Category: Political Analysis

THREAT AND COUNTER THREAT 1: ISRAEL-LEBANON

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

Over recent months threats have been exchanged between ‘Israeli’ leaders and Hezbollah in Lebanon and also between leaders of Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The former reached its hottest pitch recently and seemed to be heralding open war.

Hezbollah and ‘Israel’

Hezbollah is an Islamist anti-imperialist resistance organisation of an estimated 50-100,000 trained fighters1 and has been characterised, in numbers and equipment, as “a medium-sized army”. Its artillery units have been firing into ‘Israeli’-occupied territory since October 8th last year.

The resistance organisation has taken action in solidarity with the Palestinians facing genocide and daily massacres and has vowed to continue it until the ‘Israeli’ Occupation Force ceases its attacks on the Palestinians.

Vast areas of Israeli settlements have been temporarily abandoned by settlers (or permanently by at least 60) as a result,2 the genocidal state accommodating former residents in camps and hotels, while the IOF occupies some buildings in the regions, enduring constant Hezbollah bombardments.

IOF base hit by Hezbollah strike during during the current conflict. (Photo source: Internet)

As the genocidal assault continues, Hezbolah has begun to shell settlements which it had previously excluded from its regular bombardment. In addition, the organisation has been repeatedly hitting IOF surveillance equipment and parts of the ‘Iron Dome’ air defence system.

One might say that the ‘Israeli’ army was responsible for the creation of Hezbollah; the organisation came into existence fighting the IOF’s occupation of Lebanon and its facilitation of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp by its Christian Phalangist allies.3

Hezbollah fought the IOF occupation of Lebanon in 2000 and the re-invasion in 2006, forcing the settler state to recall its army with substantial losses. They were the first campaign defeats inflicted on the IOF since its creation.

Hezbollah stages a military parade in Beirut, Lebanon in April 2024
(Image credit: AP Photo/Hussein Malla/Alamy)

Threats

Recently Yoav Gallant, the Occupation’s Minister of Defence (sic) threatened Hezbollah with war and claimed that it would be “quick, surprising and decisive”, also that they could shift the focus of their war from Gaza to Hezbollah in an instant.

Yoav Gallant, ‘Israeli’ Minister for Defence (sic), meeting some IOF personnel. The Purple beret is one of the signature uniforms of the Givati Brigade (84th), one of the five infantry brigades of the IOF and is one of the two infantry brigades under the Southern Command. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Certainly the most nazi part of Netanyahu’s fascist coalition threatens to resign unless the IOF attacks Hezbollah; it’s been speculated for some time that ‘Bibi’ himself would like that to draw the USA into it and as a distraction from his failed war against the Palestinian resistance.4

But it was almost certainly empty bluster from Gallant, to which Hezbollah replied, in case he were serious, that while the IOF could of course cause damage in Lebanon, that Hezbollah’s damage to the ‘Israeli’ state’s military bases and civilian infrastructure would be much greater.

Had Gallant been talking about aerial bombardment only there could have been some reality in his threat — but a land invasion? Having to cross the buffer zone they themselves created,5 meanwhile under fire from Hezbollah’s missiles? And how many undamaged tanks does the IOF have left?6

And then fighting Hezbollah on the ground? Gallant’s words might also have been bravado in the face of the shock settler society received with Hezbollah’s publication the day previously of the photographs of ‘Israeli’ military and civilian infrastructure taken by undetected drone.

Last Saturday evening, Hezbollah published more photos from a new undetected “flight of the hoopoe”7 which must have given the Israeli ruling class even more pause, this one picking out military targets including its “secure” air force base and naming commanding officers.

Indeed, Shin Bet8 was recently reported shocked to find that Hamas has an extensive database of IOF personnel at all ranks, including combat history and current addresses; they tracked the IOF commander of the Al Shifa Hospital massacre,9 field-executing him two months later.

Hezbollah published the material as a warning (and also to coincide with butcher Netanyahu’s visit to address the USA’s Congress in the Capitol, Washington DC). “If we can photograph it, we can hit it” Hezbollah said and it is known that their missiles can reach any part of the ‘Israeli’ state.

As this goes to publication we read that two Hezbollah M90 missiles were targeted at ‘Tel Aviv’. Though apparently intercepted it will be unsettling for the regime to say the least to learn that the missiles were launched from an area of proximity to a concentration of IOF vehicles invading the Gaza strip.

Recently, ‘Israeli’ threats escalated following an explosion which killed 12 children playing football in the ‘Israeli’-occupied Syrian Golan. In shocking hypocrisy considering the massacres of thousands of Palestinian children, Israeli and US representatives went into paroxysms of rage.

Aside from patently untrue claims that the victims were “Israeli children”,10 Hezbollah has also denied responsibility; it’s much more likely that the explosion was an accidental IOF Iron Dome missile strike, given the haste with which the missile remains were rushed off-site (and out of sight) by the IOF.11

But with the ‘casus belli’ established, real or not, on Tuesday the IOF sent an explosive drone on an apparently assassination attempt to a southern part of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, killing a woman and two children, injuring 68 and perhaps more inside the collapsed building.

The strike also killed Fuad Shukr, leader of Hezbollah military wing, veteran of the resistance in Lebanon to the IOF invasions and until now, sole survivor of the leadership of those days, all killed in battle or in assassination.

Hezbollah at the very least will continue its bombardment and may feel it necessary to hit some part of “Tel Aviv”. Then the USA and the UK may step in. Meanwhile the Islamist Resistance in Iraq has recommenced its attacks on US bases there, Yemen’s return serve is awaited …

And Iran is in the game, inevitably bound to respond after ‘Israel’s’ assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas and chief ceasefire/ peace negotiator for the Palestinians, who was in Tehran to speak at the inauguration of the new President of Iran..

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Many with battle experience rather than killing civilians, like most of the IOF. Hezbollah’s leader claimed 100,000 fighters in Lebanon three years ago while a western agency puts the figure at 50,000. However the genocide in Palestine and the response of Hezbollah, combined with punitive ‘Israeli’ bombing and assassinations, is likely to have brought many more recruits to the organisation. It can also call on its fighters who are in Syria helping to defending the country from ISIS and US proxies.

2https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/22/724134/62,000-Israeli-settlers-flee-northern-occupied-lands-out-of-fear-of-Hezbollah-strikes–Report

3 16–18 September 1982, killing of between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias.

4Netanyahu has his personal reasons too; the minute the war is over he will face his postponed trial for corruption.

5By pulling back from their borders to make it more difficult for Hezbollah to hit them, ironically.

6From Israeli analysis sources it seems that not only does the IOF not have the necessary tanks (admitted to 500 damaged) or soldiers but even the munitions for a real war against an opposing army (see short discussion on this and the source in Electronic Intifada recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loHMeAfmnxY)

7The name Hezbollah gave the drone – the hoopoe is the national bird of Palestine.

8‘Israeli’ intelligence service.

9https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hnsJ9G_fdOY

10All of the children were of Syrian Druze families in a community in which around 90% have refused to accept citizenship in the state of their armed occupiers, holding on instead to Druze and Arab Syrian identity.

11Israeli Ministers were denounced on their visits to the site with cries translating as “child-killers” and demands they “Get out! Leave!”, Netanyahu having to leave within 15 minutes of his arrival.

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/war-with-hezbollah-will-be-quick-surprising-and-decisive-israeli-defense-minister/3278153

Hezbollah (a somewhat biased history): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah

Wolfe Tone’s “Men of No Property”

On By rebelbreezeIn Capitalism, History, History commemoration, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Religious Sectarianism, Socialist RevolutionLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

Prominent among the many words quoted from Theobald Wolfe Tone, ‘the father of Irish Republicanism’, are that ‘Our Strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property’.

The interpretation of those words has led to some confusion between socialism and republicanism.

Wolfe Tone, as he is normally known historically, co-founded the Society of United Irishmen in 1791, which led a mass armed uprising in 1798 against British Rule in Ireland, as a speaker said at the Anti-Imperialist Action’s oration at their annual commemoration at Tone’s grave last month.1

Tone himself was arrested on a French ship captured by the British Navy and despite his French Army officer rank, tried on treason charges and sentenced to death upon the gallows … but died instead in prison of a wound to his throat.

Wolfe Tone Monument, Stephens Green, Dublin (Photo cred: National Built Heritage Service)

An important part of the leadership of the United Irishmen, most of the Leinster Directorate was arrested in Dublin but the Rising went ahead in other parts of Ireland, notably Antrim, Wexford and Wicklow, and another with French troop reinforcements, too few and too late, in Mayo.

The Rising was crushed, the leaders executed or exiled, along with many of their followers. A large body of Irish traditional and folk song, mostly in English and much of it composed in its centenary, commemorates the struggle and sacrifice of the United Irishmen.

The AIA speaker: “Tone’s most important belief was that we must ‘break the connection with England’ by any means necessary – one of the most important teachings for the Revolutionary Republican Movement today,” to work “for National Liberation by any means we decide necessary”.

No-one who has even the most cursory acquaintance with the historic figure of Wolfe Tone can deny that he was determined to break away from English colonial rule and, once he became convinced there was no peaceful way to do so, was determined to do it by force or arms.

“Tone was also clear that the revolutionary struggle could only be successful,” continued the speaker, “if it was based on the masses of the Irish People, stating that, ‘Our Strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property’.”

From that, the speaker went on to claim that “we learn from Tone that the fight for our Republic is a class struggle and that the driving force of that struggle will be the working class fighting for their own liberation.”

I do not believe that the writings or recorded words of Wolfe Tone justify that interpretation. Indeed, it would have been strange if they had; the 1798 Rising was what Marxists describe as a “bourgeois revolution”, i.e. one led by a section of the capitalist class in its own class interests.2

Such also were the Revolutions in England of 1649 and 1688, of the French in 1789 and the American in 1765-1783, the Italian of 1848, the Chinese of the early Kuo Min Tang and the Latin American revolutions against the Spanish Empire, along with the Mexican 1910-1920.

Yes, the capitalist class, which is always telling us to employ only constitutional means to get what we need or want, tries to conceal that they themselves came to power by revolution.

Colorised illustration by unknown artist of the storming of the Bastille in July 1789 (Source: Wikipedia)

The leadership of the United Irishmen was almost totally of the established Anglican church or of Protestant sects – “Protestant and Dissenter”, in Tone’s words. They were descendants of settlers from Britain and they were of bourgeois social strata.

This section of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie were fed up with restraints imposed from England on developing the colony’s potential, on a taxation system they considered unfair, on corruption in the Irish Parliament and in management by the Monarch’s representative in Ireland.

Being only a very small minority of the Irish population3 they were aware that they needed the mass behind them in order to build an independent national economy, for which they tried to gain Catholics admission to the Irish Parliament, which at the time only admitted Anglicans as MPs.

When Henry Grattan, who had earlier led quite a rebellious Irish Parliament,4 failed in the attempt to make Parliament more representative, Tone and many others became convinced that only revolution could progress society in Ireland and from then on he strove to bring that about.

Grattan

Statue of Henry Grattan, failed reformer of the Irish Parliament, situated in Dame Street junction with Grafton Street and facing Trinity College. (Photo cred: Trip Advisor)

A revolution against England, a great European naval power, even with the help of revolutionary France, would require mass participation and support, as the AIA speaker remarked at the commemoration. So Tone aspired to the unity of “Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.”

The section of the religions that most fell into the category of the “men of no property” were of course the Catholics, dispossessed of their lands and under Penal Laws of the Occupation. Without the support of the Catholic majority there was no chance of a successful revolution.

Tone may well have been a most democratic Republican in favour of all kinds of progressive social reform but nowhere in his writing does he advocate the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, seizure of private property and the setting up of a socialist system to be run by the working class.

united men

Reenactment of the United Irishmen in battle, depicting the “men (and women) of no property. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Theobald Wolfe Tone was a courageous democratic revolutionary, anti-colonial and a martyred patriot but was not nor could have been a socialist leader. That which he was, was the best of his time and among the best we had to offer and there is no need to try to make him something else.

The United Irishmen represented a section of the Irish bourgeoisie that was truly Republican and revolutionary. That section of society was mostly of settler descent since the mass of the native and Catholic population had been ground down and oppressed.

Thereafter most of the native Irish bourgeoisie developed as a subservient client class, “Castle Catholics” ag sodar i ndiaidh na n-uaisle,5 up to whatever “cute hoor”6 and gombeen7 tricks they could get up to but without a fraction of the spine necessary to fight for real independence.

A successful Irish national revolution does indeed need to be led by the Irish working class as demonstrated by what James Connolly – rather than Wolfe Tone – observed: “Only the Irish working class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.”

The reason for that, as outlined by Connolly, is quite simple: the working class is the only social class of any size that has nothing to gain from compromise and betrayal of the revolution.

Some other key points laid down by Tone, continued the speaker, include that Republicanism is Anti Imperialist and it is Internationalist. Our struggle in Ireland is part of a wider international struggle of oppressed people against occupation, colonialism and imperialism.

Tone understood this when he looked to Revolutionary France to support the 1798 uprising.

This was well understood by Irish Republicans of Tone’s time who celebrated the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and the defeat of the English by the settlers in America. The United Irishmen also helped the creation of the United Englishmen and led two of the British Navy’s most serious mutinies.8

Today, continued the speaker, Republicans must fight our struggle while also supporting Liberation struggles around the world in the belief that every blow struck against imperialism brings our victory closer.

So from Palestine to the Philippines and from India to the Basque Country, and everywhere people take a stand against NATO, the Revolutionary Republican movement must raise our cries in solidarity.

End.

Footnotes

1The event was organised by Anti-Imperialist Action, a socialist republican organisation, with the oration being given on behalf of the organisation. A pilgrimage to Wolfe Tone’s grave in Bodenstown is a fixture on the calendars of most Irish Republican organisations.

2This should not be taken as a criticism since Marxists agree that many bourgeois revolutions were progressive in their time.

3Tiny, in the case of the Anglicans in particular; the Presbyterians were much more numerous.

41689-’91.

5Irish language: “Trotting after the nobles.”

6An admiring description in Ireland for one who manages to benefit by dubious means.

7Corruption of an Irish language term for the ‘carpet bagger’ types who benefited amidst the disaster of the Great Hunger in the mid 19 Century, snapping up land in particular at the lowest of prices.

8The Spithead and Nore naval mutinies, 1797.

Sources

THAT FLAG IS NOT THEIRS – BUT IT’S NOT YOURS EITHER!

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, History, Ireland, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

The Irish Tricolour has been in the news recently in an unhappy circumstance. The flag was featured borne in a group of anti-immigration racists carrying a banner declaring Coolock Says No,1 next to Union Jacks2 and Loyalist flags at a Belfast riot.

This was a bizarre juxtaposition given that Loyalists are hostile to any signs of Irish Republicanism, of which the Tricolour is chief among its historical symbols. Furthermore, the Unionist state banned its public display in most situations between 1954 and 1987 leading to resistance and arrests.3

In the sectarian society created by the British in its occupied Six County colony, the Tricolour is burned annually on British Loyalist bonfires and is reviled by Unionism and its more extreme progeny, Loyalism, which in turn is associated with state-sanctioned sectarian murder gangs.4

The strange juxtaposition was remarked upon in mass media not only in Ireland (both sides of the Border) but even in Britain — and Irish State Taoiseach (prime minister) Simon Harris remarked that he found the flag in association with racism to be “repugnant”.5

But does Harris have the moral right to make that comment?

Origin and History of the Irish Tricolour

The Tricolour as we know it and its use dates from its sewing in silk by revolutionary women in Paris in 1848 and presentation to a delegation of the Young Irelanders, a revolutionary Irish Republican group of that period and its subsequent unfurling in Ireland by Thomas Meagher.

Thomas Francis Meagher as captain in the Union Army (Source: Drawing in Library of Congress, USA)

Irish revolutionary Thomas Francis Meagher was convicted by the English Occupation of sedition during trials around the planning and carrying out of the Irish Rising of 1848 and, with death sentence commuted, transported to Australia as a felon, from which he escaped to the USA in 1852.

As the American Civil War approached, Meagher, along with most of the Irish in the USA took the side of the Union, leaving only a rump following Mitchell, formerly a comrade of the Young Irelanders, to side with the slave-owning Confederacy in the conflict.

Meagher not only fought in the Union Army in the American Civil War against the slave-owning Confederacy, gaining the rank of Brigadier but he and his wife raised a regiment, the 69th New York Infantry, unofficially called The Irish Brigade or even Mrs. Meagher’s Own.

Plaque in Lower Abbey Street (opp. side of Abbey Theatre) to the first unveiling of the Irish Tricolour in Dublin, 1848. (Source: Internet)

The Young Irelanders were Republicans and the Tricolour was always seen not only as embodying the unity of all in Ireland, regardless of origin, against the British occupation but also for national liberation, against Monarchy and for complete separation of Church and State.

In addition, it had a strong internationalist element in that it was associated with revolution throughout Europe, presented to us in solidarity by French revolutionary women and flown alongside French Tricolours in Ireland at celebrations of the French revolution of 1848.

It was the principal flag of Irish anti-fascism too in the 1930s when Irish Republicans fought the fascist Blueshirts on Irish streets and a number of them went to fight in defence of the Spanish Republic against the fascist military coup of Franco and his Nazi German and Italian Fascist allies.

More recently when Irish Republicans and socialists mobilised against the attempts of the Irish ruling class to promote NATO and to ease cooperation with that alliance of Western imperialism, Harris also ranted against supporters of Anti-Imperialist Action flying of the Irish Tricolour.

The Tricolour among Loyalists was of course newsworthy and was covered by Irish mainstream media and Unionist mouthpiece The Belfast Telegraph along with photos by The Guardian on line. But all without comment on its presence in Palestine solidarity events in London.

Irish Tricolours have been flown at every current Palestine solidarity march in London (ten of them at the most recent London march) and, along with Saoirse Don Phalaistín printed on the Palastinian flag, have been seen also at university solidarity encampments and at events to free Julian Assange.

Section of Palestine solidarity protest at Barclays Bank, Tottenham Road, London on 24th April this year, showing Irish Tricolour and Saoirse Don Phalaistín flags. Zionists and British fascists are united in opposition to them across the road. (Photo cred: Northern Times)

The Tricolour Flown by Racists and Fascists?

Given its origins and history, why is the Tricolour being flown by fascists?

In recent years it seemed that whenever one saw a crowd with Tricolours among them, it was most likely a fascist or at least racist-led event. One reason for this is that the fascists historically try to portray themselves as nationalists, i.e organising ‘for the nation’.

In all cases historically, the “nation” represented by the fascists turned out to be that of the ruling class, the financial and industrial elite – never that of the working people, not even of those sections of the lower middle class that supported the rise of fascist movements.

Fascists however have also frequently colluded with the invader of their nation, for example with the Nazis in Europe, particularly in France, Greece, Yugoslavia, Ukraine.6 The fascists in Ireland today represent the neo-colonial,7 colonial and imperialist financial-industrial interests in Ireland.

Racist group from Dublin suburb finds common cause with British Loyalists in Belfast anti-immigration demonstration and riots 3 August 2024 (Photo cred: Irish News)

In that context, the unity of fascists from the Twenty-Six Counties with Loyalists from the Six Counties is not surprising, nor even with notorious English fascist Tommy Robinson. Prominent Irish fascists have had friendly interactions with Loyalist Jim Dowson and British fascist Farrage.

Portraying themselves as saviours of the nation, as moral guardians etc., just as the German Nazis did in the 1930s is hypocritical but absolutely necessary for them. If they revealed the class interests they represent and the kind of regime they really want, where would they get supporters?

The fascists are few and need those supporters, their easily-led mobs and stormtroopers. It is among sections of the down-trodden in society that they will find them, the ignorant, marginalised, abandoned by the capitalist system but all too often by the liberals and the Left also.

Substance addiction, mental illness, crime and cultural poverty is rife in these communities and it is sections of those who are presented with false enemies – migrants, LGBT people, muslims – by false saviours masquerading as patriots. Many in those communities are ripe for manipulation.

But the attempted takeover of the Tricolour and subversion has not occurred by Fascist manipulation and through historical and political ignorance alone.

When antifascists mobilise, rarely is the Tricolour seen amongst them, assisting the impression that it is the racists and fascists that are representing the nation. Understandably, Anarchists may not wish to fly the flag of a state and socialists may feel that the flag is representing a capitalist state.

Often too in the past, Republicans have been absent from antifascist mobilisations but on occasion too went to them ready for physical confrontation and therefore without flags. But what message do antifascists think is presented by Palestinian flags among them and Tricolours on the other side?8

Invited to speak at a conference on anti-fascism in Dublin some years ago, I raised the question of the appropriation of the Tricolour by fascists and how it was necessary for the antifascists to show it among themselves also but my recommendation did not win approval9.

It is depressing to see that the situation has not noticeably improved in this regard some years later.

A welcome recent exception to the rule: a number of Irish flags including the Tricolour among antifascists outnumbering fascists and racists in Dundalk, Co. Louth on 4 August 2024 (the day following the Belfast racist riots). The fascists and racists had to be escorted out of town by the Public Order Unit of the Gardaí (Source photo: Anti-Imperialist Action FB site)

The Irish state and the Tricolour

It took some time for the Tricolour to be adopted as the national flag in the Republican movement until its fluttering above the GPO at the Henry Street Corner during the 1916 Rising.10 Thereafter it represented the forces of national liberation in the War of Independence (1991-’21).

The Irish Tricolour (Photo cred.: Getty Images)

Facing treason and counter-revolution in 1922, it was the flag of the Anti-Treaty forces, the neo-colonial traitors only flying it in order to deny it to the Irish Republicans. Despite that fact it has remained the flag of Irish Republicanism, irreconcilable with neo-colonialism, racism or fascism.

Republican women activists of Cumann na mBan designed ‘Easter Lilly’ paper lapel pins to raise funds for dependants of Republicans imprisoned or killed during the Civil War and they did so in the colours of the Irish Tricolour: Green, White and Orange. The emblem is worn to this day.

The counter-revolutionary faction that spawned the fascist Blueshhirts11 did not formally adopt the Tricolour as the State flag in law, that was done by the next wave of counter-revolution, Fianna Fáil,12 while in government, situating it in the 1937 Constitution.

The Tricolour is in a sense the flag of everyone in Ireland who does not reject it or defile it but evidently too, in its origins and among those who bore it forward, it is anathema to racism.

Furthermore, it is symbolically anathema to colonialism, loyalism, neo-colonialism and monarchy. Clearly the Tricolour is not legitimately the flag of racists and fascists but neither is it of the gombeen regime that flies it; Harris and the neo-colonial State claiming it is also repugnant.

Effigy of Simon Harris showing the bloody hands of collusion in the ‘Israeli’ genocide against Palestinians at a Palestine solidarity protest last weekend (organised by Mothers Against Genocide, North Wicklow Against Genocide, Arklow Against Zionism) at the annual Bray Air Show which features UK Military fliers. (Photo cred: Aisling Hudson)

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Coolock (from the Irish place-name An Chúlóg) is a Dublin city suburban district that has seen riots and arson recently against plans to house refugees in a disused factory building there.

2Common name for the flag of the United Kingdom, more derogatorily known as ‘The Butcher’s Apron’, featuring heraldic cross and salterres of the nations of England, Scotland and Ireland (Wales had already been conquered and incorporated into the Kingdom of England).

3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_and_Emblems_(Display)_Act_(Northern_Ireland)_1954

4Such as the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force (see also ‘the Glennane Gang’) which targeted most of their victims on the assumption of their being of the Catholic faith but also occasionally those from the Protestant community they considered disloyal (see ‘the Shankill Butchers’) or with which they were in competition around gang crime. All operated with colonial police and British Army assistance.

5https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/08/04/cafe-and-supermarket-burnt-out-after-anti-immigration-protests-in-belfast/

6These fascist groups supplied police and auxiliary units to the Nazi occupation, collecting information on the antifascist Resistance and on fugitive Jews and Roma. In some cases, as in Ukraine, they also acted as prison and concentration camp guards (but their chief leader, Stepan Bandera, was nominated as a national hero by the current Kiyv regime).

7Sometimes called ‘comprador capitalist’ or ‘client regime’, a term describing a state that is nominally independent but is under the actual domination of an external state or states. The Irish state has been in turn dominated by Britain, the USA and the EU imperialists.

8This is an issue on Palestine solidarity marches and pickets upon which I have also commented before.

9A speaker from a very sectarian migrant group ridiculed the idea but no-one else spoke up in support.

10Incidentally, at the other corner of the GPO above Princes Street in 1916 flew the green flag with the words “Irish Republic” inscribed upon it in white and gold letters, which had been created for the occasion in the home of Constance Markievicz, socialist revolutionary of a settler landowning family and born in London. And the man who erected it was Argentinian-born-and-raised Eamon Bulfin. It is ironical in the extreme that this flag also is sometimes brandished by Irish racists opposing immigration.

11Irish fascist organisation officially called the Army Comrades Association (later The National Guard), led by former Gárda Commissioner Eoin O’ Duffy which later joined with two conservative parties to form the current Fine Gael, currently in the Coalition Government with its erstwhile opposition Fianna Fáil and the Green Party.

12A major split from Sinn Féin in the early 1930s, currently in the Coalition Government with its erstwhile opposition Fine Gael and the Green Party.

SOURCES

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_and_Emblems_(Display)_Act_(Northern_Ireland)_1954

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shankill_Butchers

References to the Tricolour at Belfast racist riots: https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/08/04/cafe-and-supermarket-burnt-out-after-anti-immigration-protests-in-belfast/

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/far-right-irish-thugs-spent-night-drinking-with-uda-in-belfast-loyalist-bar/a1541636214.html

Origin & History of the Irish Tricolour: https://www.1916rising.com/cms/history/leaders-soldiers-and-poets/history-of-the-irish-flag/

Great Leaders Fall

On By rebelbreezeIn Assassination, Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Journalism, Middle East, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, Zionism1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

A number of great leaders of Arab resistance to imperialism and zionism have fallen in the last few days. “Those who live by the sword …”, the wise will comment. But they did not die by the sword but rather by long-range missile assassination.

Still, we can take the comment as a metaphor, that those who live by violence die by violence. But do they? Has Genocide Joe Biden died by violence? Sunak? Von der Leyen? Scholz and Merkel? Macron? Netanyahu, Gallant, Smotrich? No, it is clearly not a general rule.

But revolutionary fighters, commanders and leaders – they are killed, again and again. Fighters who become commanders are particularly targeted and, in the Middle East for sure, so are their spouses, their children, their parents … This is the way of Mossad and the IOF but also of the US and UK.

The SAS and MRF units of the British Army did that in the 30 Years’ War in the occupied Six Counties too. Assassinations of leaders are intended to disrupt the revolutionary organisation and demoralise the Resistance.

Sometimes, the intention is to have a revolutionary leader replaced by a traitor or someone who is ideologically pliable but often too the fallen are replaced by others as dedicated and competent, if not more so.

The IOF are accomplished assassins of individuals, also killers of civilians, just not very good at combating armed resistance, particularly in the absence of air cover..

But why shouldn’t revolutionary leaders be felled – don’t they send others out to kill or be killed? Certainly they do and all Arab resistance movement commanders know that they risk assassination, many of the commanders and fighters writing their wills while in active service.

However, visit imperialist war memorials listing the names and ranks of the fallen in war and see how many names of their armies’ generals can be found there. Not many, that’s for sure.

Haniyeh was the chief Resistance representative in the Gaza ceasefire/ peace talks. Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani of Qatar, which is mediating the talks, tweeted: “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on other side?”1

Two revolutionary leaders who fell to assassination so recently were Sayyed Fouad Shukr of Hezbollah in a suburb of Beirut and Ismail Haniye of Hamas in the Iranian capital, Tehran. Each organisation has issued statements that they will not be stopped and that they will claim revenge.

In another assassination strike on Tuesday in Iraq, admitted by the USA, Khateb Hezbollah suffered the loss of martyred leader Abu Hassan Al-Maliki and martyred fighters Ali Al-Moussawi, Hassan Al-Saadi and Hussein Karim Al-Daraji,2 bringing huge crowds out in protest there.

The Iraqi Islamic resistance had begun shelling US Army bases there recently, partly in frustration at the lack of any move to leave the country despite having indicated they would but partly also no doubt in frustration at not contributing to the united effort in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Iran declared furthermore that since the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh took place on their national territory that the obligation of response falls upon them. One imagines that another strike on somewhere in Israel will be considered necessary though the precise target is unknown.

Declarations of condolence, defiance and continuity were also issued by resistance factions in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, as well as by the leaderships of Yemen and Tunisia. A general strike was called in the West Bank and marches of defiance and solidarity held in a number of countries.

Confrontations with settlers and with the Occupation army have been taking place in towns across the West Bank and the war in Gaza continues, more or less as normal: daily massacres by the IOF, actions by the Resistance.

‘Collateral damage’

The strikes on the leaders also claimed other lives: six people including three women and two children, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps member Milad Bedi were killed in the Beirut assassination of Fuad Shukr and 78 injured in the collapsed building.3

Along with Haniyeh in Iran died his bodyguard and veteran Palestinian resistance fighter, Wassim Shabu, with no details of other ‘collateral damage’ from there or from Iraq so far.

According to the rules of war agreed among the imperialists, assassination of commanders, even civilian ones in times of war, is justified. ‘Collateral damage’ to a certain degree is also permitted by those rules but how can the bombing of journalists and killing two in Gaza be justified?

They were at the rubble site of Haniyeh’s former home, perhaps reporting on some kind of event marking the assassination, since they cannot attend the equivalent of a wake or a laying out of the body, the funeral to be held in Iran. How was their killing justifiable by any stretch of rules?

Ismail Al-Ghoul and Ramy Al-Reef were the two press men martyred there. Those two deaths bring the number of journalists killed in Palestine (always by the IOF), to 165, the highest number of journalists killed in any conflict since data began to be collected by the CPJ in 1992.4

Life of revolutionary leaders

The life stories of the martyred leaders are instructive in themselves. Ismail Haniyeh grew up in a refugee camp in Al-Shati in Gaza, son of a community driven out of their home in Jura in Askelan5 in 1948. He graduated with a degree in Arabic Literature from the Gaza University in 1981.

It was in university Haniyeh became politically active, joining the student section of Islamic Bloc (forerunner of Hamas), becoming arrested and detained three times, the final one for three years, after which he was deported to southern Lebanon with other leaders.

Ismail Haniye survived at least four assassination attempts, including in 2003 and in 2006.

Haniyeh led Hamas to victory in the 2006 elections for the legislature of the Palestinian Authority. The Fatah leadership refusing to hand over the administration in Gaza, Hamas removed them in a short struggle,6 then Abbas7 refused to recognise the election results there or in the West Bank.

The Zionist State followed, as did the Western powers and the siege of Gaza began.

Haniyeh’s granddaughter was killed last November in a bombing on a school. Three of his sons and three grandsons were assassinated in an IOF strike on their car in April and last month, 10 of his family, including his sister, were killed in an IOF bombing.

Sayeed Fuad Shukr 62, also known as Al-Hajj Mohsen, was born in the city of Nabatieh in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, according to the US government’s Rewards for Justice website, which offered up to $5 million for information on Shukr.

He came to political struggle in the resistance to the IOF invasion and occupation of Lebanon which was the spur to the creation of Hezbollah. Fuad Shukr as a fighter rose through the political and military ranks to the Jihad Council fighting the IOF and its Lebanese proxy.

Sayeed also would have been party to the decision to send Hezbollah fighters to assist the Syrian state resist attacks by NATO forces and their proxies and probably also Turkish.

He was married with children; his daughter wrote pieces in particular about martyrs under a pseudonym but just published a piece about her father under her own name on Resistance News Network (on Telegram).

Dying Gaul statue, 1st Century CE, probably Roman sculpture. By his neck ornament, the Gaul appears to be a warrior of high rank. The Gauls were a Celtic culture inhabiting most of modern-day France, Switzerland and parts of Italy; after many wars they were crushed by the Roman Empire. (Source image: Internet)

Great leaders

I commented that they were great leaders. By all accounts they were. They were Muslim revolutionaries and I am an atheist but more to the point their religious belief was an important part of their politico-social ideology, to which my own secular revolutionary ideology is opposed.

But they were revolutionaries non the less, courageously leading their people in struggle against their oppressors, who are very powerful enemies. They had emotion, which they let out in speech. In planning and in response to events however, they thought things through before acting.

Ismail Haniye probably underestimated the extent – in length of time and numbers of dead, in starvation and destruction of all infrastructure — of the ‘Israeli’ genocidal war after October 7th.8 That does not mean however that the breakout and attack was not necessary.

But the resistance was led, day after day, using the tunnels that had been dug through the years of preparation and the weapons researched, developed and produced over that time. In the truce/ ceasefire negotiations, the leadership stuck to the necessary minimum, which must’ve been hard.

Great fighters of the rank and file fall and are constantly being replaced and multiplied. Thousands of civilians have been killed, disabled and traumatised, yet the Palestinian population will recover and rebuild. Great leaders have fallen – let us hope their replacements will be great too.

End.

Footnotes

1https://www.axios.com/2024/07/31/hamas-ismail-haniyeh-killed-iran Just one more proof, in addition to going back on agreements, adding new requirements etc showing that Netanyahu never had any intention of negotiating a genuine ceasefire, exchange of prisoners and withdrawal from Gaza and the Rafah Gate to allow humanitarian aid to enter. Indeed he often said that his chief aim was wiping out Hamas and would not permit self-governance in Gaza – it was only a few of his officials and the US administration which kept pretending otherwise.

2 https://t.me/PalestineResist/50870

3https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-chief-ismail-haniyeh-killed-iran-hamas-says-statement-2024-07-31

4Committee to Protect Journalists https://cpj.org/

5Now Zionist settler district ‘Ashkelon’.

6This is the reality usually disguised in the western mass media by phrases like “Hamas seized power in Gaza” or “Hamas took control in Gaza”.

7Mahmoud, Fatah’s boss of the PA, widely known for personal corruption and nepotism and also for collusion with the Zionist Occupation.

8Even the most pessimistic could hardly have expected the extent of the genocide or the extent of the collusion or forbearance of the West and most of the Arab states.

Sources

Sayyed Fouad Shukr (but including rubbish about the explosion killing children in the Golan): https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/31/who-isfuad-shukr

Iraq assassinations: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240731-us-air-strike-in-iraq-as-regional-tensions-worsen/

HEZBOLLAH DRONE TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES SHOCK ‘ISRAELI’ SECURITY

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, ZionismLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The ability of enemy drones to evade detection and even attack, reaching into the heart of the ‘Israeli’ state’s territory, both to photograph and, in the case of the Jaffa (‘Haifa’) town and ‘Eilat’ port to strike, have shocked the state’s military.

They have shocked settler society too. Hadashot Bazman1 reported: “Hezbollah’s drones do not need a visa, and they are controlled remotely via cameras with an operator in the control room. What you do not know will not kill you now …2

“they are telling us: ‘We are here, inside you, planning, and capable of delivering harsh strikes’.” ‘Israeli’ daily newspaper Maariv added: “The Air Force has been asleep at the wheel for years.” 3

‘The sarcasm reached the point where one person wrote: “I lost a black leather wallet at Haifa (sic) Port; we hope Hezbollah will locate it accurately and professionally.”4

The hit in Jaffa was by Ansar Allah, exploding a drone near what was the former main US Embassy building (before its internationally illegal relocation to Jerusalem)5; the other was claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. But the drones hitting them almost daily are from Hezbollah.

Why the shock? It’s because they have come to believe in their security, their own racist European settler propaganda of innate superiority, instead of recognising the real source of their domination over the indigenous: the financial, military and political support of the Western powers.

With constant propaganda through western mass media, that image of the westernised (‘civilised’) ‘Israelis’ has permeated throughout the west, even infecting many who detest the Occupation’s genocidal actions.

Imagine the reaction as we explain years of Hezbollah’s drone development, testing, production, more testing … “We thought they got their weapons from Iran.6 Wait a minute! You’re talking engineers, designers, labs, test crews … Actual factories, assembly lines! In an Arab insurgency army?!”

We have been trained to see the ordinary people of the Middle East as underdeveloped industrially and (therefore!) socially, their fighters as religious fanatics. This image is not compatible with decades devoted to research development and production of sophisticated modern weaponry.

And yet, that is the ‘secret’ of the Yemeni success: determination, years of R&D, testing their ability, testing the enemy’s, redesign, more testing, tight security and deceiving the enemy … until the cat is out of the bag, spitting, claws fully extended.7

Hezbollah’s Karar drone. (Source: Yemen’s Air Force PDF)

And yet … and yet … Hezbollah is still showing restraint. Yes, they are targeting the IOF in the occupied lands and, in response to genocidal attacks on Palestinians, also some of the colonial settlements until recently untouched.

They are also hitting and destroying parts of the genocidal state’s surveillance and defence infrastructure, practically on a weekly basis. The “Iron Dome” depends on launching interception missiles and the launchers are being periodically hit by Hezbollah too.

‘Iron Dome’ launcher of interception missiles with members of the IOF in attendance (Source: Yemen’s Air Force PDF)

And they will continue doing this, they say, until the genocidal attacks on Palestinians cease and international humanitarian aid returns unimpeded (Yemen’s attacks on certain shipping will continue until the same point, as made clear by Ansar Allah).

Hezbollah, like most anti-imperialists, Arab or otherwise, want to see the demise of the genocidal state. But they clearly don’t want all-out war with it at present, with attendant wide-scale destruction of Lebanon by the air forces of the imperialist alliance.

So they have published the results of their surveillance drones flyovers, including most recently of the IOF’s high-security military airport, noting the identity of its commanding officer and also exploded a warning in the centre of the state’s third-largest city.

Published results from the earlier ‘Flight of the Hoopoe’ in June.

THE SHORT, MEDIUM AND LONGER-TERM SIGNIFICANCE

In the short term, the significance of this development is that the settler state is very vulnerable. It must endure Hezbollah’s attacks on its military and its defence systems, knowing that its vulnerability increases steadily.

Scenes from and commentary on the most recent published results of Hezbollah’s undetected drone flight containing detailed aerial film of the IOF’s airbase.

Or attack the source, which Gallant has threatened and Netanyahu desires — for which, as this was being written, they tried to find an excuse in a deadly explosion on children playing football in the occupied Golan, blamed on Hezbollah but for which they’ve denied responsibility.8

But it is extremely doubtful that their armed forces now have the necessary numbers of armour or troops to attack Lebanon, having suffered so many damaged or destroyed of the first and dead or severely injured of the second, inflicted by the lower-tech fighters of the Palestinian Resistance.

In the short-to-medium term, all the allies of the Palestinians in the Middle East draw encouragement in their own contention with the ‘Israeli’ state and with its imperialist supporters and suppliers, while some other states reconsider their alliance with what looks increasingly like a loser.

There is no question but that in recent decades the role of drones in wars between states has been significant but also in asymmetrical conflicts against resistance fighters, such as that of the ‘Israeli’ state against the Palestinians, both against fighters and more commonly against unarmed civilians.

(Source: Yemen’s Air Force PDF)

From now on, insurgency movements will have to organise not only to neutralise the adverse effects of drones in their adversaries’ hands but also to maximise the numbers and efficiency of their own against their enemies’ troops, armaments and battle HQs, production and administrative centres.

The term “drone” is used to describe UACVs (unmanned aerial combat vehicle) but versions operating on the ground, on and under sea have also been developed.

Sea versions like an unmanned boat exploding on contact or from radio signal have been used by Yemen recently. In the NATO proxy Ukraine war, the latter has also deployed them against Russian assets. The development of multi-environment military drones cannot be far away.

Drones can also observe, record, hunt and attack through detection of infra-red imaging, attacking human fighters of either side at night or in heavy fog, rain or snow – as long as the drones can fly.

In future, killer combat drones may hunt not only by detecting infra-red light and carbon dioxide emission,9 gun oil odour, presence of ammonia etc but even of pheromones, able to distinguish between sexually active males and females.

Of course, the development of drones could focus on means to find survivors (or recover bodies) in collapsed mines or buildings (something the Palestinians could make great use of due to IOF bombing), locate missing persons etc, instead of for observing people in order to kill them.

Well … not much chance of that, is there?

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Middle East commentator.

2Hezbollah_Air_Force.pdf from Resistance News Network (see Sources).

3Ibid.

4Ibid.

5Under Trump’s previous Presidency but not withdrawn under Biden’s.

6Well Iran might be viewed as ‘mad Arabs’ (they’re not even Arabs, for the most part) but at least it’s a state, not an insurgent army. In fact, it appears to be the case that Hezbollah have not only developed their own drone-building capacity but contributed to Iran’s.

7Or one of the cats, anyway; Hezbollah says it has more surprises in store and it’s hard not to believe them.

8The western mass media has recorded Hezbollah’s denial of responsibility for the explosion perfunctorily while giving much space to ‘Israeli’ and US accusations against the organisation. This should be bizarre, given Hezbollah’s record of accuracy in missile firing and in statements, compared with an ‘Israeli’ history of blatant and monstrous lies (as recently as by Netanyahu in his address to the US Congress in Washington) … but has sadly become routine.

9One of the ways in which female mosquitoes locate their prey from which to suck blood.

PALESTINE AUTHORITY PREVENTED FROM ARRESTING RESISTANCE FIGHTER IN HOSPITAL

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Popular Resistance, Uncategorized2 Comments

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Conflict with security forces of the Palestinian Authority broke out in Tulkarm city in the West Bank today as they tried to seize Palestinian Resistance commander Abu Sujaa (Mohamed Jaber), who was receiving treatment in Thabet Thabet Hospital.

According to reports the PA fired tear gas and used pepper spray inside the Hospital grounds, also striking with batons at protesters including women. Shots were fired at the PA’s HQ and protesters are calling the PA “traitors” and “collaborators”.

After a tense stand-off the PA forces eventually had to leave empty-handed.

Abu Sujaa is a commander of the Tulkarm Brigade, Soraya Al-Quds (Islamic Jihad), one of the main organisations of the Resistance. It is reported that he was injured while handling explosives and taken to hospital; when the PA learned of his presence there they sent forces to capture him.

The arrest attempt by the PA and treatment of protesters has been condemned Soraya Al-Quds and by a number of other Palestinian Resistance organisations including the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade coalition, Mujahadeen Movement, PFLP, Hamas and Popular Resistance Committees.

A statement also condemning the PA’s action by students at Birzeit University was signed off by the student movements of Hamas, PFLP, DFLP, PPSF, and PPP.

The point was also made that Abdul Nasser, one of the own PA’s employees, a security officer in uniform, was filmed executed by the IOF recently in cold blood in front of their headquarters in Tubas “without any action, condemnation, or denunciation” by the PA’s leaders.

Abu Sujaa is far from being the first Palestinian Resistance fighter targeted by the PA which holds many prisoners but has also killed fighters, including Ahmed Abu Al-Ful in early May1 and Motasim Al-Arif a month later, on that occasion also while trying to capture Abu Shujaa.2

Two Palestinian civil society activists recently went on hunger strike in protest at their detention by the PA, Fakri Jaradat being released after a week of hunger strike (but 16 days detention) but Ghassan Al-Saadi was transferred to Al-Razi Hospital in Jenin in deteriorated health condition.

This evening, according to local sources quoted on Resistance News Network, PA Security Forces stormed the city of Tubas, apparently in order to assassinate the resistance fighter Omar Meselmani who is wanted by the Occupation, since they shot at him directly.

Palestinian unity?

The Palestinian representative bodies recognised internationally are the PA and the PLO,3 both dominated by the Fatah leadership. The latter were represented at the Beijing Palestinian Unity conference last weekend at which all 14 factions agreed on the need for a unity government.

The PLO excludes Islamist organisations from membership, though both the PFLP and the DFLP delegates stated at the conference that they wished to admit those resistance organisations to the PLO, no such decision was recorded (presumably blocked by Fatah) in the conference decisions.

One might have thought that in the circumstances of the Beijing Agreement, the PA would be keeping a low profile or at least certainly steering clear of conflict with Resistance organisations. On the contrary however, the PA seems to be intent on exacerbating divisions.

Islamic Jihad, possibly divining the PA’s intentions, has declared it will not be drawn into a civil war with the organisation, despite its actions and collusion with the Occupation. But can that posture be maintained if the PA continues persecuting and even shooting its fighters?

Perhaps the PA is doing its best, in order to avoid its being sidelined and as an aid to the beleaguered Israeli occupation, to ensure that civil war breaks out among the Palestinians.

End.

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

In Dramatic Scene – Palestinians Free Fighter Besieged by PA Police in West Bank (VIDEOS)

PA arrests of Resistance fighters and other opponents of the Occupation:

In Dramatic Scene – Palestinians Free Fighter Besieged by PA Police in West Bank (VIDEOS)

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/political-detainees-in-the-palestinian-authority

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority

1https://x.com/PALMENA_IC/status/1786005323565633947

2(https://t.me/PalestineResist/34391)

3Palestine Liberation Organisation

Important Call for a United Resistance Front

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History, History commemoration, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Irish Republicanism, NATO, Peace Process, Political Analysis, Political PrisonersLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time article: 3 mins.)

Earlier this month there was an oration delivered at the grave of Wolfe Tone1 which contained some important elements which deserve inspection and discussion.

– The path to rebuild our struggle is the development of an Anti Imperialist Broad Front – said the speaker. – A United Front of Revolutionary republicans, working in cooperation to advance our common republican objectives and to achieve a common republican programme.

Looking around us at the parties and groups in the socialist and republican spectrum, the ostensibly revolutionary varieties, we see that for many of them, building up their own organisation takes precedence over anything else, including revolution – for them the revolution IS their party.

Speaker giving oration at Wolfe Tone’s grave in front of the monument, faced by colour party. (Photo: RSM)

The call given in this oration runs counter to that kind of thinking. “But we’ve heard all that about ‘unity’ before,” a reader might say. Yes we have and often “unity” meant only “unity” around that particular party or, even more often, around this or that leadership.

There is nothing of that to be found in this address “recognising and respectful of the autonomy and independence of the groups and independents involved”. “Hmmm,” the reader might say “but is it a genuine intention?” Given our experience, it’s a valid and important question.

The most dependable test is in the practice. The speaker of the oration at its annual Wolfe Town Commemoration2 was representing the Socialist Republican Movement organisation (more often manifested publicy in recent years in the form of the Anti-Imperialist Action broad group3)

As an independent revolutionary activist for many years I have often participated in AIA’s actions and at times they have supported actions of which I had been part of organising. I have found that their practice matches their words and there is no truer test.

The speaker followed with practical suggestions for the implementation of the broad front: Trust and co-operation must be developed … through activism and the development of National Republican Campaigns that can be taken up by all Republican groups and independents …

There are many campaigns that could be developed from support for POWs to opposing internment and extradition, environmental campaigns such as (overcoming) the unacceptable situation at Lough Neagh, to campaigns that oppose the British and NATO presence in Ireland.

One of the banners in the crowd at the event in Bodenstown. (Photo: RSM)

Such a Republican Broad Front would be a fitting tribute to our Patriot Dead, the speaker added, to martyrs like Cathal Brugha,4 who gave his all in fighting for the sovereign, Independent Irish Republic and gave his life on this day in 1922 as a hero in the war in defence of the Republic.

In many of the pleas for unity of the fragmented resistance in Ireland, individuals have called for a conference to form a united front, others called for a unity document of principles around which to unite while in at least one case, two distinct organisations merged.

I have for years spoken out against such endeavours and advocated as a first step unity in practice. If organisations and individuals are not capable of that step, what kind of unity can they achieve around discussion of documents? Unity in practice also helps to break down distrust.

The speaker at the Wolfe Tone commemoration takes the same line, presumably speaking for the SRM when he does so and one supposes that this will continue to be the approach of the AIA in campaigns such as against internment, in solidarity with political prisoners5 or with Palestine.6

The above piece discussed two elements of the oration given by the SRM earlier this month which I believe to be of great revolutionary importance and in need of application in Ireland, one in advocating a principle and the other in suggesting avenues for practical application.

Later I will be taking a look at some other elements in that talk (the text of which, as published by the SRM, I attach as an appendix).

Beirimís bua.

(Image sourced: Internet)

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Wolfe Tone, born into settler stock and of the Establishment Anglican congregation, was a leading figure in the formation of the revolutionary republican organisation The Society of United Irishmen, seeking “to unite Catholic, Protestant (i.e Anglican) and Dissenter” (i.e the other sects, Presbyterian, Methodist, Unitarian, Quaker etc.) to “break the connection with England. In 1798, the year of the Unitedmen uprising, the first of many Irish Republican uprisings and campaigns, Tone was captured by the British Navy on a French warship and, despite his French officer rank, tried and sentenced to death.

Tone died in jail some months before his brother Matthew was taken prisoner during the surrender at Ballinamuck (Baile na Muc) in Co. Longford of another French expedition to Ireland, late and too small, at the tail end of the Rising that year. Also ignoring his officer POW status, he was hanged in Dublin and his body reputedly thrown into the mass grave at Croppies’ Acre in Dublin city.

2Since even earlier than Thomas Davis’ (1814-1845) song In Bodenstown Churchyard, Irish Republican organisations and individuals have been making the pilgrimage to that grave in County Meath, at times with thousands in attendance.

3Also for an intense time as the Revolutionary Housing League in its attempt to spark a movement of occupation of empty properties to overcome the widely-acknowledged housing crisis in Ireland.

4Cathal Brugha (nee Burgess), son of a mixed Catholic-Protestant marriage, was a leading figure in Irish nationalist movement and in Republican rebellion in the last decades of the 19th and early decades of the 20th Centuries, learned Irish as a member of the Gaelic League, member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (which he later left, considering it undemocratic), officer in the Irish Volunteer, 2nd in command in the South Dublin Union in 1916 served as Minister for Defence in the revolutionary government from 1919 to 1922, Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann in January 1919 and its first president from January 1to April 1919, Chief of Staff of the IRAfrom 1917 to 1918. He served as a TD (electe parliamentary representative) from 1918 to 1922. He was mortally wounded by Irish Government troops in the early days of the Irish Civil War.

5Both on their own and for example in support of the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign.

6Both on their own and for example as part of the Saoirse Don Phalaistín broad front.

APPENDIX

The following is the text of the main oration of which some sections are discussed in the preceding article and more to be discussed anon. It was delivered at the annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration at Bodenstown, organised by the Revolutionary Irish Socialist Republican Movement on Sunday July 7, 2024 and published on its Telegram page.

A Chairde is a chomrádaithe,

Táimid anseo i relig bodenstown ag uaimh ár n-athair, Wolfe Tone agus táimid ag rá go bhfuil an gluaisteacht a bhunaigh sé fós beo, agus tá sé ag fás arís.

Wolfe Tone is the father of Irish Republicanism. We come here each year not just for commemoration, but like Pearse, Connolly, Mellows and Costello before us, we come because we believe that the ideas and the vision that Tone put forward of a free independent Ireland is as relevant today as they were in the 1790s and because we believe that by remaining true to the teachings of Wolfe Tone we can build a revolutionary movement that will successfully free our country. Maybe not today, but our freedom is inevitable.

Tone’s most important belief was that we must ‘break the connection with England’ by any means necessary. It is for this reason that he established revolutionary military-political organisation the United Irishmen in 1791 and led a mass armed uprising in 1798 against British Rule in Ireland.

Tone was also clear that the revolutionary struggle could only be successful if it was based on the masses of the Irish People, stating that, ‘Our Strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property’.

And in these two simple quotes from Wolfe Tone, we have two of the most important teachings for the Revolutionary Republican Movement today. Firstly, that Republicans must work as a priority for National Liberation by any means we decide necessary.

That we must break the connection with England and defeat all forms of Imperialism in Ireland to establish a sovereign, Independent, Irish Republic.

And secondly, we learn from Tone that the fight for our Republic is a class struggle and that the driving force of that struggle will be the working class fighting for their own liberation.

These are two key teachings that when deviated from lead to compromise and the selling out of our revolution.

It is the duty of all of us here today and of all Republicans across Ireland, to ensure that the struggle for national liberation is kept at the fore of our revolutionary republican objectives and that we work tirelessly to achieve it and to ensure that our movement remains centred on and driven by the working class.

Some other key points laid down by Tone include that Republicanism is Anti Imperialist and it is Internationalist. Our struggle in Ireland is part of a wider international struggle of oppressed people against occupation, colonialism and imperialism.

Tone understood this when he looked to Revolutionary France to support the 1798 uprising. Today, Republicans must fight our struggle while also supporting Liberation struggles around the world in the belief that every blow struck against imperialism brings our victory closer.

So from Palestine to the Philippines and from India to the Basque Country, and everywhere people take a stand against NATO, the Revolutionary Republican movement must raise our cries in solidarity. The tide of revolution is rising in the world and there is much to be optimistic about.

But as revolutionaries we also have to be realistic. Since the time of Wolfe Tone the tide of revolutionary Republicanism has ebbed and flowed.

After the days of Tone and Emmet and the final defeat of the United Irishmen in 1805, Republicanism was reduced to an ember, spoken about in quiet corners until the birth of Young Ireland and the uprisings of 1848 and 1849 when revolutionaries such as Thomas Davis, Fintan Lalor, James Stephens and John O’Mahony would carry forward the vision of Tone, take up the hard work of rebuilding the Republican Movement and become the spark that would renew the Revolutionary fire, giving birth to Fenianism and the struggle that has carried us until today.

And today, we are 26 years on from the surrender of 1998, a surrender that had a devastating effect on the movement. Later this month it will be 19 years since the Provisionals ended their armed campaign.

These two great betrayals have led to the situation where the movement is fractured and split.

The revolutionary forces, though active, are scattered and there is mistrust between Republicans, whether in different groups or independents across Ireland, and this mistrust and division is exploited by our enemies.

It is a situation that all Republicans want to reverse and one of the revolutionary priorities in this phase of our struggle to overcome.

Comrades, like the revolutionary republicans after the defeat of the United Irishmen and Young Ireland, we find ourselves with the hard and gruelling task of rebuilding and reasserting the revolutionary republican struggle.

And the path to rebuild our struggle is the development of an Anti Imperialist Broad Front. A United Front of Revolutionary republicans, recognising and respectful of the autonomy and independence of the groups and independents involved, working in cooperation to advance our common republican objectives and to achieve a common republican programme. This is what our enemies most fear.

But again, this will not just happen overnight.

Trust and co-operation must be developed and we assert that this will be best achieved through activism and the development of National Republican Campaigns that can be taken up by all Republican groups and independents in a unity of purpose, that shows the real and forgotten strength of the Republican Movement.

There are many campaigns that could be developed from support for POWs to opposing internment and extradition, environmental campaigns such as the unacceptable situation at Lough Neagh, to campaigns that oppose the British and NATO presence in Ireland.

Such a Republican Broad Front would be a fitting tribute to our Patriot Dead, to martyrs like Cathal Brugha, who gave his all in fighting for the sovereign, Independent Irish Republic and gave his life on this day in 1922 as a hero in the war in defence of the Republic.

Over the last seven years we have put down a solid foundation as a movement. We have reasserted Irish Socialist Republicanism as the driving force of Revolution in Ireland.

We have recruited a new generation of republicans not damaged by the 1998 surrender who are now working with more experienced republicans to drive the struggle on.

While we can be happy with these achievements, the Republic needs more from each and every one of us and we all need to ask what we as individuals can do to carry the struggle forward.

Now is the time to move to the next phase of development in our revolutionary struggle, unsurprisingly by taking it back to Tone. Now is the time to strengthen and embed ourselves in the people of no property and to engage in systematic Republican Community work across the country.

In doing so, we would do well to return to Seamus Costello and the oration that he delivered from this spot in 1966, signalling the rise of Socialist Republicanism within the Movement. Costello outlined how it was the duty of all republicans to be active in our community.

How we should be involved in community groups, trade unions, tenants and residents associations, sporting, cultural and educational organisations and how we must take and assert our revolutionary republican position within them.

This is a task for all revolutionary republicans. Look at the groups in your area and see which ones your involvement in would advance the strengthening of Socialist Republicanism in your community.

Where no such groups exist, establish them. Where help is needed reach out to us as we have experienced comrades who excel in this area that would be happy to help in this work.

To conclude the comrades, this is a brief outline of our tasks in the time ahead.

While these plans will be deepened with discussion and debate within the movement, no one should leave this graveyard thinking there is no work for them to do, and the responsibility is on you to come forward and volunteer instead of waiting for others to come and ask you.

Our work is to free Ireland and our people by any means necessary to establish the 32 county All Ireland Socialist Republic, sovereign, independent, Gaelic and free, and we will not be stopped.

Redouble your efforts comrades, onwards to the Republic of 1916.

Beir Bua,

Tiocfaidh Ár Lá

AN APPROPRIATE WELCOME FOR HIM OR HER

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

It is reported that at some point in the near future a representative of the Palestine Authority will be officially received in Leinster House as part of the recognition of the Palestinian State by the Irish Government (and presumably by the Irish State).

This will be an important occasion and all who support the Palestinian people should get ready to give this representative of the Palestine Authority an appropriate welcome.

The PA is an unelected, unrepresentative, corrupt, repressive and occasionally murderous organisation colluding with the ‘Israeli’ occupation, feeding its Occupation master (and their master’s masters) with information on the activities and persons of the Palestinian Resistance.

In the course of the current genocidal offensive of the Occupation, operatives of the PA have seized weapons of the Resistance, dismantled explosives1 and for years have arrested and jailed activists. They also arrest Resistance activists to hand over to the Occupation.

In carrying out this dirty ‘duty’ for their masters, the PA encounter natural resistance and in overcoming that resistance the PA has executed and killed under interrogation dissidents and members of the Resistance, including since October last year.2

Palestinians objecting to repression face the security force of the Palestinian Authority. (Image sourced: Internet)

Elected once, then widely rejected

Since it was created in 1994 arising out of the Palestine Pacification (wrongly named ‘Peace’) Process,3 elections were held by the PA just twice. The Fatah political (and military) party under Yasser Arafat won the first ones in 1996 but Hamas overwhelmingly won the next, in 2006.

The largely secular-voting Palestinian society rejected Fatah in favour of an Islamist party largely because of Fatah’s corruption and nepotism in the PA and also due to its collusion with the Israeli state, formally and informally in fact.4

The Hamas electoral victory of 2006 was not accepted by the Western powers, nor by Fatah, who refused to vacate their administrative control. Eventually, after a short, sharp struggle in June 2007 Hamas evicted them from the positions in Gaza to which the electorate had voted Hamas.

However, Hamas refrained from doing the same in the West Bank, presumably to avoid all-out civil war and so Fatah remains in control of that section of Palestinian governance, which is the one universally known as “the Palestinian Authority” (and, since 2013, as “The State of Palestine”).

Since 2006, the PA has held no elections though it was supposed to do so every four years.5 The reason is clear: Hamas would win again and the Fatah leadership want to hold on to their corruption opportunities and are decidedly opposed to having their funding streams6 cut.

Currently Hamas runs the government of Gaza and is the leading element in the Palestine armed Resistance, a coalition of Islamist and secular organisations that are united in fighting the Israeli occupation and in the negotiation position of the Resistance.

Fatah had been invited to participate in talks in Beijing in April to present a united Palestinian front but at the last minute declined to attend. Nevertheless, in recent days they have been invited again; it is not known at present whether their representatives will attend or not.7

Hamas and others have called for a unified position on Palestinian self-determination and for participation in a broad united Palestinian government.

Netanyahu, with the support of his internal allies and with the US and Western powers externally, refuses to accept the verdict of the Palestinian electoral process and wants a pro-Israeli administration there which, for the Western powers, means a “revitalised”8 Palestine Authority.

US Middle East would-be ‘fixer’ Blinken, already mooted that9 and Mahmoud Abbas, sitting grossly at the head of the PA in the West Bank, indicated his willingness for the job.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reads a statement as he meets French President Emmanuel Macron, in Ramallah, West Bank, October 24, 2023. Christophe Ena/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo. Note: The key on his jacket lapel is a symbol of the right of return of Palestinian refugees for which the PA has done nothing at all and which Fatah agreed to exclude from the Oslo Accords under which the PA was founded.

The USA also proposed a coalition of their Arab regime clients for that job but the Resistance has made it quite clear that managing Palestinian society and resources is for Palestinians elected democratically only and anyone else will be a usurper for the Occupation and treated accordingly.

The real purpose of Palestinian State ‘recognition’ by the Three

Sadly, it is in this context that we should see the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian recognition of the Palestinian State. It does not represent a break from the EU’s imperialist position of support for Israel in principle but rather only in tactical approach.

These states are giving the imperialists “good advice”. What they are saying in effect is this: “You have to make the Palestinians thing that they are gaining something and use Palestinians to control Palestinians. Otherwise they’ll continue resisting and you could lose the whole thing.”

Coat of arms of the Palestinian Authority (Image sourced: Internet)

They know of what they speak. This was what the British colonialists imposed on Ireland in 1922 and what the Spanish ruling class imposed on the southern Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia after the Franco Dictatorship, granting them limited autonomy under Spanish control.

And cultivating “independent” locals to run these for them.

The program these states desire for the Palestinian people is one in which they will have their local autonomy in a Palestinian state on approximately 20% of their nation, with worst land and least water and under the guns and watchtowers of their expansionist and dominating neighbours.

The reality of Israeli genocidal colonisation and the “two-state solution” beloved of imperialists and liberals. (Image sourced: Internet)

The decision on what the Palestinian people accept or reject is ultimately theirs, of course. Equally, how we decide to receive representatives of this undemocratic, corrupt, treasonous and violent PA is ours.

Let us not fail to make it a hot welcome, both in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in apology for the neo-colonial proposals of this Gombeen state.

Let those Irish political parties that support the PA answer for their position. Ours should be clear, from which too our actions should flow.

End.

FOOTNOTES

142 times in the West Bank since October 7th and most recently this week as I was writing this piece, blowing some up at 3am on the morning of the 17thJuly.

2https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-799496

3Arising out of the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords.

4e.g. in concluding a deal that excluded the Palestinians still in “Israel” and any right of return for the millions of Palestinian refugees around the world.

5https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/1/27/palestinian-elections-democracy-for-no-one

6Mainly from the EU and USA but also from Arab and Russian sources.

7An anti-Hamas reference https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2024/07/guarded-optimism-palestinian-reconciliation-ahead-fatah-hamas-meeting-china Hamas has indicated they want them to attend and at least some of the other Resistance groups are likely to do so.

8i.e, cleaned up a bit.

9https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/01/blinken-envisions-revitalized-palestinian-authority-charge-post-war-gaza/

SOURCES & ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority

I do not endorse some of the opinions in this: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/06/10-things-to-know-about-the-palestinian-authority/

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2024/07/14/the-palestinian-authoritys-shrinking-influence-in-the-west-bank/

Repression of dissent by the Palestinian Authority: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/07/palestinian-security-forces-escalate-brutal-campaign-of-repression-2/

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/1/25/analysis-palestinian-authority-cracking-down-on-opposition

MAJOR PRO-SETTLER CENSORSHIP BY META

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, History, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 7 mins.)

Meta, the company that runs the social media platform Facebook, is banning1 the use of the word Zionism by FB users, claiming the word is used interchangeably with ‘Israel’ and Jewry and is ‘anti-semitic’ and that their ban is in defence of Jews.

The word Zionism is often used in connection with Israel but it does not follow that its use is synonymous with Judaism or that it is therefore antisemitic, any more than to use the word “Nazism” in the 1930s and 1940s would have necessarily been anti-German.

The word ‘Zionism’ is associated with the state of ‘Israel’ for a very good reason – it was founded precisely as a Zionist project, a homeland for people of Judaic background. Palestine happened to be already occupied and so the initiative became also a European settler project in the Middle East.

Christians who support the project for religious – as distinct from political — reasons, mostly in the US, are also regularly described as “Zionist Christians” and form the majority of US Zionists.

But Zionism, rather than describing a religious movement, is essentially political. The Israeli State gives right of citizenship to those from anywhere who can prove being of Judaic background but does not require them to practice the religion or, in fact, to believe any Judaic tenet.

A Gallup survey in 2015 had 65% of Israelis self-identifying as being either “not religious” or “convinced atheists”, while 30% identified as being “religious”. More recently, polls found only 55% identifying as non-secular.

But its Jewish citizens being religious or not, the State is Jewish and the result of a Zionist movement with 19th -Century origins.

Of course, not all Israelis are Jewish either – there are also Muslims, Christians of various Eastern varieties and some western, Druze and others.

The Israeli State came into being on 14 May 1948 as a Zionist state, the culmination of decades of Zionist planning and search for a location, also a settlement project in Palestine promoted by British imperialism and a terrorist campaign against the indigenous Palestinians.

Theodor Herzel, key founder of Zionist Movement and author of Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) and one of his statements. (Image sourced: Internet)

Origins of Zionism

Zionism as an ideology and movement was founded “in the late 19th century by secular Jews, largely as a response by Ashkenazi Jews to rising antisemitism in Europe, exemplified by the Dreyfus affair in France and the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire.

“The political movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in 1897 following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State).

“At that time, Herzl believed that Jewish migration to Ottoman Palestine, particularly among poor Jewish communities, unassimilated and whose ‘floating’ presence caused disquiet, would be beneficial to assimilated European Jews and Christians. 

“Political Zionism was in some respects a dramatic break from the two thousand years of Jewish and rabbinical tradition.

“Deriving inspiration from other European nationalist movements, Zionism drew in particular from a German version of European enlightenment thought, with German nationalistic principles becoming key features of Zionist nationalism.

“Although initially one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to Jewish assimilation and antisemitism, Zionism expanded rapidly. In its early stages, supporters considered setting up a Jewish state in the historic territory of Palestine.

“After World War II and the destruction of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe where these alternative movements were rooted, it became dominant in the thinking about a Jewish national state.

“During this period, Zionism would develop a discourse in which the religious, non-Zionist Jews of the Old Yishuv who lived in mixed Arab-Jewish cities were viewed as backwards in comparison to the secular Zionist New Yishuv.”

Jewish use of the word

It was the Jewish Zionists who tried to equate Judaism with Zionism, an effort that was initially repudiated by many (probably most) Jews around the world prior to the Holocaust. After that and in particular with the creation of ‘Israel’, the majority seemed to identify with the Israeli state.

But there was always opposition to that among Jews, including famous ones. The Jewish historian of nationalism Hans Kohn argued that Zionism nationalism “had nothing to do with Jewish traditions; it was in many ways opposed to them”.2

Zionism had its critics from early on and the cultural Zionist Ahad Ha’am in the early 20th century wrote that there was no creativity in Herzl’s Zionist movement, and that its culture was European and specifically German.3

“He viewed the movement as depicting Jews as simple transmitters of imperialist European culture.”4

In recent decades the Zionists worked harder to demonise anti-Zionist Jews, calling them “self-hating Jews” and hounding those who spoke out against Zionism and the apartheid and genocide of the Israeli state, even destroying the employment prospects of such academics.

However, increasingly non-Israeli Jews around the world, including some commentators think the majority of their youth in the USA, are non-Zionist and even anti-Zionist. Many have been prominent in Palestine solidarity and anti-Israel actions.

A well-established Jewish sect that rejects Zionism and therefore the State of Israel. (Image sourced: Internet)

Jews using the term “Zionism” seem to be clear about its meaning and increasingly tend to identify themselves as either Zionist or Anti-Zionist. But most Jews in Israel might be considered ‘Zionist’ in the de facto sense of special ethnic entitlement status and occupation of Palestinian land.

Meta’s ban on use of the word on its social media platform therefore has nothing to do with defending Jews from anti-Semitism and in fact is aligning itself with the Zionist coercion of Jews from which a large section around the world are escaping.

By equating Judaism with Zionism, with the genocidal actions of the Israeli State, Meta is actually strengthening anti-Semitic thinking in many parts of the world.

Jews in solidarity with Palestine and therefore presumably anti-Zionist, photographed on Palestine Solidarity march in London recently. (Photo: Morning Star)

Non-Jewish Use of the word

It may be that not everyone is clear on the difference between Jews and Zionists but the likelihood is that despite obfuscation by the Zionists themselves, most understand the difference.

It is also possible that some may disguise their anti-Semitism by denouncing Zionists when they mean “Jews”.

Even so, that cannot serve as an excuse for banning the use of an appropriately descriptive and historical word, one in addition based on a political movement created — and practice carried out — by Jewish Zionists themselves.

Effect of the ban

The immediate effect of the ban is to increase the one-sided censorship which is already prevalent in the West, sheltering the European Settler State in the Middle East from much criticism for its genocidal policy and actions against the Palestinians.

The effect of that “sheltering” (and in many cases its objective) is to assist that state to continue its genocide and also to facilitate the western states’ support for that genocide in politics, journalism, sport, culture, trade, finance and armament.

The longer-term effect will be to energise the search for other platforms that will not impose such bans on speech. Already Telegram is gaining many users on both Right and Left ends of the political spectrum. This does not mean however that the State cannot find the means to spy on them.

Those wishing to use terms that describe what the western imperialists do not wish described may abandon platforms owned by Meta in favour of others, at the same abandoning many mainstream Meta users to the dominant discourse and ideology.

Image sourced: https://palestinelegal.org/distorted-definition

Other pro-Israeli censorship

Meta previously banned the word Shaheed, meaning “martyr”, which it lifted after a period of a year. This is a term regularly used by the Palestinians to describe their dead, their fallen Resistance fighters but also the huge number of civilians killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces.

The term is also used in a similar way in relation to other other Arab resistance groups from the Lebanon to Yemen. Meta suspends accounts or closes them for promotion of resistance organisations (termed “terrorists” by Western states) across the globe, not only in the Middle East.

Ex-Minister for Home Affairs for the UK Suella Braverman attempted to ban the slogan “From the river to the sea” in Palestine solidarity context,5 claiming that because it encapsulated the desire for a Palestinian state, it was anti-Israeli and therefore anti-Semitic, a giant anti-logical leap.

A small group of anti-Zionist protesters in ‘Israel’ some weeks ago was suppressed by Israeli police and one of the latter was filmed loudly declaring that any placard or banner including the word “genocide” would be removed, an attitude mirrored by police in Germany.

People, including supporters of Juedische Stimme (Jewish Voice), a Jewish organisation, gather for a ‘Global South United’ protest to demand freedom for Palestine on 28 October 2023 in Berlin, Germany. [Getty]

Challenging Israeli atrocity hoaxes of the Palestinian resistance beheading babies or mass raping Israeli women has also drawn fire and accusations of “anti-Semitism”. Placard representations likening Israeli actions to those of the Nazis were often suppressed in the West.6

The issue of banning publication of certain words is not an easy one though liberal and social-democratic trends present it uncritically. We may object to the use of any of a huge number of racist epithets, for example and understand that these can be used to build up racist cultures.

However, when the State is asked to ban these and other kinds of speech, it is in effect being publicly empowered to ban what is in the interests of the elite to ban, i.e those words that convey unpleasant images of the ruling class, however valid.

“Property speculator”, “vulture capitalists”, “imperialists”, “colonialists”, “sectarian”, “collaborators”, “quisling” and “settlers” could be on a future list for banning under “hate speech”, along with combinations of words such as “police” with “brutality” or “politician” with “corrupt”.

Liberals and social-democrats tend to forget at times where the real power lies and what interests are served by the State.

Meta’s ban will be circumvented in many ways of course but it represents a major attack in social media on democratic freedom, all in the service of a genocidal colonial state which itself is in the service of imperialism.

End.

Footnotes:

1 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/09/meta-hate-speech-policy

2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Zionism

3Ibid

4Ibid

5Though it has also been used as a slogan of Zionist expansion, including by Netanyahu.

6Including by mainstream Palestine solidarity organisations.

Sources:

Meta banning most use of the word: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jul/09/meta-hate-speech-policy

Zionism: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/zionism

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Zionism

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/12/24/zionism-anti-semitism-and-colonialism

https://palestinelegal.org/distorted-definition

Religion in Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Israel

THE REPRESENTATION OF REVOLUTIONARY ICONS

On By rebelbreezeIn Cultural Comment, Indigenous or Original People, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, US Imperialism, Writing, ZionismLeave a comment

The role of culture in revolution is of great importance – greater even than that of the armed struggle, certainly in the initial and later stages. We are created by evolution but we are born into and raised in culture.

The question of whether that culture is to be revolutionary or liberal is of crucial importance.

I have remarked on how Mandela, jailed for his revolutionary armed activities, was marketed as a peacemaker and later became a figurehead of pacification of the South African struggle. Bobby Sands, a revolutionary fighter to the last, has also been represented as a peaceful icon.1

And so also was Terence McSwiney who, like Bobby Sands, died on hunger strike.2

The following article from Resistance News Network, reflecting on the work of the revolutionary writer Ghassan Kanafani who was murdered by Israeli Zionism and his subsequent representation as an icon is I think of substantial interest. D.Breatnach

Translated by Resistance News Network
Originally by Nidal Khalaf, 16 July 2022

(Reading time: 6 mins.)


Ghassan the poet? Ghassan the Palestinian? No, Ghassan the revolutionary!

In colonial wars, the creation and dissemination of symbols to the public is a crucial battle in the war of consciousness building, even if its effects are not clearly visible in the present.

Perhaps the most prominent example of these battles was the image of Che Guevara in the wars of liberation in Latin America. Ernesto Guevara’s persona represented an individual model that encapsulated the revolutionary spirit of people fighting for their freedom from American hegemony.

As the American empire recognized its inability to destroy Guevara’s image, they transformed his image into a consumer commodity.

This was to divert his image from its original revolutionary meanings and repurpose it in the service of economic and cultural agendas that contradicted Guevara’s own principles and what he represents.

In the Arab context, the war to liberate Arab symbols from the captivity of history monopolists continues to intensify, as it involves obscuring forgotten heroes in favour of fabricating mythical legends designed to tamper with the boundaries of nationalism and betrayal in the Arab mind.

In this context, the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of the martyr Ghassan Kanafani is being observed, with pages and websites filled with commemorations of Ghassan’s life, his quotes, and his most significant works.

It is no longer surprising that Ghassan Kanafani is celebrated on both normalization platforms as well as liberal ones, when voices are raised to commemorate Ghassan even as they are in the heart of the hostile project under the umbrella of its military bases.

Thus, the question arises: which Ghassan Kanafani are we commemorating today? And how do we protect the Ghassan we know?

Ghassan Kanafani’s life provided rich material for readers, followers, and analysts after his martyrdom.

However, the perception of Ghassan was not independent of the political contexts of the recipient interpreting his word, resulting in multiple “versions” of Ghassan Kanafani, some of which we review below.

Ghassan Kanafani: The Writer (only?)

The most widespread version of Ghassan Kanafani is that of a “writer” who wrote stories, plays, and depicted the Palestinian reality.

The spread of this version may be justified since Ghassan’s literary works are the most popular among people and have played a significant role in spreading his name.

However, confining Ghassan Kanafani to the realm of “literature” is not always innocent, and in some respects, it is a deliberate reduction of Ghassan Kanafani’s political work.

Ghassan was responsible for mobilization, media, and was a part of the political decision-making circle in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine since it was part of the Arab Nationalist Movement. He remained in this role until his martyrdom.

Moreover, Ghassan’s literary output never compromised or was at the expense of his political positions or took precedence at any point in his career.

In terms of production, his political studies, research, articles, and editorial journalism are as abundant and important as his narrative and theatrical works.

Even the latter were never detached from the political context; instead, the narrative served as a framework through which Ghassan conveyed his political, social, and even philosophical ideas.

Consequently, the image of Ghassan as “the writer engaged in politics” falls away, replaced by the truth of Ghassan — the politician who harnessed literature in the service of a political cause.

The danger of this deliberate reduction lies in paving the way for a sanitized image of Ghassan Kanafani, presented to the public by liberal (and even normalization) pages and platforms to gain credibility in Ghassan’s name.

Kanafani tackles a fundamental dilemma that burdens our political reality to this day, which is the crisis of “the prioritization of internal change over liberation.”

Thus, reductionism turns into deliberate distortion, making Ghassan Kanafani’s name a “honey” slipped into the poison of isolationist, liberal, and anti-resistance ideas on our land under the guise of freedom and liberation.

Otherwise, how can we understand the celebration of Ghassan Kanafani by liberal platforms and influencers at Al-Udeid Air Base?

Ghassan Kanafani: the Palestinian (only?)

One of the unjust reductions of Ghassan Kanafani is the confining of his personality and his works to “Palestine,” as delineated by colonialism.

Again, one can find an excuse for this reduction because Palestine represents the primary aspect of Kanafani’s political and literary identity, and his experience is closely tied to the general Palestinian experience of war, forced displacement, diaspora, and the struggle for return.

Some people overly emphasize Ghassan’s Palestinian identity, overshadowing his Arab dimension, which he never concealed.

In reality, examining Ghassan Kanafani’s political studies unveils to us the truth of Ghassan as an Arab nationalist thinker who worked hard and struggled to develop practical frameworks for Arab revolutionary theory.

This is made clear in his in-depth study, “The Arab Cause in the Era of the United Arab Republic,” where he discusses the essence of the imposed war on our region, identifying enemy and friend camps, and ultimately defining the main goal of the war: liberation as a condition for unity and renaissance.

Ghassan further elaborates on this study’s conclusions in another study titled “The Revolutionary Applications of Arab Nationalism,” published in 1959, in which he masterfully details the concept of Arab unity and the tools for its practical implementation.

Ghassan Kanafani goes beyond this by considering the confrontation of isolationist (regionalist) thought a revolutionary necessity, describing “isolationism” as something that “contradicts the nature of the formation of societies.”

Isolationism or “regionalism” are anti-unity tendencies, based on defining society’s interests from colonial borders and treating each Arab state as “independent” in itself, as Sykes and Picot intended.

Kanafani tackles a fundamental dilemma that burdens our political reality to this day: the crisis of “the prioritization of internal change over liberation.”

No better formulation to this question can be found than Ghassan’s own words when he stated that “raising the concept [of focusing on internal development first] is a deliberate exclusion of the popular current directed towards unity with determination,

and diverting it to side and regional battles that are easily manipulated (as long as each Arab country is not -nationally- at a level of complete liberation worthy of proper social construction).”

Ghassan concludes his argument by asserting that “unity is a prerequisite of the renaissance… even its regional aspect.”

We mention these ideas as examples of Ghassan Kanafani’s Arab nationalist thought, which fundamentally opposed isolationism and the canned projections of Marxism and others, with strength and clarity.

Therefore, the celebration of Ghassan by the proponents of these ideas indicates their exploitation of Ghassan’s legacy (from their side) and a significant failure in protecting Ghassan (from the side of those who believe in his ideas).

How, then, do we protect Ghassan Kanafani?

The starting point lies in defining ourselves. Are we believers in Ghassan Kanafani’s approach and vision for the ongoing conflict on our land, which comes at the expense of our blood, lives, and destinies?

If so, our foremost duty is to reclaim Ghassan Kanafani from the chains of cheap consumerism and to present him to the public in his true and impeccable form: an Arab nationalist fighter who made among the most significant contributions to modern Arab revolutionary theory.

Additionally, our responsibilities also include reviving the spirit of party work, in which Ghassan was a pioneer, and correcting the Arab party frameworks to harness the wasted energies in the prisons of virtual activism,

within the halls of “non-governmental organizations” and the labyrinths of despair and discouragement.

Our obligation towards Ghassan Kanafani demands that we comprehend our reality and its conditions and that we clearly define our goals, grounded in a deep conviction in our civilizational role as a nation.

We must believe that the liberation of the land is a step towards unity, and that unity is a prerequisite for the renaissance that will elevate us to our rightful civilizational status among nations. Finally, here is a part from Ghassan Kanafani’s ongoing will:

“A human being who does not live the average of sixty years will not find enough space to live peacefully; instead, they will carry the crisis from the moment they are born… and pass it on to their children at the hour of their death.

“The results of this struggle will be for a generation we do not know when it will arrive, even though we are optimistic about witnessing its early days towards the end of our lives…

“Our only reward may be that the next generation, the happy generation that will enjoy our victories, will envy us for having earned the honour of living in the age of struggle for life. And that is enough for us temporarily.”

End.

Footnotes

1In particular by the constant reproduction of his statement that “our revenge will be the laughter of our children”, completely abstracted from his role as an armed freedom fighter and what he wrote in support of that.

2Similarly to Bobby Sands, his statement that is those who who endure, rather than inflict the most who will triumph. The statement taken in isolation seems to endorse passive resistance but McSwiney was an officer of the IRA in the War of Independence, a role skated over in the Wikipedia entry dedicated to him.