On Saturday morning, Dubliners checking messages or news on their phones or laptops, or listening to or watching news on TV or radio – or even reading a newspaper, learned that the USA had bombed Venezuela and abducted its President.
Venezuelan national flags on Ha’penny Bridge during Venezuela solidarity portrait, seen here against sky and south Liffey riverside buildings. (Photo cred: Participant)
An emergency protest and solidarity demonstration was called for 3pm in the city centre and under a clear blue sky but in bitter cold, many attended to line the iconic Ha’penny Bridge, which only a week ago had hosted a New Year’s Eve demonstration in solidarity with Palestine.
Among the crowd on the Bridge, a few Venezuelan national flags fluttered against the sky or the riverside buildings, along with a number of Irish Tricolours and one green and gold Starry Plough,1 while placards were attached to the railings along the sides of the Bridge.
The well-known slogan of US military – Out of Shannon! was among the call-and-answer chants of course, along with the easily-imagined Hands off Venezuela! But there were some innovative ones too, such as the Irish-language/ English mix of Deirimís go léir le chéile – Hands off Venezuela!
Starry Plough flag on Ha’penny Bridge during Venezuela solidarity protest, seen here against sky and north Liffey riverside buildings. (Photo cred: Participant)Irish Tricolour flags and probably Cuban national flag on Ha’penny Bridge during Venezuela solidarity protest, seen here against sky and north Liffey riverside buildings. (Photo cred: Participant)
Entirely in Castilian Spanish there was also Viva, viva – La Resistencia! Another was USA – Nothing but thieves! – a specific reference to Trump’s nakedly-declared wish to grab the country’s oilwells.
People from a number of different political parties participated as did a large number of independent activists, constituting an ad-hoc and informal anti-imperialist broad front.
Among the crowd were veteran activists but also too many of the younger ones, grown in political awareness and action in recent years of Palestine solidarity, a deep educational experience, including some facing charges from actions in Dublin or Shannon to be tried in the coming months.
It is to be hoped that their support and solidarity will also be broad.
The Ha’penny Bridge during Venezuela solidarity protest. (Photo cred: Eddie O’Reilly)
The latest news is that the kidnapped President Maduro has been charged in the US on counts including drug trafficking and possession of weapon. As the President of Venezuela and titular head of its armed forces, presumably he does indeed hold weapons.
The very existence of the drug cartel of which Trump and his cabal claim Maduro is head is very doubtful, including even to views leaked from US intelligence departments and of course, not one iota of evidence has been produced to date of the alleged drug trafficking.
Mixture of flags and people on Ha’penny Bridge during Venezuela solidarity portrait, seen here against sky and south Liffey riverside buildings. (Photo cred: Participant)
In the lead-up of months of bullying to this invasion, US forces sank many boats, killing at least 115, including one survivor of a bombing in the water. No evidence of their alleged drug-running has been produced in a single case and even so would not merit death penalty under US law.
Following the US attack on Venezuela, Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López, reportedly from his control bunker, broadcast in military uniform to the nation condemning the imperialist attack and promising resolute resistance.
Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s Minister of Interior, Justice, and Peace, was videoed in the street wearing helmet and body protection equipment, calling on citizens to place their trust in the political and military leadership and to give no assistance to invading forces.
Vice-President Celcy, now Acting President made her first ever broadcast demanding the release of the Presidential couple, affirming that “there is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” and insisting that Venezuela “will never be a colony of any nation.”
Earlier, mainstream media had reported that Celcy had fled to Russia and that Lopez had been killed, such errors perhaps being caused by the ‘fog of war’ but recalling also the part played by the mainstream media in preparing the ground for the US-instigated Chilean coup of 1973.
The US attack and kidnapping was condemned today by Russia and by President Petro of Colombia. Kallas, on behalf of the EU, while condemning Maduro’s rule, voiced some weak platitudes about the EU Charter but voiced no condemnation of this attack upon a sovereign nation.
President of the USA Trump boasted publicly about how viewing the attack and kidnapping operation had been like watching a TV show and proclaiming that the US are now “going to run” Venezuela for a while “and get the oil flowing.”2
Tomorrow, Sunday, the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation has called a protest demonstration to take place at the US Embassy in Ballsbridge, Dublin for 1pm, in defence of sovereignty and in opposition to imperialism.
End.
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1The design of the flag of the Irish Citizen Army, a workers’ defence militia against police during the Lockout/ Strike of 1913 and that also fought in the 1916 Rising.
Writing about Christmas and war tends to focus on Christmas celebration as a counter to war,1 or alternatively on how hard it is to be celebrating Christmas in the midst of war. However, in much of West Asia, Christmas is now very much apartof the war.
This is certainly the case in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank and even inside ‘Israel’.
Among the peoples of this majority Muslim region the festivities are primarily those of Christian communities. Yet the broad Muslim population has no issue with the religious aspect of the festival, nor even with the iconic symbolism of the Holy Family and the birth in a manger of Jesus Christ.
The latter, among Christians believed a human incarnation of God, is also revered among Muslims but as a prophet, though of course lower in ranking than their highest-ranking prophet, Mohammed (c. 570 – 8 June 632 CE), allegedly of the Banu Hashim clan of the Quaraysh Arab tribe.
Among the Judaic religion, Jesus Christ is also believed a prophet.
It is important – and not just for historical reasons – to note that the major perpetrator of religious persecution from the Middle Ages on has been Christianity, led by European Christian elites persecuting followers of Judaic and Islamic religions and employing the Inquisition2 against them.
Earlier of course Christianity had its internal divisions resulting in one part of Christianity persecuting another (the East-West schism) and then later the split of the Reformation, with religious and temporal powers in war and in persecution of one another and of subject populations.3
The chief object of Christian religious persecution overall was the Jews and the objects of that persecution found sanctuary in many Muslim countries and, in general, within the Austro-Hungarian Ottoman Empire.
Leaders of a number of Muslim states today are traditionally at pains to demonstrate their acceptance of Christian communities and this Christmas both Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Prime Minister of Iraq and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran once more did so publicly.
Mohammed al-Sudani attended a Christian service and Masoud Pezeshkian visited a Christian family.4
Of course, Christmas as celebrated generally across the West is more – and one might say also much less – than a Christian or even a religious festival, with emphasis on feasting, alcoholic consumption and expenditure on presents.
Much of the symbolism too owes more to pagan religion than to Christianity.5
With a number of those aspects, including consumption of alcohol (traditionally forbidden by and to Muslims), pagan symbolism and more than a nod to western imperialist culture, many Muslims may take exception but even then not at all to celebration of the alleged birth of Jesus Christ.
However, for those wishing to cause divisions in predominantly Islamic societies, or in imposing their sectarian absolutist rule on society, the celebration of Christmas has become a hostile target in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, the West Bank and even inside ‘Israel’.
LEBANON
Lebanon is the most ethnically-diverse of the West Asian states, approximately one-third Christian, one-third Shia Muslim and a third Sunni Muslim. For years, Christmas has been celebrated not only by the Christian community but also, to varying degrees, by the other ethnic groups also.
It is extremely worrying therefore when a primary schoolteacher taught her girl pupils and filmed them not only renouncing Christmas as ‘non-Muslim’ but calling its celebrants the equivalent of heretics. There was widespread shock when she uploaded the video she had made of the girls.
Not surprisingly, the teacher was sacked but this too was orchestrated into a controversy with extreme religious sectarians coming on to the streets to protest, including former sectarian terrorist and ex-convict for bombing a church Samir Geagea of the sectarian Lebanese Forces militia).6
SYRIA
Under the new regime in Syria, celebrating Christmas can get people killed.The celebration was not controversial in the majority Islamic but secular state of Syria under al-Assad but that changed following that regime’s overthrow by western-supported Islamic fundamentalist jihadists.
During Christmas 2024 units of the fundamentalist jihadist coalition under self-appointed al-Julani (formerly Ahmed al-Sharaa of the Syrian chapter of ISIS) led attacks on Christians, forbade the erection of Christmas trees and knocked down and burned some that had been erected.7
Earlier this year Sayara Ahl Al-Sunnah, a Syrian terrorist organization split from the ruling Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) of al-Julani in February carried out a suicide attack on the Mar Elias Greek Orthodox church in Damascus, killing 30 Christian worshippers.8
Not just Christian communities are targeted in this ‘new democratic Syria’ so beloved of the Western powers but primarily really the Shia Muslim offshoots of Alawites9 and Druze10 communities. Both these communities are now mobilising in self-defence against the new rulers.
PALESTINE
In Gaza, blockaded and besieged, starving, flooded, homeless, cold, bombarded, even thinking of a festive celebration seems a crazy idea yet some have attempted to celebrate Christmas this year11 although any gathering of Palestinians seems an invitation to an IOF raid or even bombing.
In the West Bank, the Christian pastor12 in Ramallah, Isaac Munther, faced with the accelerating genocide in Gaza in 2023 declared there would be religious observation only and no Christmas celebrations of lights etc … but his sermon and Christ-nativity-in-rubble scene went ‘viral.’
Munther did the same during Christmas 2024 but this year the West Bank faces its own escalation of Palestinian home demolitions, army invasions, settler attacks on homes, livestock, farmland. However the IOF attacked some Palestinians who did try to celebrate a western-style Christmas.
Palestinians of other Christian denominations also tried to celebrate Christmas but met with repression and in Bethlehem there were clashes with Palestinians in Santa costume assaulted and arrested by ‘Israeli’ Occupation Forces.13
Occupied Palestine (‘Israel’ sic) also saw a Palestinian ‘Santa Claus’ being arrested by the IOF and Palestinian celebrants assaulted in Haifa.
As the supposed Holy Land where Jesus Christ was allegedly born, Christian tourism makes a significant contribution to the income of the Zionist state.14 But even so, Palestinian Christians and even tourists have complained of being menaced and spat at by militant Zionist settler youths.15
The Israeli Zionist state likes to promote itself as culturally representing the West much more than the East – which it certainly does – but seeing this repression of Christians even celebrating Christmas, one has to wonder what kind of ‘western society’ is this?
Meanwhile, in Rome …
Discussion of Christmas entails a mention of the majority sect of western Christianity, the Catholic faith and of its leader, the Pope. And the relatively new Pontiff – and first USA-born one – did in fact refer to Gaza in the traditional Papacy Christmas message from the Vatican.
Leo XIV’s message has been lauded by some in apparent ignorance of the political position of the Vatican and of its Papacy, which has been always to support western imperialism, or in his advocacy of Zionist colonisation in the western support for a two-State solution (sic) in Palestine.16
But for democracy and anti-imperialist unity …
Republicans reject any religious role in the management of the state or of its institutions – including education17 – but should also protect the freedom to worship or celebration of festive period of any personal or organised religion — and indeed also the right to promote atheism or agnosticism.18
Anti-imperialist revolutionaries whether secular or not need to oppose religious sectarianism and promote unity in the face of imperialism. It is imperialism and colonialism that promotes inter-religious conflict and fosters fundamentalist sectarians in order to undermine anti-imperialist resistance.
End.
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2Although it later became an instrument of Rome to ensure orthodoxy in religion, literature and science, the Inquisition was originally instituted in Iberia as a controlling agent over the forced conversions of Jews and Muslims to Christianity and later also operated as an instrument in control of the Spanish colonies.
3Of which we in Ireland have centuries of experience.
5The ‘old man of the woods’ Santa Claus or God of thunder and lightning in a sky-chariot pulled by horned beasts (two of which are also allegedly named Thunder (Donner) and Lightning (Blitzen) and the Christmas Tree and/ or Yule Log, pagan symbols of a festival signalling the turn of the seasons.
14“While there is no precise figure for how much Israel earns specifically from religious tourism, estimates suggest that Christian holy sites alone generate around $3 billion each year to the Israeli economy under normal circumstances — with over half of all tourist arrivals coming from Christians — and a quarter of those visitors going to Christian holy sites.” https://religionunplugged.com/news/war-in-gaza-and-the-disruption-of-pilgrimages-to-jerusalem
17This is an issue in many lands including Ireland where the Irish State and the colony’s both pay the salaries of teachers employed in religious-ethos schools. People have a right to religious education for their children should they wish it but in no way should the State facilitate such and, on the other hand, all children are required to attend formal education supplied by the State.
18The 1916 Rising Proclamation: “The Republic guarantees religious and civil iberty to all …”
There were lively scenes today outside Dublin’s British Embassy in solidarity with the hunger strikers in British jails awaiting trial on charges arising out of Palestine Action’s operations against the Israeli arms company, Elbit Systems UK.
Two of the six hunger strikers are in their 50th days without food and approaching the point where fatal seizures are possible or suffering irreversible damage to body systems. Their demands are release on bail, a fair trial, de-proscription of Palestine Action and the closure of Elbit Systems.
Early shot of hunger-striker solidarity protesters outside the British Embassy compound today. (Photo: R.Breeze)
There have been daily solidarity protests in Britain, including those led by the Irish Brigade1 in London amid general mass media silence but the arrest of Greta Thurnberg today on ‘terrorism’ charges may bring a focus on the hunger-strikes for a change.
Today also The National newspaper revealed that Barclay’s had asked the British Government to ban Palestine Action and already the question is being asked: How is it that was not admitted by the Government when Huda Ammori took the Palestine Action banning to judicial review?
(Greta Thurnberg about to be arrested earlier in Central London). Photo source: Internet)
The rally today, like that outside the British Embassy last week, was organised by the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum, while another solidarity rally in Dublin last week but on College Green, in the City Centre, was organised Communities for Palestine.
The ‘corpses’ in the road outside the British Embassy compound today. (Photo: R.Breeze)
The chants led outside the Embassy today included the usual ones heard on Palestine solidarity marches, including those referencing the Intifada, the occupation of Ireland and the Irish-language Saoirse don Phalaistín! But there were also new ones and additions to older slogans.
A new Four, Five and Six was added to a previous only One, Two and Three: One – We are the people; Two – We won’t be silenced; Three – Stop the bombing now, now, now! Four – Free our people; Five – Free our land; Six – Kick Zionism out, out, out!
Some other changed and new chants included: One, Two, Three, Four– Support the Filton 24! Five, Six, Seven, Eight – Israel is a terrorist state. We are all Palestine Action! Victory to the hunger-strikers! Brick by brick, wall by wall – all the colonies will fall!
Slogans also castigated British Government collusion in the Israeli genocide, Irish state collusion through militarisation of Shannon Airport and Gardaí collusion through their defence of the British Embassy.
Numbers of Gardaí and one of their vehicles actually inside the British Embassy compound today. (Photo: R.Breeze)
On two occasions the MC asked demonstrators to line both sides of the road outside the Embassy, which is one of the main Dublin routes from and towards the South. Passing traffic frequently sounded their horns in solidarity, passengers often signing thumbs-up or with clenched fist.
But at one point, most of the demonstrators occupied the road, blocking traffic in each direction. The Gardaí moved quickly to break this up and were soon violently shoving demonstrators off the road, one in particular screaming with wild eyes so that he was twice seen restrained by colleagues.2
However part of the northbound road remained occupied in front of the Embassy entrance and at this point a new group of protesters arrived and, unpacking white curtain material, began to squirt red paint on it, then to lie down in the road under the material like massacre victims.
A number of speeches were made during the event and later a man called the crowd to remember also the 1981 hunger strikes in Ireland, for which he sang the Joe McDonnell3 Ballad, with its wonderful chorus lines: You dare to call me a ‘terrorist,’ while you look down your guns!4
Another man recounted the story told by Bobby Sands5 of the caged lark which would not sing for its captor and how that bird came to represent Sands himself, before reciting a poem of an Irish migrant in London in anguish as Bobby Sands lay dying.
The ‘corpses’ were moved from the road to immediately in front of the British Embassy compound today. (Photo: R.Breeze)
The current hunger-strikes are sometimes referenced as “the first coordinated hunger strikes in Britain” since those of the Irish Republicans in 1981. Of course, those strikes were not in Britain but in occupied Ireland and therefore currently part of the United Kingdom.
There are important differences of course. The Irish Republican hunger strikers were convicted, albeit by special non-jury courts, of armed resistance to British occupation; the current hunger strikers have not yet even been tried and none of the charges against them include armed action.
And the motivation of the Palestine Action accused is purely internationalist solidarity against a regime committing daily massacres in a programmed genocide.
Nevertheless, the British ruling class may yet come to regret the day they permitted anti-Zionism to become so strongly linked to anti-British colonialism, and anti-genocide internationalism so closely linked to the memory of Irish colonial resistance.
End.
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FOOTNOTES
1An ad-hoc broad Palestine solidarity organisation composed of Irish migrants and diaspora in London.
2This may possibly be the same Garda who was seen wildly striking with his baton and pepper-spraying peaceful participants at a Palestine solidarity march to Dublin Port some weeks ago.
4And you dare to call me a terrorist, while you look down your guns! When I think of all the things that you have done: You have plundered many nations, divided many lands, You have terrorised their people, ruled with an iron hand – And you brought the stain of terror, to my land.
5Bobby Sands relinquished his elected post of Officer Commanding the Republican male prisoners in Long Kesh in order to lead the hunger strikes of 1981. On 5th May he was the first of the Ten to die.
In the aftermath of the Bondi massacre, we might ask: Is anti-Semitism1 on the rise?
It is hard to be certain, given that politicians and media keep conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Israel feelings with anti-Semitism, mixing acts against one with acts against the other, despite their being two very different things.
People pay respects at Bondi Pavilion to victims of a shooting during a Jewish holiday celebration at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, December 15, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams
But would it be surprising if anti-Semitism were indeed on the rise? And if it is, who are the main culprits?
Undoubtedly, the western imperialists who support the Israeli settler colony and repress their own citizens for opposing genocide must contribute to anti-semitism.
Above all however the Israeli State itself and its genocide against the indigenous Palestinian people, while insisting that the Zionist State is the ‘national’ expression of Judaism, that their Zionism is Judaism, must be counted as particularly responsible.
Zionism is a late 19th Century political movement for the creation of a Jewish state, founded by a small group of European Ashkenazi2 Jewish background which received the support at the time of imperialist European capitalists, particularly the British variety (some of them anti-Semites too!).
A branch of Evangelical Christianity, especially in the USA has also become Zionist.3 Leaving aside religious and prophetic belief, this sector provides a strong base of political and financial support, particularly through AIPAC,4 for US imperialist support for the Israeli Zionist state.
Judaism is a religion, often described as ‘of the Book’, which it shares with Christianity and Islam, all of them with origins in West Asia but with Christianity recruiting most of its congregations and states in Europe (now also the whole West, with the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand).
Later, the main supporters of the Zionist project were the USA. A dedicated foothold in West Asia, secure from socialist revolution among its colonial Zionist settler population and with any nationalist Arab movement suppressed by this garrison, was of course attractive to the imperialists.
The project of conflating Judaism with Israeli Zionism has been underway for well over a century but even in the wake of the Nazi genocide, Zionism did not have the support of the majority of Jews around the world.5 This changed as the 20th Century progressed but appears to be reverting now.6
ANTI-SEMITISM?
As more and more people, particularly youth around the world take to the streets and to educational establishments to denounce the daily genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israeli State and the collusion of the Western regimes, they face heavy repression of the states.
Beating with truncheons, use of irritant sprays, threats to academic study programs, arrests, strip-searching and serious charges are already occurring in the Irish state. To those must be added banning of organisations under false ‘terrorism’ classification in the UK and Canada.7
Special repressive measures are routinely taken against public displays of Palestinian solidarity in Germany, Austria and France. Journalists have been harassed and arrested, recording equipment confiscated and professionals have their careers threatened, all for opposing the Israeli genocide.8
Some of the resentment felt by the victims of such repression may be misdirected upon people of Jewish background, particularly since the Zionists and the Imperialists work so hard to identify the one with the other.
In addition there is a long anti-Semitic tradition in European Christian society from the Middle Ages9 which was employed and extended by fascist and Nazi movements in the 1930s, combined with a false and perverted nationalism. And currently fascist movements are once again on the rise.
It is instructive to see British fascist and Israeli flags side by side among groups counter-protesting gatherings of Palestinian solidarity in England, or British colonial Loyalists burning Palestinian flags alongside symbols of Irish Republicanism such as the Irish Tricolour.
AN ANTI-SEMITIC ATROCITY
Is is difficult, particularly in the absence so far of information from the perpetrators,10 to view the Bondi Beach massacre in Australia as other than an anti-Semitic atrocity. The victims were attending a Jewish religious festival when fired upon.
First panel shows the shooters, father and son, said to be linked to ISIS; Second panel shows one of the shooters being tackled and disarmed by Syrian-born Australian Ahmed al Ahmed who was later injured and underwent surgery. (Photo sources: Internet)
Had one of the victims, media-characterised as a saintly rabbi but in fact a Zionist supporter of the genocidal Israeli State (who had himself photographed among its soldiers while holding an automatic rifle)11 been an intended target cannot justify the resulting civilian ‘collateral damage’.
In fact, such disregard for other casualties surrounding a targeted individual is a standard feature of Israeli Occupation Forces assassinations and can never be those supported by Palestine internationalist supporters or by any other democratic movement.
Western politicians and media now strive to employ this massacre and its attendant horror to further strengthen Zionism and to further conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, none more so than Netanyahu who claimed that recognition of Palestinian nationhood was a causative factor.12
And in Australia, the massacre is already being used in propaganda against the Palestine solidarity movement: Prime Minister Albanese has stated the intention to outlaw the Palestinian liberation and solidarity slogan: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!’.13
The fact remains that the Israeli Zionists themselves are the greatest cause of any rise of anti-Semitism in the World.
End.
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1Although the term ‘Semitic’ describes ethnic cultural groups including Jews and Arabs, the term ‘anti-Semitic’ has been taken largely to mean anti-Jewish, i.e. against people of Jewish religious background, despite its much more recent conflation with anti-Zionism.
2One of the European-based sections of the Jewish community, speaking European languages and the German-based Yiddish, using Hebrew only for religious purposes.
4American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israeli Zionist lobbying organisation providing funding to most US Congress and Senate elected members.
7The direct-action organisation Palestine Action was declared a ‘terrorist organisation’ under UK law on 5 July 2005 and so far over 2,490 people have been arrested for declaring support for the organisation.
9Jews in many Christian European countries were required by law to live in ghettoes or were expelled, such as the expulsion of Jews and Muslims by the Christian Monarchs of the Spanish Kingdoms 1492-1614.
10According to reports they were a father and son, the first killed at the scene and the second hospitalised, just now out of a coma.
It was great to see the Irish pacification process being referenced with regard to the Trump plan for Gaza1 because that is exactly what the latter is: a plan to pacify the Resistance while ensuring it gets none of what it fought for.2
In other words, exactly like the Irish pacification process.
(Cartoon by D.Breatnach)
Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad grew out of previous Palestinian pacification processes. The Madrid Conference (1991) and the Oslo Agreement (1993) were imperialist/ Zionist attempts to pacify the wide-scale militant Palestinian resistance period of the First Intifada.3
Fatah at that time was the leading group in numbers and influence in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (from which Islamic groups were excluded) but also in Palestinian society in general. But Fatah had agreed to recognise ‘Israel’ and also the two-state solution (sic).
In the Oslo Agreement, furthermore, the question of the return to their homeland of the refugees was left aside. It appears that the Fatah leadership had lost faith in the eventual victory of their people’s struggle and had decided to get what they could by using the struggle to bargain.
The Oslo Agreement: US Imperialism’s President Clinton oversees Yitzak Rabin, Premier of Zionist state of ‘Israel’ shaking hands with Yasser Arafat of Fatah, then leader of the PLO.
What Fatah got was Palestinian Authority control in the first elections (1996), with internal control over/ management of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza, but not of the Palestinians in Jerusalem (captured by ‘Israel’ in 1967): a far cry from a free Palestine.4
In the Algiers conference of 1988 Fatah had won majority agreement to recognise ‘Israel’ and to accept the two-state solution5 (sic), i.e. embodying a Palestinian state on 20% of Palestinian land, under the eyes and guns of their Zionist neighbour).
Fatah’s rule became known for corruption and nepotism, which then had to be protected and defended from the Palestinian masses, leading to authoritarian, repressive and often arbitrary rule. And repression of the Resistance, along with direct collusion with the ‘Israeli’ State.
Continuing ‘Israeli’ repression and settlement expansion in turn led to the Second Intifada; Fatah lost to Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections of 2006 followed by defeat of Fatah’s attempted coup in Gaza in 2007 (but the West Bank remaining under unelected Fatah control).
Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has refused to announce elections since, sitting in unelected control of the PA’s office in the West Bank, collecting the various international grants, presiding over corruption,6 repressing Palestinian resistance of deed or word and colluding with the ‘Israeli’ Occupation.
US Imperialism’s then Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine, soon after the start of the accelerated Zionist genocide in Gaza, December 2023
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE IRISH CONNECTION?
Starting with Palestine and South Africa in 1991, an imperialist pacification process spread to Ireland, Basque Country, Kurdish Turkey, Colombia, India, Philippines, Sri Lanka. With some variations the drive has been the same: to give up revolution and join the system.
One of the features of this process was the apparent need of a recognised leader to sell it to the resistance support base and to front it for the world: Arafat (Palestine), Mandela (S. Africa), Adams/McGuinness (Ireland), Ocalan (Turkish Kurdistan), Otegi (Basque Country).
The Provisional IRA was by far the major organisation in the Irish Republican resistance; it gave up armed struggle in return for vague promises and the release of its prisoners under licence.7 Another organisation complied also even as new ‘dissident’ fighters were being jailed.
Nearly 30 years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Ireland is no nearer the Provisional IRA’s declared aims Irish reunification, independence and sovereignty. The Sinn Féin party helps run the colony8 and is attempting to become part of the neo-colony’s government.
Sinn Féin representatives Tina Black (Mayor of Belfast) and Michelle O’Neill, First Minister of the British colony, laying a wreath at the British War Memorial in Belfast, July 2022 (Cred: Liam McBurney/ PA Wire)
Neither the Spanish, French nor Turkish states were interested in other than crushing the Basque and Kurdish resistance and the corresponding movements disabled themselves without getting anything in exchange other than continued repression.9
The resistance movements in parts of India and Philippines continue to resist but in Sri Lanka was wiped out.10
One feature of the spread was the contagion-like way in which leaders of one infected resistance sought to entice others to follow suit: S. Africa and Palestine to Ireland; S. Africa and Ireland to Basque Country; Ireland to Colombia (where only the FARC but not the ELN accepted it).
In only one iteration of the pacification processes was there a partial achievement of the stated aims of the resistance: South Africa got national enfranchisement but the economy remained under imperialist extractive control and its working people under repression.11
In the course of giving up armed struggle, allegedly just changing the methods, the leaders gave up what they had fought for, the very reason for which they had first come into the struggle. Of course, they could still shout the slogans, just not make them real in any way.
The Irish version (and the Basque one) decommissioned their weapons, which makes it very relevant to the Trump Plan for the Palestinian Resistance, particularly Hamas and PIJ. No resistance movement should even discuss giving up their weapons until the defeat of the enemy.
(Image sourced: Internet)
It will be interesting to see what positions the former parties of Irish and Basque resistance, Sinn Féin and EH Bildu12 and their supporters take on this US/ ‘Israeli’ plan for the Palestinian Resistance.
One of the features of the pacification process was the apparent need of a recognised leader to sell it to the resistance support base and to front it to the world: Arafat (Palestine), Mandela (S. Africa), Adams/McGuinness (Ireland), Ocalan (Turkish Kurdistan), Otegi (Basque Country).
Who will the imperialists find to play this role in Palestine?13
End.
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4“This mirrors Israel’s post-Oslo approach to the occupied West Bank in pacifying the population through economic incentives, avoiding political concessions, and entrenching structural dependence. This model, often dubbed “economic peace,” has transformed the Palestinian Authority (PA) into a subcontractor of occupation – flush with foreign funds, but powerless to deliver sovereignty.” https://thecradle.co/articles-id/34757
7Those released under licence could be returned to jail (and a number were) at the decision of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland without trial, hearing or details of why the individual was considered to be ‘a threat to public safety.’
8Its representative, Michelle O’Neill, is currently First Minister of the colony’s government. In the Irish State, the party has 33 TDs (MPs), only two behind the party with next largest representation, Fianna Fáil. They Party has abandoned its opposition to the repressive legislation of the State, welcomed British Royal visits to both parts of Ireland, supports recruitment to the colonial gendarmerie and its leader refused to rule out coalition with the neo-colonial political parties of membership of the British Commonwealth. https://www.thejournal.ie/mar-lou-mcdonald-commonwealth-4561600-Mar2019/
9The Basque leadership abandoned armed struggle unilaterally at the time without gaining even the end of dispersal of their jailed fighters throughout the state. The Turkish Kurdish PKK tried to make progress through political electoral means only under continuing repression. But their Syrian version of armed Kurdish forces got a new lease of life with the vulnerability of the Assad regime in Syria but ended up as a NATO proxy in the latter’s war for regime change. The PKK in Turkey very recently agreed to disarm while their Syrian part remains in difficult relationship with the new (formerly ISIS) regime in Syria and some other ISIS elements under Turkish influence.
11See The Marikana Massacre of striking miners by the ANC Government’s police.
12Both parties support the Two-State proposal for Palestine.
13Some liberal and social-democratic sections seem to have fixed on Marwan Marghouti in this role, which of course is no reason not to support his release on human rights grounds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6IgjlHaaIs
The week before last in Ireland we were led through motions of Palestine solidarity actions once more, motions without practical effect, first by the Irish trade unions, followed the following day by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Seen on the IPSC National march (Photo by: Participant)
On Friday, the unions announced a ‘stand out for Palestine’ day – well, not a day exactly, more like a lunch break. It was not a strike, not even a work stoppage, rather some dedicated employees surrendering their lunch break to stand with Palestinian flags etc in front of their workplaces.
Not even a work stoppage of one day, half-day, or even an hour. The union leaderships, in most cases, organised nothing, leaving it up to their members to get together and to sacrifice their lunch breaks.
More of us went through the motions again on Saturday 29 November. From the Garden of Remembrance, down O’Connell Street, across the river, around by Trinity College, up Dawson Street and into Molesworth Street, facing Leinster House.
Seen on the IPSC National march (Photo by: Participant)
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised this ‘National Demonstration’ as it does roughly every month. It is supposed, presumably, to impress the Government with its numbers and pressure them to end their collusion with the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
It has not done so — nor did it in any month or any year in the life of the IPSC, the longest-active Palestine solidarity organisation in Ireland. Nor have the monthly marches brought about any change in Irish Government collusion since the genocide of Gaza began in October 2023.
That is not the fault of the IPSC. What they are to be blamed for is not recognising that and adjusting appropriately to actions of greater pressure. Or, perhaps they recognised it indeed but nevertheless refused to change towards any effective pressurising methods.
The IPSC was for a long time near the ‘middle of the road’ but it has moved further into that position as the genocidal actions of the Zionist colony became worse and as awareness of Israeli crimes spread and grew in Ireland (which it did in part thanks indeed to the work of the IPSC).
Section of the IPSC National march (Photo by: Participant)
Solidarity work however is not about education in the abstract, raising awareness without using that awareness to bring about change. I am sure the IPSC leadership is aware of that and would wish much change but they do not adapt their actions, rather continuing with the monthly motions.
Probably they do not increase the pressure out of fear of losing their influence with the political class. Which would perhaps be well and good if the political class were delivering on ending collusion with the genocidal state – but they are not, nor is there any indication that they will.
Ireland remains the biggest single importer of Israeli products next to the USA and the biggest in the EU. The Irish Government permits military consignments to fly to Israel through ‘neutral’ Irish airspace and USA aircraft and military personnel to stopover and refuel at Shannon Airport.
Seen on the IPSC National march as passing O’Connell monument (Photo by: Participant)
Occupying the ground near the middle is only a good thing if it can be used to support action for change; it is a hindrance if the act of being there comes to be more important than the end objective: an end to genocide and the Occupation, with freedom and independence for Palestine.
The IPSC could use its mass base to blockade Dublin Port, through which Israeli products come into the country. It could also blockade other major stocking and distribution points.
The IPSC could organise mass days of action against retail and tech outlets handling Israeli exports and mobilise pickets in support of retail workers refusing to handle Israeli products, such as a Tesco worker currently facing disciplinary procedures (i.e punishment) for that very ‘crime’.
The worker in question, employed by Tesco in Newcastle, Co. Down is a member of the IWW and also of USDAW, main union for retail workers in the UK (as in the colony) but while the word is that his union is defending them, it is not seeking to extend and widen the boycott.
Defending a worker’s right not to act against their conscience is an individual and personal issue.1 It is understood that the motivation of this worker is one of solidarity with the Palestinian people and against genocide, which is what the trade unions need to be promoting and mobilising.
Union leaderships become bureaucracies with buildings and paid officials, employing administrative staff, growing more and more cautious and afraid of State action (particularly against their funds), moving further away from the ethos that first led to the unions’ creation.
Organised workers in Italy have shown the potential in dock strikes and mass mobilisations but again it was not the mainstream unions that led the action. Canadian provincial trade union Federations have marked all ‘Israel’ goods and services as ‘hot’2 and not to be handled.
Union membership in Ireland has declined as union leadership collusion with management and government escalated from the 1980s and resistance actions decreased; an increase in militant action is likely to boost recruitment but in any case organising resistance is the supposed role of trade unions.
Questions around solidarity with Palestine bring many other underlying issues to the fore: media partiality, government collusion, imperialist and colonialist influence, effective means of applying pressure, appropriate leadership, resistance to oppression, solidarity with prisoners.
We have been taught lessons of great importance – but at a terrible cost; we owe it to the Palestinians and to ourselves to apply them.
End.
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From The Cradle news updates on Telegram 6 December 2025:
Ontario’s largest labor federation backs ‘hot cargo’ boycott of Israeli goods
The Ontario Federation of Labour has become the fourth provincial labor federation in Canada to adopt a “hot cargo” resolution against Israeli goods and services.
The move designates all trade ties with Israel as products and services workers will refuse to handle due to their connection to exploitation and oppression. The OFL’s decision follows growing momentum across the country as labor groups escalate solidarity actions.
The New Brunswick Federation of Labour first set the precedent in May when it voted to stop handling weapons destined for Israel. Similar resolutions soon followed in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, culminating in Ontario’s endorsement last week.
Together, these federations represent a significant portion of Canada’s organized labor movement.
The OFL’s stance signals a widening labor-led boycott effort, reinforcing a broader push within Canadian unions to apply economic pressure and support calls for accountability over Israel’s war crimes.
1Individual ‘conscience’ can object to many things we consider necessary, for example to give contraception methods information, or about pregnancy termination, to deal politely with migrants, to serving people in the national language, to sending children to integrated education or even to any school, etc. etc.
2‘Blacked’ was a common term for such cases in the recent past, as was ‘tainted’ further back still (á la Larkin and Connolly) – see Appendix.
Leaders of two main neo-colonial Irish political parties are reported vehemently opposing a proposal by Dublin City Council to rename one of the city’s parks. That’s almost enough to make most decent people want to support the proposed name change.
The current name is Herzog Park, situated in Rathgar and the controversy is around a proposed removal of ‘Herzog Park’ and change to ‘Hind Rajab Park’.
Of course, the far-Right ‘patriots’ who are so much against the Irish Government won’t be supporting the name-changing or supporting local democracy – not to mention humanitarianism or international solidarity (except in the case of solidarity with US or British-based fascists).
The Herzog in question was Chaim Herzog, 6th President of the State of ‘Israel’1, raised in Ireland after his father, Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, moved from his birthplace in the Russian Empire to England and then to Dublin, where he was Chief Rabbi of the Jewish faith in Ireland (1921-1936).
Both Herzogs, father and son, were part of the founding of the Israeli State in 1948 of which Yitzham Halevi’s great-grandson, Isaac Herzog is President currently.2
Chaim Herzog (like his father and son) was a Zionist, which is to say he was part of a European movement that believed those of the Jewish faith should have a state of their own for which they were entitled to occupy a land, despite any indigenous people, upon which to establish that state.3
He was also a member of the Haganah, the Zionist murder gang that carried out the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba before going on to form the IOF; and he was later military Governor of the West Bank.
Hind Rajab was a Palestinian girl of five years who was killed by the armed forces of the Zionist State of Israel while fleeing Gaza on 29 January 2024. She appears to have been the last survivor of a gradual killing of her uncle, aunt and four cousins including 15-year old Layal Hamadeh.
The distress call came first from Hind’s cousin Layal, begging for help and explaining that they had been targeted by the Israeli Occupation Forces and that the adults were dead but the call terminated amid screams. Gazan emergency services phoned them and Hind told them Layal was dead.
The sequence suggests that the IOF were monitoring movement in the car or perhaps even the calls, as after they had shelled the other occupants, they shot Layal and finally Hind. Not content with that, they also killed the heroic Palestinian ambulance crew4 who lost their lives in rescue attempt.
Placard held at Monday night’s protest lobby of Dublin City Council (Photo: D.Breatnach)
The Park got its current baptism in 1995 which is hard to excuse. Of course the Zionazis were not as reviled 30 years ago as they are now but the facts of their general racism, apartheid and repression of Palestinians were clear – we were no long the Israelophiles we had been formerly.5
BUT WHO ARE TODAY’S REAL NAZIS?
Foremost unofficial ambassador for Zionism in Ireland Alan Shatter, former Fine Gael’s Minister for Justice & Equality and Minister of Defence from 2011 to 2014, of course entered the fray and, commenting on the proposed name-changing, accused Dublin City Council of nazism.6
Shatter’s statement and his sporadic public interventions in support of the genocidal state would provide good ammunition for anyone campaigning against the principle of free speech. How does the Israeli State he defends itself compare to Nazism, his hurled attack on Dublin City Council?
The Nazis carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide against Jews and Roma and mass murders of Communists, Socialists, Gays and Lesbians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and physically and mentally Disabled people.
The State of ‘Israel’ is carrying out daily ethnic cleansing and genocide against Palestinians.
The Nazis attacked and invaded other countries, starting with those near their State in Germany.
The State of ‘Israel’ has attacked 12 countries, starting with those near its base in Palestine, including its 1956 bombing of Egypt in the French-British war against the nationalisation of the Suez Canal.
The Nazis carried out collective punishment against civilians in areas where Nazi forces were attacked.
The IOF for years demolished the family home of anyone who took armed action against them, even after they had killed the alleged individual. Worse, they have collectively punished the whole population of Gaza, allegedly due to the 7th October Resistance operation.7
The State of ‘Israel’ is carrying out collective punishment against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by bombing and shelling, house and infrastructure demolition, also against Palestinians and other people by similar bombings in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.
There are four main differences between the crimes of the Nazis and the State of ‘Israel’:
The Nazi extermination campaign was more ordered and faster, included trains to extermination camps with ovens for disposing of the bodies of the victims.
The Zionazis, after the mass expulsions of 1948, carried out a more gradual process of appropriation and genocide until the last two years in Gaza and they don’t have ovens to burn the corpses of their victims, leaving most of them to rot under bombed-out rubble.
The other huge difference between the two is that eventually the rest of the Western powers united against the Nazis, while today they are all united in actively supporting the Zionist genocide.
And of course, although the Nazis kept their actual genocide secret from the vast majority of the German and Austrian populations, for fear they would not support it, the leaders of ‘Israel’ boast of their actions and intentions and opinion polls show the majority of ‘Israelis’ agree with them.
PURPOSE OF PROPOSED CHANGE OF PARK’S NAME
It is hard to imagine decent people being opposed to dropping the Herzog dedication in the park’s name, as that Zionist’s connection with Ireland, though a historical fact, is not one in which we should take pride.
Banner of an Irish sport association in solidarity with Palestine at Dublin City Hall protest lobby. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
If we wanted to honour a representative of Irish Jewry (rather than of Irish Zionism) there were a number of worthwhile candidates, such as antifascist and anti-Zionist Irish Jews Max8 and Maurice Levitas9 or Irish Republican Jews Estella Solomon (Cumann na mBan) and her brother Bethel.10
More than one proposal has been put forward to replace Herzog’s name on the park, the other being Terence Wheelock’s.11
I support the Wheelock family’s campaign for Gardai to be held accountable for the fatal injury to Terence Wheelock in Garda custody in 2005. I have attended protests and covered some of the campaign in articles on the Rebel Breeze blog and I would support a memorial park in his name.
At 24-hours’ notice a rally in support of the Hind Rajab name change was called for Dublin City Hall at 6pm Monday 1 December 2025. Speaking after a number of elected councillors, Abubakker Abed pointed out that whatever about the replacement, a Zionist should not be honoured here.
View of Monday night’s protest lobby of Dublin City Hall. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Abed is a prominent Gaza journalist for the Electronic Intifada media and recent Palestinian refugee studying in Ireland. A number of Jewish people spoke also, David Landy pointing out that the Jewish community in Ireland is split between supporters of Israel and anti-Zionists.
A speaker from the Bronx, New York, also a Jew, recalled how Chaim Herzog had bragged about the demolition of a row of Palestinian houses in the West Bank, calling them ‘toilets’ and remarked how likening people to dirt or animals reminded him of the Nazis’ portrayal of the Jews.
Banner of an Irish sport association in solidarity with Palestine at Dublin City Hall protest lobby. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
However, in the Hind Rajab naming proposal there is not only the removal of a dedication to a Zionist but also in a sense its replacement by its opposite, the remembrance of a murdered child, with her family victims of Zionism and, in a sense of all Palestinian victims of ongoing genocide.
If you support the proposal for both those purposes, as I do, you may want to sign the petition: https://c.org/kBvN64BhWv.
End.
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2Much in the news at the moment because of the controversial application by Benjamin Netanyahu, for a pardon – without admitting guilt – to charges of corruption and bribery.
10I learned of the Solomon siblings only yesterday, through a post by Dave Gibney on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/dgibney100 A number of others were listed by David Landy, speaking outside City Hall during the rally on Monday night.
Recently an Irish Palestine solidarity organisation posted a report that 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed in 23 months, an average higher than one child per hour.1 “Have been killed”? Traffic accidents? Unknown causes?
They were killed by Israel, isn’t that the case? Then why not bloody say so! They were murdered by a genocidal European Zionist settler colony called Israel and itcontinues to murder them, along with their older siblings, parents, extended families and neighbours.
We can find different ways to present the facts of the ongoing genocide in order to try to shock but it does not alter the fundamental and well-known truth that a genocide is being committed before our eyes. Why is this continuing despite what everyone knows? Well, because it can!
Israel will continue to do what it does because it can and the cost of doing it is not high enough, as Ali Abunimah said three months ago.2 Or to turn that a little, the Irish Government will continue doing what it does in collusion with the genocide because the cost of doing so is not high enough.
The EU is the biggest importer of Israeli goods and the Irish state is the highest importer in the EU, also the 2nd single biggest Israeli goods importer in the world. And still the weapons of genocide fly through our skies. The Irish Government continues collusion because the cost to them is low.
Marches and pickets show solidarity towards a beleaguered people suffering genocide and in that they are very important. They also show us our strength in numbers. But they do not cost our government much. Not even enough to really stop the Central Bank assisting genocide.
In England, Palestine Action raised the cost of collusion in genocide by targeting the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems in Bristol. Activists were arrested but they kept doing it. This Zionist death company has now closed its targeted Bristol factory.
While this was happening, the British Government, in support of Elbit and others and in collusion with the genocide of Palestinians, not only arrested and charged Palestine Action people but designated the organisation as ‘terrorist’ and any supporters as people supporting ‘terrorism’.
People defied that designation and were arrested for holding a placard saying they were opposed to genocide and supported Palestine Action.
Placards in Westminster August 2025 (Photo credit: Mike Kemp In Pictures/ Getty Images)
Following that action and repression, 1,500 gathered in London on Saturday 6th September 2025 to continue that solidarity and to defeat the attack on civil liberties. By midnight, the last arrest recorded by the police for the day, they had arrested nearly 390 people.
The ‘crime’ of nearly all was to display placards stating “I am opposed to genocide. I support Palestine Action.” The police were unable to arrest them all as it took them 11 hours to arrest the 390. The organisers continued the action in London and other parts of the UK.3
More recently there have been other such acts of public defiance, organised by the Save Our Juries campaigning group and the numbers now arrested on charges of “assisting terrorism” (sic) have reached at least 2,269.
In addition, eighteen arrested Palestine Action activists were jailed, refused bail with some embarking on hunger strike4 of whom two were recently admitted to hospital.
The closure of Elbit Systems, the mass defiance of the terrorist categorisation of Palestine Action and the prison hunger strikes are raising the cost of supporting genocide of Palestinians and criminalising Palestine solidarity action, hitting collusion where it hurts, politically and practically.
We in Ireland are the most-pro-Palestine country in Europe … but we are not doing that.
We are not raising the cost high and despite that being clear to us and to our political and solidarity organisations and trade unions, made clear well over a year ago, we are still not doing it. Until we raise the cost high enough to make them stop, our government will continue its collusion.
And until the external cost is raised high enough to make them stop, Israel will continue its ethnic cleansing and genocide. But marchers attempting to blockade Dublin Port in early October were pepper-sprayed without warning and savagely batoned, with some arrested.
Gathering outside Dublin courthouse in solidarity with two Palestine solidarity activists assaulted and charged by Gardaí during early October attempt to blockade Dublin Port (Photo: R. Breeze).
A trio of activists were arrested in May for invading Shannon Airport to protest the ‘neutral’ Irish State’s collusion with US military flights through there4 and last weekend another three young people were arrested for a similar action.
Activists in Ireland are slowly starting to raise the cost of collusion for the State. However, they are not supported by the leadership of the mass movement which, while aware its tactics are not forcing the Government to end its collusion, nevertheless persists solely in repeating them.
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2Director of the Electronic Intifada, speaking on 29 August at a public meeting organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Dublin and hosted by the FÓRSA trade union. The other guest speaker was Abubaker Abed from Gaza, now studying in Ireland after being a journalist for the EI and threatened with assassination by Zionists.
3The Six Counties are at the moment in the UK but the British colonial gendarmerie went very lightly there in dealing with Palestine Action supporters – the rulers do not wish do have Palestine activists as political prisoners while they contain also Irish Republican prisoners.
(Reading time:3 mins.) (Reprinted with gratefully-received permission of author of article1 originally published in the Electronic Intifada, a non-profit online publication covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflictfrom a Palestinian perspective)
Nadav Zafrir – a guru in Tel Aviv’s tech scene – offers a textbook example of how spies can make a killing.
Zafrir has gone from commanding Unit 8200 – an elite division in Israel’s military focused on electronic espionage – to leading Check Point,2 a big success story in the business known as cybersecurity.
One element of his rise which has received scant attention is that he has been helped along the way by the European Union.
In 2020, the Brussels bureaucracy issued a research grant worth more than $2.5 million to Illusive Networks, a firm then chaired by Zafrir.
Illusive Networks had developed what it called a “solution that allows early detection of cyber attacks” and the grant was explicitly aimed at enabling the firm to “expand into the EU market.”
As “ethics checks” for EU-funded research projects involve little more than box-ticking, it is a safe bet that Brussels officials did not raise objections to Unit 8200’s activities before approving the grant.
The sinister nature of those activities was summarized in a 2014 letter signed by a few dozen of its veterans.
“The Palestinian population under military rule is completely exposed to espionage and surveillance by Israeli intelligence,” the letter reads. “While there are severe limitations on the surveillance of Israeli citizens, the Palestinians are not afforded this protection.”
A state which discriminates based on race or ethnicity is by definition an apartheid state. Although the 2014 letter did not use the word “apartheid,” the practices it described certainly fit the definition of apartheid.
Those practices did not materialize overnight. As Nadav Zafrir was head of Unit 8200 from 2009 to 2013, he had definitely practised apartheid – a crime against humanity, according to the International Criminal Court.
By issuing a research grant to his firm, the EU was rewarding a spy chief who had served an apartheid system.
Ireland’s dereliction of duty
Profiles of Zafrir in the mainstream press do not call out his crimes. Rather, they celebrate how he has an “X factor” and how he has been offered a “compensation” package worth more than $15 million for 2025.
Since he joined Check Point as CEO last year – a time when his old buddies in the Israeli military were busy inflicting a genocide on Gaza – he has garnered numerous favourable headlines.
Checkpoint leader Zafrir
Check Point is consolidating its position by either snatching rivals or teaming up with them.
A partnership accord has been inked, for example, between Check Point and another Tel Aviv firm Wiz. “Check Point’s cloud network security tools will be merged into Wiz’s cloud security platform,” The Times of Israelinformed its readers in February.
Technology reporters may get excited by what’s happening in the clouds. Back on the ground, activists are raising awareness about Check Point’s inextricable links to Israel’s military.
In Ireland, a protest against Check Point last month grabbed some media attention.
It involved a disruption of a promotional event organized by Check Point and featuring a speech from the former rugby international Brian O’Driscoll, who is regarded as a hero to many following that sport.3
The group behind the protest – Your Tech = Their Deaths – is rightly sounding the alarm about Irish companies and public authorities that use Check Point’s software.
I contacted the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Dublin following reports that it had renewed a contract relating to Check Point technology over the past few weeks. The DPP’s office replied that it “does not comment on any arrangements related to cybersecurity.”
Ireland is a country still grappling with the effects of colonization. Overcoming those effects requires not only the unification of the island but a willingness to stand up for oppressed peoples around the world.
The other kind of Israeli checkpoint, this a temporary one in the West Bank in April 2024. These are in addition to the fixed ones and Palestinians driving or walking may have to go through many in one journey. Israeli checkpoints are some of the areas of confrontation and arbitrary arrest of Palestinians. (Photo: Times Israel Jaafar ASHTIYEH/ AFP)
Defending Palestinian rights – through action, not just rhetoric – is surely a moral duty for Ireland. Handing over money to Check Point is a dereliction of that duty.
End.
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2An ironic name, given that the IOF and even settlers set up checkpoints to harass Palestinians on towns’ entrances and exits and many points along the roads and that their checkpoints are where Palestinians are routinely arrested and sometimes killed. (Rebel Breeze editorial comment)
3According to reports the protest received rough handling by Gardaí and by security personnel and one participant was subsequently threatened by Driscoll’s lawyers but the promotional event nevertheless had to be abandoned (Rebel Breezeeditorial comment).
Last week saw the anniversary of the creation of the Irish Citizen Army, a militia formed initially to defend the workers from attacks of the Dublin Metropolitan Police on behalf of the Dublin capitalists but that went on to fight in the 1916 Rising.
The ICA was born in the struggle of the consortium of Dublin employers, led by big capitalist and Irish nationalist William Martin Murphy, to smash the militant and successful Irish Transport & General Workers Union in Dublin, where the union had its headquarters, in August 1913.
The workers were presented with a declaration to sign that they would not support the ITGWU but no union in Dublin at the time, whatever they thought of the targeted union and its founder,1 could sign such a declaration. As workers began to be sacked, others came out in solidarity strikes.
Dublin entered an extended struggle between the organised capitalists and the organised workers. In such a struggle of course, the organised capitalists had on their side the magistrates, the hierarchy of the various churches, the mass media2 – and the Dublin Metropolitan Police.
Anti-WW1 banner across Liberty Hall, HQ of the Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union in October 1914, with the Irish Citizen Army parading outside.
The DMP, a British colonial police force for Dublin would have needed no specific instructions to attack demonstrations of the ITGWU, their instincts as guardians of colonial ‘law and order’ sufficing but in addition, the attitude of the media would have outlined their ‘duty’.
And after representation from W.M. Murphy to Dublin Castle, the HQ of British control, the ‘duty’ of the DMP was outlined and they were reinforced by a number of the colonial gendarmerie,3 the Royal Irish Constabulary.4
On the evening of 30th August a mass meeting of the ITGWU in Beresford Place, outside the union’s headquarters, Liberty Hall, was attacked by a baton-wielding force of the DMP, leaving two workers mortally wounded5 with resulting running battles towards city working class areas.6
The following day, the DMP again viciously attacked crowds in O’Connell Street in front of Clery’s from which Larkin attempted to address the crowd in a meeting banned by the city magistrate.7
Not long after, a marching music band leading a strikers’ parade was also attacked by the DMP with musical instruments damaged and members injured and the leadership of the union decided that a counter-strategy was required for self-defence and possibly the very survival of the union.
The Lawrence O’Toole Pipe Band’s website lays claims to having been the victims of this attack while other history talks and articles have claimed that the ITGWU’s Fintan Lawlor Pipe Band was the one attacked. It is not impossible that the DMP attacked both.
On 19th November 1913 the Irish Citizen Army was born8 following a suggestion by Seán O’Casey and a call by Jim Larkin as a workers’ defence militia. After Larkin left Ireland for the USA in 1914, James Connolly took over leadership of the ICA and wielded it into a revolutionary force.
I recall attending a book launch or talk about the ICA in which it was described as “the first workers’ army in the world” but searching for that quotation I now find it refuted by AI online and replaced by “first working-class army”.9 I cannot agree with the latter.
Most armies, especially nowadays, are “working class” in that this most numerous social class will contribute the vast majority of its rank-and-file. In the past, the peasantry and landless labourers would have been the majority.
Despite the overwhelming worker membership of the ICA, its most important distinction was not in the social class of its membership. Nor was it totally working class, containing as it did some notable members of middle-commercial and one of a landowning classes.10
What made the Irish Citizen Army very different from other armies and qualified it, I maintain, for the title of “workers’ army” were the intentions and ideological perspective of its founders, the conditions of its birth, ethos of its members and – most of all – its declared purpose.
The ICA was founded with the express intention and necessity of defending a worker’s organisation which was resisting an attempt by the capitalist employers to break that organisation. The struggle was led by declared openly-socialist leaders who gave the call for the ICA’s founding.
In every respect, I maintain, even without a specifically socialist constitution, this was a workers’ army, formed by workers, in a workers’ struggle in defence of their organisation and of the right to organise, defending their previously-won improvements and their dignity.
And the lack of evidence of any such precursor qualifies the Irish Citizen Army as “the first workers’ army in the world.”
However, none of the preceding makes it a socialist organisation, in my opinion. A socialist organisation would have as one of its principal objectives the attainment (whether by reformist or revolutionary methods) of a socialist organisation of society.
As to Lenin having allegedly called the ICA “the first Red Army in the world”, I have searched for the original reference without success, finding only it quoted by speakers, writers, organisations and authors – but never with a reference of where and when Lenin supposedly said it.
I strongly suspect that Lenin never said that. But even if he had, the ICA’s constitution does not support it, being rather of a democratic nationalist and anti-colonial character.11
Socialist Republicans today approve of the Irish Citizen Army throughout the 1913-1916 period. But it is not unknown for them to go further and to characterise it as socialist republican in nature and orientation. I don’t see evidence of this in either the ICA’s constitution or in its membership.
Though certainly Irish nationalist in intention, the word ‘Republic’ is not mentioned anywhere in the constitution. One might argue that it was understood but I can’t see the evidence for that either. Some contemporary prominent Irish nationalists were not even wedded to the idea of a Republic.
The 1919-1921 IRA was not a socialist organisation. Nor was the monarchist Sinn Féin party, even after its founder Griffiths permitted its reformation as Republican in order for the disparate nationalist movement to contest the UK’s 1918 General Election on an abstentionist manifesto.
The political leadership of the Republican movement split over the British offer of dominion status with partition as against a unitary Republic. Churchill was quite adamant that the new Irish State could not be a Republic and it was not declared so until the 1937 Constitution.
Certainly the founders of the ICA were socialist Republicans but in the absence of its constitution being of a kind, for the organisation to qualify as such it must be shown to have been also the widely-embraced ethos of its membership.
Even if imagining that the membership of the ICA, like its founders and a number of its officers, were Irish Republicans, it is still a greater step to assert that they were socialist Republicans, in the sense of intending the socialist organisation of society and elimination of capitalism.12
Irish Citizen Army on the roof of Liberty Hall during a flag-raising activity. (Photo sourced from Internet)
TODAY AND TOMORROW
Whereas these historical questions may fuel debate, no debate should be needed regarding the right of workers to organise to defend and improve their conditions, nor to change the dominant political shape and allegiance of their country, nor to defend their organisation from the police.
Indeed, not only can we take those rights as legitimate and necessary to exercise but it also becomes clear that at some point we will, as workers, as socialists and/ or as Republicans, need such an army. The ruling class has its physical force organisations in the Gardaí and the Irish Army.
The history of ruling classes bears testament to the fact they never relinquish power without using violence against challenges from the rising social forces; even such social and political rights as we have were won through hard struggle, sacrifice and indeed martyrdom.
Commemorative postcard 1916, showing severe British shelling damage to the original Liberty Hall building, Beresford Place, Dublin.
The Far-Right has also given ample proof of their readiness to employ violence against the vulnerable sections of our class and against also those they consider opposed to them ideologically; the history of fascism too warns us of the need to organise our defence.
In that respect too let me briefly comment on the false “ICA” recently proclaimed in a video which, while claiming a 32-County outlook and repeating that Britain has no right in Ireland, filled the rest of their video with racist anti-migrant rhetoric, conspiracy theory and lies.
Of course they contain nothing of the workers’ solidarity ethos of the ranks of the real ICA, not to mention the anti-fascist, anti-racist internationalist and socialist outlook of the ICA’s leadership.
The ICA developed as a force for physical defence of workers’ rights on the streets, which is where the DMP and RIC attacked them. It was some years later, in the course of inter-imperialist World War I that the ICA fought in an armed rising alongside other democratic national forces.
Some, usually only among Irish Republicans, have striven also to organise a fighting force. Typically they concentrated on gaining arms and planning armed actions. Isolated from the masses, they were easily infiltrated by State agents, resulting in activists going to jail.
Captain White & Irish Citizen Army on parade on their grounds at Croydon House, Fairview, N. Dublin City. (Sourced: Internet)
While needed, I believe a workers’ defence force should, in current circumstances, concentrate on street defence-and-offence fighting tactics, also that it should be based on the broad democratic political front, on unity in action against imperialism, colonialism, fascism and Loyalism.
Defence on a broad front basis can and should educate the whole resistance movement, in its disparate ideological influences, as it may be that similar recruits in the Irish Citizen Army were educated and trained under the leadership of revolutionary socialists and republicans.
End.
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1913 – A Policeman’s Lot and Murphy’s Law. Talk given at Garda Historical Society at Store Street Station, August 29th 2013 and Dublin Castle at Police Memorabilia Exhibition, November 16th, 2013 (speaker’s name not listed). https://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=1800
1Jim Larkin, a migrant and union organiser from Liverpool, had formed the ITGWU as a split from the British-based National Union of Dock Labourers after serious clashes with the latter’s General Secretary, ?????? Sexton (also an Irish nationalist). Larkin was very popular with the ITGWU’s members but much less so with other union leaders around Dublin.
2Not least the editorial and management boards of the Irish Independent, owned by William Martin Murphy, leader of the union-busting consortium.
3An armed police force under central State control, like the Guardia Civil (Spain), Carabinieri (Italy) and similar in France and Turkey.
5James Nolan and John Byrne, which Wikipedia has for years erroneously recorded as killed the subsequent day in another DMP riot in O’Connell Street, known as Bloody Sunday (1913).
6South-eastwards along Townsend Street towards Ringsend and Northwards towards Corporation Street in the Montgomery (Monto) Street area. There the residents defended the strikers and attacked the police, an example of class solidarity for which they paid soon afterwhen a DMP force paid them a visit, smashing household furniture and ornaments and beating John McDonagh. Paralysed from the waist down and in bed, McDonagh was unable to effectively defend himself and when his wife attempted to do so, she also was beaten and McDonagh died shortly afterwards in Jervis Street Hospital. (see Police Retaliation [sic] in APoliceman’s Lot and Murphy’s Lawhttps://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=1800)
7See a number of entries, including Wikipedia on Bloody Sunday Dublin 1913. Though some of those claim the deaths of James Nolan and Patrick Byrne were caused then, in fact it was the previous day that they received their fatal wounds from the police. Unmentioned in most is the case of Fianna Éireann youth Patsy O’Connor, knocked unconscious as he gave first aid to another victim of the police. Patsy O’Connor suffered repeated headaches thereafter and died on 15th June 1915 at the age of 18. https://1913committee.ie/blog/?p=2293
10I state this qualification despite Connolly’s remark in Workers’ Republic, 30 October 1915: Hitherto the workers of Ireland have fought as parts of the armies led by their masters, never as a member of any army officered, trained and inspired by men of their own class. Now, with arms in their hands, they propose to steer their own course, to carve their own future.
Constance Markievicz and Katherine Lynn were officers in the ICA but neither were born into the working class.
12I am not unaware that a significant number of individuals and organisations claiming to be Irish socialist Republicans currently spend hardly any time at all discussing the socialist organisation of society.
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