The Palestinian Authority had a small protest against it in Dublin on the afternoon of Friday 23rd August 2024. This seems to be the first protest that has taken place outside the Palestinian Embassy at 66 Lower Leeson Street.
It would perhaps have been the first protest against the PA in Ireland, were it not for the Palestinian solidarity activists who attempted to convey the Palestinian reality in contrast to the Ambassador’s speech at a public meeting in Belfast in February, before being evicted by Sinn Féin supporters.
Palestinian solidarity activists protesting the Palestinian Authority and Embassy?
At first sight that seems bizarre but as some solidarity activists and most people of Middle Eastern origin know, the PA is not only widely considered unrepresentative and corrupt – and in fact has not held elections since 2006 – but also represses protests in the West Bank against ‘Israel’.
However, the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign says that its main purpose in calling the protest was to raise awareness of the harm the PA is doing to the Palestinian Resistance, in arresting Resistance fighters and disrupting resistance defence against ‘Israeli’ army incursions.
Photo of placard being displayed outside the Palestine Embassy today. (Photo: R.Breeze)
The IAIC’s leaflet handed out at the event points out that the PA’s security force shot and wounded and even killed Resistance fighters, also attempting to enter hospital in force to arrest fighters on two occasions recently, their attempts being frustrated by large mobilisations.
Could a picket on the Palestinian Authority and its Embassy be considered divisive? “Not with justification,” replied an IAIC spokesperson. “It’s the actions of the PA that are divisive. We are supporting the broad resistance there, not one faction or another.”
He points out – as did their leaflet – that 14 Resistance factions including Fatah met in Beijing recently and agreed that the Palestinians have a right to resist, including with weapons and called for unity of all the resistance organisations. “The PA is acting against that unity”, he said.
But why is it that the IAIC called this protest and not one of the Palestinian solidarity organisations? “You’d need to ask them that,” says the spokesperson. “We regularly fly a Palestinian flag on our anti-internment in Ireland pickets; the PA was overdue to be done but nobody else was doing it.”
(Photo: R.Breeze)
The IAIC was founded a decade ago to raise awareness about ongoing internment of Irish Republican activists by revoking ex-prisoners’ licence and through refusal of bail by special no-jury courts. In those cases it can take two years for a case to come to trial.
However the IAIC has organised or participated in other events also, such as those around framed prisoners like the Craigavon Two in the Six Counties and the Munir family in England. It has also called two of its pickets since October 2024 to specifically highlight Palestinian prisoners.
Will the group be regularly picketing the Palestinian Authority now? “Probably not. It’s not what we were set up for but we felt the ice needed breaking on this. Others need to step forward now,” replied their spokesperson, though signalling that they would support others in doing it.
Photo of copy of the leaflet being distributed outside the Palestine Embassy today. (Photo: R.Breeze)
It is probable that a representative of the PA will be welcomed soon by the Irish Government as part of its recognition of the ‘Palestinian State’. One wonders how this reception of a corrupt and Occupation-collusive organisation will be mediated in the Palestinian solidarity sector in Ireland.
The Governments of the EU, including Ireland’s, formally recognise the PA but not only that – so does Sinn Féin in Ireland, EH Bildu in the Basque Country and Esquerra Republicana in Catalonia. This corresponds across the board also to support for ‘the Two-State Solution’ (sic).
What that entails is allocating the Palestinians less than 20% of their homeland weaving around illegal zionist settlements, with least water and some of the worst land, under the permanent watchtowers and guns of their genocidal neighbour.
Organisations and individuals within the broad Palestinian solidarity movement will need to decide exactly what their solidarity with Palestine actually means, especially for the Palestinians themselves.
A number of great leaders of Arab resistance to imperialism and zionism have fallen in the last few days. “Those who live by the sword …”, the wise will comment. But they did not die by the sword but rather by long-range missile assassination.
Still, we can take the comment as a metaphor, that those who live by violence die by violence. But do they? Has Genocide Joe Biden died by violence? Sunak? Von der Leyen? Scholz and Merkel? Macron? Netanyahu, Gallant, Smotrich? No, it is clearly not a general rule.
But revolutionary fighters, commanders and leaders – they are killed, again and again. Fighters who become commanders are particularly targeted and, in the Middle East for sure, so are their spouses, their children, their parents … This is the way of Mossad and the IOF but also of the US and UK.
The SAS and MRF units of the British Army did that in the 30 Years’ War in the occupied Six Counties too. Assassinations of leaders are intended to disrupt the revolutionary organisation and demoralise the Resistance.
Sometimes, the intention is to have a revolutionary leader replaced by a traitor or someone who is ideologically pliable but often too the fallen are replaced by others as dedicated and competent, if not more so.
The IOF are accomplished assassins of individuals, also killers of civilians, just not very good at combating armed resistance, particularly in the absence of air cover..
But why shouldn’t revolutionary leaders be felled – don’t they send others out to kill or be killed? Certainly they do and all Arab resistance movement commanders know that they risk assassination, many of the commanders and fighters writing their wills while in active service.
However, visit imperialist war memorials listing the names and ranks of the fallen in war and see how many names of their armies’ generals can be found there. Not many, that’s for sure.
Haniyeh was the chief Resistance representative in the Gaza ceasefire/ peace talks. Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani of Qatar, which is mediating the talks, tweeted: “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on other side?”1
Two revolutionary leaders who fell to assassination so recently were Sayyed Fouad Shukr of Hezbollah in a suburb of Beirut and Ismail Haniye of Hamas in the Iranian capital, Tehran. Each organisation has issued statements that they will not be stopped and that they will claim revenge.
In another assassination strike on Tuesday in Iraq, admitted by the USA, Khateb Hezbollah suffered the loss of martyred leader Abu Hassan Al-Maliki and martyred fighters Ali Al-Moussawi, Hassan Al-Saadi and Hussein Karim Al-Daraji,2 bringing huge crowds out in protest there.
The Iraqi Islamic resistance had begun shelling US Army bases there recently, partly in frustration at the lack of any move to leave the country despite having indicated they would but partly also no doubt in frustration at not contributing to the united effort in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Iran declared furthermore that since the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh took place on their national territory that the obligation of response falls upon them. One imagines that another strike on somewhere in Israel will be considered necessary though the precise target is unknown.
Declarations of condolence, defiance and continuity were also issued by resistance factions in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, as well as by the leaderships of Yemen and Tunisia. A general strike was called in the West Bank and marches of defiance and solidarity held in a number of countries.
Confrontations with settlers and with the Occupation army have been taking place in towns across the West Bank and the war in Gaza continues, more or less as normal: daily massacres by the IOF, actions by the Resistance.
‘Collateral damage’
The strikes on the leaders also claimed other lives: six people including three women and two children, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps member Milad Bedi were killed in the Beirut assassination of Fuad Shukr and 78 injured in the collapsed building.3
Along with Haniyeh in Iran died his bodyguard and veteran Palestinian resistance fighter, Wassim Shabu, with no details of other ‘collateral damage’ from there or from Iraq so far.
According to the rules of war agreed among the imperialists, assassination of commanders, even civilian ones in times of war, is justified. ‘Collateral damage’ to a certain degree is also permitted by those rules but how can the bombing of journalists and killing two in Gaza be justified?
They were at the rubble site of Haniyeh’s former home, perhaps reporting on some kind of event marking the assassination, since they cannot attend the equivalent of a wake or a laying out of the body, the funeral to be held in Iran. How was their killing justifiable by any stretch of rules?
Ismail Al-Ghoul and Ramy Al-Reef were the two press men martyred there. Those two deaths bring the number of journalists killed in Palestine (always by the IOF), to 165, the highest number of journalists killed in any conflict since data began to be collected by the CPJ in 1992.4
Life of revolutionary leaders
The life stories of the martyred leaders are instructive in themselves. Ismail Haniyeh grew up in a refugee camp in Al-Shati in Gaza, son of a community driven out of their home in Jura in Askelan5 in 1948. He graduated with a degree in Arabic Literature from the Gaza University in 1981.
It was in university Haniyeh became politically active, joining the student section of Islamic Bloc (forerunner of Hamas), becoming arrested and detained three times, the final one for three years, after which he was deported to southern Lebanon with other leaders.
Ismail Haniye survived at least four assassination attempts, including in 2003 and in 2006.
Haniyeh led Hamas to victory in the 2006 elections for the legislature of the Palestinian Authority. The Fatah leadership refusing to hand over the administration in Gaza, Hamas removed them in a short struggle,6 then Abbas7 refused to recognise the election results there or in the West Bank.
The Zionist State followed, as did the Western powers and the siege of Gaza began.
Haniyeh’s granddaughter was killed last November in a bombing on a school. Three of his sons and three grandsons were assassinated in an IOF strike on their car in April and last month, 10 of his family, including his sister, were killed in an IOF bombing.
Sayeed Fuad Shukr 62, also known as Al-Hajj Mohsen, was born in the city of Nabatieh in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, according to the US government’s Rewards for Justice website, which offered up to $5 million for information on Shukr.
He came to political struggle in the resistance to the IOF invasion and occupation of Lebanon which was the spur to the creation of Hezbollah. Fuad Shukr as a fighter rose through the political and military ranks to the Jihad Council fighting the IOF and its Lebanese proxy.
Sayeed also would have been party to the decision to send Hezbollah fighters to assist the Syrian state resist attacks by NATO forces and their proxies and probably also Turkish.
He was married with children; his daughter wrote pieces in particular about martyrs under a pseudonym but just published a piece about her father under her own name on Resistance News Network (on Telegram).
Dying Gaul statue, 1st Century CE, probably Roman sculpture. By his neck ornament, the Gaul appears to be a warrior of high rank. The Gauls were a Celtic culture inhabiting most of modern-day France, Switzerland and parts of Italy; after many wars they were crushed by the Roman Empire. (Source image: Internet)
Great leaders
I commented that they were great leaders. By all accounts they were. They were Muslim revolutionaries and I am an atheist but more to the point their religious belief was an important part of their politico-social ideology, to which my own secular revolutionary ideology is opposed.
But they were revolutionaries non the less, courageously leading their people in struggle against their oppressors, who are very powerful enemies. They had emotion, which they let out in speech. In planning and in response to events however, they thought things through before acting.
Ismail Haniye probably underestimated the extent – in length of time and numbers of dead, in starvation and destruction of all infrastructure — of the ‘Israeli’ genocidal war after October 7th.8 That does not mean however that the breakout and attack was not necessary.
But the resistance was led, day after day, using the tunnels that had been dug through the years of preparation and the weapons researched, developed and produced over that time. In the truce/ ceasefire negotiations, the leadership stuck to the necessary minimum, which must’ve been hard.
Great fighters of the rank and file fall and are constantly being replaced and multiplied. Thousands of civilians have been killed, disabled and traumatised, yet the Palestinian population will recover and rebuild. Great leaders have fallen – let us hope their replacements will be great too.
End.
Footnotes
1https://www.axios.com/2024/07/31/hamas-ismail-haniyeh-killed-iran Just one more proof, in addition to going back on agreements, adding new requirements etc showing that Netanyahu never had any intention of negotiating a genuine ceasefire, exchange of prisoners and withdrawal from Gaza and the Rafah Gate to allow humanitarian aid to enter. Indeed he often said that his chief aim was wiping out Hamas and would not permit self-governance in Gaza – it was only a few of his officials and the US administration which kept pretending otherwise.
6This is the reality usually disguised in the western mass media by phrases like “Hamas seized power in Gaza” or “Hamas took control in Gaza”.
7Mahmoud, Fatah’s boss of the PA, widely known for personal corruption and nepotism and also for collusion with the Zionist Occupation.
8Even the most pessimistic could hardly have expected the extent of the genocide or the extent of the collusion or forbearance of the West and most of the Arab states.
Conflict with security forces of the Palestinian Authority broke out in Tulkarm city in the West Bank today as they tried to seize Palestinian Resistance commander Abu Sujaa (Mohamed Jaber), who was receiving treatment in Thabet Thabet Hospital.
According to reports the PA fired tear gas and used pepper spray inside the Hospital grounds, also striking with batons at protesters including women. Shots were fired at the PA’s HQ and protesters are calling the PA “traitors” and “collaborators”.
After a tense stand-off the PA forces eventually had to leave empty-handed.
Abu Sujaa is a commander of the Tulkarm Brigade, Soraya Al-Quds (Islamic Jihad), one of the main organisations of the Resistance. It is reported that he was injured while handling explosives and taken to hospital; when the PA learned of his presence there they sent forces to capture him.
The arrest attempt by the PA and treatment of protesters has been condemned Soraya Al-Quds and by a number of other Palestinian Resistance organisations including the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade coalition, Mujahadeen Movement, PFLP, Hamas and Popular Resistance Committees.
A statement also condemning the PA’s action by students at Birzeit University was signed off by the student movements of Hamas, PFLP, DFLP, PPSF, and PPP.
The point was also made that Abdul Nasser, one of the own PA’s employees, a security officer in uniform, was filmed executed by the IOF recently in cold blood in front of their headquarters in Tubas “without any action, condemnation, or denunciation” by the PA’s leaders.
Abu Sujaa is far from being the first Palestinian Resistance fighter targeted by the PA which holds many prisoners but has also killed fighters, including Ahmed Abu Al-Ful in early May1 and Motasim Al-Arif a month later, on that occasion also while trying to capture Abu Shujaa.2
Two Palestinian civil society activists recently went on hunger strike in protest at their detention by the PA, Fakri Jaradat being released after a week of hunger strike (but 16 days detention) but Ghassan Al-Saadi was transferred to Al-Razi Hospital in Jenin in deteriorated health condition.
This evening, according to local sources quoted on Resistance News Network, PA Security Forces stormed the city of Tubas, apparently in order to assassinate the resistance fighter Omar Meselmani who is wanted by the Occupation, since they shot at him directly.
Palestinian unity?
The Palestinian representative bodies recognised internationally are the PA and the PLO,3 both dominated by the Fatah leadership. The latter were represented at the Beijing Palestinian Unity conference last weekend at which all 14 factions agreed on the need for a unity government.
The PLO excludes Islamist organisations from membership, though both the PFLP and the DFLP delegates stated at the conference that they wished to admit those resistance organisations to the PLO, no such decision was recorded (presumably blocked by Fatah) in the conference decisions.
One might have thought that in the circumstances of the Beijing Agreement, the PA would be keeping a low profile or at least certainly steering clear of conflict with Resistance organisations. On the contrary however, the PA seems to be intent on exacerbating divisions.
Islamic Jihad, possibly divining the PA’s intentions, has declared it will not be drawn into a civil war with the organisation, despite its actions and collusion with the Occupation. But can that posture be maintained if the PA continues persecuting and even shooting its fighters?
Perhaps the PA is doing its best, in order to avoid its being sidelined and as an aid to the beleaguered Israeli occupation, to ensure that civil war breaks out among the Palestinians.
It is reported that at some point in the near future a representative of the Palestine Authority will be officially received in Leinster House as part of the recognition of the Palestinian State by the Irish Government (and presumably by the Irish State).
This will be an important occasion and all who support the Palestinian people should get ready to give this representative of the Palestine Authority an appropriate welcome.
The PA is an unelected, unrepresentative, corrupt, repressive and occasionally murderous organisation colluding with the ‘Israeli’ occupation, feeding its Occupation master (and their master’s masters) with information on the activities and persons of the Palestinian Resistance.
In the course of the current genocidal offensive of the Occupation, operatives of the PA have seized weapons of the Resistance, dismantled explosives1 and for years have arrested and jailed activists. They also arrest Resistance activists to hand over to the Occupation.
In carrying out this dirty ‘duty’ for their masters, the PA encounter natural resistance and in overcoming that resistance the PA has executed and killed under interrogation dissidents and members of the Resistance, including since October last year.2
Palestinians objecting to repression face the security force of the Palestinian Authority. (Image sourced: Internet)
Elected once, then widely rejected
Since it was created in 1994 arising out of the Palestine Pacification (wrongly named ‘Peace’) Process,3 elections were held by the PA just twice. The Fatah political (and military) party under Yasser Arafat won the first ones in 1996 but Hamas overwhelmingly won the next, in 2006.
The largely secular-voting Palestinian society rejected Fatah in favour of an Islamist party largely because of Fatah’s corruption and nepotism in the PA and also due to its collusion with the Israeli state, formally and informally in fact.4
The Hamas electoral victory of 2006 was not accepted by the Western powers, nor by Fatah, who refused to vacate their administrative control. Eventually, after a short, sharp struggle in June 2007 Hamas evicted them from the positions in Gaza to which the electorate had voted Hamas.
However, Hamas refrained from doing the same in the West Bank, presumably to avoid all-out civil war and so Fatah remains in control of that section of Palestinian governance, which is the one universally known as “the Palestinian Authority” (and, since 2013, as “The State of Palestine”).
Since 2006, the PA has held no elections though it was supposed to do so every four years.5 The reason is clear: Hamas would win again and the Fatah leadership want to hold on to their corruption opportunities and are decidedly opposed to having their funding streams6 cut.
Currently Hamas runs the government of Gaza and is the leading element in the Palestine armed Resistance, a coalition of Islamist and secular organisations that are united in fighting the Israeli occupation and in the negotiation position of the Resistance.
Fatah had been invited to participate in talks in Beijing in April to present a united Palestinian front but at the last minute declined to attend. Nevertheless, in recent days they have been invited again; it is not known at present whether their representatives will attend or not.7
Hamas and others have called for a unified position on Palestinian self-determination and for participation in a broad united Palestinian government.
Netanyahu, with the support of his internal allies and with the US and Western powers externally, refuses to accept the verdict of the Palestinian electoral process and wants a pro-Israeli administration there which, for the Western powers, means a “revitalised”8 Palestine Authority.
US Middle East would-be ‘fixer’ Blinken, already mooted that9 and Mahmoud Abbas, sitting grossly at the head of the PA in the West Bank, indicated his willingness for the job.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reads a statement as he meets French President Emmanuel Macron, in Ramallah, West Bank, October 24, 2023. Christophe Ena/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo. Note: The key on his jacket lapel is a symbol of the right of return of Palestinian refugees for which the PA has done nothing at all and which Fatah agreed to exclude from the Oslo Accords under which the PA was founded.
The USA also proposed a coalition of their Arab regime clients for that job but the Resistance has made it quite clear that managing Palestinian society and resources is for Palestinians elected democratically only and anyone else will be a usurper for the Occupation and treated accordingly.
The real purpose of Palestinian State ‘recognition’ by the Three
Sadly, it is in this context that we should see the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian recognition of the Palestinian State. It does not represent a break from the EU’s imperialist position of support for Israel in principle but rather only in tactical approach.
These states are giving the imperialists “good advice”. What they are saying in effect is this: “You have to make the Palestinians thing that they are gaining something and use Palestinians to control Palestinians. Otherwise they’ll continue resisting and you could lose the whole thing.”
Coat of arms of the Palestinian Authority (Image sourced: Internet)
They know of what they speak. This was what the British colonialists imposed on Ireland in 1922 and what the Spanish ruling class imposed on the southern Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia after the Franco Dictatorship, granting them limited autonomy under Spanish control.
And cultivating “independent” locals to run these for them.
The program these states desire for the Palestinian people is one in which they will have their local autonomy in a Palestinian state on approximately 20% of their nation, with worst land and least water and under the guns and watchtowers of their expansionist and dominating neighbours.
The reality of Israeli genocidal colonisation and the “two-state solution” beloved of imperialists and liberals. (Image sourced: Internet)
The decision on what the Palestinian people accept or reject is ultimately theirs, of course. Equally, how we decide to receive representatives of this undemocratic, corrupt, treasonous and violent PA is ours.
Let us not fail to make it a hot welcome, both in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in apology for the neo-colonial proposals of this Gombeen state.
Let those Irish political parties that support the PA answer for their position. Ours should be clear, from which too our actions should flow.
End.
FOOTNOTES
142 times in the West Bank since October 7th and most recently this week as I was writing this piece, blowing some up at 3am on the morning of the 17thJuly.
4e.g. in concluding a deal that excluded the Palestinians still in “Israel” and any right of return for the millions of Palestinian refugees around the world.
Gustavo Petro and Truth Commission President Francisco de Roux.
I recently read an article written by the former Colombian truth commissioner and academic at the Los Andes University, Alejandro Castillejo titled Teaching After Gaza?: Indifference Perpetuates Barbarism.(1)
As its title indicates, it deals with Gaza, but also covers other conflicts, such as Ukraine and also the Colombian conflict itself.
In the text he puts forward a question “When we say ‘Never Again’, exactly what should never happen again?”
It is a good question and one that is not often asked; he talks of the continuities, as Gaza is ongoing and will continue after the genocide, it won’t end in some precise reference point.
I would like to deal with another aspect of that question.
Once upon a time the social organisations in Colombia, the NGOs, the left groups, both legal and illegal ones, reformists (some illegal) and revolutionaries (some of which are legal), were very clear about what they meant when they gave voice to the slogan Never Again.
It is a common phrase. There are some reports from Colombian organisations that include it in their names. I had the honour of contributing, through my field work to the first two reports on the 14th Zone.(2)
Outside of Colombia, there is more than one truth commission report that has that as its name, such as the REMHI Report of Guatemala,(3) or the report on the disappeared in Argentina.(4) We were all clear, we did not want a repetition of the terrible night.
We spoke of the bloodbath and many were equally clear that they did not want a repeat of the circumstances that made it all possible, necessary and justifiable in the eyes of the state and bourgeoisie (a term disgracefully fallen into disuse in current times.)
Nowadays, it would seem that nobody is clear about it. The Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) understands Never Again to be never again the FARC and some “rotten apple” in the state’s military forces.
The Truth Commission hadn’t a clue as to what it understood Never Again to be, other than some generic, non-specific abhorrence of violence in and of itself, but not of the system and circumstances that gave rise to the bloodbath.
Less still to the rivers of blood that flow through the fields and furrows of the country. The Commission absolved the state for the so-called False Positives for which the state acknowledges and accepts the figure of 6,402 victims.
It was a state crime, acts of state terrorism, crimes as appalling as they were evident.
As far as the Commission was concerned it was not a state policy to take youths to the countryside, dress them up as guerrillas and murder them to present them in dispatches as part of a media campaign that sought to show the state was winning the war.
So, if it was not a state policy, when we say Never Again, are we saying that the state shouldnot commit such a crime in the future?
Or are we asking thousands of crazy soldiers not to think of putting boots on the wrong way round on the feet of young civilians that they just murdered and dressed up as a guerrillas?
In the first case, it would be something we could demand of the state, in the second case if they were really the demented actions of the soldiers, well even the state would be a victim in that case.
Even the paramilitaries sometimes say No More, rather than Never Again. In zones where they displaced the entire population, they don’t have to continue killing anyone. They can say No More.
With groups such as the Unión Patriótica that they decimated, or groups such as A Luchar that they finished off, they can say No More.
There is no need to continue murdering as the dirty work has been done, or at least it got to a point in which it had achieved its aim. If there is a need to repeat it, they will, which is why they say No More rather than Never Again.
This juxtaposition of No More and Never Again shows the banality of the slogan now. Is it really Never Again or do they speak of “until the next time there is a need to”?
We can see just how empty the refrain of Never Again is by looking at some examples of violence in Colombia.
In the 90s, the levels of violence in the port of Buenaventura began, for various reasons, to dramatically rise. The violence cannot be explained by reference to one single fact or motive.
However, there are contributing factors and whilst I don’t wish to reduce the explanation to something simple, we can point to the privatization of the port as a key factor in the rise in violence.
In 1991, following recommendations from the World Bank, Colombia — in the context of the growing forward march of neoliberalism — privatized the ports of the country.
In the case of Buenaventura this resulted in the loss of jobs in the port area, a reduction in salaries, both of which impacted the economies of the neighbourhoods where the workers spent their wages, generally increasing poverty in the city.
The port workers used to be able to apply for grants for their children to study, but with the privatisation that was gone, thus reducing not only the labour market but also the possibility of escaping poverty through studying.
Then came the plans to expand the port and the massacres such as Punta del Este, amongst others, to clear out those who lived where they were going to construct the new port zones.(5)
So when we say Never Again, it is clear that they don’t want the youths of the city to be killed, if they see another alternative, but does Never Again include the plans to privatise and expand the port?
Or we could look at the violence in the mining areas of the country, such as Southern Bolívar (gold) or Cesar and La Guajira (coal).
Once again, we see the hand of the grey men, the banal ones from the World Bank, the IMF or state bodies who like Eichmann never directly killed anyone but rather moved pieces of paper around knowing what the consequences were of those bureaucratic procedures in which they took part and knowing that the new realities they sought to impose required a high dosage of violence.
In the 1980s, the WB had been promoting the expansion of mining in Latin America, the abolition of restrictions on foreign investment, the exporting of capital etc.
In the case of Colombia, it didn’t need to do that much, the national bourgeoisie did the dirty work, without even a nod and a wink from the grey men at the WB. A key figure in all of this was Ernesto Samper, the head honcho in the country between 1994 and 1998.
It is worth bearing in mind that this satrap likes to present himself as a human rights defender, when it was his government that legalised the paramilitaries and is now one of the fiercest defenders of the current government of Gustavo Petro.
Not only was he the president of the country from 1994 to 1998, he was the owner of various mining companies.
He tried to introduce a new mining code but it was overturned by the Constitutional Court. In 1998, another satrap and mining businessman, Andrés Pastrana, took over as president and implemented a new mining code, which is currently in force.(6)
During this whole process, the massacres in Southern Bolivar and other mining regions of the country intensified, whilst the paramilitaries tried to take these zones for the multinationals. In the case of Southern Bolivar they were very explicit about it.
After the murder of the leader Juan Camacho Herrera they played football with this head, placing it on a stake facing the mines, declaring that they had come to hand over the mineral resources to other people, who would, according to them, make a more rational use of them.
So, when we say Never Again, does it mean Never Again to the national and international plans to take control of mineral resources? Or do they just mean that they are not going to play football with the heads of those who oppose these plans?
Nowadays the discussion in Colombia centres round the question of violence as something alien to the economic projects and they talk about the individuals.
The slogan is to stop the war, but only a few say stop the plans of the WB, the IMF, the imperialist powers such as the USA and Europe. When the president of the Truth Commission spoke to the UN he stated:
We have come to understand that the solution to the armed conflict is through respecting each person as an equal and we should respect each indigenous and afrocolombian child with the same commitment that we show to presidents, the wealthy, the powerful, and personalities, military generals.
That all personality cults end and we love and respect each other as people entitled to the same dignity. And that in Colombia and the world over all of us contribute to promoting a new sense of ethics based on human dignity and that all the spiritual traditions lend their support to this.(7)
Pass the joint round, take out the guitar, sing Kumbaya and kiss each other. In his speeches and the Commission’s report, the economic model is not questioned, in fact through the terms of reference they restricted the researchers and even banned them from dealing with certain issues.
Issues such as the role of the banks, the institutions and even the role of the USA in the conflict, which was reduced to isolated comments lacking in depth. So Never Again means never again showing disrespect to someone and that we not seek recourse in violence to solve differences.
But that violence is not fortuitous and the bullets, the machetes, the chainsaws [common weapons in massacres] are used when the first victim of the economic plans refuses to submit. So, Never Again has become: accept the established order and its plans!
A Never Again to violence that says little about structural violence is an exhortation to surrender and is a Never Again until such time as it is necessary to resort to violence to impose the will the of the capitalist class. Never Again for the moment, just like in Gaza.
(2) Although the Never Again project changed since its foundation in 1995 in terms of participants and leadership, some of the reports are available on the site https://nuncamas.movimientodevictimas.org
Resistance to colonialism and imperialism takes many forms but there are those who try to downgrade, deny or even condemn its armed aspect and this has been happening recently in the case of the Palestinian struggle.
Historically, resistance has taken the form of strikes, sabotage, protest pickets, marches, rallies, placards, hunger strikes, songs, poetry, visual arts, arson, petitions, articles, books, leaflets, speeches, graffiti, clothing, language promotion, riots … and armed action up to and including revolution.
All have proved useful and the question of whether the prevailing circumstance favour some more than others is a tactical one, never one of principle. Those who seek to forbid some tactics to the movement in all circumstances are they who cannot be trusted in leadership of the struggle.
The facet of resistance that temporisers and outright opponents of the resistance movement most often seek to outlaw and remove from the struggle is the armed one, presumably because it is one of the least amenable to sidetracking into cosmetic reform.
Ruling classes of states regularly outlaw armed resistance activity including the organisations that espouse that, usually dubbing them “terrorists”, while of course ensuring they themselves have military forces which, even when aggressive invaders, they dub “defence forces”.
Indeed, those elites usually arm even their civil security forces, i.e their police. But arms and their use in the hands of working people or the invaded populations? No, that would be terrorism!
Joint press conference with representatives of different resistance organisations. (Photo sourced: Internet)
THREE-PRONGED ATTACK ON ARMED RESISTANCE
Recently a three-pronged ideological and propaganda attack was carried out on the Palestinian armed resistance from sources that are seen by some as friends of the Palestinian people: The Palestine BDS National Committee, the President of the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League.
The National Committee made their attack through a document advising on tactics and principles in presentation of BDS demands, in particular of the student campus encampments or occupations, advising activists that upholding the armed resistance was not advisable.1
Around the same time, the Arab League was having its summit meeting and, though not stupid enough to advocate giving up the armed struggle, long upheld by the Palestinian people, recommended the resistance to place themselves under the leadership of the PLO2 and the PA.
The PLO is controlled by the leadership of Fatah; their nominee, President of the PA Mahmoud Abbas, who was also at the Arab League summit, accused the October 7th attack by the Palestinian resistance of providing the Israelis the excuse for their genocidal war on Palestine.
In October 2023, during the genocidal war by “Israel”, Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State and envoy to the Middle East, shakes hands with Mahmoud Abbas, “President” of the Palestinian Authority, who remains in office despite his term having concluded in 2009. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Arab League is composed of the current 22 Arab states, i.e those for which the dominant language is Arabic.3 But the elites of the majority of those states are clients of imperialism, chiefly of the United States. In the case of Yemen, it is the overthrown ‘government’ that is a member.4
Apart from their weakness against imperialism, one must wonder at their impertinence in telling the Palestinian armed resistance, which they do not at all assist, who should be their leadership5 and that the “two-state solution” (sic) is the only option available and recommended.6
The leadership of Fatah under Arafat betrayed the struggle for an independent Palestine and the right of return of the millions of Palestinian refugees when they agreed to the Oslo Accords in 1993/’95, for which they received limited autonomy through a “Palestine Authority”.
The corruption of Fatah in the PA and their betrayal of fundamental objectives of the Palestinian struggle led to their ousting in the elections of 2006, which were won instead by Hamas, who then had to fight Fatah who were refusing to hand over administration in Gaza.
Fatah refused to recognise the electorally-expressed wish of the people in the West Bank too but Hamas chose not to enter into a civil war with them there. From that point onwards, Gaza was besieged by the zionist authorities and periodically bombarded.
Meanwhile the PA continued in their corruption, Abbas continued to be unelected President, occupying the office and sharing the funds coming in among his clique but using their security force primarily to control and repress the Palestinians of the West Bank.
During this week alone, Resistance News Network reported that the PA’s forces dismantled explosives prepared by the resistance in the home of Tamer Fugaha which was planned for demolition by the Israeli occupation forces, where the explosives would target them.
The zionist forces regularly demolish the homes of Palestinian fighters and Tamer Fugaha was killed, along with another four Palestinian comrades, in an epic 15-hour battle with the IOF early this month in Tulkarem.
The PA has Palestinian political prisoners and also identifies these for the IOF to arrest later. Naturally (as even admitted by western mass media) the PA is hated by Palestinians, yet the Arab League wants the armed resistance to place themselves under its rule!
The armed resistance movement, which is composed of a number of distinct organisations7 fighting in unity, has of course rejected any such move and instead continued its calls for the support of the Arab people and to break the zionist blockade at the Rafah gate of desperately-needed aid convoys.
Palestinian fighters from different resistance organisations. (Photo sourced: Internet)
The Palestine BDS National Committee headquarters is also, like that of the PA, in Ramallah (West Bank). A recent statement of theirs also advised organisations working for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions with regard to the Israeli State to drop mention of armed resistance.
Furthermore, they did so in the name of a host of organisations that sponsor Palestine BDS but the Boycott and Anti-Normalization Campaign, condemning the advice given,8 established that those organisations had not been consulted at all and if they had, would not have given approval.
The BANC criticised the offending committee not only for the original statement but also for acting as though they commanded the BDS movement.9 The statement in question was quickly withdrawn and replaced with another with the offending section on armed struggle removed.
Among the Palestinian groups that criticised the statement was the PFLP’s Haitham Abdo, head of the organisation in Lebanon, at the Popular Women’s Committees festival in Beirut on the occasion of Nakba Day, celebrating also the memory of a group of women fighters:
“Holding the resistance responsible for what happened after October 7 serves the zionist narrative and harms our people’s struggle and national fight. This statement is rejected, regardless of who says it.”10
In Yemen, the weekly “million-men march”11 sent a solidarity message to the Palestinians12 but also rebuked the participants in the Arab League summit with a non-too subtle hint as to where lie their allegiances:
“to the rulers of the Arab regimes meeting in Manama, near the embassy of the enemy entity: We regret to inform you that the enemy has committed more than 3,000 massacres to date, and even one massacre should have stirred your consciences.”13
Scene from Palestine solidarity demonstration in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo sourced: Internet)
OPPOSITION TO ARMED RESISTANCE IN IRELAND
The dislike of or even hostility to promoting the armed Palestinian resistance can be seen in Ireland. A Garda confiscated a demonstrator’s a flag of one of the resistance groups, the secular Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine, while another was asked by IPSC stewards not to fly it.
In one of the student encampments, the PFLP flag was taken down too. The PFLP is a secular resistance organisation while others are Islamist but all are fighting in unity.
In some cases this opposition could be seen as a reluctance to have the solidarity movement associated with one specific liberation organisation which would be understandable but then a compromise would allow the flags of all groups — or one non-specific one of armed resistance.
To restrict the solidarity movement to the Palestinian national flag only is the imposition of an undemocratic “unity” and removes one of the most salient features of the Palestinian resistance – its armed aspect, fighting now amid the ruins and alleys of Gaza and in the West Bank.
Every week RNN posts photos of fighter martyrs of different resistance organisations, killed as they fought tanks, IOF bulldozers and, more rarely, IOF troops on the ground. The fighters too have been killed by aerial bombardment as of course there is no Palestinian air force or air defences.
Yet every week RNN also lists IOF tanks, bulldozers, troop carriers and IOF ground troops hit by the resistance at close quarters or at remove by mortars and rockets. The IOF dead and wounded are evacuated by helicopters which – unlike Palestinian ambulances – are never fired on.
The western mass media is not reporting these engagements and Al Jazeera reports only some of them.14
Our internationalist duty to support the Palestinians means also supporting their right to resist and that means in effect to support the armed resistance, whether we elevate one organisation or more, or just the broad principle of the right to armed resistance.
An Israeli tank hit by Palestinian fire. (Photo sourced: Internet)
THE IRISH EXPERIENCE
In the struggle for Irish liberation we have used – in different combinations – all the forms of resistance listed in the second paragraph at the beginning of this article ; indeed one of those forms during the Land War gave the word “boycott’ to the world!15
But the armed aspect has been a part of that struggle from the time of the clans right down through eight hundred centuries, against even internal opposition. In July 1846, John O’Connell’s proposal to have the Union Repeal Association renounce the use of armed force split the organisation.16
At the meeting, Thomas Meagher, said that “There are times when arms will alone suffice, and when political ameliorations call for a drop of blood, and many thousand drops of blood. Opinion, I admit, will operate against opinion. But … force must be used against force.
“The soldier is proof against an argument, but he is not proof against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason, let him be reasoned with; but it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone avail against battalioned despotism.”17
LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE – IN ALL ITS FORMS!
End.
Palestinian youth respond to an Israeli raid on Beita in the West Bank Aug 2023 (Photo cred: Nidal Esthayeh/ Xinhua)
FOOTNOTES
1 We reiterate our firm position and call for a just and comprehensive peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue, and we support the call of His Excellency President Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, to convene an international peace conference and to take irreversible steps to implement the two-state solution in accordance with the Arab Peace Initiative and resolutions of international legitimacy to establish an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the lines of 4 June 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital, and to accept its membership in the United Nations as an independent and fully sovereign state in common with other countries in the world, and to ensure the restoration of all legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, in particular, the right to return and self-determination, empowerment and support.
2At its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 28 May 1964. After concluding the meeting, the PLO was founded on 2 June 1964. Its stated “complementary goals” were Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine. (Wikipedia) Under Fatah domination it banned Islamist groups from membership.
3 Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordon, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
4 Rather than those in power, the Ansar Allah (“Houthis”) government, preferred by the vast majority of Yemenis to the western-recognised exiled government.
5We call on all Palestinian factions to join together under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and to agree on a comprehensive national project and a unified strategic vision to focus efforts towards achieving the aspirations of the Palestinian people to achieve their legitimate rights and establish their independent national State on their national soil, on the basis of the two state solution, and in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy and established references.
6 The 2-state option, supported by the imperialist powers, is of a much smaller Palestine state alongside an Israeli state at least the size of its current dimensions. However even this has arguably been made impossible by the spread of Israeli settlements and is rejected by most Palestinians and many Israelis. The 1-state option envisages the whole of historic Palestine under a democratic regime.
7 Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (QQB) – Hamas; Al-Quds Brigades (AQB) – Islamic Jihad; Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades (PFLP) – People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine; National Resistance Brigades (DFLB) – Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – Fatah (not under Fatah political control); Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades (PRC) – Popular Resistance Committees; Lion’s Den; Mujahideen Brigades.
8The Boycott Campaign – Palestine condemns the statement issued by the Boycott National Committee, in Ramallah, which asserts the danger of supporting the Palestinian resistance on their work and the necessity to distance themselves from any positions that support the resistance, especially armed resistance.
This disgraceful stance comes at a time when the zionist enemy is committing the crime of genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip for over seven months, resulting in the killing and injury of more than 120,000 innocent Palestinians and the destruction of 70% of Gaza’s buildings.
Such dangerous statements provide cover and legitimacy for the enemy to continue its aggression.
What is more dangerous is that the BNC claims it issued the statement in consultation with a large number of national entities and organizations.
However, through our communications with several entities mentioned in the statement, it is certain that they were not presented with this statement nor consulted about it, and they would certainly refuse to sign such statements that promote non-national positions.
All struggles for freedom around the world have seen various forms of struggle side by side, with armed resistance at their core. Therefore, our Palestinian struggle strategy should reinforce different forms towards the major goal of dismantling this zionist project on our land.
Accordingly, we call on the BNC to revise its position and align with the authentic national stance that glorifies resistance in all its forms.
We also urge it to stop this approach that attempts to monopolize the legitimacy of international work for Palestine and issue top-down orders to everyone. Palestine is greater than all, and the global revolution today to support our people is greater than something that can be monopolized by anyone.
Boycott Committee — Palestine / Boycott and Anti-Normalization Campaign
11 For the 31st week, the Yemeni people turned out in massive crowds across various cities in Yemen in support of Gaza under the slogan: “With Gaza: Holy Jihad and No Red Lines.” A million-man flood took place in the capital Sana’a, a massive rally occurred in the city of Ibb, and marches were reported across 23 locations in Rima, among other cities. (RNN)
12 “The statement at the weekly turn out reiterated the legendary steadfastness of the fighting Palestinian people and the perseverance of its fighters in this critical phase. The people assured the American and British enemies that they will not be deterred from maintaining a steadfast stance.” (RNN)
14Electronic Intifada updates reports a number with analysis and RNN posts the reports of the groups themselves.
15 The word comes from the National Land League successful campaign of withdrawal of labour along with isolation of services (or even social contact) with Captain Charles Boycott, the agent of an absentee settler landlord who was planning to evict some tenants in 1886. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott Boycott is a non-violent tactic but the fact of the use of violence during the Land War by the Occupation and in response by the peasantry is often overlooked. The Fenians supported the campaign and landlord’s agents were shot at, police and bailiffs stoned and scab labour attacked.
16 The Repeal organisation’s leadership became dominated by the rising Catholic Irish bourgeoisie of which John and his father Daniel were leading members. The “split” became known as the Young Irelanders and contributed nationalist culture and journalism, in particular through The Nation newspaper and some long-lasting songs such as A Nation Once Again. The Irish Tricolour was first presented to Meagher by French women during the revolution in Paris in 1848; the Young Irelanders also staged an ill-fated uprising that same year.
University students in the USA protesting, setting up encampments, occupying university buildings; threats from administrators; police invasions, assaults on students, resistance, arrests …
Step forward, Youth and shake the towers
Those ivory towers stand on sweat and blood
Make those lies fall in showers —
Become the earthquake and the rushing flood.
Step forward youth
For solidarity and truth!
Academic freedom and investigation
and principles too of democracy
Have taken now academic vacation
Revealing true base in hypocrisy.
Step forward youth
For solidarity and truth!
Look down below your feet
Reach out to workplace and street
Stretch out solidarity’s hand
to the struggling in another land.
Step forward youth
For solidarity and truth!
only thus can you also be
in a better world, at peace and free.
(Dublin, May 2023)
It seems as though we’ve been here before, a sense of dejá vu … Ah, yes! During the Vietnam War (1955-1975). University students in the US were in conflict with the authorities about lifestyle, content and style of the curriculum, racism, sexism, sexuality and .. yes, the US’s war in Indochina.
Students lost their study and work plans, got hit by truncheons, were sickened by teargas and some were shot dead, as in Kent State University, Ohio by the National Guard and in Jackson, Mississippi 11 days later.1
Which is why the suggestion of House Speaker Mike Johnson to send that same body in against the students last week was a vicious act of intimidation.
In the 1960s Trinity College Dublin, the academic bastion of the British-unionist Ascendancy, was a hotbed of protest and even revolutionary organisation along many fronts – including gay rights, contraception rights, Irish socialism and national liberation.2
The Ulster University in Belfast, in the British Six-County colony saw protests for Catholic civil equality, a struggle that faced armed repression and developed into a responding armed struggle of three decades.
In the USA those years coincided too with marches for black civil rights and also the rise of militant revolutionary groups such as the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, Weathermen, SLA and later the American Indian Movement.
Women’s liberation and Gay & Lesbian liberation movements3 also moved more to the fore.
The responses of the US State to many of those movements were even more vicious than they had been against the students, with trials, jailings,4 shootings5 and downright unofficial executions.6 As the campus protests now draw in wider communities, are we heading for something similar?
In the USA, the authorities seem terrified of that conjunction — or how else can we understand the violence of their reaction which has even horrified some university senates?
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEN AND NOW
When the students in the USA fought the institutional authorities, it was partly in solidarity with the people of Vietnam (and later of Laos and Cambodia). Yes, but many also feared being sent to the Vietnamese War meat grinder and being airlifted home from there in body bags.
The draft had been introduced in 19647 and though middle-class students had a better chance of avoiding conscription, they were far from immune.8 Being an officer might make one safer from the enemy than being a grunt but not from the grunts themselves as “fragging” incidents soared.9
The students now protesting in US Universities are doing so in solidarity with Palestinians, in horror at their state’s support of Israeli genocide. They may have other issues with their universities’ management and society at large but in general we can rule out the motive of self-preservation.
Encampment Palestine solidarity Vera Cruz University California Thursday (Photo cred: Aric Sleeper Santa Cruz Sentinel)
The drug culture was very much seen as part of the protest movement back then, though opposed by some such as Panthers and viewed with suspicion by other revolutionaries. Pacifist trends were strong and Timothy Leary’s “turn on, tune in and drop out” mantra attracted many.
Much of the revolutionary potential of the movement was lost under that influence, nowhere near as powerful now and revolutionaries who know their history will be aware that such arch-opponents of the system as Leary became an FBI informant to get out of jail.10
Many may argue as to degree but the power of patriarchy and oppression of LBG sexuality, though certainly present, are nowhere near as strong today in the “western world” as they were in the 1960s.
The power of the Catholic Church hierarchy in Irish society has been greatly weakened by struggles, Church scandals and society’s evolution. Discrimination against Catholics in the Six Counties is also less than it was in the previous era.
The armed struggle is not currently being waged.
However, Ireland remains divided between a 26-County neo-colony and a Six-County colonial statelet. The economies are hugely penetrated by foreign multinationals, the health services tottering and a huge housing crisis due to turning housing over to big landlords and property speculators.
The main parties of the ruling classes have been exposed to such degree that they no longer act in the charade of opposition: Sinn Féin and the DUP share political administration of the British colony while Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil share it for the neo-colony, prepared to admit SF there too.
Fascists gather some of the disenchanted, marginalised and disinherited to try to mould them into a fascist movement against migrants and refugees, against LGBT rights, against socialism. The State facilitates that development while it grows more repressive in both the administrations.
The ruling class will be aware of the potential of a rise in student protest coinciding with a feeling of Palestine solidarity and frustration at Irish state complicity very widely spread throughout Ireland. But then the Irish state is not imperialist, it’s just complicit in imperialism.
UNIVERSITY PROTESTS NOW
Students in universities across the USA have staged occupations or built encampments in explicit solidarity with Palestine against their own government and against the collusion of their academic institutions with zionist genocide of Palestinians and the destruction of every university in Gaza.
The response of the academic authorities has been denunciation, threat, eviction and false characterisation of the high motives of the students as “anti-semitism”.11
Municipal, county and state police forces have responded violently to peaceful protest, including bodily assault, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and arrests. The Government has drafted a change of the legal meaning of anti-semitism to include opposition to the Israeli zionist State.12
Rutgers students tents 29 April 2024 (Photo cred: Sophie Nieto-Munoz/ New Jersey Monitor)
The violence of the authorities has not been confined to the protesting youth but has been extended to staff who stood with them. During the week Dr. Steve Tamari, professor at the University of Southern Illinois got nine ribs fractured by cops – for filming what was going on.
Chair of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth University, New Hampshire, Annelise Orleck (senior citizen) was violently arrested and banned from campus for six months.
In some cases not only have the protesters resisted valiantly but actually drove the cops into retreat and in Portland, Oregon, police cars were set alight. Also a fascist who drove at protestors and pepper-sprayed them was, according to reports, identified and his car destroyed.
On the other hand, Zionists (and suspected fascists) have mobilised against the students in many universities, with the tired old propaganda of “anti-semitism” and in one case attacked an encampment with sticks and fireworks, also playing a “crying child” Israeli drone recording.13
Irish Republicans and other anti-fascists will not be surprised to learn that a) the police disappeared shortly before the violent attack and b) none of the attackers were arrested when the cops returned.
More than 2,100 people have been arrested at US campuses since April 1814 and students have been barred from their own campuses which, for many, means also their own accommodation.
Police Attack Palestine solidarity UCLA campus Thursday 2 May 2024 LA (Photo cred: Ethan Swope/ AP)
The university protests have spread beyond the USA and have broken out in Canada (McGill), Australia (Brisbane and Sydney) and even Humbold in Germany, main Israel arms supplying country after the US, where state repression of Palestine solidarity has been particularly heavy.15
In France, where there has also been much repression of Palestinian solidarity activity, there have been occupations at the Sorbonne and Sciences Po in Paris) and in England, Newcastle and London, while an encampment was set up in Edinburgh in front of the Scottish Parliament.16
“SHAMEFUL SILENCE”
In Ireland, the universities have been relatively quiet until now but the Trinity College Dublin administration fined their Students Union €214k for a one-day Palestine solidarity picket outside the building housing the Book of Kells exhibition, citing loss of visitor revenue in justification.
“The People’s University” banner hanging from windows in Trinity College Saturday (Photo: D.Breatnach)
But repression leads to resistance; now there is a Palestine solidarity encampment on the green in front of the Kells exhibition. People are mobilising to support the student resistance in Trinity and today saw a march there from the Spire with the administration locking the gates shut.
“We plan on staying here indefinitely, our message is there is no ‘business as usual’ during a genocide,” outgoing students’ union president Laszlo Molnarfi said.17
(Photo: Social Rights Ireland)
“When our academic institution, Trinity College Dublin, has ties to Israeli companies, entities and universities that are complicit in the war industry, we must speak up. That is why we are doing this.
“And we must speak up in this disruptive, powerful way. Because when we tried to engage with the authorities, with petitions and letters and meetings, we were met with shameful silence.”18
Inside Trinity College grounds Friday night/ Saturday morning (Photo: Social Rights Ireland)
In the wider ‘global South’, Palestine solidarity protests have been seen in India at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi against a visit from the US Ambassador to the country, Eric Garcett, which had to be cancelled.
More dangerous by far to the US ruling class and Israeli-colluding King of Lebanon, so geographically close to Palestine and with a strong Hizbollah guerrilla presence, are the student demonstrations at the university of Beirut.
Students at American University in Cairo (AUC) Demonstrating Monday in Solidarity Palestinians (Photo source: X Twitter)
Whether overall these actions of students, who comprise a large and influential section of youth, will significantly deepen, widen and energise the growing Palestine solidarity movement, and simultaneously the wider anti-imperialist movement, remains to be seen.
End.
“Victory to the Palestinian Resistance” banner on Trinity College railings Saturday (Photo: D.Breatnach)
FOOTNOTES
14th May 1970, killed by the Ohio Kent National Guard during a protest against the Vietnam War. The Jackson killings occurred 11 days later on Friday, May 15, 1970, at Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 14, 1970, city and state police confronted a group of students outside a campus dormitory. Shortly after midnight, the police opened fire, killing two students and injuring twelve.
2Ironically, precisely because it was free of the major socially controlling agency in Ireland at the time, the Catholic Church hierarchy.
3See the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in the US against homophobic police harassment.
4Including many frame-ups, some of which were only exposed decades later. Leonard Peltier was jailed on dubious evidence in 1977 which had already collapsed against a co-accused but is still in jail, 79 years of age with diabetes and other health problems.
11Thereby also devaluing the meaning of that particular form of racism which was a basic ideological aspect of Nazism and Fascism and continues to be a strong trend in European fascism today.
13One of the latest horrors from the Israeli Zionist cabinet, killer drones playing sounds of a crying baby or a woman needing help in order to bring would-be helpers out where they can then be shot dead, being played in this case mockingly.
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.”
There is a belief around that the reason that Israel is being supported by the US and getting away with genocide as far as the Western powers are concerned, is because the Palestinians are dark-skinned and that it wouldn’t happen to ‘whites’.
Those who believe that are mistaken: it would and it did. It is only marginally about skin colour but rather about where the Palestinians are.
Palestine sits in a strategic spot in the heart of the Middle East, with borders to Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, with the Red Sea to the South-east and a Mediterranean coastline to the west, connecting by sea to Europe, Africa and Asia. That made it important to old and to new empires.
The historic land known as “Palestine” in the 19th and early 20th Century was that which up until 1917 was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, now occupied by the zionist Israeli State and those areas recognised as Palestinian by international law including Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem.
After WWI, during which the Ottoman Empire, along with Germany had been on the losing side, in the divvying up of the colonial spoils, Palestine (occupied by the British since 1917) was given by the League of Nations in 1922 to one of the War’s victors, the UK.
The UK began to invite Ashkenazi Jews to settle there as part of a European colonial and partly anti-semitic1 project. Of course in those days “semitic” was understood to apply to the Arabs as well as to the Jews and the latter were often referred to by Europeans as “oriental”.
The British, as is the wont of colonisers in general and of them in particular, played the settlers off against the Arab majority.
And of course broke promises about restricting the number of settlers. But after WWII, a high influx of Holocaust survivors organised by Zionists began to head for Palestine and the British, fearing the destabilisation of their colony, tried to prevent unapproved Jews from landing.
The zionist terrorist militias (Irgun, Haganah, Stern Gang) began to attack the British colonial forces and Arab villages. In July 1946, Zionist group Irgun killed 91 people and injured 46 in an explosion at the King David Hotel, location of the British administrative and occupation army HQ.
Damage to the King David Hotel after bomb planted by Zionist terrorist group Irgun in 1946. (Photo sourced: Wikipedia)
The British pulled out in 1947, reneging on all their promises to the native Palestinians. The Zionists began their genocidal settler project with threats to and massacres of Palestinians and the expulsion of 700,000, mostly Muslims — and declared a Jewish State in 1948.
Thereafter the Israeli State began a program of repression and oppression of Palestinians and of colonial expansion. Naturally, this project required ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinians and aggression against Israel’s neighbours.
The USA and the USSR quickly recognised the Zionist State, the USA increasingly funding the state and supplying it with weapons while the USSR permitted its Ashkenazi Jewish citizens to emigrate to the settler colony.
In October 1956, eight years after the founding of the Zionist state, in response to Egyptian nationalisation of the Suez Canal, the Israeli air force attacked Egyptian airfields without warning while British and French Army and Naval forces invaded the country.
The invaders were forced to retreat and the USA admonished France and the UK for, in effect, not realising that the USA and not the old European colonial powers was now the boss of most of the world.
The zionist lobby (both Jewish and Christian) in the USA is often blamed for that imperialist state’s continual support for Israel’s genocidal attacks on the Palestinians.
But the US imperialists have their own reasons for supporting the only state in the Middle East that is susceptible to neither internal national liberation struggle or muslim fundamentalist uprising. It gives the US a safe foothold and also a guard dog to watch the neighbours (e.g Syria and Iran).
RACISM
The Nazis had a racist view of the Ashkenazi Jews, who were mostly fair-skinned. But they also considered the Slavic people (the majority European and light-skinned) as “untermenschen” (i.e ‘subhuman’). It’s estimated they killed at least 1.9 million Polish non-Jewish civilians.2
The Nazis also murdered millions of Russian non-Jewish civilians in genocidal ethnic cleansing of territory, in labour concentration camps, near sensitive battle formations and in reprisals for partisan resistance.
Fair-skinned and even blonde children victims of Nazi racism and genocide. (Source: New Zealand Holocaust Centre “Button project”)
The South African settler racist regime discriminated against all non-European people, in their official categories of “Native”, “Coloured” (mixed race) and “Asian” (mostly from the Indian sub-continent). Nevertheless, they also made some groups “honorary whites”.3
Racism isn’t primarily about skin colour anyway: It is a discriminatory social ideology based on ethnicity and the marker for ‘difference’ can be ‘racial’, national or religious. The Anglo-Norman invaders of Ireland in the mid-12th Century racialised the Irish, who were generally fair-skinned.4
The rational reason behind the racism is to unite in opposition to the targeted groups, whether in order to wage war against them or so as to repress their resistance as slaves or as occupied people. The racists colonise their own minds and attempt to colonise the minds of their targets also.
Not quite two centuries after the initial invasion and part-occupation of Ireland, the British-based Anglo-Normans, now describing themselves as “English”, criticised most of their people settled in Ireland for ‘going native’ and passed laws against their social acclimatisation.
The Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366 attempted to prevent “the degenerate English” from speaking Irish, adopting Irish customs and laws, dressing in Irish style, patronising Irish cultural performance, intermarrying with the Irish and becoming “more Irish than the Irish themselves.”
The main purpose for the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland had been occupation by feudal lords to gather rents from the natives but it soon became a question of replacing the natives with settlers. This was not always successful since the Irish people and many clan chiefs resisted.
The cities became fortified centres of colonial occupation, administration and garrison, the colonial city of Dublin known as “the Pale” in reference to the original earthworks surmounted by a palisade; hence “beyond the Pale” signified the native Irish and barbarism to the colonists.
The earlier occupation settlements were in or around fortified constructions, castles and ‘keeps’. Later, town and villages were established with a central square or diamond, i.e in a good defensive shape and entry by natives forbidden. Settler churches were also built as defensive structures5.
Pseudo-scientific racism from white Anglo-Saxon Harper’s Weekly magazine 1899 in the USA. (Sourced: Nothing But the Same Old Story, Liz Curtis).
With the creation of Irish Republican Brotherhood (or the ‘Fenians’) in the 19th Century and their activities in Ireland, the USA and in Britain, the British elite combined anti-Irish racism with pseudo-evolutionary ‘science’ representing the Irish as not quite human or childlike – but violent.
Cartoons in some British popular periodicals, in particular Punch, Fun, Judy(and Puck in the USA) represented the Fenians as monsters, in particular ape-like creatures and racist jibes and ‘humour’ were popularised, a practice which sprouted new variants during the recent 30 Years War.
Updated British anti-Irish racism by cartoonist Cummings, Daily Express, London, 12 August 1970, depicting the colonial British Army as “keeping the peace” between the colonised Catholic/ Nationalist population and the British Loyalists. (Sourced: CAIN)
ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE
All European settler projects imply ethnic cleansing accompanied by genocide to one degree or another: in Africa, Latin America, North America, Australia, New Zealand … but this was practiced by a European power against a European nation also: Ireland.
The British elite used atrocity stories from the 1641 uprising of the Irish to justify and encourage the genocide by Oliver Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland in 1649. Through ethnic cleansing, battle and starvation, Cromwell killed nearing 40% of the Irish population.6
British atrocity propaganda image about the Irish uprising of 1641 to justify Cromwell’s campaign of ethnic cleansing, genocide and enslavement. (Sourced: online).
These figures do not include those he had sent to British colonies in the Americas as slaves.7
The Great Hunger (1845-1848) wiped out, through starvation, well over 2 million of the Irish population of around 8 million and during that and the following decade, probably another 2 million emigrated (many of those too dying on the way or on arrival8).
Monument on the Liffey quays in Dublin to the Great Hunger (1845-1852) genocide of the Irish by the British ruling class. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
DOES IT MATTER WHETHER IT’S DRIVEN BY RACISM OR BY COLONIAL EXPANSION?
Yes, it does. The difference between the two does not change the situation of the Palestinians but it does affect how the genocide may be understood and what the targets of our actions may be.
Liberals would probably prefer the issue to be primarily of racism. If that were the source of the problem we could still be pushing for economic and isolation pressure as was the focus with the anti-apartheid campaign against the South African racist regime.
That is being done now and that’s fine. But the assumption would be that with enough pressure, Israel would be obliged to change its ways and the US leaders would feel pressured to advise it to end its racist discrimination (as they did in the case of white South Africa).
But if the project is colonial expansion, presupposing ethnic clearing and genocide, it is a different situation completely.
No arguing with Israeli zionists, boycott or isolation culturally and in sport is going to change that or get ‘liberal’ Zionism to act against their Right; as Finkelstein recently pointed out, the Nakba and all the settler expansions were carried out under ruling periods of the ‘Left’ side of zionism.
Also, if this settler expansion (or supporting such at least) is part of a US imperialism project, then no amount of campaigning to expose the behaviour of the Zionists is going to be effective in persuading the ruling class of the USA to apply corrective pressure to the zionist regime.
The fact that the basic source of the problem is zionist settler expansion means that genocide and ethnic cleansing will continue as long as the Israeli zionist state exists. And US and Western imperialism will continue to support that as long as they believe it benefits their regional interests.
This makes it clear that the long-term solutions can only consist of ending the zionist project or the ending of imperialism which supports it. The former is of course a smaller objective but at the moment western imperialism is energetically defending the zionists.
A whole neighbourhood in Gaza wiped out by Israeli bombardment months ago (Photo cred: WAFA agency)
It is doings so politically and culturally, with armaments, also with propaganda from its mass media, by repression of its own populations where these are protesting in solidarity with the Palestinians – and in the course of that it is endangering all its facades of justice and objectivity.
In the longer term that is probably a good thing, helping to create the subjective conditions for the overthrow of imperialism and monopoly capitalism.
But we need to help that process along in our own struggles while also making their continued support for zionist genocide of Palestinians as costly for them as we possibly can. While we act in solidarity with the Palestinians we are acting also against our own immediate enemies.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1This may surprise some but the British ruling class was deeply anti-semitic even before Shakespeare wrote his Merchant of Venice script. Not only that, but Balfour, infamous for his eponymous Declaration that Palestine was suitable for Jewish settlement, was personally strongly anti-semitic (I am thankful to Ali Abunimah for pointing that out in one of the youtube discussions of the Electronic Intifada)
4I keep telling people struggling against colonialism and imperialism that they should study Irish history. It’s practically all there: racism, invasion, division, settlers, plantations and ethnic cleansing, recruitment of native enforcers, undermining of native culture, religious oppression, genocide (twice), partition, recruitment of sections of the elite and nationalist political parties.
5Though this also had a history in medieval Europe. The administrators of the Ulster Plantation at the start of the 17th Century allocating grants of land specified that those who got parcels of land had to be English-speaking, be Protestant, build defensive structures and not employ Catholics.
7This has become something of a controversy, with racists of Irish diaspora background claiming parity with the slavery experience of Africans in the southern USA and some anti-racists denying it, saying the Irish were indentured servants. Both are mistaken: Irish were sent in slavery by Cromwell but subsequent Irish were sent in indentured servitude which, bad as it is, is not chattel slavery and the historical slavery period of the Irish in the USA was nowhere near as long as it was for the Africans.
8Over 3,000 are buried on Grosse Isle alone, an island in the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada.
We, the public have been bombarded daily with lies and propaganda from the western mainstream media (wsm) and nowhere has this been clearer than since October 7th in relation to the Israeli state and the Palestinian people.
It would be useful to unpick some of the most often-repeated items.
For five weeks after the raid, until mid-December the figures given and repeated without question were 1,400 killed1 by Palestinians along with Zionist stories of Israeli babies being beheaded and mutilated and women raped, also repeated without question, challenge or investigation.
The “mutilated and beheaded babies” lie was repeated by US President Biden. That story has now been sunk: ONE Israeli baby died during the attack by hands and means unknown. The rape story has also been debunked and the family of one alleged victim revealed they were manipulated.2
“The Hamas incursion killed 1,200 and took 240 hostages.” This contains at least one lie and another doubtful item. The lie is in the number of Israelis killed by guerrillas and though censored in the wsm this is being widely discussed in the Israeli media, both liberal and right-wing.3
The number of Israelis killed may or may not be not so much in doubt but the issue is who killed them?
Undoubtedly Palestinian guerrillas killed some but, according to Israeli survivors some were also killed in crossfire battles and some deliberately by an Israeli tank firing a shell into a house where guerrillas were holding hostages.
According to some of the Israeli military involved, some were also killed by a commander calling a missile strike on their own position. Israeli helicopter gunships also fired on cars being driven away by guerrillas – almost certainly all those burned-out wrecks — and containing hostages.4
A “graveyard” of burned-out cars, reported post-7th October 2024, all more likely burned by Israeli helicopter Hellfire missiles than by the Palestinian raiders. (Photo sourced: Interneti)
If the number of the Israeli dead has been revised at least twice,5 how can we be sure how many were taken away alive? Of course, this is not such a great issue internationally but will be so for their Israeli relatives and friends who are awaiting and campaigning for their return.6
“The Hamas invasion launched the war on Gaza.” This is inaccurate reporting for propaganda reasons. Certainly the current genocidal bombing of Gaza was begun the next day by Israel but it carried out other bombing campaigns many times in the past and sometimes for months.7
Not only Hamas on October 7th but also Islamic Jihad guerrillas carried out the raid on that date. And some other Palestinians entered when they noted the gaps blown in the walls by the guerrillas.8 Also in resisting the Israeli forces since, there are a number of other Palestinian forces in action.9
In addition, the territory the guerrillas raided is occupied by Israel but belonged to the Palestinians and is claimed by them. How often do we hear or read in the wsm of Israeli forces “invading” areas of the West Bank or Gaza, a district they don’t even officially claim is theirs?
The presentation of news and information in this way is Zionist propaganda aided by the wsm, turning truth on its head to make it seem as though the Palestinians are at fault, the problem is one Palestinian resistance organisation, not necessarily other Palestinians and certainly not the Zionists.
“ … since the Hamas take over of Gaza” is another propaganda twist of the truth, hinting at an illegal and undemocratic coup. The truth is that Hamas won the Palestine Authority elections of 2006 throughout the territory.
The Palestinian organisation formerly in power, Al Fatah, refused to accept the results and later, after a short struggle with Al Fatah, Hamas took their elected places but did not press the issue in the West Bank, where Al Fatah continues to receive funding from the EU and the USA.10
“ … the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority …”11 is clearly another misleading phrase since a) it does not reveal the fact that most Palestinians despise it (which is reported by many observers) and b) that it has not held its scheduled 4-year elections since 2008!
The Second Intifada was a rebellion led by youth against the Oslo Agreement treason of the Al Fatah-led PLO (Photo cred: Abbas Momani)
“Israel claims to have killed 9,000 Hamas fighters but without providing evidence”.12 OK, so they say and it’s fair enough to report it. But shouldn’t an impartial media also report the claims of the guerrillas?
Apart from statements quoting statistics, there have been many videos from the resistance showing them blowing up Israeli tanks and armoured bulldozers by their rockets and with hand-delivered bombs. Claims of Israeli cover-up of casualty figures pop up frequently among commentators.
Also, if Israeli sources are claiming killing 9,000 fighters13 when the overall death toll had passed 25,000, is that not an admission of killing at least 14,000 civilians in three months? Why is the western mass media not making that simple subtraction and publicising its conclusion?
The Gaza health ministry “does not distinguish between military and civilian casualties”14 is quoted in almost every single wsm report listing Palestinian casualties.
The bombardment on our minds by the western mass media. (Cartoon: D.Breatnach)
What is the purpose of this except to allow the reader to infer that maybe most or a heavy proportion of the dead are not civilians? This is nearly always in the report alongside the fact that most of the dead are women and children (therefore without any question civilians.)
A line being repeated in the western mass media more recently is also profoundly misleading: “The Palestinians want a state to include the West Bank, Gaza and parts of Jerusalem.” How does the wsm know what the Palestinians want? Have they carried out a survey?15
In the Oslo Accords, the Al Fatah-dominated PLO agreed to a two-state arrangement, i.e one to be Zionist-run and the other run by Palestinians. The area on offer to the Palestinians composed less than 40% of the original Palestine, much unproductive land and the least accessible water.
However, since 2000, the Second Intifada expressed a clear rejection of Al Fatah which was even more clearly the case with their replacement in the 2008 Palestinian Authority election results. The second-largest organisation in the PLO, the PFLP wants a unitary democratic state.16
The Second Intifada was a rebellion led by youth against the Oslo Agreement treason of the Al Fatah-led PLO (Photo cred: Gallo/ Getty)
All the imperialist states, including the EU, USA and UK, along with the capitalist Arab states support the two-state “solution” (sic) for Palestine which, apart from being fundamentally unjust, is likely to store up trouble for the future — as indeed it has in Ireland.17
2https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/family-of-key-case-in-new-york-times-october-7-sexual-violence-report-renounces-story-says-reporters-manipulated-them The immediate purpose of the Palestinian raid was clear: to kill enemy military and take prisoners for exchange for Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails. Quite apart from any question of morals or morale among the guerrillas, the other type of crimes of which they were being accused were clearly impractical in the timescale and would also have given the Zionists and wsm valuable propaganda material against the guerrillas. They clearly did not carry out those crimes but they were accused of them anyway and the lies repeated again and again.
6As late as early this month, one believed hostage was confirmed not captured but killed https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67053011, i.e probably one of those bodies incinerated in a car by Israeli Hellfire missiles from helicopters and only recently identified.
9Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Jenin Brigades, Lion’s Den …
10Yasser Arafat’s Al Fatah party lost the 2008 elections because of their corruption and because of their agreement to the Oslo Accords giving them a kind of state to run through the Palestinian Authority but with no right of return for the Palestinian refugees. The youth rose up in the Second Intifada (2000-2005), against the Israeli occupation but also against Al Fatah misrule and collusion with Zionism. The Al Fatah control of the PA’s offices in the West Bank is in defiance of the 2008 election results but the EU and USA don’t mind sending them the money for the PA.
16And Hamas stated that they did not invade Israel on October 7th but rather “entered into a part of Palestine”.
17Ireland, like Palestine, was occupied by Britain and ruled as one country. In 1948, with imperialist support, Zionist settlers seized some of Palestine for a ‘Jewish State’ and occupied more of it in 1967. Ireland was partitioned by Britain in 1921, the creation of a sectarian colonial statelet alongside a neocolonial state, which led to a civil war 1922-1923 and a number of guerrilla resistance campaigns since.
rebelbreeze 