The anniversary on Sunday of the death on hunger strike of IRA Volunteer Bobby Sands was marked with a number of posts on social media. I would like to add an Irish migrant’s1 perspective and some analysis of his legacy.
The Irish diaspora was a powerful sector in solidarity for the Irish struggle not only because of their cultural background but also because of their numbers. Some British cities had an estimated diaspora population of 10% (Irish-born and 1st and 2nd generations).
Furthermore, the higher proportion of those in turn was of the working class, a section of society which, although they in no way had their hands on the standard levers of power, certainly had a strong potential of the kind the British ruling class had learned to fear.
Irish Republicans of course formed part of that sector and organised within it but on the other hand the IRA’s bombing campaign in Britain was of no help at all. The popular fear of being caught in an explosion greatly enabled the Government to tighten the screws under the guise of “security”.
Karl Marx, a strong supporter of Irish freedom had commented after the Clerkenwell prison bombing of 18672 that “One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of the Fenian emissaries” (i.e who they were trying to free from the jail).
In 1974 the Labour Government had repressive legislation ready and on 29 November, using hysteria arising from the Birmingham and Guildford pub-bombings they rushed through the Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974) which permitted the holding of suspects for two days without charge.
An underground cell in London’s Paddington Green police station – this is where Irish detainees under the Prevention of Terrorism Act might be kept and interrogated for seven days without visitors or access to solicitor. “The old cells were 12-foot square, contained no windows and were reportedly too hot in the summer and too cold in winter” (Wikipedia).(Photo: Posted in 2020 on Internet by Green Anti-Capitalist Front who occupied the empty building intending to turn it into community centre.)
That could be extended for another five days – and often enough was — by application to the Home Secretary. Access to solicitor was usually denied and though not lawful, the fact of the detention itself was often denied to concerned people making enquiries of the police station.
The prospect of disappearing for seven days into police custody somewhere was naturally terrifying and a ‘suspect’ could also be deported without trial to Ireland – even to the British colony of the Six Counties, which amounted according to their law to “internal exile”.
Snapshot of London police harassment and intimidation of Irish solidarity activists in 1981. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The framing of a score of innocent Irish people3 in five different trials4 with very heavy sentences added to the intended terrorising of the Irish community in Britain, the “suspect community”5, many of whom believed the victims to be not only innocent but most not even politically active.6
Irish solidarity activity in Britain diminished greatly after 1974 as state repression impacted across the Irish community. But the hunger strikes and concerns to save the lives of the strikers in 1981 broke the hold of state terror as people took to the streets in their thousands once again.
They were unsuccessful but never returned to that state of immobilising fear that had settled over the community.
The Irish in Britain Representation Group got its initial start in 1981 which happened as follows: the bourgeois Federation of Irish Societies had its AGM in May 1981 and one of the members proposed that a motion of sympathy to the Sands family be recorded when he died.
IBRG and Irish Republican POW Support Committee banners on march Birmingham 1984 (Source: Mullarkey Archive)
The meeting’s Chairperson ruled the proposal out of order and ‘the Fed’ continued with their ordinary business. The then Editor of the Irish Post7, writing in his “Dolan” column, found this disturbing and suggested there might be a need for a new type of Irish community association.
A number of individuals wrote in and the ball got rolling, though it took until 1983 to set up the branch-based organisation with a constitution and democratic safeguards in operational rules. The IBRG soon had a number of branches in London and others in the North and Midlands.
For the next two decades the organisation campaigned for the release of the framed prisoners, against the Prevention of Terrorism Act, strip-searching, all racism but in particular the anti-Irish and anti-Traveller varieties, for Irish representation in education, services, Census category, etc.
Lewisham Irish Centre Management Committee and Staff, possibly 1994. The Centre was campaigned for and won by the Lewisham Branch of the IRBG in conjunction with the Lewisham Irish Pensioners’ Association (which the IBRG had also founded).
The IBRG also called for British departure from Ireland and collaborated with other organisations in marches, demonstration, pickets, conferences, producing also a number of important report documents. The organisation’s officers were drawn from migrant Irish and those born in Britain.
Bobby Sands Mural on gable end of a house in Belfast (Photo cred: Brooklyn Street Art)
REPRESENTATION OF BOBBY SANDS
Bobby Sands was a man of great courage whose leadership qualities were recognised by his fellow political prisoners when they elected him as their Officer Commanding in the H-Blocks. He was also an accomplished writer and poet.
When the British reneged on the agreement that ended the 1980 hunger strike and a new one was planned, Sands insisted on being first on the list, which also meant that in the event of resulting deaths, his would be the earliest.
Most people will agree easily with all the above evaluation of the man but from that point onwards, his representation is manipulated to suit different agendas, in particular those of pacifists, social democrats, liberals and a variety of opportunists.
Some of them love above all his quotation that “Our revenge shall be the laughter of our children”. They forget many other things he wrote and seek to turn him into an angel or saint of pacifism.
Since they embraced the pacification process, Sinn Féin try to represent Sands as an advocate for and proof of the effectiveness of participating in the parliamentary electoral system, based on his success in a 1981 Westminster by-election with 30,492 votes, 51.2% of the total of valid votes.
What both these groups fail to recognise is that Sands was an IRA volunteer and was sentenced for possession of handguns in 1972 and again in 1976. If he was an angel, it was of the Archangel type, fighting against what he considered evil.
He was proposed in the Fermanagh-South Tyrone by-election mainly in order to support the campaign of the prisoners against criminalisation and for the political status recognition that they had previously. Saving the lives of the hunger strikers was of course part of the plan too.
Nine protesting Republican prisoners contested the general election in the Irish State in June. Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew (who was not on hunger strike) were elected in Cavan-Monaghan and Louth respectively, and Joe McDonnell narrowly missed election in Sligo-Leitrim.
But that is a long way from proving that the electoral process is a viable way of dislodging the ruling class and their system and, in fact, history has proven the opposite.
Nobody knows what position Sands and the other nine would have taken on the electoral process had they lived. Possibly some would have gone along with the SF leadership on that and some others would now be reviled as “dissidents” (as are indeed some H-Block survivors).
All we can say for certain is that they were men of courage in that all of them had joined the armed struggle for Irish national liberation. They had even higher courage of a level hard to imagine, to risk and then experience slow physical disintegration and death by the day and by the hour.
Long after their erstwhile prominent enemies are forgotten, their names will shine in our history and Bobby Sands’s, the brightest of them all.
2A bomb was planted against the prison wall to free a member of their group who was being held on remand awaiting trial at Clerkenwell Prison, London. The explosion damaged nearby houses, killed 12 civilians and wounded 120; no prisoners escaped and the attack was a failure. Michael Barrett was found guilty of the bombing despite his claim supported by witness testimony of having been in Glasgow during the bombing and was hanged on Tuesday 26 May 1868 outside Newgate Prison, the last man to be publicly hanged in England (the practice was ended from 29 May 1868 by the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerkenwell_explosion.
3Carole Richardson of the Guildford Four was not Irish but she was the girlfriend of one of three Irishmen.
4Birmingham Six, Guidford Four, Giuseppe Conlon, Maguire Seven and Judith Ward. They were not acquitted and released until decades later, by which time Giuseppe Conlon had died in jail.
5Suspect Community by Paddy Hillyard, Pluto Press (1993)
6Believing them innocent and not active worked even better to terrorise because if the likes of those could be framed and jailed, no-one was safe. But perhaps safest was to do absolutely nothing to draw the attention of the State.
7Brendán Mac Lua, co-founder of the Irish community newspaper in 1970 which is now a very different periodical.
8The lark is associated with Sands because he wrote a story about a man who had captured a skylark, a bird that unusually sings in flight. In the cage the bird would not sing so the man draped the cage with cloth and still the bird would not sing, nor would it do so when he refused it food and water until eventually, it died in the dark, silent to the last.
The past six months of an almost incredible level of Israeli genocide and Palestinian resistance have taught the world some valuable lessons but particularly perhaps those of us living among the Western powers.
PART TWO: LESSONS FROM THE ISRAELI ZIONISTS
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time:5 mins.)
The Nature of Zionism
The Zionists have taught us the nature of Zionism as an ideology upholding a people allegedly chosen by religion to occupy a land and to repress or expel the indigenous occupants of that land.
Nature of settler states
As Zionism is a variant of occupier-settler ideology we have, by extension, learned to recognise the nature of all settler states. To be fair, the evidence of that nature was clearly before us but we had perhaps learned to push it to the backs of our minds.
The European settler states of USA and Canada practiced genocide against their native indigenous peoples, of which only discriminated fractions remain from “California” to “Newfoundland”, from Pacific to Atlantic coasts. Both those states have diligently supported the Zionist settler project.
Lithograph image of aftermath of the Wounded Knee massacre of Indigenous people, USA, 29 December 1890 (Image sourced: Internet)
Those Northern American territories were primarily English colonies1 as were Australia and New Zealand, both also practicing genocide and discrimination against their indigenous populations and both those states too have supported the Zionist settler project.
European coloniser collection of New Zealand Indigenous heads 1895 (Photo source: Khamen.ir)
Less unanimous have been the mainly Spanish and Portuguese settler colonies of what is now called “Latin America”, from Brazil to Argentina to Mexico. Their indigenous populations too were ethnically cleansed and subjected to genocide, although to varying degrees of intensity.2
The Caribbean islands have all been settler and imported slave colonies of the states of England, Spain and France3, all now having nominal independence but, with the exception of Cuba,4 remaining within the imperial ambit of the USA (mostly) and France and have responded accordingly.
Nature of the zionist state
The Zionist State has demonstrated to us the true outcome of the Israeli zionist ideology, expansionist and prepared to inflict any horror upon the indigenous people in order to achieve its aims, descending to depths of inhumanity unimaginable only if Nazism were forgotten history.
An early mass grave of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in Gaza back in November 2023 as the cemeteries were already full (Photo cred: Mohammed Salem/ Reuters)
Currently the Israelis’ toll of Palestinians is at least 34,049 dead and 76,901 wounded, with an estimated further 8,000 under rubble in Gaza, nearly 2 million displaced (many several times), all medical, educational and social facilities and infrastructure degraded if not totally destroyed.5
And with at least 9,500 prisoners (i.e hostages) reportedly ill-treated, humiliated and even tortured, of which an Israeli-admitted 27 have died during these six months alone and 3,660 are held without trial or release date in “administrative detention”.6
Brazen Truth and Lies
We have also learned from the Zionist state its brazen genocidal intentions towards the Palestinians, expressed for internal Israeli consumption, alongside its outlandish lies for the international public about October 7th: beheaded babies, mass rapes, disfigurements, burning alive, etc.
All of those have been debunked and the recorded statistics alone (but also backed by evidence of other agencies) expose the lies that the Israeli army is attacking only7 the Palestinian resistance, that it is not applying collective punishment and using starvation as a weapon.
False Israeli Zionist propaganda about the Palestinian resistance “beheading babies” repeated by US President Joe Biden in press statement, claiming he had seen photos. His aides later ‘clarified’ that he was relying on reports from the Israeli state and had not seen actual photos. (Photo sourced: Internet)
Not bothering to give excuses for its demolition of universities and museums, schools and places of Muslim and Christian worship, ‘Israel’ has claimed the existence of tunnel entrances in them as excuses for the total elimination of Palestine’s main hospitals and degradation of all others.
It has done this despite its lack of evidence of such use of the hospitals, despite denials of hospital staff and organisations and without having to explain how such claims, even if they were true, could justify siege of hospitals, killing patients and staff and their destruction as functioning hospitals.
What Israel and the western imperialist states have shown us to date is that Israel has impunity to carry on its genocide. Not only will it not be boycotted, much less blockaded, not to even mention invaded, it will continue to be supplied with weapons, money and political support.
Even after the ICJ judgement in favour of S. Africa that Israel was “plausibly committing genocide” and restrictions imposed on Israel by the court, the genocide continued without pause and without any serious international repercussions by any western state.
Israel has given us a clear demonstration in practice of the hollowness of western institutional democracy and liberalism, not only in its continued support for the genocidal state but in the repression by western states of those who have supported the Palestinians in word or deed.
Demonstrations and pickets have been forbidden8, protesters threatened and arrested9, academics hounded and sacked,10 artists and public speakers cancelled, social media profiles hampered or blocked. In fact, all the kinds of undemocratic actions of which some other states are often accused.
Exposure of the world order of legal democratic institutions
The exposure of these institutions was almost complete. The United Nations of 193 states was shown powerless to act without the authorisation of the five Permanent Members11 of the Security Council — which itself was shown nullified by a veto of even one Member.12
United nations
United Nations building with approach flanked by national flags of member states(Photo sourced: Internet)
The International Court of Justice, a sub-institution of the UN itself, with a history of never even trying a western power, though judging Israel plausibly guilty of genocide,13 failed in its judgement on 26th January to order an immediate cease to the state’s attacks on the Gaza population.
The ICJ failed even to take action on Israel’s non-compliance with the interim measures it ordered, viz: “to take all measures to prevent any acts that could be considered genocidal according to the 1948 Genocide Convention”, other than to issue another non-complied order on 28th March.14
The United Nations failed to defend its own aid organisation for the relief of Palestinians (both in Palestine and as refugees in other parts) from unsupported Israeli allegations of the participation of 0.04% of its staff in the Palestinian resistance operation of October 7th 2023.
The UNWRA chiefs responded by failing to stand up to Israeli bullying and by sacking nine of their own workers without any evidence presented against them and without a right to a hearing or appeal. It also for a time failed to denounce Israel for reported torture of the agency’s employees.15
The UN failed to defend the staff of UNWRA from unproven allegations, unfair internal treatment and Israeli intimidation and murder or to maintain the essential funding of UNWRA essential for the Palestinians, or to insist on the regular and protected entry of aid trucks safe from Israeli attack.
The European Union refused to even call for a ceasefire; continued to act as Israel’s biggest export market; some of its members withdrew UNRWA funding and continued to supply the genocidal state with arms, while many states repressed their own citizens acting in solidarity with Palestine.
The need for revolutionary resistance
The Zionist state and its imperialist backers and, to be fair to it, our own Irish state too, have demonstrated to us the fragile and temporary nature of western liberalism and democracy on the one hand and the need, by implication, of revolutionary resistance and organisation on the other.
IN CONCLUSION
It remains to us to learn those hard-earned lessons, to internalise them and to apply them externally. We owe that to the Palestinians and to ourselves.
End.
Part of Gaza after Israeli bombardment back July 2014; now of course it is much, much worse. (Image sourced: Internet)
1The Dutch also colonised the north-east of what is now the USA and the French particularly Louisiana, in what is now the USA and Quebec in what is now Canada. What is now SW USA was part of the Spanish colonial empire, subsequently part of the Mexican Empire and gained by the USA in two wars with Mexico.
2The disparity in approach of these states is underlined by for example on the one hand El Salvador unreservedly supporting the zionist state and by Nicaragua on the other hand taking Germany to the International Court of Justice in accusation of being complicit in the Israeli genocide by supporting the state with weapons and finance.
3Without overlooking the fact that each of those states (England now as the United Kingdom) contains other dominated nations within it.
4During the existence of the USSR Cuba was often described as being under Soviet colonial influence but remains today the only truly independent (though part-occupied) state in the whole of the Caribbean.
6 At the time of writing Adameer, the Palestinian prisoner and human rights organisation reports 9,500 Palestinian prisoners of which 3,660 are “administrative detainees”, 200 children and 80 women. Seventeen of the prisoners are elected Legislative Council members (similar to MPs or TDs) https://www.addameer.org/statistics. These figures have changed regularly during the 6 months of zionist genocide and the trend is always upward except for a brief period during the truce and exchange of hostages.
A solidarity rally in Dublin to mark 17th April Palestinian Prisoners’ Day was staged by the IPSC outside the iconic General Post Office building on Dublin’s main street and was supported by the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign.
At a public meeting about Palestinian prisoners after the event Tala Nasir, a lawyer working with the prisoner support group Adameer, stated that there are 8,000 Palestinians currently held by the zionist state of which 275 are women and 500 are children.
Ms. Nasir was on a round-Ireland speaking tour organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the main Palestine solidarity organisation in Ireland but which has not been prominent in highlighting the situation of the Palestinian political prisoners.
On the other hand, at its street information pickets, although primarily working for Irish political prisoners, the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign has regularly flown a Palestinian flag in support of political prisoners from that nation also.
An IAIC spokesperson recalled that at their traditional annual prisoner solidarity rally in December, their speaker stated: “Wherever there is oppression, there will be resistance; but also wherever there is resistance there will be political prisoners and in Ireland we have centuries of that experience.”
The organisation maintains that although large-scale official internment last used in the occupied Six Counties ended in 1795, it continues on a smaller scale under another name: “Remand in custody”, in which Republicans regularly wait two years before their case comes to court.
The decision to deny bail is taken by the special no-jury political courts: Diplock Court in the Six Counties and Special Criminal Courts within the Irish state, all of which have been condemned by civil liberties organisations in Ireland and abroad.
Israel also has a form of internment without trial which they call “administrative detention”, under which Palestinians can be detained for up to six months at a time as a preventive measure without any kind of trial or evidence shown against them.
PALESTINIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS
Tala Nasir, a lawyer of the Adameer organisation was introduced by Gary Daly (of Lawyers for Palestine group) to the audience in the theatre of Pearse House, formerly the home of Patrick and Willie Pearse and sculpture business address of their English father (and of Willie).
Ms. Nasir informed the packed audience that Israel has declared her organisation of Palestinian prisoner support and advocacy to be a “terrorist” on “evidence” they declare “secret” but the absence of which results in no other state accepting that designation in the case of Adameer.
“Once you’re a prisoner you will always be a prisoner,” stated Ms. Nasir, illustrating that in raids the Israeli military frequently detain former prisoners, often repeatedly. “Crimes” can include a comment on social media, “Liking” or sharing a comment against Israel.
Even the posting of a “green heart” symbol may be interpreted as a sign of support for Hamas and may become the reason for a person’s arrest. Children are most often accused of throwing stones, statements written for them in Hebrew, told to sign them, sufficient “evidence” for jail.
Ms Nasir said that 80% of the prisoners are held under “Administrative Detention” without trial and no defence is possible since the “reason” for it is secret and neither the accused nor their lawyer may see the allegations. The six months detention is automatic and can renewed repeatedly.
Prisoners must buy their own food from the canteen but after October 7th it was closed for periods. Child prisoners told Adameer: “We wake up hungry and go to sleep hungry”. Typically adult prisoners have lost 15-20 kg from their previous weight when released.
The prisoners were prevented from going out of their cells which also meant they were unable to shower for many days and also had to wear the same clothes every day. They were also humiliated through being blindfolded and strip-searching, sometimes by male, sometimes female soldiers.
Beatings are common and prisoners have commented on their transport vehicles not only smelling awful but seeing the floor covered in blood. Sixteen prisoners have been killed in the last 6 months and though autopsies have recorded bruises and broken bones, Israeli investigations are closed.
All but one of the Israeli prisons are in the “Israel” area and the lawyer is not permitted to visit the prisoners there without special permission, which is why, she said, so many of the Palestinians are transferred to those prisons, which she maintains is a war crime.
Declaring her greater trust in and dependence on the solidarity of the people of the world, “in particular the global South” who have had similar experiences to those of the Palestinians, the Palestinian lawyer nevertheless said that she has to practice diplomacy at times.
Tala Nasir called for the widest possible support for Adameer’s Call For Action, which is the simple task of sending text supplied emails to two specified officials responsible for prisons and prisoners telling them they will be held answerable for war crimes.
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign have a march booked in Dublin for this coming Saturday 23rd April, commencing at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm.
A spokesperson for IAIC stated they would be on the streets again in order to proclaim the continue existence of political prisoners in Ireland and that Republican activists are essentially being interned without trial from no-jury political courts to spend two years or more in jail awaiting trial.
“The IAIC is a democratic non-sectarian independent organisation,” the spokesperson said “and welcomes support from concerned democratic people and we’ll continue to fly the Palestinian flag. If people follow our page they should receive adequate advance notice in order to attend.”
Almost immediately after the Al Aqsa Flood breach of the Israeli military wall and subsequent raid, the Israeli state’s stories of alleged atrocities by Hamas1 were being widely repeated in the western mass media.
The accounts, always levelled at Hamas, included burning alive and mutilation of adults, rape, beheading of babies and even ripping of a baby from the womb of a pregnant woman, most of the allegations quickly proven untrue.
The rape story however continues to run. So far there has been not one piece of forensic evidence, not one certifiable victim and not only have the journalistic standards been flawed but the backgrounds of the original reporters are deeply suspect.
Or “Mass media and atrocity”?Or “Mass media atrocity”? (Image sourced: Internet)
“Beheaded babies”
Since according to Israeli statistics one baby alone died during the Al Aqsa Flood operation and was neither headless nor premature, all the allegations about atrocities towards babies or pregnant women have been disproven and the “witnesses” discredited.
The latter were reported in the media as serving Israeli military and some civilians but were quoted at length and no attempt was made to question the accused, Hamas, nor to interrogate the logic (which we’ll come to later). President Biden quoted the “beheaded babies” as fact.2
“Mutilation” allegation
Despite the frequent allegations of mutilations of bodies of babies and women no forensic examples have been provided by the Israeli authorities, who had full access to all sites of the Al Aqsa Flood raid within hours of the operation.
“Burning people alive” allegation
There is certainly much evidence of the immolation of buildings and cars (the latter with occupants) – but by whom? There is no evidence that the Palestinian military possess flamethrowers or carried any inflammable devices. In the course of a battle of course some buildings can catch fire.
But deliberately burning people alive when the objective is to take live prisoners? Certainly not logical. However, we have known almost since the date of the operation that Israeli fighters were firing Hellfire missiles at cars on the ground without being able to identify their occupants.3
There is also eyewitness testimony from an Israeli survivor that an Israeli tank fired a shell into a house in which Palestinian fighters were holding Israeli prisoners known to her, killing everyone including a child.
First “Mass rapes” allegation
In an article titled “Scream without words” on 28th December, this allegation was published in the New York Times, a US periodical that considers itself ‘a newspaper of record’, i.e one with high standards of checking and the reports of which therefore can be relied upon.
Though Pulitzer-Prizewinner Jeffrey Gettleman was the article’s main author, Anat Shwartz and Adam Sella were researchers on this story with Shwartz in the lead.
The two-month investigation produced no forensic evidence and no named alleged victims except one, Gal Abdush. According to Gal’s sister the allegation of rape was concealed from the family by the NYT; she does not believe her sister was raped and they know of no forensic tests performed.
… at 7:00 a.m., Nagi Abdush called his brother Nissim to say Gal was shot and dying. The Times never explains how Gal could be captured, raped, fatally shot, and burned to death in nine minutes while Nagi messaged his family and never mentioned any physical contact with Hamas forces.4
The team claimed interviewing “150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors … identified at least seven locations” where Israeli women and girls appear to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated. Yet not a single named individual (other than Gal).
During this period, the team published an article rehashing Israeli propaganda claims of Palestinian atrocities but containing false assertions. Under pressure the NYT had to publish a correction on December 8th stating that the Israeli police had no forensic or autopsy evidence for the claims.
Among the few “witnesses” identified by Shwartz are an Israeli Army paramedic, a special forces soldier and members of the ZAKA group. The latter claims to be a philanthropic organisation but is mired in claims of inventing horror stories,5 with some of its leaders on trial for sexual abuse.
The military paramedic changed the location of victims of rape from one kibbutz to another and, though his story coincides perfectly with that of the special forces soldier, it is flatly contradicted by family and kibbutz members regarding rape and the location and status of the bodies.6
The person who filmed the original video of Gal Abdush’s body, Eden Wesley says that at first she did not understand the importance of the image but that Shwartz and Sella kept pressurising her for the footage and telling her it would be valuable ‘hasbara’ (Israeli State propaganda) material.7
It emerged after the article’s publication that Schwarz had previously “liked” a number of rabid anti-Palestinian posts on Twitter/X, including one with the false story of “beheaded babies” and another about the need to equate Hamas with ISIS in the narrative for propaganda purposes.
Sella is Shwartz’s nephew and neither he nor his aunt had a history of covering stories of this size or of working with or for the NYT and it is curious how in November 2024 Schwartz came to be an investigative reporter for the prestigious newspaper on alleged atrocities by the Al Aqsa Flood.
Though the NYT has yet to admit the story is basically faulty it has criticised Shwartz for ‘liking’ zionist posts and is carrying out an investigation, declaring such to be violating its standards.
It may be that in time the NYT will sacrifice the reporters to save its reputation. But the newspaper needs to answer why it employed them in the first place and ran a story of such serious allegations (and consequences) under Gettleman without a shred of actual evidence.
Debunked – but the allegations run on
The latest version of these allegations is by UN Envoy Pramila Patten who, once again, admits to being able to name no victims and to having no forensic evidence. But even so she is able to suggest that female Israeli prisoners may be experiencing “ongoing” sexual assault in captivity!8
The report of her delegation, which had not been sent in an investigative capacity, claimed finding in various locations, “that several fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down were recovered – mostly women – with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head”.
Although of course captives would have their hands tied, I don’t recall this detail of partial nakedness and shooting of Israeli captives being reported before and its emergence five months after the military operation must give rise to extreme suspicion.
Anti-German military WWI poster (Image sourced: Internet)
Control of the investigation, control of the discourse
As with a number of other war propaganda allegations in various parts of the world, the Israeli State insisted it will not permit any independent international agency investigation and also declined to carry out its own investigations “until after the war” (while forensic evidence is compromised).
That does not prevent the western mass media from giving credence to Israeli State stories.
LOGIC?
Let’s set aside all horror or distaste for a moment and apply some logic to the situation. The short-term objectives of the Palestinian military raid were to
Coordinate rocket bombardment of Israeli settlements with six simultaneous infantry assaults
Knock out local Israeli Wall automatic guns and military communications
Get through or over the Israeli Wall
Overcome the Israeli garrison at the Wall
Take Israelis prisoners to exchange for the release of Palestinians prisoners of the Israeli state
It is worth noting that the Palestinian operation achieved all of its short-term objectives, No. 5 only partially since we now know that many Palestinian fighters were killed by Israeli fire along with their captives.
In addition to the short-term we can assume longer-term objectives
strike back at the oppressor
destroy the occupier’s sense of invulnerability
keep the Israeli prisoners taken safe
negotiate for the exchange of prisoners and
probably to force the rulers of Israel to negotiate with the elected representatives of the Palestinians.9
How logical would carrying out atrocities be with regard to any of those objectives, bearing in mind that the Palestinian resistance wants its justifications acknowledged and supported domestically and internationally? And to be able to negotiate with the Israeli State’s leaders?
Would the short-term mission directives be compatible with “mass rape”? The mission directive is to knock out communications, kill any resistance necessary, grab prisoners and – get out quickly! Speed was essential for the success of the operation and the survival of its personnel.
To knock aside any evaluation on the basis of logic we are encouraged to regard the Palestinians as irrational, violent and sub-human – in fact the very kind of propaganda used for centuries by the British-based colonisers against the Irish, both in text and cartoons.10
The joint Palestinian limited military operation was represented in the media as “a rampage” “slaughtering”, “massacring” while a number of Israeli politicians described Palestinians as “animals”, openly calling for genocide.
Part of the British propaganda depicting slaughter of men, women and children settlers by the Irish in 1641, which helped to gain recruits and funds for Cromwell’s genocide and plantation campaign in Ireland in 1649. (Source of image: Article in Guardian)
WAR PROPAGANDA
Propaganda has always been a part of preparing the combatants and their society for war and, once war begins, sustaining it. The English-based invaders racialised the Irish as uncouth, barbarians, dishonest (but then had to pass laws to prevent the integration of their own colonists!).11
In the 1800s the Irish were described for British society as lazy, violent, drunkard, dirty and treacherous while a number of cartoons depicted them as brutish and ape-like, drawing on literature from Shakespeare, Mary Anne Shelley and evolutionary theory for its caricatures.
Much more recently, the leaders of the USA and of the UK, in order to justify their invasion of Iraq, falsified the reports of their intelligence agencies to accuse Saddam Hussein of being somehow responsible for the Twin Towers atrocity and of having weapons of mass destruction.12
A poster to boost recruitment for the USA’s troops in WWI – note the common theme of a murdered child and atrocity (crucifixion) towards a woman with perhaps suggestion of sexual violation also. (Image sourced: Internet)
ACTUAL RAPE & SEXUAL ASSAULT
Sexual assault and rape of Palestinian female prisoners
A UN body of seven sexual violence experts reported on 19th February that there is credible evidence of Palestinian females being shot and female prisoners being subjected to sexual assault, humiliation and even rape by Israeli military officers.13
To contrast this situation with that of alleged victims of “mass rapes” of Israeli women by Al Aqsa Flood on October 7th, with no actual victims yet produced, at least two female Palestinian prisoners have alleged being raped and others of sexual assault and humiliation.
Furthermore, the taking of Palestinian prisoners and their detention is no hurried military operation with severe time constraints, unlike that of the Al Aqsa Flood operation.
Thirdly, while any Israeli victim of rape cannot ordinarily expect retribution for testifying to such an experience but rather the opposite, Palestinians in Israeli jail and ex-prisoners anywhere in Palestine are always vulnerable to Israeli retribution and eight have died in jail since October 8th.
Another difference is that while Palestinians have to think about how their actions will be perceived not only internally but also externally, this is not the case with the Israeli State and its armed forces, who boast about their human rights violations in official videos and on soldiers’ social media.
Victims of rape and sexual assault by Palestinians in Palestinian society
There are sadly bound to be such victims but we know nothing about them because of the siege and genocidal war conditions to which Palestinian society is subjected. Such a situation conditions complicity in silence due to feelings of solidarity and fear of seeming to help the enemy.
We know this from our own history in Ireland in the Republican movement during the 30 Years War in the occupied Six Counties, some accusations of sexual abuse within Republican families only emerging to the public eye only after the end of the War.
Victims of rape and sexual assault by Israelis in Israeli society
However, there are substantial statistics on complaints of rape and sexual assault in Israeli society, which are according to one source, 40% higher there than the average in OECD countries. Furthermore they have been on the increase (which may mean greater occurrence or of reporting).
In 2013, 40,000 calls were received by the Israeli rape crisis centres, a rise of 12% from previously but only 15% were reported to the police. Even more disturbingly, 31% of callers reporting assault were under the age of 12 and 33% of callers reporting assault were between 13-18 years of age.14
The Association of Rape Crises Centres in Israeli reports that one in three women in Israel is sexually assaulted during her lifetime, with one in seven raped during her lifetime.15
Gang rapes seem to be on the increase and the risk of punishment for rapists and sexual assaulters seems statistically low as a study found that 90% of cases are closed without charges.16
Some of the allegations of sexual assault and rape of Israeli personnel within the Israeli military
In 2013 there were 561 reports of sexual assault in the IDF that were of military circumstances, with 396 reports not of military circumstances. 91% of reports were of assault against women, 49% were of physical assault but in 61% of cases a complaint was not submitted.17
There have been two notorious cases of alleged gang rapes by Israeli men but in Cyprus, a common holiday destination for Israelis.18 One, of a woman in 2019 was dismissed due to police incompetence and the other, of a UK woman, is currently being tried. 19
In Conclusion
During the many hours of Israeli military missing after the Wall breaches, other Palestinians entered and could possibly have robbed, assaulted, raped or killed a small number of Israelis. However forensic, victim or credible witness evidence of rape remains absent to date.
The mass rape allegations against the Palestinian resistance in the course of their Al Aqsa Flood operation originate in Israeli propaganda, are not credible logically, have provided neither victims nor forensic evidence and the track record of the “investigators” is tainted by zionist sympathies.
Despite debunking by statistics and investigation, the “mass rapes” and other allegations such as the numbers killed by the Palestinian resistance continue to be repeated in the western mass media or to be allowed to resurface after the allegations and/or the sources have been discredited.
Sadly even liberal anti-Zionist reporters appear at times to allow themselves to believe the propaganda while at the same time criticising the Israeli State’s actions or their extent.20
The original source is Israeli war propaganda and those who ignore that fact and the number of investigation results refuting the allegations but rather give them some kind of credence and currency in reporting are deeply complicit in the ongoing zionist genocide of the Palestinian people.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1In order to deny that the target of operations by the Israeli State is the Palestinian people, the propaganda always talks about “Hamas” alone. It is rarely admitted but well-known by the authorities that the Al Aqsa Flood operation was a joint one including not only the military wings of Hamas but also of Islamic Jihad, the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Popular Resistance Committees and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
8The U.N. envoy focusing on sexual violence in conflict says there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape, “sexualized torture,” and other cruel and inhuman treatment of women during its surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
There are also “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing,” said Pramila Patten, who visited Israel and the West Bank from Jan. 29 to Feb. 14 with a nine-member team. (Washington Post – see Sources). Contrast this claim with the accounts of female prisoners of the Palestinian resistance released to date.
9The elected representation of the Palestinian people since the 2006 elections has been Hamas (no 5-yearly elections have been held since by the PA which is under Fatah control). The Fatah political structure in power in Gaza refused to respect the electorate’s decision and in 2007 Hamas was obliged to remove them by force (which they decided not to do in the West Bank). The Israeli ruling class likewise refused to accept the decision of the Palestinian electorate and besieged Gaza. The rulers of the western states followed suit in not recognising Hamas either, though UN aid organisations and NGOs had to deal with Hamas in Gaza.
10“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true. They could’ve risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime,” said the President of the Israel State, Herzog.
11For example, the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1666 by the British-Norman rulers of England were series of 35 Acts aimed at preventing the British-Norman settlers (also described as Norman-Irish) from continuing to be “the degenerate English” who had “become more Irish than the Irish themselves” by adopting traditional Irish customs, culture, language and even law.
12The ironical truth is that while the UK and the USA are some of the few powers that do indeed posses weapons of mass destruction, Iraq had none; also the Twin Towers atrocity had been carried out by Al Qaeda, an Islamicist organisation originating in jihadists supported and supplied by the USA in order to overthrow the Russian-supported Afghanistan regime of 1979-1988. Furthermore Al Qaeda was a known opponent of the Saddam Hussein regime.
13Though reported in some western mass media, neither as often nor nowhere nearly as much as the Israeli story of “mass rapes by Hamas”.
On Tuesday evening in one of Dublin city centre’s high-end shopping street picketers refuted colonial Minister for ‘Justice’ Naomi Long’s lie that “There are no political prisoners in Northern Ireland” (sic – she means the Six-County colony).
The Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign came on to the street to highlight that yes indeed, there ARE political prisoners in Ireland – over two score between both sides of the Border. And that furthermore, they are convicted in special political no-jury judicial processes.
View of the picket and the IAIC banner in Henry Street on Tuesday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The IAIC states that these judicial processes are called the “Diplock Court” in the occupied Six Counties and the “Special Criminal Courts” in the Irish state and were “specifically created in both cases for the easy conviction and jailing of Irish Republicans.”
The SCC has been labelled “a sentencing tribunal” rather than a court of law by human rights campaigners. IAIC states that the Diplock Court is “now being administered by former Republicans while the SCCs have now, after years of opposition, been approved by those same people.”
View of placards on the IAIC banner in Henry Street on Tuesday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
However, as accused before these courts are also regularly refused bail, IAIC points out they are also effectively administrators of internment without trial, jailing activists for around two years before judicial process. If bail is granted, it is always under severe conditions preventing political activity.
The IAIC, an independent group campaigning for ten years, was supported in their picket yesterday by Irish Republicans and Socialists including from the Anti-Imperialist Action and Saoirse Don Phalaistín groups, in addition to some independent activists.
Although Henry Street is a high-end shopping street of Dublin city centre, lots of working class people use it also.
A member distributes leaflets to passers-by near the picket in Henry Street on Tuesday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Over 100 leaflets were distributed and a number of people stopped to discuss the issues. Some queried the mix of flags flown (Irish Starry Plough, Palestinian and Basque) and participants explained that these represented some of the struggles where repression has taken prisoners.
“We thought it particularly important to refute the colonial Minister’s lie today,” commented a spokesperson for the IAIC “and we’re glad for the support we received on the picket line and from interested people on the street. We hope to do it more often this year.”
“Internment continues in Ireland, just on a different scale and more selectively than for example in the Six Counties in the 1980s”, continued the spokesperson.
View of the picket and the IAIC banner in Henry Street on Tuesday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The IAIC states that it is “an independent campaigning group run on a participative democratic basis” and that it “welcomes democratic people” on their pickets. The Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063166633467 is their usual public outlet for notification of events and highlighting of related issues.
Among Christmas shopping crowds in Dublin’s city centre, the calls for freedom of political prisoners rang out, while the Irish, Palestinian and Basque flags fluttered in the wind among festive lights and projected light-show.
The Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign was holding its annual political prisoner solidarity picket in the busy O’Connell street, supported by socialist Republican groups and independent activists.
View of picket line looking southward. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
December is a traditional month in Ireland for focus on Republican prisoners. However, the IAIC campaign has always made a point of remembering political prisoners elsewhere too, with Palestinian and Basque flags erected on its regular pickets.
This year the Campaign had especially requested Palestinian flags and these were present, both the national flag and that of the Peoples Front for the Liberation Palestine, fluttering alongside Basque flags and the green-and-gold Starry Plough.1
In addition, one of the IAIC’s banner displayed a large copy of an image depicting a Palestinian’s arm extended through prison bars to grasp the hand of an Irish Republican prisoner’s hand also from nearby bars, from the original by political cartoonist Carlos Latuf,.
A black banner had been rigged with lights to spell “Saoirse”, the Irish word for “freedom” and the picketers set up in a line with other banners and flags facing the GPO building.2
Political prisoners sometimes have their family visits cancelled as a punishment and during the Covid pandemic prevention period it was used as an excuse to prevent Republican prisoners’ family visits. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
SHOUTS
A speaker using a megaphone informed passers-by that internment without trial had not ceased in Ireland and that Republicans were being charged and then refused bail by non-jury courts on both sides of the British Border, spending two years in jail regardless of their trials’ outcomes.
All the Republican prisoners, the IAIC speaker said, had been convicted in non-jury special courts. Palestinians were also being convicted in special courts, he said, military courts and many were in jail – in “administrative detention”, i.e interned without ever having been convicted or tried.
Over 3,000 had been arrested in Israeli Army raids since October 7th,3 the speaker said through the megaphone, bringing the overall number of Palestinians in jail to over 7,000.4
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The recent exchange of prisoners between the Zionist state and the Palestinian resistance had resulted in liberty for 240 Palestinians, of which 1075 were children and 68 women.
There was regular chanting from the picket line including: “From Ireland to Palestine – Free all political prisoners!” “When there is occupation – Resistance is an obligation!” and “Free political prisoners – Free them now!”
At one point some kind of religious procession was briefly enacted in front of the GPO building and an elderly woman in apparent religious garb approached the picketers shouting something at them which they largely ignored, maintaining their solidarity slogans.
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
In addition to interested people taking photos or filming video of the protest on their devices, some approached the participants to ask questions and to receive a leaflet, after which a number actually joined the protest line for a while (some until the end).
Occasional passing traffic also sounded their horns in solidarity.
The pavement in front of the GPO showing shoppers and people queuing for food distribution. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
STATEMENT
As the end of the event’s allocated period approached, a representative of the IAIC asked the participants to gather around and spoke about how resistance brings repression and oppression brings resistance, resistance being the “crime” for which political activists are jailed.
The participants were thanked for their support, whether independents or activists of Ireland Anti-Imperialist Action and Saoirse Don Phalaistín organisations.
The event ended with the acapella singing of “The H-Block Song” by Diarmuid Breatnach, in an adaptation of the original air to the lyrics of what is “still a good song” he said, composed by a man who, along with his party, “no longer supported Republican prisoners”.6
(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The lyrics recall the struggle of Republican prisoners in the late 1970s against the removal of their ‘Special Category’ political status, which began with refusal to wear prisoner uniform. The struggle escalated to the “no-wash protests” and to hunger strikes in 1980 with ten martyrs in 1981.
As the protesters collected their flags and wrapped up their banners, the nature of current Irish society was underlined by the queues forming up across the road for free food being distributed by charitable organisations.
Early view of picketers, looking northward. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
INDEPENDENT AND OPEN DEMOCRATIC ORGANISATION
The IAIC is “an independent organisation and open democratic organisation” of ten years’ existence and although it has held events for specific cases such as the framed Craigavon Two,7 its main activity has been regular public pickets in Dublin to highlight ongoing internment in Ireland.
The Campaign group encourages participation by democratic people in its regular pickets, regardless of political organisation affiliation or none and, according to one of the organisers, expects to hold its next one in Dublin in January or February.
The IAIC expects also to take part again in the annual Bloody Sunday Commemoration march in Derry on Sunday 29th January 2024.
end.
Unintentionally impressionistic image, photo taken from the east side of O’Connell Street (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
APPENDIX: ANNIVERSARY OF HANGING OF IRISH REPUBLICAN
Though not mentioned in the discourse, the above event took place within days of the anniversary of the British colonial execution of an Irishman in revenge for his killing of an ex-Republican who had turned informer.
James Carey, in the midst of a ‘witness protection program’ provided as a reward for his betrayal of his comrades in giving evidence in court to ensure the jailing of some and hanging of five others, was killed in a gunfight with Pat O’Donnell.
Carey had been a leading member of the National Invincibles’ (a split from the Fenians) cell in Dublin, and had given the signal for the fatal stabbing of British Under-Secretary Burke and Chief Secretary Lord Frederick Cavendish in Phoenix Park on 6th May 1882.
However, Carey turned “Queen’s Evidence” to testify ensuring the conviction of his former colleagues and even gloated in court at their fate. His reward, but for O’Donnell, would have been a new life with pension under an assumed name with wife and children in the South African colony.
O’Donnell was an independent Republican from the Irish-speaking Gweedore area in Donegal but had been to the USA, where he had cousins who were prominent in the “Molly Maguires”, an Irish-led resistance organisation among miners in the USA.
O’Donnell was hanged on 17th December 1883 but is commemorated in the satirical song “Monto” and also in the serious “Ballad of Pat O’Donnell”. His home town of Gweedore also holds a monument in his honour.
end.
FOOTNOTES
1Flag of the Irish Citizen Army, the first workers’ army in the world, founded to protect workers from the police during the Dublin Lockout/ Strike of 1913.
2The General Post Office, iconic building on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, which was the HQ of the leadership of the 1916 Rising, left a shell by fire from British artillery bombardment but rebuilt later.
6Francis Brolly (1938-1920) of Provisional Sinn Féin, composed the song which was released in 1976. PSF abandoned the struggle in the imperialist-promoted pacification process towards the end of the last century and most of their prisoners were released under licence. However those who made public their disagreement with the colonial occupation and the pacification process were on occasion returned to jail while new “dissidents” were charged and refused bail in special no-jury courts, with tacit support of the PSF.
There is no doubt that the genocidal bombing of Palestine has radically politicised people around the world, exposing the Zionist colonial state of ‘Israel’ and its US and other imperialist backers to a greater degree than ever before.
The effect has been hugely but not alone on the mass of people and especially the young, it has been felt also on democratic organisations, pushing them towards more revolutionary positions and actions. Even representatives of states have had to pay close attention to what they say and do.1
There probably has not been a situation of anti-imperialist radicalisation to a similar degree around the world since the USA’s war in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia – of which the death of Kissinger this month was a reminder, if one were needed).2
Section of the march to the US Embassy passing through Baggot Street on Saturday (Photo: D.Breatnach)(Photo: D.Breatnach) (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Dublin saw thousands on its streets again at the weekend in a march towards the US Embassy, while Axa Insurance was occupied and picketed during the week for its investment in genocide. It seemed that every town across the land also saw a demonstration or picket.
The US Ambassador to Ireland’s residence was also picketed on the occasion he had invited Irish politicians and “VIPs” to a meal.
On Tuesday the broad Saoirse Don Phalaistín group organised an occupation of the Israeli Embassy with a picket of about sixty people outside, of different groups and individual activists. Furthermore, it became clear that the State was reluctant to create ‘martyrs’ with arrests.
Picket outside the Zionist Embassy Tuesday with some protesters in occupation before those were removed by Public Order Unit Gardaí (Photo sourced: Anti-Imperialist Action)
THE “FREE PRESS”
The mass media is an integral part of the imperialist system and that too has come under huge criticism.
The western mass media, “the free press” of the western capitalist world, has undergone a huge exposure of its biased reporting (and censorship, particularly on social media). Every atrocity committed by Israel has been represented as ‘caused’ by the Palestinian attack of 7th October.
On the other hand, the attacks of the Palestinian resistance have never been presented as what they truly are and have always been: responses to occupation, genocide, banishment, racism, murder, torture, land-theft and massive bombings by Israel.
Every lie of the Zionist administration and of its imperialist allies, including such patently ridiculous horror stories as ‘beheading of Israeli babies’ and ‘rape and mutilation of Israeli women’ has been repeated while entirely likely accusations by Palestinians have been treated as dubious.
Conversely, within the settler colony itself, some parts of its mass media have exposed the panicky reaction of its military to the October 7th incursion, in killing hostages along with their Palestinian captors and the very recent killing of three escaped or released Israeli hostages.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
THE “DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS”
The allegedly democratic state institutions have fared no better. The European Union was exposed in its voting and by words of its Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen, as a profoundly imperialist backer of Israeli Zionism (e.g fulsomely celebrating the anniversary of the state’s founding3).
According to reports, the EU last week failed even to call for a ceasefire, despite a large majority of states being in favour. The opposition of the minority was so strong that they decided to completely avoid formally discussing the matter at all!4
The United Nations was exposed as a profoundly undemocratic body in that the vast majority of its member states wished the Israeli bombing to stop but were unable to force the Zionist state to comply, even with formally registered votes.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
Only decisions of the Security Council are compulsory on the 193 members and any Permanent Member of that Council can veto any resolution. There are only five of those: UK, France, USA, Russia and China — and the USA vetoed the call for unilateral Israeli ceasefire.
The USA has consistently opposed any resolution that went counter to what Israel intends and recently twice vetoed a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire to allow food, medicine and water to reach the besieged and displaced Palestinians in Gaza.
This was countered last week by a massive majority of the General Assembly voting for such a motion, which however has no obligatory effect by UN rules, thereby exposing the inherent undemocratic nature of the institution but also isolating the USA from its clients and allies.5
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
In fact, the voting in the Security Council and in the General Assembly exposed fractures in European imperialist unity too, since the UK abstained and France voted for the ceasefire.
The allies of the USA fear that the actions of Israel are destabilising the Middle East and feel that the USA should be pressurising rather than backing the Zionist state.
When put under pressure reactionary alliances tend to strain and fracture and this too is a sign that events are developing along lines favourable to revolution.
The International Criminal Court, which a number of liberals and social democrats hope will try Israel for war crimes and genocide was also exposed, not only by its own record to date but by the biased actions of its Prosecutor Karim Khan on a recent visit to the Zionist state.6
Despite the overwhelmingly majority sympathy for and empathy with the Palestinians in many states, their rulers have not responded to anything like the degree wished for and demanded by their citizens, neither in states of the “western world” nor in those of the Arab or Muslim worlds.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
The rulers of the German and French “democracies” have widened the gap by banning Palestine solidarity demonstrations and persecuting people wearing the keffiyeh (and in the case of France, previously outlawing wearing of traditional muslim dress in public places by women).
In Britain, the idea of banning the slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free!” as “antisemitic” was proposed by the Home Secretary7 and a number of direct activists and even posterers on social media have been arrested under criminal and even anti-terrorist legislation.
The British imperialist Labour Party has been exposed too by the words of its leader Keir Starmer; denunciations during his visit to his party’s organisation in Scotland exposed not only Starmer’s unpopularity but his party’s too, along with the massive support for Palestine there.
THEIR ACTIONS MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR THEM
When the enemy’s repressive actions make things worse, rather than better for them, it is a sign that revolutionary opportunities are on the rise.
Direct actions are an essential component of revolution and such have been on the rise too, from occupations of Government offices and buildings complicit with Zionism in Ireland, for example, to occupations and blockades of arms companies in Britain and of shipments in the USA.
Whether these actions are motivated in part by frustration at the lack of progress by other means or through revolutionary understanding, they put the system under greater pressure and tend to isolate the reformists while the activists gain deeper education about the nature of the system.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
The world has witnessed unity in action too, with Hezbollah8 missiles launched from Lebanon against the Israelis causing casualties; but 60 martyrs of the resistance organisation have also fallen to Israeli bombs and missiles9 and Lebanese non-combatants have also, including journalists.
Houthi attacks on shipping off Yemen have caused disruption and financial cost to several major freight companies – including MSC and Maersk – which have begun to sail around Africa instead.
About 15% of shipping traffic regularly transited via the Suez Canal, the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia. Combined, the companies that have diverted vessels “control around half of the global container shipping market,” ABN Amro analyst Albert Jan Swart told Reuters.10
Oil major extractor British Petroleum has also temporarily paused all transits through the Red Sea following the attacks over the weekend.11
Most impressive of all however has been the unity and coordination of the Palestinian armed resistance itself.
The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades is Hamas’ armed wing and the party is a Muslim fundamentalist organisation, as are also Palestine Islamic Jihad. But the Lion’s Den, Jenin Brigades and Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees are mixed.
The Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine12 and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine are secular, socialist organisations yet they and the Islamic organisations are fighting the Israeli state in unity coordinated through the Joint Operations Room.
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
PRISONERS, HOSTAGES, CIVILIANS
The current struggle has also brought to light the huge numbers and treatment of Palestinian prisoners of the Zionist state, including women and children, when some of the latter were exchanged with prisoners taken by the Palestinian forces in their incursion on 7th October.
This issue also challenged the discourse about ‘rules of war’ regarding civilians about which politicians and media commentators made much in attacking the Palestinian incursion.
The question must be posed as to why the Zionist state can take “prisoners” while the Palestinians take “hostages”?13 Outside the US Embassy on Saturday, an IPSC speaker called Israel’s prisoners “freedom fighters” to loud applause, the first such public stance by the organisation.14
Here in Ireland it is a Republican tradition in December to focus on its members incarcerated in prisons within the Irish neo-colonial and British colonial states. The Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign held its annual event in front of the GPO on Thursday 23rd including Palestinian flags.
Annual Prisoners’ picket for Christmas organised by the Ireland Anti-Internment Committee showing Palestinian and Irish flags (Photo: D.Breatnach)
Sadly it was not only officials embedded in the system but also liberals and some of the Left who condemned the Palestinians for ‘attacks on civilians’, ignoring the fact that civilians and soldiers were being captured to exchange for the many Palestinian civilians behind Israeli prison bars.
Then too, rarely mentioned in the media is the fact that most Israeli men and women are military reservists. On the other hand, of over 20,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombing, at least a third are women and children, which shows who it is who really are attacking civilians.15
The draft requirement applies to any citizen or permanent resident, male or female fit to serve and who has reached the age of 18; many of the soldiers who complete their mandatory military service are later obligated to serve in a reserve unit in accordance with the military’s needs.16
(Photo: D.Breatnach)
IN CONCLUSION
The pain, loss and suffering inflicted upon the Palestinians is a horror almost too hard to grasp; it is intended to demoralise the Palestinians and destroy their resistance to colonisation and can create a feeling of helplessness in us, viewing it from afar.
But it is not destroying the resistance of the heroic Palestinian people who are teaching the world a lesson in resistance, an important attribute of humanity. We should not let our resolve be undermined either.
The oppressed people of the world are a step closer to revolution and liberation as a result of this struggle. Let us push forward together.
1This has been particularly the case with regard to the Irish State but not only there.
2Kissinger was a US imperialist strategist and chief advisor to US President Nixon but was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his steering the US out of their disaster in Indochina and thereby devaluing the Nobel Peace Prize forever hence.
3Without of course any mention of the 750,000 Palestinians expelled forever during the creation of the state.
7Suella Braverman; she has since been sacked but not for that, rather for suggesting that the London Metropolitan Police have been “soft” on Palestinian solidarity demonstrators in contrast to their policing of the far-Right. The latter took advantage of her comments to stage a number of actions including some attacks on police and Braverman’s comments were widely criticised by politicians as having helped set that up.
12According to Wikipedia, PFLP is the second-largest organisation in the PLO. However, the PLO has long been dominated by Al Fatah and, due to the latter’s collusion with Israel and imperialism, the PLO has come to lose much support. Hamas and the Islamic fighting organisations are not part of the PLO.
13There is a long Irish history of political prisoners of the English occupation which were often in the earlier centuries named “hostages” and a Republican prisoners’ newspaper
14Of course it may not be that but rather a personal position of the speaker.
Demonstrations, like many organised activities, require a certain discipline: time and place set, conduct along the way, speakers and time allocated, dispersing afterwards. But just as discipline helps avoid dangers, its imposition also bring dangers.
I’ve been one of the organisers, or a steward on a number of public events over the years but more often a participant without any particular role.
Once, in London as a steward I was called “a State agent” as I moved to prevent a couple of people leading others out of an Irish demonstration to attack some British fascists and Loyalists who were chanting against us.
For us, the main objective was to hold an Irish solidarity demonstration in London from its start to its finish without giving the London Metropolitan Police and Special Branch the opportunity to disrupt it.1 Attacking fascist jeerers was secondary to our objective on that occasion.
And if those guys really wanted to attack fascists, they should have been travelling parallel to the march (as the Red Action group often did, for example) instead of inside the march body. Then they could have attacked the fascists without any disruption of the march.
I have also been a party on a broad antifascist mobilisation to a refusal to organisers’ direction to march away from the fascists, instead heading towards them with others.2 In those cases the organisers were, in effect, colluding with the State.
PALESTINE SOLIDARITY IN IRELAND
The main organisation for Palestine solidarity in Ireland for decades has been and continues to be the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Its steering group or executive committee is entirely unpaid and works with energy and determination over the years and at times more intensively.
Those intensive times have been with us again since last month in the horrific genocidal Zionist bombing of Gaza and the murderous ground attacks in the West Bank and the IPSC activists have organised large – sometimes huge – marches of solidarity in Dublin every week.
These have been combined with other events such as rallies, concerts and public meetings in the city and marches, rallies and pickets elsewhere to the south, the west and the north of the country.
No organisation however is perfect or right all the time and there are a number of areas and occasions that deserve constructive criticism for improvement.
I do believe that the cancelation of a Palestine solidarity march scheduled for 25th November was a serious error tactically and strategically.
Section of a midweek demonstration in persistent rain organised by the IPSC outside Leinster House, seat of the parliament of the Irish State in October. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
In terms of strategy we must strive as far as is possible not to give ground in the public arena to fascists and other racists since as we vacate ground, they step forward to occupy it. To move the rallying point from the Garden of Remembrance3 made sense but the cancellation not at all.
Tactically, the absence of a Palestine solidarity march that weekend broke the momentum of large public Palestinian solidarity events occurring at least weekly throughout the capital city.4
WHICH SLOGAN?
The IPSC now calls for the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador but earlier on in October it refrained from doing so. That was a mistake but what was worse was the attempt to influence others also not to do so, for example with regard to speakers from their platform.
During that period the presence of non-stop chant-leaders shouting the approved slogans, one after another, particularly near groups who might chant for the expulsion of the Ambassador seemed more than a coincidence.
It is good to hear now the ubiquitous “Israeli Ambassador – Out, out, out!” from the IPSC slogan-callers and, though perhaps not the IPSC’s choice, may the one stating that “There is only one solution – Intifada revolution!” be accepted in toleration.
WHICH FLAGS?
At the recent much-diminished Palestine solidarity march in Dublin5 – the first since the cancellation – I witnessed a man and woman acting for the IPSC organisers, they said, approaching a person with a PLFP6 flag, to ask not to fly any flag other than the Palestinian national one.
They were polite and not in any way intimidating; their manner was not the problem but the content of their message was.
Palestinians participate in a rally marking the 52nd anniversary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in Gaza City, December 7, 2019. (Photo cred: Hatem Moussa/ AP)
There are issues where the IPSC should be giving a lead and are of course doing so but just as there are some where they should but are not, this is one where they seem to be attempting to impose a discipline and uniformity that is both unnecessary and unhealthy.
There are organisations that send sacks of their group’s flags and placards to demonstrations to be carried by random participants, swamping the event to make it appear as though their organisation is bigger and more prevalent than is the case, a practice I detest.
It is not as though people are flooding the demonstration with PFLP flags or, indeed, Irish Tricolours and Starry Ploughs, though it seemed that they were not as worried about the latter two.
There are people who support different organisations in Palestine and why should it be a problem for them to fly the flag of the organisation of their choice?
Why should it be a problem for people to realise that there are many Palestinian organisations of struggle in opposition to the one of collusion?
In a demonstration for Irish independence would we demand that only the Tricolour7 could be flown? Or for Catalan independence, only accepting the display of the Senyera?8
WHAT KIND OF PALESTINIAN STATE?
The IPSC is formally neutral on the issue of what kind of Palestinian state to which to aspire, which in some respects is fair enough since that is a matter for the people there to choose. But it is not OK to be neutral on whether the ‘two-state solution’ (sic) is acceptable, never mind viable.
Yes, we know that the imperialists of the EU, USA and UK support that ‘solution’. We know that their allies do, including the Irish Government. We also know that the collaborationist Palestinian organisation9 and most Arab states’ leaders also support that arrangement.
BUT
The two-state solution is one where the settler-occupier gets to keep what he robbed and murdered to get while the indigenous receives less than 40% of her original land and the worst of it, with the least water and, furthermore, under the constant guns of the robbers and murderers.
The diminished part of Palestine being offered to Palestinians under “the 2-state solution” (Image sourced: Internet)
MOST PALESTINIANS POLLED IN PALESTINE REJECT IT.10 And you can guarantee, without polling, that the vast majority of the exiled Palestinian refugees reject it too, since it would close for ever any hope for a return to Palestine for most of them.
The IPSC supports the slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” This is, one might say, an implicit rejection of the two-state proposal since it must mean a free Palestine from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean and Red Seas. But how many understand that?
In a world where imperialism is the main support of the European Zionist colonial (and genocidal) project, it is essential that the mass of people understand for what it is that the Palestinians are fighting and what we support, as distinct from what the imperialists want to foist upon them.
PALESTINIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS
In the struggle for independence and for social justice, right across the world, many people are taken by those in power and put in jail. Solidarity with those prisoners, objections to their conditions and demands for their release have been an important part of those struggles.
This has been well-illustrated in Irish history too and in Britain, the First International (Workingmen’s Association) founded by Marx, Engels and others campaigned in solidarity with the Fenians incarcerated in English jails.
The “blanket protests” and in particular the hunger strikes in colonial jails in Ireland a little over 40 years ago drew huge attention and wide support not only in Ireland but across the world.
All the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are there as a result of the European Zionist occupation of Palestine and the natural resistance of the indigenous people.
When Hamas recently obtained the release of 180 prisoners from Israeli jails, most were women and children. Furthermore, many had not even been convicted in the Israeli military courts but were held in “administrative detention”, in effect, interned without trial.
Palestinian prisoner solidarity protest in Nablus 17 April 2023 (Photo credit: Jaafar Ashtiyeh /AFP)
Though the IPSC has highlighted the number of children in Israeli jails and those in administrative detention, it does not have a position of overall solidarity with the rest of the 100,000 Palestinian prisoners nor in calling for their blanket release.
The organisation has however covered the release of prisoners in the recent exchange and shared reports of the brutality inflicted upon many, particularly after the Hamas offensive on 7th October. One must hope that this process will be extended to solidarity with all the Palestinian prisoners.
Solidarity with political prisoners does not necessarily imply support for their previous actions or for their organisations; what it does is to recognise that all liberation struggles produce martyrs and prisoners due to the repression of resistance to colonialism and occupation.
The existence of the prisoners is a direct result of the colonial occupation and if we oppose that occupation we should stand in solidarity with the prisoners, agitate around their conditions and demand their freedom, along with the departure of the colonists.
IN CONCLUSION
All organisations and movements need to instil some discipline around their activities. All also commit errors from time to time and it is crucial to learn from those in order to improve their effectiveness and to bring nearer the objectives for which they strive.
In their attempt to mediate between the different pressures upon them it is necessary to distinguish between what the dominant system wants or would like and what the movement’s supporters wish, between what is most welcome and what is most necessary.
Rally after large IPSC march 10 October 2023 (Photo sourced: Internet)
The IPSC is an important and valuable organisation in Ireland doing crucial work in the area of solidarity with the Palestinians and, in doing so, contributing to an atmosphere of internationalist solidarity which is essential for the advance of humanity.
While I have not for some years been part of its Dublin organisation I will of course continue to support its marches, rallies and pickets as I have been doing for decades, both in promotion and in attendance.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1The police used attacks by fascists and resistance to them on Irish solidarity marches as opportunities to disrupt the march and to arrest march participants.
2The Communist Party of Great Britain despite the history of many of its members in the 1930s, did not wish to physically attack fascists from the late 1960s and tried to steer demonstrations away from direct confrontation, often leading them away from where the fascists were gathered.
3That place is less than 100 metres from the scene of the attack on the children and the march began there the participants would have to pass by the site.
4It also left exposed to attack any small group that went ahead with Palestine solidarity or anti-racism pickets, as some did, in the city centre.
7There is nothing wrong with the Tricolour but some Republicans and socialists prefer the Starry Plough, signifying a more socialist republicanism and also a separation from the State, which has appropriated the Tricolour.
8The original flag of Catalan independence, red stripes on a yellow field — but on Catalan demonstrations the Estelada Blava, including a blue triangle surrounding a white star, for left Republicans, is much more common and the Vermella, with a red star on yellow instead of the white one on blue is quite common also, especially among revolutionary socialists.
9The Al Fatah-dominated PLO from which a number of Palestinian resistance organisations are excluded. They also dominate the Palestinian Authority which has not held elections since Hamas won them in 2008.
November 17th is the anniversary of the date when a demonstration, mainly of Irish in solidarity with Fenian prisoners in British jails, saved the public Speakers’s Corner in Hyde Park from State control for everyone.
‘Frederick’ (Friedrich) Engels was there and reported on it (see below) with great admiration for the Irish diaspora. In his seminal The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) he had not had that feeling for the Irish but had matured as a person and a revolutionary since.1
The Clerkenwell jail wall blown by Fenians (Photo sourced: Internet)
Frederick Engels and Karl Marx, both exiles from Germany, one by choice and the other as a refugee, came to form a strong corresponding, writing and organising partnership. Together they formed the International Working Men’s Association.
The First International, as it came to be called, took a position on many international questions but did not shirk the Irish one and indeed exposed and agitated about the terrible conditions under which Fenians were being held in British jails.
Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa (1831-1915), a Fenian prisoner, wrote that he was for a period chained to the wall and had to eat his food from a bowl on the floor like a dog. It is also recorded that a third of the prisoners died in jail or went insane.
Frederick Engels as a young man (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Irish Republican Brotherhood had been founded in Dublin and in New York on St. Patrick’s Day, 1858 and in the USA quickly became better known as “the Fenian Brotherhood”. In Ireland they were frequently referred to as “the Fenians” or, by those on ‘the inside’ as ‘the IRB’.
Clearly from Engels’ description, “Fenians” was also the common description in Britain too. The Fenians took the war to Britain; the Crown responded by organising a specific police department, the Special Irish Branch of Scotland Yard, to spy on the Irish diaspora and to arrest suspects.
The “Special Branch” became known henceforth as the political department of the British police force but also of British colonial police forces in Ireland, Commonwealth countries such as Australia, and colonies such as Kenya, Uganda, Hong Kong …
We know that that the Fenian prisoners were not forgotten in Ireland, with campaigns for their freedom including articles, public events and even songs composed for them. But evidently they were not forgotten by the Irish diaspora in Britain nor by their socialist and democratic allies.
On November 17th 1872 the First International organised a march to Speakers’ Corner in London to protest the conditions under which those Fenian convicts were having to exist. Engels reported on the march and that he public speaking area was under threat of State control.
The Irish diaspora in Britain, the Irish-born migrants and descendants, contributed hugely to society and especially so to the working class in Britain, including presenting its anthem,2 its classic novel3 and two leaders4 of the Chartists, the working class’ first first genuinely mass movement.
In addition, members of the Irish diaspora helped build up the trade unions and were present in every movement against state repression, police violence, fascism, racism, colonialism and imperialism, fighting in organisations for housing, wages, free speech, political and civil rights.
Depiction of Speakers’ Corner meeting about the Fenian prisoners (Photo sourced: Internet)
Frederick Engels:
III Meeting in Hyde Park
London, November 14, 1872
The Liberal5English Government has at the moment no less than 42 Irish political prisoners in its prisons and treats them with quite exceptional cruelty, far worse than thieves and murderers.
In the good old days of King Bomba, the head of the present Liberal cabinet, Mr. Gladstone, travelled to Italy and visited political prisoners in Naples; on his return to England he published a pamphlet which disgraced the Neapolitan Government before Europe for its unworthy treatment of political prisoners.
This does not prevent this selfsame Mr. Gladstone from treating in the very same way the Irish political prisoners, whom he continues to keep under lock and key.
The Irish members of the International in London decided to organise a giant demonstration in Hyde Park (the largest public park in London, where all the big popular meetings take place during political campaigns) to demand a general amnesty.
They contacted all London’s democratic organisations and formed a committee which included MacDonnell (an Irishman), Murray (an Englishman) and Lessner (a German) — all members of the last General Council of the International.
A difficulty arose: at the last session of Parliament the government passed a law which gave it the right to regulate public meetings in London’s parks.
It made use of this and had the regulation posted up to warn those who wanted to hold such a public meeting that they must give a written notification to the police two days prior to calling it, indicating the names of the speakers.
This regulation carefully kept hidden from the London press destroyed with one stroke of the pen one of the most precious rights of London’s working people — the right to hold meetings in parks when and how they please.
To submit to this regulation would be to sacrifice one of the people’s rights.
The Irish, who represent the most revolutionary element of the population, were not men to display such weakness.
The committee unanimously decided to act as if it did not know of the existence of this regulation and to hold their meeting in defiance of the government’s decree.
Last Sunday at about three o’clock in the afternoon two enormous processions with bands and banners marched towards Hyde Park.
The bands played Irish songs and the Marseillaise6; almost all the banners were Irish (green with a gold harp in the middle) or red.
There were only a few police agents at the entrances to the park and the columns of demonstrators marched in without meeting with any resistance. They assembled at the appointed place and the speeches began.
The spectators numbered at least thirty thousand and at least half had a green ribbon or a green leaf in their buttonhole to show they were Irish; the rest were English, German and French.
The crowd was too large for all to be able to hear the speeches, and so a second meeting was organised nearby with other orators speaking on the same theme.
Forceful resolutions were adopted demanding a general amnesty and the repeal of the coercion laws which keep Ireland under a permanent state of siege.
At about five o’clock the demonstrators formed up into files again and left the park, thus having flouted the regulation of Gladstone’s Government.
This is the first time an Irish demonstration has been held in Hyde Park; it was very successful and even the London bourgeois press cannot deny this.
It is also the first time the English and Irish sections of our population have united in friendship.
These two elements of the working class, whose enmity towards each other was so much in the interests of the government and wealthy classes, are now offering one another the hand of friendship; this gratifying fact is due principally to the influence of the last General Council of the International,[307] which has always directed all its efforts to unite the workers of both peoples on a basis of complete equality.
This meeting, of the 3rd November, will usher in a new era in the history of London’s working-class movement.
You might ask: “What is the Government doing? Can it be that it is willing to reconcile itself to this slight? Will it allow its regulation to be flouted with impunity?”
Well, this is what it has done: it placed two police inspectors and two agents by the platforms in Hyde Park and they took down the names of the speakers.
On the following day, these two inspectors brought a suit against the speakers before the ustice of the Peace. The justice sent them a summons and they have to appear before him next Saturday.
This course of action makes it quite clear that they don’t intend to undertake extensive proceedings against them.
The government seems to have admitted that the Irish or, as they say here, the Fenians have beaten it and will be satisfied with a small fine. The debate in court will certainly be interesting and I shall inform you of it in my next letter.[308]
Of one thing there can be no doubt: the Irish, thanks to their energetic efforts, have saved the right of the people of London to hold meetings in parks when and how they please.
Notes
307 By the “last” General Council Engels means the London Council that existed before the Hague Congress of the International at which a decision was adopted to transfer the scat of the General Council to New York.
308 In the fourth article of the Letters from London series: “Meeting in Hyde Park. — The Position in Spain,” written on December 11, 1872, Engels reported that the Justice of the Peace could do no more than impose the smallest possible fine, and since his decision anyway ran contrary to the rules governing behaviour in Hyde Park the accused demanded that the case be brought before a court of appeal.
Engels’s Letters from Londonappeared in La Plebe, the newspaper of the International’s sections in Italy, early in April 1872, and continued throughout the year.
Early in 1873, Engels’s co-operation with La Plebewas temporarily interrupted due to government reprisals against the paper’s editors.
La Plebe was published under the editorship of E. Bignami in Lodi between 1868 and 1875, and in Milan between 1875 and 1883. Up to the early seventies the newspaper followed a bourgeois-democratic line, later it became socialist.
In 1872-73 La Plebeplayed an important role in the struggle against the anarchist influence in the Italian working-class movement. Engels’s contributions greatly promoted the paper’s success.
In 1882, the first independent party of the Italian proletariat the Workers’ Party — formed around La Plebe.
Source: Marx and Engels on Ireland, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1971; First Published: in Italian in La Plebe, November 17, 1872; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
1Aided by the Burns sisters Lizzie and Mary when he lived in Manchester, one of whom was his partner until she died and the other, subsequently his wife.
5The two main bourgeois political parties in Britain at the time were the Conservatives and Liberals; over time the latter declined and was replaced in its counterpoint to the Conservatives by the British Labour Party.
6French national anthem now but originally song of the French Republican uprising of 1789. In addition the air has been used for the lyrics other revolutionary songs.
“Six innocent men” … “Garda oppression and perjury’ … “Longest case in the history of the State”
Four leading human rights organisations this week delivered a petition to the Irish Government asking the Minister for Justice to establish an inquiry into the abuse suffered by six innocent men in the Sallins case almost half a century ago.
Not to do hold such an inquiry, maintained Liam Herrick of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties at a press conference on Tuesday, is to continue the abuse of the victims’ human rights and to fail to prevent such an abuse in the future.
Osgur Breatnach, Liam Herrick and Nicky Kelly at the petition launch press conference (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Apart from the ICCL, the other three organisations pushing the petition are the Committee for the Administration of Justice (CAJ), the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) and Fair Trials; the first three are Ireland-based organisations and Fair Trials is a global criminal justice watchdog.
The six innocent men were named as Osgur Breatnach, Michael Barrett, John Fitzpatrick, Nicky Kelly, Brian McNally and Michael Plunkett (deceased1).
At the time in 1976 all were members of a legal political party (the Irish Republican Socialist Party) but were tortured and some jailed in the Irish state.
In the longest series of trials in the history of the State, three of the men were sentenced at the end of 1978 to prison terms of between nine and twelve years each on the basis of no ‘evidence’ but their confessions obtained by torture and which in court they completely retracted.
Michael Plunkett, who had signed no confession walked free while Nicky Kelly absconded the day before the sentence, eventually reaching the USA where he remained until a strong campaign saw Breatnach and McNally freed, whereupon Kelly returned to Ireland and was immediately jailed.
Although the nature of the ‘evidence’ against Kelly was of the same kind as that which had been declared ‘unsafe’ for Breatnach and McNally, Kelly remained in jail forfour-and-a-half years, despite another strong campaign2 and was only freed eventually on ‘humanitarian grounds’3.
PRESS CONFERENCE
ICCL’s Liam Herrick chaired the conference in Buswell’s Hotel4 flanked by survivors Osgur Breatnach and Nicky Kelly, while Chris Stanley of KRW Law sat nearby, all facing the audience which included Sinn Féin’s Pa Daly TD5 and Fionna Crowley of Amnesty International.
Opening the proceedings, Herrick listed the four organisations backing the call for an inquiry and pointed out the present-day relevance of that call, both in terms of the survivors and their families and in terms of wider society.
Not to have that inquiry would be an ongoing violation of human rights, Herrick maintained and pointed out that the ICCL was founded arising out of concerns regarding the post-Sallins robbery arrests and the activities of the Garda CID unit colloquially known as the “Heavy Gang”.
The ICCL Director stated that they could not rest until the demand for an inquiry was met and referenced also “crucial legislation before the Oireachtas”6 and recognition of past injustices in a series of TV documentaries linking the cases, in particular through actual Garda individuals.
Introducing Osgur Breatnach, Herrick acknowledged the leading role he had played in keeping the demand for the inquiry going over the years.
Breatnach read from a prepared statement that there had been cases of torture, perjury and framing innocent people in England, Northern Ireland and the Republic.
It was wrong and hypocritical of the State raising concerns about cases elsewhere not to hold an inquiry into the Sallins case, of which there had been five trials, one the longest in the history of the State.
Breatnach said he went through the process expecting to be jailed but to expose the political nature of their persecution; his and McNally’s convictions were overturned, the ‘confessions’ having been obtained by oppression but despite that none were indicted for that oppression.
Breatnach concluded saying that the State’s refusal to hold an inquiry amounted to cruel and inhuman treatment of the victims and their families and that without the investigation of an inquiry a similar scenario could be repeated at some point ahead.
Nicky Kelly, introduced by Herrick thanked the ICCL for organising the events that day. Speaking apparently ex-tempore with perhaps reference to some bullet-points, he expressed the opinion that the State wanted the victims to die so that they had no need to hold an inquiry.
“Ireland has an impeccable reputation with regard to foreign relations,” Kelly said, but not so within the state. He believed that the Sallins case is “too big in its implications for politicians, judiciary and police force” and all attempts to investigate were obstructed by successive governments.
Liberal politicians in government have been “no different from the rest”, the Wicklow man said and referred to his own personal battle even to get out of jail after the ‘evidence’ to convict him had been discredited and how he had been obliged to undertake a hunger strike to be freed.
Now, rather than hold the inquiry into what went on, they were waiting for him “to be over and done with” Kelly said in conclusion.
Herrick introduced Chris Stanleyof KRW Law who said that cases such as the Birmingham pub bombings and the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, like the Sallins one, all related to the recent conflict and required investigation for the sake of the victims.
Chris Stanley of KRW Law speaking at the petition launch press conference (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Stanley commented that perhaps the State had been too reliant on the Good Friday Agreement for resolution of these matters.
Commenting on the UK’s new legislation blocking much resolution of historic cases, all but become law, the solicitor regretted the UK had chosen to disengage from Europe but remarked that that they remained signed up to the European Commission of Human Rights.
From among the seated audience, Fionna Crowley of Amnesty International spoke to underline the importance of having an inquiry into the case and that her organisation had been in support of the victims’ campaigns and was fully in support of the current petition for an inquiry.
Breatnach acknowledged that within one week of the arrests, Amnesty had raised public concerns about them.
DELIVERY OF PETITION TO DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
After the conclusion of the press conference with Herrick’s summing-up and thanks to those in attendance, Herrick and ICCL staff along with Chris Stanley, Breatnach, Kelly and a couple of others walked to the Dept. of Justice’s offices on the south side of Stephens Green.
Delivering the petition to the Department of Justice: (from bottom up) Nicky Kelly, Osgur Breatnach, Chris Stanley, Liam Herrick. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
Pausing for some photos to be taken, a delegation entered the building and presented the petition. Then some more photos were taken outside and Breatnach was interviewed by a TG4 reporter in Irish and Nicky Kelly in English while a light rain began to fall.
TG4 (Caoimhe Ní Laighin) interviews Osgur Breatnach outside the Department of Justice in Stephen’s Green (Diarmuid, brother of Osgur is centre photo and Nicky Kelly to the right). (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The group split up into smaller groups then, the ICCL staff returning to their office to issue a press statement and others to hope, perhaps with further pushing, for positive developments further – but not too far – down the road. For all and for some much more than others, it’s been a long haul.
End.
Outside the Department of Justice with copies of the four-agency petition (right to left): Liam Herrick of ICCL, Chris Stanley of KRW Law, victims/ campaigners Osgur Breatnach and Nicky Kelly (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
APPENDIX (A): BACKGROUND
The IRSP was the result of a split from what had remained in Sinn Féin after an earlier split in 1969, the group leaving the party then calling themselves ‘Provisional Sinn Féin’.
Not all who had become unhappy with the direction of Sinn Féin departed into Provisional Sinn Féin because they perceived the new group as being much more nationalist than socialist and being also socially conservative.
After some internal struggle that section remaining within what became known as “Official Sinn Féin” left in 1974 under the leadership of Séamus Costello to form the IRSP.
The armed wing of the Republican movement had split along the same lines into Provisional IRA, Official IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army, the latter loyal to the perspective of the IRSP.7
Bernadette Devlin (now McAlliskey) and Tony Gregory (now deceased) were on the IRSP’s Executive but however departed soon afterwards from the party on what they perceived as the dominant relationship of the armed group INLA to the political party.
It appears that the Irish State at that time viewed the IRSP as more dangerous than the two Sinn Féin parties and determined to ensure its demise, framing them for the Sallins Mail Train Robbery in March 1976.8 And framing, rather than mistaking, it was.
The 40 arrested included IRSP members who, tortured by the SDU Garda unit known colloquially as the “Heavy Gang”, confessed to participating in the robbery but who could not possibly have been there. The State decided to put on trial those whose only alibis were with family.
The court chosen was the Special Criminal Court, set up under the Offences Against the State Act in the panic of the 1974 Loyalist and British Intelligence Bombing of Dublin and Monaghan which somehow got blamed on Irish Republicans. The SCC has three judges and no jury.
Until the SCC moved to the court building near the main gate to Phoenix Park, it was located in Green Street, in the very same building where Robert Emmet was tried in 1803 and sentenced to death, his sentence carried out in public in Thomas Street, in the Dublin Liberties area.
The Four IRSP eventually selected for the second of what became four trials included senior member of the party’s Executive and the Editor of its newspaper, The Starry Plough, Osgur Breatnach.9
In the second trial, one of the three judges hearing the case was regularly seen to be sleeping. Only after the judge died suddenly was there another retrial ordered.
In the fourth trial, Kelly being tried in his absence, the judges accepted as fact10 the Prosecution case that the injuries of the accused were due to beating one another up (in Breatnach’s case, that he’d beaten himself up) and that their withdrawn confessions were true.
Mick Plunkett, in the absence of a ‘confession’, was found not guilty but the other three were sentenced to 12 years in jail. In May 1980 Breatnach and McNally were freed by the Appeal Court on grounds that they had suffered ‘oppression’ and that their confessions could not be relied upon.
No investigation took place into who had carried out the ‘oppression’ or how the judiciary had jailed the victims purely on withdrawn confessions and Garda perjury or which political decisions by whom were behind it.
Nicky Kelly returned to Ireland in 1980 — but to jail.
He was only freed by a Minister of Justice on ‘humanitarian’ grounds after four-and-a-half years in jail, a strong campaign seeking his release and finally a hunger strike of 38 days which pushed the European Court of Human Rights to agree to hear his case.
He received a presidential pardon in 1992 from Mary Robinson and in 1993 Breatnach, McNally and Kelly were awarded compensation, allegedly a six-figure amount. But to get that, they had to forgo any litigation on torture or police brutality.
No official inquiry has ever been carried out in the whole set of State actions and in fact some of the Heavy Gang went on to force false confessions from others, most notably the Joanna Hayes and relatives case.11
APPENDIX (B): SUPPORTING STATEMENTS FROM OTHER ORGANISATIONS
Also speaking elsewhere on the day, Director Daniel Holder of the Campaign for the Administration of Justicesaid they support this call and that
“an inquiry into the case of the Sallins Men is long overdue.”
He went on to say that “Over the last few years inquests and other legacy mechanisms in the north have been finally delivering like never before for families who have had to wait decades.
“They are providing important historical clarification for victims and accountability for past human rights violations but now face being shut down by the notorious UK Legacy Bill.”
Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) Director Paul O’Connor said that
“PFC welcomes this demand to the Irish Government for a human rights compliant investigation into the miscarriage of justice that followed the Sallins Trains Robbery 1976.
For too long human rights violations that occurred in the Republic of Ireland during the Conflict have been at best marginalised or at worst ignored.
Successive Irish governments have either relied upon the British to address the investigatory deficit of the Conflict or deflected it as an inconvenient non-issue.
“Now the human rights deficit created by those successive Irish governments is clear – and will be clearer when the legislative effect of the British Legacy Act starts to bite.
The Irish Government was right to challenge the British about the use of torture suffered by the Hooded Men; now it must look to its own police and criminal justice system and acknowledge the torture suffered by the Sallins Men.”
Verónica Hinestroza, Senior Legal Advisor at Fair Trials said:
“According to international standards, States must investigate complaints and reports of torture or ill-treatment.
We call on the Minister for Justice to ensure that a prompt, impartial and independent investigation is conducted into the allegations made by Mr Osgur Breatnach, Mr Michael Barrett, Mr John Fitzpatrick, Mr Nicky Kelly, Mr Brian McNally and Mr Michael Plunkett (deceased), considering that torture and ill-treatment violations are not to be subject to any statutes of limitation.”
2 The campaign PRO was CaoilteBreatnach, a brother of Osgur’s and was supported by many people in the fields of politics and culture, including the band Moving Hearts who performed Christy Moore’s song about the Nicky Kelly case, The Wicklow Boy.
3 By Minister of Justice Michael Noonan after Kelly’s hunger strike of 36 days. According to law, Kelly had exceeded the time period after conviction permitted for registering an appeal and it was claimed that only a ‘pardon’ could set him free.
4 Buswell’s is across the road from Leinster House, the Irish Parliament building and is frequently host to political meetings and press conferences.
5 Recently appointed to Sinn Féin’s front bench as spokesperson on Justice, he is by profession a solicitor.
7 The history of the IRSP is a separate and contentious story but suffice it to say that of the ten hunger strike martyrs in 1981, three were INLA; at one point a number of INLA factions were feuding within it leading to a number of fraternal murders. After the Provisional prisoners embraced the Good Friday Agreement and left the jails renouncing armed resistance, the much smaller contingent of INLA prisoners did the same. The IRSP remains a legal though much reduced political party.
8 The robbery was carried out by a unit of the Provisional IRA which however did not acknowledge operations carried out within the Irish State, to which ion 27th April 1980 they made an exception in a public statement taking responsibility for the robbery. The Irish State chose to ignore their statement as had the British State when the Balcolme Street group ibn 1977 admitted in court their responsibility forthe Guildford Pub Bombingsfor which the UK had jailed the innocent Guildford Four and Maguire Seven.
9 Apart from anything else, the notion that prominent Executive members under constant police surveillance, including one regularly working on the newspaper in the Dublin office (in the days before this could be done from anywhere else), could carry out such an operation, was clearly ridiculous.
10 According to the Court of Criminal Appeal in the “Madden” Case in November 1976, Appeal Courts should usually accept as a finding of fact anything decided by the Special Criminal Court (SCC) to be a fact. Therefore although a court verdict of guilt or innocence can be overturned on appeal, a decision as to fact made in the non-jury Special Court cannot be overturned in any appeal court.
11 Three separate cases of false confessions obtained by Gardaí, including the Sallins and Joanna Hayes cases, were covered in the three-part documentary series Crimes and Confessions by the Irish TV channel RTÉ July 2022- January 2023: https://www.rte.ie/player/series/crimes-and-confessions/SI0000012595?
