Irish state soilin November last year. (Photo: Anti-Imperialist Action)
Gardaí had been called and the activists had refused their instruction to leave under the Public Order legislation and they had then been arrested. No act of violence, physical or verbal, took place on either side other than the refusal to leave and the arrests.
The activists appeared in the Parkgate Street building before Justice John Hughes and all three were defended by Damien Coffey of Sheehan Partners, a law firm which often handles political and human rights cases. Three Gardaí from Store Street acted in the role of the Prosecution.
The Garda in charge of the prosecution and his two colleagues gave evidence as to the arrests. Questioned by Coffey for the Defence, all confirmed that although the protesters had refused to leave, there had been no violence offered by them during their arrests.
Strangely, as shall become evident and relevant, one did not recall the British military presence on the gangway to be armed, whereas another did and confirmed that a photo of the armed men was of those who had been present.
One of the Garda offered his opinion that whereas the vessel was regarded in law as “British soil”, the gangplank was legally “Irish soil” and, if the protesters had actually set foot on the ship, they might have been charged with piracy. This piece of evidence also had unintended consequences.
One of the placards displayed by supporters outside the courthouse (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
According to this evidence, the British in a foreign military uniform had been present on Irish state soil and all replied to the defence lawyer that they were unaware of any Ministerial permission to do so — or that this could have constituted an offence under Section 317 of the Defence Act 1954.1
Furthermore, none were aware of any special permission granted to them to carry firearms on Irish state ground. The British military personnel themselves were not present as witnesses as their superiors had not replied to the Garda request to discuss giving evidence in the case.
Port security camera footage was shown as evidence by which protesters could be seen at the gates of a fenced-off section of the docks and some time later proceeding through a gate. A port security employee had been summoned by the Gardaí as a witness.
After he had been taken through his evidence (and failed to respond to what seemed an attempted prompt) by the Garda in charge the only relevance of his evidence was that a) the area was restricted and b) that he was worried for the safety of the protesters.
This (and the reason for the possible attempted prompt) was of importance when Coffey developed his defence summary on the legal grounds that Section 14 (1) of the Public Order Act required there to be an element of fear arising from the actions of those to be charged under the Act.
None of the evidence for the Prosecution had shown the presence of fear of anyone from the defendants and, furthermore, he submitted, any element of fear was much more likely to arise from the presence of two men holding firearms, to whit, the British military personnel.
The second part of the Defence summary dealt with right to protest, Coffey quoting a number of legal sources, also referencing the Irish Government’s recognition of a Palestinian state and statistics of people killed by the Israeli state against which the activists had been protesting.
Judge Hughes announced that a recess was due for lunch and that he wished to consult legal authority (case law etc) so they would recess and reconvene in an hours’ time.
A number of supporters who had taken time off from other commitments left at this point while a few arrived instead.
THE JUDGEMENT
After reconvening Judge Hughes began his long drawn out summing up and it gradually became clear that he intended to find the accused guilty. However people awaited with varying degrees of patience for the details of the sentence.
The Judge referred to the right to protest but also to the restrictions upon it (usually limiting its effectiveness) though he did not say that, nor that powers exist to abolish those rights when the State feels it necessary.
With regard to the ‘element of fear’ required for conviction under the Public Order Act Hughes quoted a judgement as a reference that seemed neither relevant nor reasonable, involving a woman experiencing fear of being broken into and even fear of children playing outside her home.
Despite repeating the standard claim of capitalist law that judges cannot adjudicate emotionally nor be swayed by what was occurring in Palestine, John Hughes revealed his own political bias when he bizarrely claimed that a British fleet had been welcomed into an Irish port in 1820.
He revealed his political naivety also when he expressed surprise that the British had not replied to the Garda communication regarding the incident.
On submission by Coffey regarding the lack of previous convictions and effect of criminal convictions on the lives of the three, Johnson, again drawing out the moment, gave them what amounts to a conditional discharge with a provisional forfeit of 500 euro.2
No doubt the desire not to create martyrs around whom solidarity campaigns might intensify played at least as much a part as any concern for the lives of the activists.
The defendants and their supporters left; outside the court they were embraced by a number of supporters before the gathering broke up, some attending to other solidarity activities elsewhere. The show of support was a good sign of solidarity against state repression.3
View of some of the people outside the courthouse on Thursday in solidarity with the three activists (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
SERIOUS ISSUES AMONG ELEMENTS OF COMEDY
The name of the British naval vessel being The Penzance and the mention of a possible piracy charge brings to mind of course the Gilbert & Sullivan opera The Pirates of Penzance (1879).
The focus of the Gardaí on arresting peaceful protesters in preference to unauthorised people in foreign military uniform carrying unlicensed firearms on Irish soil and also trying to suggest that not they but the protesters would give rise to fear is not without its comedic elements.
However overall the whole matter is extremely serious, with regard to the zionist genocide in Palestine, the active collusion of the UK/NATO, the active collusion of the Irish ruling class4despite its verbal positions – and the repression of its State on more active and directed solidarity actions.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1 317. — (1) No person shall, save with the consent in writing of a Minister of State, enter or land in the State while wearing any foreign uniform. (2) No person shall, save with the consent in writing of a Minister of State, go into any public place in the State while wearing any foreign uniform.
2 It will not appear as a criminal record but in the event of a subsequent conviction, the 500 euro can be levied as a fine in addition to any other punishment in court sentence.
3 Though the absence of a number of political organisations and trends was also marked.
4 “Dual-use”exports to the zionist state which can be adapted to military use; failure to press for any economic, academic or cultural sanctions against the zionist state; shelving of the Occupied Territories Bill; failure to impose diplomatic sanctions of any kind.
The fundamental thing to grasp here is that there can be no peace deal as such. Although there can – and needs to be – an end to Israeli massacres of Palestinians, no arrangement that leaves the zionist settler state in situ can possibly deliver peace.
Even if the zionists could go against their settler nature and therefore abandoned expansion, the Palestinians will never reconcile themselves to their dispossession of most of their country, including their best land and water.
TALK OF A CEASEFIRE DEAL
Very recently Biden put forward a ceasefire plan which he claimed to be an ‘Israeli’ one; Netanyahu seemed to reject it but one of his ministers accepted it was their position.
News footage of Biden’s announcement of the ceasefire proposal “by Israel”. The Palestinian resistance states that the offer received from ‘Israel’ does not at all match the content or process laid out by Biden. (Source video clip: Internet)
Since it contains the main items in the deal brokered by the Arab state intermediaries and approved by the CIA’s man some weeks ago, naturally the Palestinian Resistance1 has welcomed the proposals.
But with caution – they have seen Netanyahu torpedo ceasefire deals before, including the earlier one. And Netanyahu has said repeatedly that eliminating Hamas (by which he means Palestinian Resistance capability) and recovery of the detained Israelis2 is a necessity for any ceasefire.
Of course, the actions of the IOF under his orders don’t suggest that he is serious about recovering the detainees – not alive, anyway. On the other hand, he dearly would like to eliminate the Resistance capability and was happy to wipe out more than the 36,000+ civilians he has already.
But it may be that he has come to believe – or has been pressured into believing – that that project may have to be put off for awhile. The settler society is deeply divided over the question of the Israeli detainees and in a recent poll only 10% believed that the IOF was winning the war.3
Netanyahu’s position is rational from the settler perspective which is that the Indigenous have to be dispossessed and, because they naturally resist, have to be also heavily repressed. But he would like to keep the war going for another reason, which is that he is due to face trial for corruption.
However, he doesn’t get to be where he is or do what he does as an individual but rather with the backing of, in the first place the Israeli ruling class and secondly, of course, of the US Government, which really means by the rulers of the US financial-industrial-military complex.
Supporting ‘Israel’ has been basic US imperialist policy since 1948, when the zionist lobby in the US was not anywhere near as strong as it is today. Biden now, Trump before (and possibly again), Obama, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Reagan – all of them have supported the zionist colony.
Contrary to what many people think, the main reason for the US supporting ‘Israel’ is that it is the only state in the Middle East totally safe from national liberation revolution (because it’s a settler state fighting the Indigenous) or Islamic fundamentalist revolution (because it’s zionist).
In other words, it’s the only safe long-term USA foothold in the Middle East. Or at least it was.
Current map of the Middle East states. The US has overthrown the Iraq ruling regime and made clients of the regimes of all the others with the exception of Yemen and Iran, both of which overthrew their western-aligned ruling elites. (Source map: Internet)
So if Biden is really pressuring Netanyahu– which is not clear yet, given that money and weapons are still being supplied and massacres of Palestinians continue daily — that means that the US ruling class (or at least its dominant section) is pressuring the Israeli ruling class.
Perhaps that’s why John Kirby, Biden’s Middle East envoy is now heading back to the Middle East, in the first place to the zionist state then possibly to Egypt afterwards, where some Resistance leaders have gone already (at least of Islamic Jihad and of the PFLP, according to Arab media).
But every passing day, the IOF massacres between 50-100 Palestinians on average, the population of Gaza suffers from malnutrition, their housing and shelters are bombed, rescue workers are targeted and the only functioning hospital4 is low on fuel and out of many medicines and drugs.
Since the talk of a deal began, the known death toll in Gaza (not to mention the West Bank) passed 5,000 and is now half way through its sixth thousand.
The cold hard fact is that if the US shut off finance and munitions delivery to Israel, the massacres would stop within a day or two and, because the IOF can’t fight without air cover, it would have to withdraw from its blockade of the Rafah crossing, instantly allowing in food, fuel and medicine.
But also as the Medical Director of GLIA5 Tarek Loubani stated in a recent very informative interview,6 the Palestinian bordering states of Egypt and of Jordan, which also have gates, could break the siege tomorrow. Of course these are ruled by elites that are clients of the imperialists.
“THE TWO-STATE” OPTION
But what’s the long-term plan for Palestine?
For some Zionists, including a couple of members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, it’s the expulsion (sorry, “voluntary resettlement”) of Palestinians from Gaza to be run by ‘Israel’ and resettled by zionists. Not many outside the state would openly espouse that objective.
Although liberal ‘Israeli’ journalist Gideon Lev, who no longer supports the “2-State solution” (sic) commented that Biden dropped that objective from his outline of the alleged deal,7 it has been for decades the only long-term plan of the US, UK and EU and of their main political parties.
This plan is to get some kind of collaborator management to run less than 20% of historic Palestine next to the robbers of most and the best of its land and most of its water, in a “state” dominated by the robbers and under their constant eyes, genocidal guns and air force.
Who gets the Quisling management job? The USA suggested months ago a “revamped Palestinian Authority” which is despised by most Palestinians, corrupt and authoritarian (hence to be “revamped”). Others have suggested some kind of Arab state partnership to manage at least Gaza.
The most recent map of the imagined two-state “solution”, drawn up during Trump’s earlier presidency – areas in green allocated to Palestine, beige to the zionist state. (Source: Wikipedia)
But Netanyahu says the PA will not run Gaza. Of course, if he’s on the way out, he may be ignored but the Resistance is on record saying that what they have, whether part of 2-State setup or not, must be run by Palestinians and that they will not accept any other states doing so.
And that for Palestinian unity, the PLO8 must be opened to Islamist organisations such as Hamas.9
If legislative elections (overdue by almost two decades) are run now, the likelihood is that Hamas will win again10as it did in Gaza and the West Bank in 2006.11
MEANWHILE, THE DEAL …
“The first stage proposes to involve a six-week ceasefire during which the Israeli army will withdraw from the populated areas of Gaza. Hostages, including the elderly and women, would be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
“Civilians would also return to all of Gaza, with 600 trucks carrying humanitarian aid flooding the enclave daily, Biden said.
“The second phase would see Hamas and Israel negotiate terms for a permanent end to hostilities. “The ceasefire will still continue as long as negotiations continue,” the president said.
“In the third phase, a permanent ceasefire would follow, facilitating the reconstruction of the enclave, including 60 percent of clinics, schools, universities and religious buildings damaged or destroyed by Israeli forces.”12
The Resistance leadership, while welcoming what Biden said, declare they want to see all the provisions spelled out – and quite rightly so – before they commit to the pacification plan. They also want to see that Netanyahu himself commits to it, which is far from what he’s currently saying.
They want to stop the genocidal murder of their people through bombing, starvation and destruction of medical care facilities. No doubt they also welcome the opportunity for a respite for their surviving veterans and for training new recruits, perhaps also stocking up on war materiel.
But what game are the USA and the Zionists playing? Could this just be electioneering for Biden? Is there a serious split in the Zionist war-cabinet? Or could it be a playing for time and divide-and-rule game by the US, the Zionists and allies?
A statement given by “a senior leader in the Palestine resistance” to Al-Akhbar and published in Resistance News Network suggests that the latter might be the imperialist game.13
The latest attempts will occur in the coming days, following an invitation issued in the name of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi through his intelligence chief Major General Abbas Kamel to senior leaders of the Popular Front and Islamic Jihad
to visit Cairo for consultations on the situation and the possibility of “creating a breakthrough which would lead to a deal the United States wants to happen now.”
The factions will visit Egypt, and there will be separate or joint meetings.
It is expected that a Hamas leadership delegation will also arrive in Egypt, where representatives from the United States and Qatar will be present, while the “israelis” will be sitting in a private hotel waiting for the results of the meetings.
However, it is clear and decided by the resistance factions that the message that will be conveyed to the Egyptians or any other party present will be much higher than the position announced by Hamas.14
However all this pans out, despite the huge toll of its genocidal campaign, the Zionist state gained nothing militarily, while it has lost hugely on the international political stage. Which means its primary sponsor, the US has lost influence too.
The world is not the same place it was up to the first week in October last year. Nor is it likely to be ever so again. Not just in the Middle East but also in the global South and even in the global West, especially in the latter for thousands of young people.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Spokesmen of a number of different Palestinian resistance organisations have made it clear that the negotiators of Hamas represent them in the talks and that they are kept informed.
2I use this term to describe what are normally called “hostages”, given that the hostages of the zionists are usually called “prisoners”.
3Quoted by Jon Elmer in last week’s Intifada Update. This is in a society with military censorship of the press and, as Jon Elmer remarked on an Electronic Intifada update, “10% is an error margin for zero.” Elmer also quoted the result of 40% who believed “Hamas” was winning.
4For a million people, according to a recent of the almost daily appeals from the Health Authority.
7Interview today on line (can’t recall which agency).
8The Palestine Liberation Organisation, dominated by Fatah, which has largely been sidelined in the Resistance struggle, in particular since October last year.
9And Islamic Jihad – and there are others. Secular organisations like the PFLP are in the minority. The latter have been in the Fatah-dominated PLO, which excluded Islamist resistance organisations and which has been seen as betraying Palestinian objectives and colluding with the zionist occupation while indulging in substantial corruption until the Palestinian electorate voted them out and Hamas in in 2006.
10Probably with gains too for any Resistance group standing and even less votes than before for Fatah, from which the PA leadership comes.
11In Gaza Fatah refused to accept the electoral verdict and to give up their control; in a short battle they were removed by Hamas which chose not to do the same in the West Bank, where civil war would have been much more intense. From the moment Gaza came under Hamas management it was blockaded physically by the zionist state with Egyptian and Lebanese regimes collusion and politically and financially with full backing of the US and the imperialist states of the EU and the UK (and again, collusion of the Palestinian Authority). The intention was to make life in Gaza so unbearable that it would be abandoned or otherwise ripe for ‘Israeli’ control.
13The context about attempts to split the Resistance: “They attempted to open communication channels with local leaders in Gaza but were met with the shocking response to go to Hamas. They then tried to open side channels with the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] and factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization that have military wings in the Strip, and they led an initiative they believed would be tempting to the leadership of [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad, only to hear the same response. Nevertheless, the enemy continues to try to break the unity behind Hamas.”
14I interpret that as meaning that the factions will exceed the demands of Hamas, forcing the negotiators to abandon their splitting plans and deal with the actual issue of a ceasefire deal and present the detailed written terms as presented by Biden (and previously agreed by the Resistance but refused by Netanyahu) with the ‘Israeli’ Government’s acceptance, which the Resistance will accept.
In the western world we observe the manifestation of solidarity with Palestine in giant marches and in college solidarity encampments and building occupations. But there are many other manifestations to be seen every week and on specific occasions.
These other smaller actions take place of special occasions or on a regular weekly, monthly or even daily basis. The Bridges of Solidarity event was organised as a specific one-off but others are organised weekly, for example in Dublin where one of them, by coincidence is also on a bridge.
These solidarity events are seen by passing people away from the routes of the big marches and locations of encampments and allow those people at minimums to express their approval and, for a few seconds at least, to be part of that solidarity expression.
This contributes to the popular public opinion. Smaller or special events sometimes also pull in people who might not normally participate in marches for a variety of reasons.
The Solidarity Bridges protest day was set for Friday 31st May and Palestine solidarity flags were waved and banners hung from bridges over motorways and rivers across the nation, disregarding the foreign-imposed border.
In Dublin, motorway and main road bridges, over river and stream showed the Palestinian colours and were greeted every few seconds by motor horns sounding in support.
One of the Bridges of Solidarity with Palestine events that took place across different parts of Ireland on 31 May 2024, this one on the Dublin Fairview pedestrian bridge across the road.
On the “RTÉ Bridge”1 the numbers were small with Palestinian flags and a drop banner bearing the message “RTÉ LIES”. However the horns of passing traffic blowing in approval sounded every ten seconds or so, sometimes individually and sometimes in a chorus, accompanied by thumbs up.
Irish and Arabic recorded resistance music sounded out from an amplifier. On the UCD Bridge, chanted slogans replaced recorded music with a couple of songs too, sung accapella; the numbers here were boosted with students from the ongoing solidarity encampment there.
A huge “Ireland Stands With Palestine” banner figuring the watermelon slice2 hung off the southern side of the bridge with flags and a text banner facing north.
According to media reports and its FB on 28th June, the IPSC called for those bridge protests but none of the Dublin ones were listed and today there were no photos of any such events on its FB page; however its website lists nineteen such protests for next Friday 7th June.
Every Thursday evening in Dublin a solidarity picket takes place from six to seven o’clock in four areas in prominent locations passed by much motorised traffic: Annesley Bridge Fairview/ East Wall (alternating between them weekly); Ballymun; Cabra and Donnycarney.
One of weekly Palestine solidarity picket every Thursday in four Dublin city areas – this one on Annesley Bridge, Fairview, 30 May 2024.
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Committee does not for some unexplained reason promote these events. In its weekly list of activities for participants around the country, it does not list the Thursday events.
The IPSC is long-established and the main organisation promoting Palestine solidarity across Ireland but this kind of censorship, for that is what it amounts to, is harmful to that solidarity. These initiatives are not even radical3 nor organised by people hostile to Palestinian solidarity in any way.
Bernadette McAlliskey joined the weekly protest on Annesley Bridge on 22nd May.
Of course in themselves these actions do not stop the genocide but nor do big marches, while the college encampments may force some limited divestments and academic boycotts. But all together form part of the political ambience of the country upon which yet other actions may be based.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1So called because of its proximity to the headquarters of Radio Teilifís Éireann, the national broadcasting service.
2The Palestinian Flag is forbidden in “Israel” and wherever else they exercise control in Palestine and, because the colours of the watermelon slice are those of their flag, the Palestinians have used it as a “legal” substitute (green and white in the rind, red in the flesh and black in the seeds). An interested 6th Year student cycling past asking the reason for the design had it explained to him and told participants, whom he thanked, that he’ll be taking Politics as a subject in university.
3 Not that there is anything wrong with radical protests and in fact they are needed but one might think that the IPSC was not supporting certain types of protest because it was concerned that they might be perceived as being too radical.
Responding to its latest genocidal atrocity which it claims was “a tragic error”,1 bombing a displaced person’s tent camp2, the zionist state offered some excuses for its general behaviour which are not only not acceptable but are not even true.
In fact the Israeli state does exactly the things of which it accuses its Palestinian resistance.
Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people declared “safe area” by the Israeli military in Rafah, Gaza Strip, May 27, 2024 (Photo cred: AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Let’s examine one of its claims in the statement: “Israel says it does its best to adhere to the laws of war and says it faces an enemy that makes no such commitment, embeds itself in civilian areas and refuses to release Israeli hostages unconditionally.”3
Every phrase about its own conduct is the opposite of what the zionist state does. Every accusation directed at the ‘other’ is what it does itself.
The Israeli state embeds its armed forces in civilian areas by a) requiring military service of nearly every Israeli male and female and b) by providing military backing to its settlers, including those in areas of what international bodies recognise as ‘illegal occupation’.
The Israeli regime and its armed forces ignore the international rules of war with regard to attacks on (Palestinian and Arab) civilians, journalists, medical and aid personnel4 and civilian cultural, administrative, infrastructural, educational and religious locations and buildings.
It is the zionist state that refuses to release their captives unconditionally (even re-detaining those they’ve agreed to release under prisoner exchange deals). At the time of writing the zionist state has detained 8,875 Palestinians since 8th October last year, including about 295 women, 630 children, 76 journalists (49 still in detention) and has issued 5,210 “administrative detention orders” (i.e internment without trial).5
On the other hand, the resistance forces target mostly the Israeli armed forces but also settlers. They allow military helicopters to land and remove IOF dead and wounded but do not fire on them, unlike the IOF who fire on paramedics, doctors and hospitals, killing many medical personnel.
Of course the Resistance is embedded amongst the people because it is of it, born of the population’s will to resist and also fights to protect it, insofar as it can. Were this not so the Resistance would long ago have been expelled by the people or exposed to the occupying forces.
However, the Resistance does not base itself in hospitals, in mosques or in refugee centres, which the Occupation’s military does not hesitate to bomb or invade.
Two Medical Staff Kuwait Hospital Rafah, South Gaza, Killed by Israeli Missile 27 May 2024 (Photo sourced: Resistance News Network)
Recently, Netanyahu, Biden, Sunak and some others, in responding to the International Criminal Court’s statement that it was going to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant,6 along with three Hammas officials, exclaimed in rage that there is no equivalence between the two groups.
They are absolutely correct.
The Palestinian resistance has not stolen land, does not target Israeli women and children, hospitals, schools and universities nor are its members afraid to fight its enemies on the ground without armour or air cover.
Bodies of two workers of the Kuwait Hospital in Rafah killed by missile strike on othe gate of the hospital today. (Sourced at: Resistance News Network)
The symbolic decision of the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian states to recognise a Palestinian state drew the ire of the same parties as with the ICC statement, the Israeli Foreign Minister accusing the Irish State’s leaders in a racist video of having rewarded Palestinian “terrorism” with statehood.
This is yet another example of the zionists accusing others of what they themselves have done.
The zionist settlers waged a war against the English occupiers and the indigenous Palestinian people from the 1920s to the 1940s through the terrorist groups of the Irgun, Lehi, Haganah and Palmach, going on in 1948 to kill and rape Palestinians, burning villages and expelling 700,000 people.7
The Zionists declared their state in 1948 and demanded recognition, granted by the USSR and the USA, thereby rewarding their terrorism with recognition of their state, which was followed by other states later.
One of the terrorist groups, the Haganah, became the core of the army of the zionist state.
1At first they tried to justify it by saying that Resistance militants were gathered there, then remembered it was an area they had claimed safe from bombing and so changed their story to one of “tragic error”, blaming the chaos of war. But these bombings are ordered and directed far from any battle-chaos and with satellite and drone imagery to consult. Which means the area could not be confused with some other and the bombing was deliberate.
2On Sunday, 26th May 2024 killing 45 Palestinians and wounding 250 (at the time of writing), having also bombed a number of UNRWA displaced person centres.
4As recently as today the Occupation killed two medical workers as they shelled the doorway to Kuwait Hospital in southern Rafah, Gaza. There is not a medical centre in Gaza which the Occupation has not partially damaged or completely destroyed.
5Source: Adameer, Palestinian prisoner support organisation.
6Prime Minister and Minister for ‘Defence’ (sic) of ‘Israel’, respectively.
A Zionist march and rally was organised for Dublin today as an “Israel solidarity” event by the Ireland Israel Alliance. Despite prior publicity and drawing from around the country the attendance numbered only a few hundred.
Around a hundred anti-zionists with flags, banners, amplifier and loudhailer occupied the announced destination of the Zionist rally an hour prior to the scheduled arrival of the IIA march and had to wait even longer as the Zionist groups arrived at Stephens Green.
One of the banners displayed by among the anti-zionists outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
During the week the IIA issued a statement in line with the Israeli state’s Foreign Minister that “Ireland rewards Palestinian terrorism with a State”1 in response to the announcement by the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian states that they intended to formally recognise the Palestinian state.
Palestinian solidarity supporters in Dublin organised at short notice a counter-rally. “It’s a bit rich for Zionists who set up their settler state with terrorism”, said one in Dublin today, “claiming that Palestinian statehood rewards Palestinian ‘terrorism’!”2
One of the banners displayed by among the anti-zionists outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Although Palestinian Christians are suppressed and killed by Israeli armed forces, the IIA were supported by right-wing Christian Zionists, among them the All Nations Church, the Irish branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and the TJCII.
According to advance releases to the press, the newly inaugurated Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Yoni Wieder was to speak at the zionist rally.3
Some Gardaí in Molesworth Street, stacked crowd barriers not yet erected at that point and contractor staff awaiting instructions. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The anti-zionists organised their event at a day or two’s notice and according to some sources the IPSC4 had called on its branches not to counter protest the Zionist event but around a hundred Palestinian supporters attended, mainly Irish but also with Palestinians and a sprinkling of others.
In their prior publicity the Zionists trotted out their usual claims that Palestinian solidarity is based on anti-Semitism and that Jews are being victimised,5 ignoring the fact that zionism does not equal judaism and that in fact a substantial number of Jews have opposed zionism.6
The population of Ireland went from being largely supportive of ‘Israel’ in 1948 to being mostly pro-Palestinian from the 1970s onwards because of their observation of the genocidal and ethnic cleansing actions of the Israeli state.
Placard displayed among the Palestine supporters (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
There was a fairly high Garda presence at the events and after some delay crowd barriers were erected across the east end of Molesworth Street with a second line of barriers a little further west beyond which the Zionists were setting up a stage.
The anti-Zionists in front of Leinster House awaited the arrival of the pro-Israel march which when it got going could be seen passing the Stephens Green end of Kildare Street, eventually coming down Dawson Street and turning into Molesworth Street.
View in distance of the zionist rally location before the arrival of their march from Stephens Green (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
As they arrived the Palestinian solidarity people attempted to move across the road but the Gardaí pushed back, individual Gardaí at times viciously shoving and being resisted; here and there an arrest seemed threatened but was evaded by solidarity action around the targeted person.
With the Palestinian supporters pushed to a couple of feet in front of the pedestrian pavement of Leinster House, the Gardaí stopped and by then two vans of the Public Order Unit had arrived and were deployed but some time later stood down, got in their vans and were driven off.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)View northward in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)View southward in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)The arrival of a Garda prisoner transport van in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday raised tensions among some of the anti-zionist demonstrators (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
There could have been some confused impulses among the Gardaí given the public symbolic positions of the Government in recognition of the Palestinian state and the sharp and public diplomatic language flying between the Irish and Israeli states.
Two Garda vans were parked in front of the entrance to Molesworth St, partially blocking the views of the zionists and their opponents. The latter however stood with banners and flags on top of barriers and an amplifier was also strapped to a pole to better carry the message to the Zionists.
Palestinian supporters attaching an amplifier speaker to a pole outside Leinster House, directed at the Zionist rally in Molesworth Street (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Despite the IIA having recommended its supporters to bring Israeli and Irish flags, only one Tricolour could be seen among their blue-and-white Israeli flags. One placard depicted the whole of Ireland covered with a menora, the traditional Jewish multi-candlestick.
Some of the Zionists’ placards repeated the debunked accusations of programmed mass rapes by the Palestinian resistance on October 7th last year, for which no evidence whatsoever or known victim exists despite Israeli state propaganda parroted by some of its western media supporters.
Zionist marchers arrive at their rally point in Molesworth Street, with two sets of barriers placed between them and the Palestine supporters (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Among the Palestinian supporters the Palestine national flag was very much in evidence, also a couple of the PFLP7 and one in the colours of the anti-fascist Popular Front Government of 1930s Spain bearing the words “Connolly Column”, honouring the Irish who fought fascism there.
Here too there was only one Tricolour to be seen.
Flag of the PFLP seen against the trees (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
There were intermittent rain showers during the events, often persistent and somewhat heavy, streams running northwards along the road and pavement edge down Kildare Street but the demonstrators remained without shelter, many also without specific rain gear or umbrellas.
Women (mostly) speaking through amplification led the slogans that have become common on Palestine solidarity demonstrations in English, Irish and Arabic but with a few additions, including “Zionist scum – Off our streets!” Also “West-Brit Blueshirt scum – Off our streets!”
View of the rain’s ‘river’ running down between the Leinster House pedestrian pavement and the road. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)View of small section of Palestinian supporters’ line with police line in front and the rainwater swirling around their feet. The Zionist rally is taking place behind the police line and beyond two lines of metal crowd barriers. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
At intervals Arabic resistance music was played and sections of the Palestine solidarity crowd began to sway or even dance, including one young woman from Gaza who seemed accomplished in traditional dance. Irish patriotic songs were played for a period also.
Among the Palestinian supporters the Zionist chants or speakers could not be heard, nor can one know how much of the Palestinian solidarity chants could be heard by the Zionists. Eventually the Zionists left to jeers from their opposition, a Garda helicopter watching over them in the sky.
The Gardaí left and the Palestinian supporters did too, mostly leaving together in a group.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
AFTERMATH – FIGHT IN PARNELL/ O’CONNELL STREET
That was not all however for perhaps an hour later a fight developed between what seemed to be a far-Right man against a group of Palestinian supporters in Parnell Street. According to some people, the man had approached them aggressively about their Palestine solidarity activism.
Disliking their response, he punched one of the Palestine solidarity demonstrators in the face and when the women in the group protested, struck a couple of them too. Another male in the group then launched at the Far-Right man and gave him a bloody face.
When observed by this reporter, the man was covered in tattoos, stripped to the waist and shouting about being “for the Irish” (which for some reason the Far-Right assume Palestinian supporters are not — though many have a far better track record in that respect than do Far-Right activists).
In Palestine that same day the zionist air force bombed a tent town of displaced people in northwest Gaza, which they had declared a safe area, murdering over 30 and injuring many more, some of whom will die. They also bombed 10 UNRWA displacement centres.
2The zionists had a number of terrorist organisation pushing the formation of the Israel State: Haganah, Irgun, Palmach … Haganah became the core of the Israeli armed forces.
Resistance to colonialism and imperialism takes many forms but there are those who try to downgrade, deny or even condemn its armed aspect and this has been happening recently in the case of the Palestinian struggle.
Historically, resistance has taken the form of strikes, sabotage, protest pickets, marches, rallies, placards, hunger strikes, songs, poetry, visual arts, arson, petitions, articles, books, leaflets, speeches, graffiti, clothing, language promotion, riots … and armed action up to and including revolution.
All have proved useful and the question of whether the prevailing circumstance favour some more than others is a tactical one, never one of principle. Those who seek to forbid some tactics to the movement in all circumstances are they who cannot be trusted in leadership of the struggle.
The facet of resistance that temporisers and outright opponents of the resistance movement most often seek to outlaw and remove from the struggle is the armed one, presumably because it is one of the least amenable to sidetracking into cosmetic reform.
Ruling classes of states regularly outlaw armed resistance activity including the organisations that espouse that, usually dubbing them “terrorists”, while of course ensuring they themselves have military forces which, even when aggressive invaders, they dub “defence forces”.
Indeed, those elites usually arm even their civil security forces, i.e their police. But arms and their use in the hands of working people or the invaded populations? No, that would be terrorism!
Joint press conference with representatives of different resistance organisations. (Photo sourced: Internet)
THREE-PRONGED ATTACK ON ARMED RESISTANCE
Recently a three-pronged ideological and propaganda attack was carried out on the Palestinian armed resistance from sources that are seen by some as friends of the Palestinian people: The Palestine BDS National Committee, the President of the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League.
The National Committee made their attack through a document advising on tactics and principles in presentation of BDS demands, in particular of the student campus encampments or occupations, advising activists that upholding the armed resistance was not advisable.1
Around the same time, the Arab League was having its summit meeting and, though not stupid enough to advocate giving up the armed struggle, long upheld by the Palestinian people, recommended the resistance to place themselves under the leadership of the PLO2 and the PA.
The PLO is controlled by the leadership of Fatah; their nominee, President of the PA Mahmoud Abbas, who was also at the Arab League summit, accused the October 7th attack by the Palestinian resistance of providing the Israelis the excuse for their genocidal war on Palestine.
In October 2023, during the genocidal war by “Israel”, Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State and envoy to the Middle East, shakes hands with Mahmoud Abbas, “President” of the Palestinian Authority, who remains in office despite his term having concluded in 2009. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Arab League is composed of the current 22 Arab states, i.e those for which the dominant language is Arabic.3 But the elites of the majority of those states are clients of imperialism, chiefly of the United States. In the case of Yemen, it is the overthrown ‘government’ that is a member.4
Apart from their weakness against imperialism, one must wonder at their impertinence in telling the Palestinian armed resistance, which they do not at all assist, who should be their leadership5 and that the “two-state solution” (sic) is the only option available and recommended.6
The leadership of Fatah under Arafat betrayed the struggle for an independent Palestine and the right of return of the millions of Palestinian refugees when they agreed to the Oslo Accords in 1993/’95, for which they received limited autonomy through a “Palestine Authority”.
The corruption of Fatah in the PA and their betrayal of fundamental objectives of the Palestinian struggle led to their ousting in the elections of 2006, which were won instead by Hamas, who then had to fight Fatah who were refusing to hand over administration in Gaza.
Fatah refused to recognise the electorally-expressed wish of the people in the West Bank too but Hamas chose not to enter into a civil war with them there. From that point onwards, Gaza was besieged by the zionist authorities and periodically bombarded.
Meanwhile the PA continued in their corruption, Abbas continued to be unelected President, occupying the office and sharing the funds coming in among his clique but using their security force primarily to control and repress the Palestinians of the West Bank.
During this week alone, Resistance News Network reported that the PA’s forces dismantled explosives prepared by the resistance in the home of Tamer Fugaha which was planned for demolition by the Israeli occupation forces, where the explosives would target them.
The zionist forces regularly demolish the homes of Palestinian fighters and Tamer Fugaha was killed, along with another four Palestinian comrades, in an epic 15-hour battle with the IOF early this month in Tulkarem.
The PA has Palestinian political prisoners and also identifies these for the IOF to arrest later. Naturally (as even admitted by western mass media) the PA is hated by Palestinians, yet the Arab League wants the armed resistance to place themselves under its rule!
The armed resistance movement, which is composed of a number of distinct organisations7 fighting in unity, has of course rejected any such move and instead continued its calls for the support of the Arab people and to break the zionist blockade at the Rafah gate of desperately-needed aid convoys.
Palestinian fighters from different resistance organisations. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Palestine BDS National Committee headquarters is also, like that of the PA, in Ramallah (West Bank). A recent statement of theirs also advised organisations working for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions with regard to the Israeli State to drop mention of armed resistance.
Furthermore, they did so in the name of a host of organisations that sponsor Palestine BDS but the Boycott and Anti-Normalization Campaign, condemning the advice given,8 established that those organisations had not been consulted at all and if they had, would not have given approval.
The BANC criticised the offending committee not only for the original statement but also for acting as though they commanded the BDS movement.9 The statement in question was quickly withdrawn and replaced with another with the offending section on armed struggle removed.
Among the Palestinian groups that criticised the statement was the PFLP’s Haitham Abdo, head of the organisation in Lebanon, at the Popular Women’s Committees festival in Beirut on the occasion of Nakba Day, celebrating also the memory of a group of women fighters:
“Holding the resistance responsible for what happened after October 7 serves the zionist narrative and harms our people’s struggle and national fight. This statement is rejected, regardless of who says it.”10
In Yemen, the weekly “million-men march”11 sent a solidarity message to the Palestinians12 but also rebuked the participants in the Arab League summit with a non-too subtle hint as to where lie their allegiances:
“to the rulers of the Arab regimes meeting in Manama, near the embassy of the enemy entity: We regret to inform you that the enemy has committed more than 3,000 massacres to date, and even one massacre should have stirred your consciences.”13
Scene from Palestine solidarity demonstration in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo sourced: Internet)
OPPOSITION TO ARMED RESISTANCE IN IRELAND
The dislike of or even hostility to promoting the armed Palestinian resistance can be seen in Ireland. A Garda confiscated a demonstrator’s a flag of one of the resistance groups, the secular Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine, while another was asked by IPSC stewards not to fly it.
In one of the student encampments, the PFLP flag was taken down too. The PFLP is a secular resistance organisation while others are Islamist but all are fighting in unity.
In some cases this opposition could be seen as a reluctance to have the solidarity movement associated with one specific liberation organisation which would be understandable but then a compromise would allow the flags of all groups — or one non-specific one of armed resistance.
To restrict the solidarity movement to the Palestinian national flag only is the imposition of an undemocratic “unity” and removes one of the most salient features of the Palestinian resistance – its armed aspect, fighting now amid the ruins and alleys of Gaza and in the West Bank.
Every week RNN posts photos of fighter martyrs of different resistance organisations, killed as they fought tanks, IOF bulldozers and, more rarely, IOF troops on the ground. The fighters too have been killed by aerial bombardment as of course there is no Palestinian air force or air defences.
Yet every week RNN also lists IOF tanks, bulldozers, troop carriers and IOF ground troops hit by the resistance at close quarters or at remove by mortars and rockets. The IOF dead and wounded are evacuated by helicopters which – unlike Palestinian ambulances – are never fired on.
The western mass media is not reporting these engagements and Al Jazeera reports only some of them.14
Our internationalist duty to support the Palestinians means also supporting their right to resist and that means in effect to support the armed resistance, whether we elevate one organisation or more, or just the broad principle of the right to armed resistance.
An Israeli tank hit by Palestinian fire. (Photo sourced: Internet)
THE IRISH EXPERIENCE
In the struggle for Irish liberation we have used – in different combinations – all the forms of resistance listed in the second paragraph at the beginning of this article ; indeed one of those forms during the Land War gave the word “boycott’ to the world!15
But the armed aspect has been a part of that struggle from the time of the clans right down through eight hundred centuries, against even internal opposition. In July 1846, John O’Connell’s proposal to have the Union Repeal Association renounce the use of armed force split the organisation.16
At the meeting, Thomas Meagher, said that “There are times when arms will alone suffice, and when political ameliorations call for a drop of blood, and many thousand drops of blood. Opinion, I admit, will operate against opinion. But … force must be used against force.
“The soldier is proof against an argument, but he is not proof against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason, let him be reasoned with; but it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone avail against battalioned despotism.”17
LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE – IN ALL ITS FORMS!
End.
Palestinian youth respond to an Israeli raid on Beita in the West Bank Aug 2023 (Photo cred: Nidal Esthayeh/ Xinhua)
FOOTNOTES
1 We reiterate our firm position and call for a just and comprehensive peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue, and we support the call of His Excellency President Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, to convene an international peace conference and to take irreversible steps to implement the two-state solution in accordance with the Arab Peace Initiative and resolutions of international legitimacy to establish an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the lines of 4 June 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital, and to accept its membership in the United Nations as an independent and fully sovereign state in common with other countries in the world, and to ensure the restoration of all legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, in particular, the right to return and self-determination, empowerment and support.
2At its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 28 May 1964. After concluding the meeting, the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its stated “complementary goals” were Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine. (Wikipedia) Under Fatah domination it banned Islamist groups from membership.
3 Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordon, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
4 Rather than those in power, the Ansar Allah (“Houthis”) government, preferred by the vast majority of Yemenis to the western-recognised exiled government.
5We call on all Palestinian factions to join together under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and to agree on a comprehensive national project and a unified strategic vision to focus efforts towards achieving the aspirations of the Palestinian people to achieve their legitimate rights and establish their independent national State on their national soil, on the basis of the two state solution, and in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy and established references.
6 The 2-state option, supported by the imperialist powers, is of a much smaller Palestine state alongside an Israeli state at least the size of its current dimensions. However even this has arguably been made impossible by the spread of Israeli settlements and is rejected by most Palestinians and many Israelis. The 1-state option envisages the whole of historic Palestine under a democratic regime.
7 Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (QQB) – Hamas; Al-Quds Brigades (AQB) – Islamic Jihad; Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (PFLP) – People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine; National Resistance Brigades (DFLB) – Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – Fatah (not under Fatah political control); Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades (PRC) – Popular Resistance Committees; Lion’s Den; Mujahideen Brigades.
8The Boycott Campaign – Palestine condemns the statement issued by the Boycott National Committee, in Ramallah, which asserts the danger of supporting the Palestinian resistance on their work and the necessity to distance themselves from any positions that support the resistance, especially armed resistance.
This disgraceful stance comes at a time when the zionist enemy is committing the crime of genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip for over seven months, resulting in the killing and injury of more than 120,000 innocent Palestinians and the destruction of 70% of Gaza’s buildings.
Such dangerous statements provide cover and legitimacy for the enemy to continue its aggression.
What is more dangerous is that the BNC claims it issued the statement in consultation with a large number of national entities and organizations.
However, through our communications with several entities mentioned in the statement, it is certain that they were not presented with this statement nor consulted about it, and they would certainly refuse to sign such statements that promote non-national positions.
All struggles for freedom around the world have seen various forms of struggle side by side, with armed resistance at their core. Therefore, our Palestinian struggle strategy should reinforce different forms towards the major goal of dismantling this zionist project on our land.
Accordingly, we call on the BNC to revise its position and align with the authentic national stance that glorifies resistance in all its forms.
We also urge it to stop this approach that attempts to monopolize the legitimacy of international work for Palestine and issue top-down orders to everyone. Palestine is greater than all, and the global revolution today to support our people is greater than something that can be monopolized by anyone.
Boycott Committee — Palestine / Boycott and Anti-Normalization Campaign
11 For the 31st week, the Yemeni people turned out in massive crowds across various cities in Yemen in support of Gaza under the slogan: “With Gaza: Holy Jihad and No Red Lines.” A million-man flood took place in the capital Sana’a, a massive rally occurred in the city of Ibb, and marches were reported across 23 locations in Rima, among other cities. (RNN)
12 “The statement at the weekly turn out reiterated the legendary steadfastness of the fighting Palestinian people and the perseverance of its fighters in this critical phase. The people assured the American and British enemies that they will not be deterred from maintaining a steadfast stance.” (RNN)
14Electronic Intifada updates reports a number with analysis and RNN posts the reports of the groups themselves.
15 The word comes from the National Land League successful campaign of withdrawal of labour along with isolation of services (or even social contact) with Captain Charles Boycott, the agent of an absentee settler landlord who was planning to evict some tenants in 1886. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott Boycott is a non-violent tactic but the fact of the use of violence during the Land War by the Occupation and in response by the peasantry is often overlooked. The Fenians supported the campaign and landlord’s agents were shot at, police and bailiffs stoned and scab labour attacked.
16 The Repeal organisation’s leadership became dominated by the rising Catholic Irish bourgeoisie of which John and his father Daniel were leading members. The “split” became known as the Young Irelanders and contributed nationalist culture and journalism, in particular through The Nation newspaper and some long-lasting songs such as A Nation Once Again. The Irish Tricolour was first presented to Meagher by French women during the revolution in Paris in 1848; the Young Irelanders also staged an ill-fated uprising that same year.
University students in the USA protesting, setting up encampments, occupying university buildings; threats from administrators; police invasions, assaults on students, resistance, arrests …
Step forward, Youth and shake the towers
Those ivory towers stand on sweat and blood
Make those lies fall in showers —
Become the earthquake and the rushing flood.
Step forward youth
For solidarity and truth!
Academic freedom and investigation
and principles too of democracy
Have taken now academic vacation
Revealing true base in hypocrisy.
Step forward youth
For solidarity and truth!
Look down below your feet
Reach out to workplace and street
Stretch out solidarity’s hand
to the struggling in another land.
Step forward youth
For solidarity and truth!
only thus can you also be
in a better world, at peace and free.
(Dublin, May 2023)
It seems as though we’ve been here before, a sense of dejá vu … Ah, yes! During the Vietnam War (1955-1975). University students in the US were in conflict with the authorities about lifestyle, content and style of the curriculum, racism, sexism, sexuality and .. yes, the US’s war in Indochina.
Students lost their study and work plans, got hit by truncheons, were sickened by teargas and some were shot dead, as in Kent State University, Ohio by the National Guard and in Jackson, Mississippi 11 days later.1
Which is why the suggestion of House Speaker Mike Johnson to send that same body in against the students last week was a vicious act of intimidation.
In the 1960s Trinity College Dublin, the academic bastion of the British-unionist Ascendancy, was a hotbed of protest and even revolutionary organisation along many fronts – including gay rights, contraception rights, Irish socialism and national liberation.2
The Ulster University in Belfast, in the British Six-County colony saw protests for Catholic civil equality, a struggle that faced armed repression and developed into a responding armed struggle of three decades.
In the USA those years coincided too with marches for black civil rights and also the rise of militant revolutionary groups such as the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, Weathermen, SLA and later the American Indian Movement.
Women’s liberation and Gay & Lesbian liberation movements3 also moved more to the fore.
The responses of the US State to many of those movements were even more vicious than they had been against the students, with trials, jailings,4 shootings5 and downright unofficial executions.6 As the campus protests now draw in wider communities, are we heading for something similar?
In the USA, the authorities seem terrified of that conjunction — or how else can we understand the violence of their reaction which has even horrified some university senates?
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEN AND NOW
When the students in the USA fought the institutional authorities, it was partly in solidarity with the people of Vietnam (and later of Laos and Cambodia). Yes, but many also feared being sent to the Vietnamese War meat grinder and being airlifted home from there in body bags.
The draft had been introduced in 19647 and though middle-class students had a better chance of avoiding conscription, they were far from immune.8 Being an officer might make one safer from the enemy than being a grunt but not from the grunts themselves as “fragging” incidents soared.9
The students now protesting in US Universities are doing so in solidarity with Palestinians, in horror at their state’s support of Israeli genocide. They may have other issues with their universities’ management and society at large but in general we can rule out the motive of self-preservation.
Encampment Palestine solidarity Vera Cruz University California Thursday (Photo cred: Aric Sleeper Santa Cruz Sentinel)
The drug culture was very much seen as part of the protest movement back then, though opposed by some such as Panthers and viewed with suspicion by other revolutionaries. Pacifist trends were strong and Timothy Leary’s “turn on, tune in and drop out” mantra attracted many.
Much of the revolutionary potential of the movement was lost under that influence, nowhere near as powerful now and revolutionaries who know their history will be aware that such arch-opponents of the system as Leary became an FBI informant to get out of jail.10
Many may argue as to degree but the power of patriarchy and oppression of LBG sexuality, though certainly present, are nowhere near as strong today in the “western world” as they were in the 1960s.
The power of the Catholic Church hierarchy in Irish society has been greatly weakened by struggles, Church scandals and society’s evolution. Discrimination against Catholics in the Six Counties is also less than it was in the previous era.
The armed struggle is not currently being waged.
However, Ireland remains divided between a 26-County neo-colony and a Six-County colonial statelet. The economies are hugely penetrated by foreign multinationals, the health services tottering and a huge housing crisis due to turning housing over to big landlords and property speculators.
The main parties of the ruling classes have been exposed to such degree that they no longer act in the charade of opposition: Sinn Féin and the DUP share political administration of the British colony while Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil share it for the neo-colony, prepared to admit SF there too.
Fascists gather some of the disenchanted, marginalised and disinherited to try to mould them into a fascist movement against migrants and refugees, against LGBT rights, against socialism. The State facilitates that development while it grows more repressive in both the administrations.
The ruling class will be aware of the potential of a rise in student protest coinciding with a feeling of Palestine solidarity and frustration at Irish state complicity very widely spread throughout Ireland. But then the Irish state is not imperialist, it’s just complicit in imperialism.
UNIVERSITY PROTESTS NOW
Students in universities across the USA have staged occupations or built encampments in explicit solidarity with Palestine against their own government and against the collusion of their academic institutions with zionist genocide of Palestinians and the destruction of every university in Gaza.
The response of the academic authorities has been denunciation, threat, eviction and false characterisation of the high motives of the students as “anti-semitism”.11
Municipal, county and state police forces have responded violently to peaceful protest, including bodily assault, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests. The Government has drafted a change of the legal meaning of anti-semitism to include opposition to the Israeli zionist State.12
Rutgers students tents 29 April 2024 (Photo cred: Sophie Nieto-Munoz/ New Jersey Monitor)
The violence of the authorities has not been confined to the protesting youth but has been extended to staff who stood with them. During the week Dr. Steve Tamari, professor at the University of Southern Illinois got nine ribs fractured by cops – for filming what was going on.
Chair of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth University, New Hampshire, Annelise Orleck (senior citizen) was violently arrested and banned from campus for six months.
In some cases not only have the protesters resisted valiantly but actually drove the cops into retreat and in Portland, Oregon, police cars were set alight. Also a fascist who drove at protestors and pepper-sprayed them was, according to reports, identified and his car destroyed.
On the other hand, Zionists (and suspected fascists) have mobilised against the students in many universities, with the tired old propaganda of “anti-semitism” and in one case attacked an encampment with sticks and fireworks, also playing a “crying child” Israeli drone recording.13
Irish Republicans and other anti-fascists will not be surprised to learn that a) the police disappeared shortly before the violent attack and b) none of the attackers were arrested when the cops returned.
More than 2,100 people have been arrested at US campuses since April 1814 and students have been barred from their own campuses which, for many, means also their own accommodation.
Police Attack Palestine solidarity UCLA campus Thursday 2 May 2024 LA (Photo cred: Ethan Swope/ AP)
The university protests have spread beyond the USA and have broken out in Canada (McGill), Australia (Brisbane and Sydney) and even Humbold in Germany, main Israel arms supplying country after the US, where state repression of Palestine solidarity has been particularly heavy.15
In France, where there has also been much repression of Palestinian solidarity activity, there have been occupations at the Sorbonne and Sciences Po in Paris) and in England, Newcastle and London, while an encampment was set up in Edinburgh in front of the Scottish Parliament.16
“SHAMEFUL SILENCE”
In Ireland, the universities have been relatively quiet until now but the Trinity College Dublin administration fined their Students Union €214k for a one-day Palestine solidarity picket outside the building housing the Book of Kells exhibition, citing loss of visitor revenue in justification.
“The People’s University” banner hanging from windows in Trinity College Saturday (Photo: D.Breatnach)
But repression leads to resistance; now there is a Palestine solidarity encampment on the green in front of the Kells exhibition. People are mobilising to support the student resistance in Trinity and today saw a march there from the Spire with the administration locking the gates shut.
“We plan on staying here indefinitely, our message is there is no ‘business as usual’ during a genocide,” outgoing students’ union president Laszlo Molnarfi said.17
(Photo: Social Rights Ireland)
“When our academic institution, Trinity College Dublin, has ties to Israeli companies, entities and universities that are complicit in the war industry, we must speak up. That is why we are doing this.
“And we must speak up in this disruptive, powerful way. Because when we tried to engage with the authorities, with petitions and letters and meetings, we were met with shameful silence.”18
Inside Trinity College grounds Friday night/ Saturday morning (Photo: Social Rights Ireland)
In the wider ‘global South’, Palestine solidarity protests have been seen in India at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi against a visit from the US Ambassador to the country, Eric Garcett, which had to be cancelled.
More dangerous by far to the US ruling class and Israeli-colluding King of Lebanon, so geographically close to Palestine and with a strong Hizbollah guerrilla presence, are the student demonstrations at the university of Beirut.
Students at American University in Cairo (AUC) Demonstrating Monday in Solidarity Palestinians (Photo source: X Twitter)
Whether overall these actions of students, who comprise a large and influential section of youth, will significantly deepen, widen and energise the growing Palestine solidarity movement, and simultaneously the wider anti-imperialist movement, remains to be seen.
End.
“Victory to the Palestinian Resistance” banner on Trinity College railings Saturday (Photo: D.Breatnach)
FOOTNOTES
14th May 1970, killed by the Ohio Kent National Guard during a protest against the Vietnam War. The Jackson killings occurred 11 days later on Friday, May 15, 1970, at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 14, 1970, city and state police confronted a group of students outside a campus dormitory. Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve.
2Ironically, precisely because it was free of the major socially controlling agency in Ireland at the time, the Catholic Church hierarchy.
3See the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in the US against homophobic police harassment.
4Including many frame-ups, some of which were only exposed decades later. Leonard Peltier was jailed on dubious evidence in 1977 which had already collapsed against a co-accused but is still in jail, 79 years of age with diabetes and other health problems.
11Thereby also devaluing the meaning of that particular form of racism which was a basic ideological aspect of Nazism and Fascism and continues to be a strong trend in European fascism today.
13One of the latest horrors from the Israeli Zionist cabinet, killer drones playing sounds of a crying baby or a woman needing help in order to bring would-be helpers out where they can then be shot dead, being played in this case mockingly.
There is no doubt that the ghost of Joseph McCarthy wanders the earth through many a hallowed university hall, newspaper editorial room, police headquarters around the world and of course the cabinets of many western governments.
Censorship when it raises its ugly head, does so in a similar fashion to its past incarnations, though with new twists and turns that perhaps take us by surprise.
However, it should come as no surprise to see that voices on Palestine are being shut down, though the recent German police assault on an international conference in Berlin was a major escalation in government attempts to criminalise those critical of the genocidal regime that holds sway in Tel Aviv and the white supremacist philosophy that is Zionism.(1)
Various issues are thrown into the mix.
Palestine and Palestinian demands are presented as hate speech by governments and right-wing media, but so too is any defence of women’s spaces, though in this latter case the right-wing governments find some support from sectors of the Left.
These think that when they argue for censorship and the suppression of freedom of speech that somehow it will never be applied to them.
The German police stormed the three-day event as the first speaker was addressing it.
They claimed they did so to prevent antisemitic statements being made i.e. not only are we in McCarthyite land of criminalising certain ideas by labelling them as antisemitic but we are in the land of Minority Report(2) where thought crimes can be punished in advance, before they have been committed.
This is not that far removed at all from the Irish Hate Speech Bill that some on the Left have given support to, as the Police may inspect computers and phones and you may be charged with possession of material that may be used to commit hate speech.
It was laughable and ironic that one of the photos of the police intervention of the Berlin event was the arrest of a young Jewish man, wearing a kippa, who was there in solidarity with Palestinians. Following the event a number of Jews were charged with antisemitism.
Not only that but some of the speakers were banned from entering the country, amongst them Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah who was an eyewitness to what was happening in Gaza and is also the Rector of the University of Glasgow.
The former Greek politician Yanis Varoufakis was also banned from entering Germany and both were warned that they could not participate even by Zoom from another jurisdiction, an unlawful extension of German jurisdiction and a suspension of the free movement of European citizens within the EU.
This is part of a wider criminalisation of protest and the criminalisation of thought.
Though some on the Left in Ireland such as People Before Profit T.Ds like Paul Murphy who support hate speech legislation believed in the benevolence of capitalist leaders when restricting commentary on women’s rights would never be extended to them, it has and for obvious reasons.
Most right-wing governments, particularly those that claim some liberal kudos on certain social issues have taken advantage of the defeat of workers, critical thinking and any opposition at all to capitalism to advance right-wing hate speech legislation and restrictions on academic freedom.
This includes the dismissal of staff, limitations on the right to voice opinions that go against government policy and in the process have garnered the support of many liberal currents and of course major NGOs who depend on government largesse to finance themselves.
The German event is not an isolated incident. Over the years various lecturers in the US have been suspended or not had their contracts renewed for speaking out about Palestine.
Zionists were the original cancel culture specialists who managed to turn spoilt students whining into action, getting staff sacked and silencing other students.
Recently, a professor of 30 years standing at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the US was suspended over a contribution made to a blog.
In their suspension of the employee the president stated that “I find her comments repugnant, condemn them unequivocally, and want to make clear that these are her personal views and not those of our institution.”(3)
It was liberals, the wokerati and even some Marxists who pushed for employers to take action against employees for their personal views and activities outside of the workplace and now it has come back to bite some of them, though not all, as many liberals and wokerati in the US are Zionists.
Some of those who had been targeted were vile racists who shouted “Jews will not replace us” as they marched with torches. But you fight Fascism, you don’t give employers control over employees’ lives, ever.
As Trotsky once quipped, if you can’t convince a Fascist, acquaint their head with the pavement. He didn’t say give your boss and the state more control over you and beseech them to act in your interests.
A few days prior to that, Columbia University had suspended six students for allegedly participating in a panel discussion on Palestine.(4)
And in a further sign that jackboots are once again goose-stepping through Germany, the University of Cologne rescinded a job offer to Nancy Fraser, a Jewish American professor of philosophy, over her condemnation of killings in Gaza.(5)
They will not stop at that and it is not limited to issues such as genocide, but even local domestic politics.
In April 2023, a French journalist Ernest Moret was arrested by British anti-terrorist police due to his involvement in protests in France against the Macron government’s pension proposals.
He refused to give the police access to pass codes for his electronic devices and was charged with obstruction.(6)
There are other precedents for this, one of them being the arrest of David Miranda, Glen Greenwald’s now deceased partner, in Britain when returning from a meeting with another journalist who had also worked on the files released by Edward Snowden.(7)
The courts later upheld his detention to be lawful. Police held him and demanded access to his electronic devices.
Then there is the jailing and punishing of Julian Assange. The charges against Assange were dressed up in various disguises.
The first of them was the now discredited rape charges in Sweden which were dropped and also espionage charges when the real reason for jailing Assange is that he, as a journalist, exposed US war crimes in Iraq.
The message is clear, censorship is the order of the day as is the hounding of journalists who hold unpopular views and expose the crimes of the state. Assange did not receive the support he should have, due to the trumped-up rape charges, with many on the Left, like cowards running for cover.
Even today, when the rape charges have been exposed for the lies they were and have been dropped there are those who refuse to speak out on his behalf for this very reason.
There is no world in which right wing governments suppress freedom of speech, academic freedom, freedom of assembly and criminalise broad opinions that they label as hate speech and don’t target the Left. It has never happened and never will.
When they stood aside on Assange, they prepared the way for the assault on the Berlin Conference. When they harassed and tried to silence women defending women’s spaces they prepared the ground for the assault.
When they advocated and supported right-wing governments’ attempts at introducing hate speech legislation they paved the way for the criminalisation of solidarity with Palestine.
When the Hate Speech Bill comes back before the Irish parliament, they should take note and do the correct thing and oppose it, unequivocally.
Leftists who advocated employers taking control of employees lives and opinions, those that demanded that JK Rowling and others like her be hounded from the public sphere and that what they termed hate speech, in reality thought crimes, should be punished in law have aided and abetted right-wing governments in getting us to where we are now, which is that it is now very easy to criminalise pro-Palestinian voices.
All you have to say is “Hate Speech!” Meanwhile Rushi Sunak in Britain is pushing ahead with a very broad and loose definition of extremism which will see almost everyone who does not support Sunak or Starmer in the dock.
(2) Minority Report is a Tom Cruise film in which three mutants can see the future and predict who will commit crimes and they are arrested, charged and sentenced in advance before the crime is committed. In the film the system unravels.
A huge Palestine solidarity march proceeded from the north Dublin city centre on Saturday 20th, passing down O’Connell Street, over the Bridge, around by Trinity College and on towards Leinster House, the parliament of the Irish State.
Detained by an earlier activity I hurried to join it, catching up with it near the Larkin Monument. From there I could see sections of the march across the river and another section wending around Trinity College in the distance, its leaders out of sight.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
“Over a thousand”, reported our “newspaper of record”, the Irish Times. In other words, less than 2,000. Really?!
The march was organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity organisation, the main Irish nationwide Palestine solidarity organisation, sponsored by a multitude of organisations and was supported in marching by many organisations and individuals, the latter being the capacity or most participants.
The usual slogans could be heard as I hurried past marchers, such as “Free, Free – Palestine” and including the one that Suella Braverman tried to ban when she was a Minister in the UK Government: “From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free!”
I paused by the Thomas Moore monument waiting to meet up with friends in order to march with them. One group passed calling out that what is occurring in Palestine is “Not a conflict, not a war”. I understand them to mean it is genocide instead but I can’t agree with them.
It IS a conflict, the old one of the European colonial settler against the indigenous people, fought for centuries on all the continents of the world except in Antartica. And the zionist State IS waging a war, a genocidal war against the Palestinian people.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Another group went by with a chant leader calling out a list of categories of victims of the zionist genocide such as medical workers, journalists, ambulance crews, refugees etc, to which the group replied “Not a target”. Perhaps they meant “not a legitimate target” but targets they certainly are.
I was flying the Palestinian flag but also the Starry Plough, flag of the risen Irish working class in 1913 and 1916, the only one I saw on the march and which was how my friends found me. A woman I mistook for a visitor asked to take my photo, to which I agreed.
Near the rear of the march one could hear the usual call-and-response slogans drifting back towards us but people in our section marched silently or chatted with one another. Then a voice called out: “From the river to the sea!” and the reply was instantaneous: “PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!”
Chanting takes energy but also seems to supply it and from then our section joined in with gusto: “In our thousands, in our millions – We are all Palestinians!” “In our millions and our billions – We are all Palestinians!” “In our TRILLIONS and our billions – We are all Palestinians!”
“Netanyahu, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?” “Joe Biden, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?” “EU, you can’t hide – You’re supporting genocide!” “Irish Government, you can’t hide – You’re supporting genocide!”
“Saoirse – Don Phalaistín!” was the only slogan1 in Irish. There was no doubt about what people wanted for the Israeli Ambassador or the zionist Embassy, which was “Out, out, out!”
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
As we turned from Dawson into Molesworth Street, the rest of the march was packed ahead of us all the way up to the presumed police barriers at Kildare Street, across from the main gate of Leinster House. Here the IPSC stewards were urging us to move in still closer ahead.
What was the reason? Apparently the Gardaí wanted us past the intersections with South Frederick Street and with Molesworth Place. But for what purpose? Those were southward traffic only streets which should have been blocked anyway and Dawson Street was open in both directions.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)Molesworth Street from the Junction with Molesworth Place, already packed and with more arriving, yet we were expected to pack in closer and have barriers moved up against us! (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Then a private company began to erect barriers across the north-eastern section of Molesworth street which looked to me like kettling, a view which seemed born out as the barriers were moved once more further eastward with instructions to keep moving – with which I declined to cooperate.
This whole exercise seemed to me of dubious traffic easement validity and more about getting people used to obeying order and to being kettled by police if required by them. In the Irish state we do not have to gain police permission for a march or approval for its route.
There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the IPSC leaders informing the police of their march routes for traffic easement. But our rights have to be protected and not easily surrendered, much less for no visible valid reason. It is not good for stewards to automatically comply with police wishes.
I have seen (and resisted) Garda attempts to push demonstrators from the front of the GPO into the pedestrian reservation in the middle of O’Connell Street, while they told people that “It’s what your organisers (IPSC) want.”
Declining to be kettled.
The police of a state are not neutral forces for the public good and have drawn and used their batons through the decades against people protesting partition of their nation, imperialist war, water privatisation, growth of fascist and racist attacks, against imperialism and colonialism …
Not to mention torturing and framing people to have them jailed.
CHRISTY MOORE AND REPRESSION
In the distance, we could hear that Ireland’s chief living balladeer, Christy Moore, had got on stage and was speaking, then singing, though I could make out only snatches of the lyrics. Moore gained fame both as a member of Moving Hearts band and Planxty but also as a solo performer.
Moore had been litigated against for his song about the young 48 Stardust Fire victims but was vindicated during the week by a long-delayed second inquest into the deaths.2 On the other hand he’s received no apology for the police raid on his H-Block album launch back in 1972.3
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are facing repression throughout the western world, in some places much worse than others. The German State is behaving like Nazis in banning demonstrations and raiding a conference, apparently in twisted expiation of its sins under the Adolf Hitler regime.
This impacted also on an Irish language group in Berlin during the week while they attempted to have a small gathering speaking and singing in Irish in a park in front of the German Parliament. The police told them that only German and English languages were permitted in that area.4
The Irish Tricolour has been seen on many London demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians, on its own or flying below the Palestinian flag inscribed with “Saoirse don Phalaistín”. The Tricolour turned up too as university students and staff faced down the New York Police.
Columbia University, New York, Monday.St. Patrick’s Day, New York, March 2024.London, November 2023.London, clearly.
In Palestine itself new horrors are being revealed with the recovery of bodies in mass graves in the areas of destroyed Gaza hospitals recently occupied by the Israeli military. Their remains testify to their being patients and medical staff in addition to refugees.5
A totally new horror are the Israeli killer drones emitting the wailing of a baby or a woman’s cry for help, waiting to gun down would-be rescuers. Palestinians in Gaza have been accustomed to responding to those cries in reality for months and often enough shot or bombed as they did so.6
This however is a new depth for the zionist military.
Under danger of Israeli bombardment, digging bodies out of a mass grave at the destroyed Nasser Hospital site April 2024. (Photo cred: Ramadan Abed/Reuters)
During the week also the independent investigation commissioned by the UN has found no basis to the Israeli claim that many staff of its aid agency for Palestinians, UNWRA, were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, much less involved in the October 7th Palestinian resistance operation.7
That investigation result has UNRWA vindicated of the false Israeli claims but also commended on its procedures to comply with the impartiality requirements of the UN and of its funders, many of which however now stand condemned for withdrawal of their funding from starving people.
But UNRWA chiefs should share the condemnation for appearing to give the accusations credibility in firing some of their Palestinian staff, not to mention sacking appallingly and reducing to poverty a number without hearing or appeal, on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations.
And from a source known for lying for decades and long hostile to the UNWRA organisation. True to type, the Israeli government has rejected the findings, despite having provided no verification of its accusations to date.
Few official actors of states or of the UN come out well in evaluation over the last six months of this daily broadcast genocide.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Interestingly the word “slogan” is itself from the Irish language, or at least Scottish Gaedhlig, meaning a “call to/from the multitude/ troop”.
The past six months of an almost incredible level of Israeli genocide and Palestinian resistance have taught the world some valuable lessons but particularly perhaps those of us living among the Western powers.
PART TWO: LESSONS FROM THE ISRAELI ZIONISTS
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time:5 mins.)
The Nature of Zionism
The Zionists have taught us the nature of Zionism as an ideology upholding a people allegedly chosen by religion to occupy a land and to repress or expel the indigenous occupants of that land.
Nature of settler states
As Zionism is a variant of occupier-settler ideology we have, by extension, learned to recognise the nature of all settler states. To be fair, the evidence of that nature was clearly before us but we had perhaps learned to push it to the backs of our minds.
The European settler states of USA and Canada practiced genocide against their native indigenous peoples, of which only discriminated fractions remain from “California” to “Newfoundland”, from Pacific to Atlantic coasts. Both those states have diligently supported the Zionist settler project.
Lithograph image of aftermath of the Wounded Knee massacre of Indigenous people, USA, 29 December 1890 (Image sourced: Internet)
Those Northern American territories were primarily English colonies1 as were Australia and New Zealand, both also practicing genocide and discrimination against their indigenous populations and both those states too have supported the Zionist settler project.
European coloniser collection of New Zealand Indigenous heads 1895 (Photo source: Khamen.ir)
Less unanimous have been the mainly Spanish and Portuguese settler colonies of what is now called “Latin America”, from Brazil to Argentina to Mexico. Their indigenous populations too were ethnically cleansed and subjected to genocide, although to varying degrees of intensity.2
The Caribbean islands have all been settler and imported slave colonies of the states of England, Spain and France3, all now having nominal independence but, with the exception of Cuba,4 remaining within the imperial ambit of the USA (mostly) and France and have responded accordingly.
Nature of the zionist state
The Zionist State has demonstrated to us the true outcome of the Israeli zionist ideology, expansionist and prepared to inflict any horror upon the indigenous people in order to achieve its aims, descending to depths of inhumanity unimaginable only if Nazism were forgotten history.
An early mass grave of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in Gaza back in November 2023 as the cemeteries were already full (Photo cred: Mohammed Salem/ Reuters)
Currently the Israelis’ toll of Palestinians is at least 34,049 dead and 76,901 wounded, with an estimated further 8,000 under rubble in Gaza, nearly 2 million displaced (many several times), all medical, educational and social facilities and infrastructure degraded if not totally destroyed.5
And with at least 9,500 prisoners (i.e hostages) reportedly ill-treated, humiliated and even tortured, of which an Israeli-admitted 27 have died during these six months alone and 3,660 are held without trial or release date in “administrative detention”.6
Brazen Truth and Lies
We have also learned from the Zionist state its brazen genocidal intentions towards the Palestinians, expressed for internal Israeli consumption, alongside its outlandish lies for the international public about October 7th: beheaded babies, mass rapes, disfigurements, burning alive, etc.
All of those have been debunked and the recorded statistics alone (but also backed by evidence of other agencies) expose the lies that the Israeli army is attacking only7 the Palestinian resistance, that it is not applying collective punishment and using starvation as a weapon.
False Israeli Zionist propaganda about the Palestinian resistance “beheading babies” repeated by US President Joe Biden in press statement, claiming he had seen photos. His aides later ‘clarified’ that he was relying on reports from the Israeli state and had not seen actual photos. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Not bothering to give excuses for its demolition of universities and museums, schools and places of Muslim and Christian worship, ‘Israel’ has claimed the existence of tunnel entrances in them as excuses for the total elimination of Palestine’s main hospitals and degradation of all others.
It has done this despite its lack of evidence of such use of the hospitals, despite denials of hospital staff and organisations and without having to explain how such claims, even if they were true, could justify siege of hospitals, killing patients and staff and their destruction as functioning hospitals.
What Israel and the western imperialist states have shown us to date is that Israel has impunity to carry on its genocide. Not only will it not be boycotted, much less blockaded, not to even mention invaded, it will continue to be supplied with weapons, money and political support.
Even after the ICJ judgement in favour of S. Africa that Israel was “plausibly committing genocide” and restrictions imposed on Israel by the court, the genocide continued without pause and without any serious international repercussions by any western state.
Israel has given us a clear demonstration in practice of the hollowness of western institutional democracy and liberalism, not only in its continued support for the genocidal state but in the repression by western states of those who have supported the Palestinians in word or deed.
Demonstrations and pickets have been forbidden8, protesters threatened and arrested9, academics hounded and sacked,10 artists and public speakers cancelled, social media profiles hampered or blocked. In fact, all the kinds of undemocratic actions of which some other states are often accused.
Exposure of the world order of legal democratic institutions
The exposure of these institutions was almost complete. The United Nations of 193 states was shown powerless to act without the authorisation of the five Permanent Members11 of the Security Council — which itself was shown nullified by a veto of even one Member.12
United nations
United Nations building with approach flanked by national flags of member states(Photo sourced: Internet)
The International Court of Justice, a sub-institution of the UN itself, with a history of never even trying a western power, though judging Israel plausibly guilty of genocide,13 failed in its judgement on 26th January to order an immediate cease to the state’s attacks on the Gaza population.
The ICJ failed even to take action on Israel’s non-compliance with the interim measures it ordered, viz: “to take all measures to prevent any acts that could be considered genocidal according to the 1948 Genocide Convention”, other than to issue another non-complied order on 28th March.14
The United Nations failed to defend its own aid organisation for the relief of Palestinians (both in Palestine and as refugees in other parts) from unsupported Israeli allegations of the participation of 0.04% of its staff in the Palestinian resistance operation of October 7th 2023.
The UNWRA chiefs responded by failing to stand up to Israeli bullying and by sacking nine of their own workers without any evidence presented against them and without a right to a hearing or appeal. It also for a time failed to denounce Israel for reported torture of the agency’s employees.15
The UN failed to defend the staff of UNWRA from unproven allegations, unfair internal treatment and Israeli intimidation and murder or to maintain the essential funding of UNWRA essential for the Palestinians, or to insist on the regular and protected entry of aid trucks safe from Israeli attack.
The European Union refused to even call for a ceasefire; continued to act as Israel’s biggest export market; some of its members withdrew UNRWA funding and continued to supply the genocidal state with arms, while many states repressed their own citizens acting in solidarity with Palestine.
The need for revolutionary resistance
The Zionist state and its imperialist backers and, to be fair to it, our own Irish state too, have demonstrated to us the fragile and temporary nature of western liberalism and democracy on the one hand and the need, by implication, of revolutionary resistance and organisation on the other.
IN CONCLUSION
It remains to us to learn those hard-earned lessons, to internalise them and to apply them externally. We owe that to the Palestinians and to ourselves.
End.
Part of Gaza after Israeli bombardment back July 2014; now of course it is much, much worse. (Image sourced: Internet)
1The Dutch also colonised the north-east of what is now the USA and the French particularly Louisiana, in what is now the USA and Quebec in what is now Canada. What is now SW USA was part of the Spanish colonial empire, subsequently part of the Mexican Empire and gained by the USA in two wars with Mexico.
2The disparity in approach of these states is underlined by for example on the one hand El Salvador unreservedly supporting the zionist state and by Nicaragua on the other hand taking Germany to the International Court of Justice in accusation of being complicit in the Israeli genocide by supporting the state with weapons and finance.
3Without overlooking the fact that each of those states (England now as the United Kingdom) contains other dominated nations within it.
4During the existence of the USSR Cuba was often described as being under Soviet colonial influence but remains today the only truly independent (though part-occupied) state in the whole of the Caribbean.
6 At the time of writing Adameer, the Palestinian prisoner and human rights organisation reports 9,500 Palestinian prisoners of which 3,660 are “administrative detainees”, 200 children and 80 women. Seventeen of the prisoners are elected Legislative Council members (similar to MPs or TDs) https://www.addameer.org/statistics. These figures have changed regularly during the 6 months of zionist genocide and the trend is always upward except for a brief period during the truce and exchange of hostages.
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