Tag: Israeli Zionism

THREAT AND COUNTER THREAT 1: ISRAEL-LEBANON

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

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

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

Hezbollah and ‘Israel’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Threats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End.

FOOTNOTES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8‘Israeli’ intelligence service.

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

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

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

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

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

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

Great Leaders Fall

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

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Collateral damage’

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

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

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

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

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

Life of revolutionary leaders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great leaders

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

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

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

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

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

End.

Footnotes

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

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

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

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

5Now Zionist settler district ‘Ashkelon’.

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

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

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

Sources

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

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

HEZBOLLAH DRONE TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES SHOCK ‘ISRAELI’ SECURITY

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

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE SHORT, MEDIUM AND LONGER-TERM SIGNIFICANCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Source: Yemen’s Air Force PDF)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well … not much chance of that, is there?

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Middle East commentator.

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

3Ibid.

4Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

MAJOR PRO-SETTLER CENSORSHIP BY META

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

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 7 mins.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Origins of Zionism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jewish use of the word

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Non-Jewish Use of the word

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

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

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

Effect of the ban

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

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

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

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

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

Other pro-Israeli censorship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End.

Footnotes:

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

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

3Ibid

4Ibid

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

6Including by mainstream Palestine solidarity organisations.

Sources:

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

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

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

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

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

https://palestinelegal.org/distorted-definition

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

Israeli Army Mutiny call a sign of growing rift in Israeli society

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Fascism, Genocide, Israeli Zionism, Political Analysis, ZionismLeave a comment

The Electronic Intifada Mati Yanikov 1 June 2024

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

On 25 May, a video surfaced on Israeli social networks in which an armed and masked man in an Israeli army uniform stood in front of a camera and threatened mutiny to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The message was also directed to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, the reserve soldier said Gallant should resign.

He warned that 100,000 reservists in Gaza are not willing to “hand over the keys of Gaza to any Palestinian Authority” or other “Arab entity,” and said these soldiers would only take orders from Netanyahu.

Among the many that shared the video was Yair Netanyahu, son of the Israeli prime minister, who later deleted it following the resulting controversy.

Despite being masked, the rifle in the video appears to carry the name “Luzon,” which helped eventually identify the man a few days later as Ofir Luzon, a right-wing activist from Herzliya, a town north of Tel Aviv.

He is a supporter of the local Likud party, which is also the party of Netanyahu.

Luzon is a reserve soldier serving in Gaza, but the video probably wasn’t shot in Gaza but rather in an abandoned building in the Tel Aviv area. He was likely acting alone.

Israeli media have since published many of his social media posts in which he expresses right-wing views, is seen alongside Likud ministers and city council members in Herzliya, threatens leftists and Israeli protesters against the judicial overhaul and opposes Gallant.

He expresses enthusiasm about the approaching attack on Rafah.

Day after

The immediate context of the video was a recent ultimatum issued by Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet, to Netanyahu, in which Gantz demanded that his concerns over the management of Israel’s assault on Gaza and its aftermath be answered by 8 June.

And threatening to resign from government if they aren’t.

The “day-after” scenario is a heated subject of debate within the war cabinet. Gantz wants clarity around a “governing alternative” to Hamas to rule over Gaza, envisaging an international, Arab and Palestinian administration to handle civilian affairs in Gaza.

Netanyahu, however, is insisting there be no discussion of post-war scenarios or who should govern Gaza, arguing that as long as Hamas is not defeated, such discussions are “meaningless.”

Netanyahu has expressed strong opposition to the Palestinian Authority taking over, and maintains that Israel must keep “security control over the entire territory to the west of Jordan,” meaning Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or all the area from the river to the sea.

This is in direct contrast to Gallant, who is pressuring Netanyahu to declare that Israel will not take over civil rule or maintain a military occupation in Gaza.

Disintegrating army

The wider context, however, is a bit different, and has to do with dynamics that some Israeli analysts describe as part of the “disintegration” of the military.

Luzon’s video may be the first time that an open expression of mutiny has been voiced from within the ranks of the Israeli military, but Israeli reservists in Gaza during the current genocide have regularly disobeyed orders right from the outset in October.

The Israeli military has admitted to disciplinary problems and difficulty in controlling the rank and file. So far, these issues have been seen on social media, especially TikTok, where soldiers have filmed themselves giving political speeches, trashing homes and vandalizing shops.

Or blowing up universities and committing other war crimes.

These disciplinary problems have also surfaced over nationalist graffiti on houses and properties in Gaza, some calling for revenge and some for the rebuilding of Jewish settlements in the territory.

The military has not investigated most of these incidents, perhaps out of fear of pressure from right-wing politicians or protest from within the military, borne out of experience.

In November, an order to soldiers in Gaza to erase their own graffiti led to a public outcry from right-wing politicians, including from minister of national security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who called on Gallant to rescind the order.

Some soldiers openly refused to obey the order.

Chain of command

In addition to disciplinary issues with reservists, problems in the chain of command have also been exposed, notably between the chief of staff and division commanders on the ground.

Infamous, of course, is Barak Hiram, who gave orders to bomb an Israeli settlement near Gaza during the 7 October attack, and also gave the order to bomb a university in Gaza, without, the army says, prior approval.

Brigadier General Dan Goldfuss, meanwhile, was reprimanded following a statement to the media in which he said that national leaders must be “worthy of the soldiers.”

Whether from division commanders or rank and file reserve soldiers, it is clear that the Israeli military has a growing problem with discipline.

It is a problem that stems not only from deepening political divisions within Israeli society, but also from class and identity conflicts. Many reservists and regular soldiers are traditionally drawn from marginalized areas, and are often from religious and right-wing backgrounds.

It’s difficult to predict whether 100,000 soldiers will actually disobey orders to withdraw from Gaza, should such an order eventually come down.

But Luzon’s video does not come in a vacuum. It is rather the latest expression of a growing rift within the Israeli military, and in Israeli society more generally.

End.

Mati Yanikov is a Haifa-based anti-colonial activist.

This version of the original is very slightly edited organisationally with no matter changed or removed.

SOURCE: https://electronicintifada.net/content/mutiny-call-sign-growing-rift-israeli-society/46746

“ZIONISTS OFF OUR STREETS! IRELAND STANDS WITH PALESTINE!”

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-Fascism, Current Event Report, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, RacismLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

A Zionist march and rally was organised for Dublin today as an “Israel solidarity” event by the Ireland Israel Alliance. Despite prior publicity and drawing from around the country the attendance numbered only a few hundred.

Around a hundred anti-zionists with flags, banners, amplifier and loudhailer occupied the announced destination of the Zionist rally an hour prior to the scheduled arrival of the IIA march and had to wait even longer as the Zionist groups arrived at Stephens Green.

One of the banners displayed by among the anti-zionists outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

During the week the IIA issued a statement in line with the Israeli state’s Foreign Minister that “Ireland rewards Palestinian terrorism with a State”1 in response to the announcement by the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian states that they intended to formally recognise the Palestinian state.

Palestinian solidarity supporters in Dublin organised at short notice a counter-rally. “It’s a bit rich for Zionists who set up their settler state with terrorism”, said one in Dublin today, “claiming that Palestinian statehood rewards Palestinian ‘terrorism’!”2

One of the banners displayed by among the anti-zionists outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

Although Palestinian Christians are suppressed and killed by Israeli armed forces, the IIA were supported by right-wing Christian Zionists, among them the All Nations Church, the Irish branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and the TJCII.

According to advance releases to the press, the newly inaugurated Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Yoni Wieder was to speak at the zionist rally.3

Some Gardaí in Molesworth Street, stacked crowd barriers not yet erected at that point and contractor staff awaiting instructions. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

The anti-zionists organised their event at a day or two’s notice and according to some sources the IPSC4 had called on its branches not to counter protest the Zionist event but around a hundred Palestinian supporters attended, mainly Irish but also with Palestinians and a sprinkling of others.

In their prior publicity the Zionists trotted out their usual claims that Palestinian solidarity is based on anti-Semitism and that Jews are being victimised,5 ignoring the fact that zionism does not equal judaism and that in fact a substantial number of Jews have opposed zionism.6

The population of Ireland went from being largely supportive of ‘Israel’ in 1948 to being mostly pro-Palestinian from the 1970s onwards because of their observation of the genocidal and ethnic cleansing actions of the Israeli state.

Placard displayed among the Palestine supporters (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

There was a fairly high Garda presence at the events and after some delay crowd barriers were erected across the east end of Molesworth Street with a second line of barriers a little further west beyond which the Zionists were setting up a stage.

The anti-Zionists in front of Leinster House awaited the arrival of the pro-Israel march which when it got going could be seen passing the Stephens Green end of Kildare Street, eventually coming down Dawson Street and turning into Molesworth Street.

View in distance of the zionist rally location before the arrival of their march from Stephens Green (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

As they arrived the Palestinian solidarity people attempted to move across the road but the Gardaí pushed back, individual Gardaí at times viciously shoving and being resisted; here and there an arrest seemed threatened but was evaded by solidarity action around the targeted person.

With the Palestinian supporters pushed to a couple of feet in front of the pedestrian pavement of Leinster House, the Gardaí stopped and by then two vans of the Public Order Unit had arrived and were deployed but some time later stood down, got in their vans and were driven off.

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)
View northward in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
View southward in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
The arrival of a Garda prisoner transport van in Kildare Street outside Leinster House on Sunday raised tensions among some of the anti-zionist demonstrators (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

There could have been some confused impulses among the Gardaí given the public symbolic positions of the Government in recognition of the Palestinian state and the sharp and public diplomatic language flying between the Irish and Israeli states.

Two Garda vans were parked in front of the entrance to Molesworth St, partially blocking the views of the zionists and their opponents. The latter however stood with banners and flags on top of barriers and an amplifier was also strapped to a pole to better carry the message to the Zionists.

Palestinian supporters attaching an amplifier speaker to a pole outside Leinster House, directed at the Zionist rally in Molesworth Street (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

Despite the IIA having recommended its supporters to bring Israeli and Irish flags, only one Tricolour could be seen among their blue-and-white Israeli flags. One placard depicted the whole of Ireland covered with a menora, the traditional Jewish multi-candlestick.

Some of the Zionists’ placards repeated the debunked accusations of programmed mass rapes by the Palestinian resistance on October 7th last year, for which no evidence whatsoever or known victim exists despite Israeli state propaganda parroted by some of its western media supporters.

Zionist marchers arrive at their rally point in Molesworth Street, with two sets of barriers placed between them and the Palestine supporters (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

Among the Palestinian supporters the Palestine national flag was very much in evidence, also a couple of the PFLP7 and one in the colours of the anti-fascist Popular Front Government of 1930s Spain bearing the words “Connolly Column”, honouring the Irish who fought fascism there.

Here too there was only one Tricolour to be seen.

Flag of the PFLP seen against the trees (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

There were intermittent rain showers during the events, often persistent and somewhat heavy, streams running northwards along the road and pavement edge down Kildare Street but the demonstrators remained without shelter, many also without specific rain gear or umbrellas.

Women (mostly) speaking through amplification led the slogans that have become common on Palestine solidarity demonstrations in English, Irish and Arabic but with a few additions, including “Zionist scum – Off our streets!” Also “West-Brit Blueshirt scum – Off our streets!”

View of the rain’s ‘river’ running down between the Leinster House pedestrian pavement and the road. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)
View of small section of Palestinian supporters’ line with police line in front and the rainwater swirling around their feet. The Zionist rally is taking place behind the police line and beyond two lines of metal crowd barriers. (Photo: Rebel Breeze)

At intervals Arabic resistance music was played and sections of the Palestine solidarity crowd began to sway or even dance, including one young woman from Gaza who seemed accomplished in traditional dance. Irish patriotic songs were played for a period also.

Among the Palestinian supporters the Zionist chants or speakers could not be heard, nor can one know how much of the Palestinian solidarity chants could be heard by the Zionists. Eventually the Zionists left to jeers from their opposition, a Garda helicopter watching over them in the sky.

The Gardaí left and the Palestinian supporters did too, mostly leaving together in a group.

(Photo: Rebel Breeze)

AFTERMATH – FIGHT IN PARNELL/ O’CONNELL STREET

That was not all however for perhaps an hour later a fight developed between what seemed to be a far-Right man against a group of Palestinian supporters in Parnell Street. According to some people, the man had approached them aggressively about their Palestine solidarity activism.

Disliking their response, he punched one of the Palestine solidarity demonstrators in the face and when the women in the group protested, struck a couple of them too. Another male in the group then launched at the Far-Right man and gave him a bloody face.

When observed by this reporter, the man was covered in tattoos, stripped to the waist and shouting about being “for the Irish” (which for some reason the Far-Right assume Palestinian supporters are not — though many have a far better track record in that respect than do Far-Right activists).

In Palestine that same day the zionist air force bombed a tent town of displaced people in northwest Gaza, which they had declared a safe area, murdering over 30 and injuring many more, some of whom will die. They also bombed 10 UNRWA displacement centres.

End.

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES & USEFUL LINKS

https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/national-news/1508465/take-a-stand-pro-israel-march-to-dail-eireann-planned-this-weekend.html

1https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/national-news/1508465/take-a-stand-pro-israel-march-to-dail-eireann-planned-this-weekend.html

2The zionists had a number of terrorist organisation pushing the formation of the Israel State: Haganah, Irgun, Palmach … Haganah became the core of the Israeli armed forces.

3https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/national-news/1508465/take-a-stand-pro-israel-march-to-dail-eireann-planned-this-weekend.html

4Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the largest and longest-lived Palestine solidarity organisation in Ireland.

5Ditto.

6It is truly remarkable to observe how a racist occupying genocidal bully simultaneously paints itself as the victim.

7People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular Palestinian resistance organisation.

LESSONS THE PALESTINIANS AND THE ISRAELI ZIONISTS HAVE TAUGHT US (Part 2)

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, History, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, US Imperialism, Zionism1 Comment

The past six months of an almost incredible level of Israeli genocide and Palestinian resistance have taught the world some valuable lessons but particularly perhaps those of us living among the Western powers.

PART TWO: LESSONS FROM THE ISRAELI ZIONISTS

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

  • The Nature of Zionism

The Zionists have taught us the nature of Zionism as an ideology upholding a people allegedly chosen by religion to occupy a land and to repress or expel the indigenous occupants of that land.

  • Nature of settler states

As Zionism is a variant of occupier-settler ideology we have, by extension, learned to recognise the nature of all settler states. To be fair, the evidence of that nature was clearly before us but we had perhaps learned to push it to the backs of our minds.

The European settler states of USA and Canada practiced genocide against their native indigenous peoples, of which only discriminated fractions remain from “California” to “Newfoundland”, from Pacific to Atlantic coasts. Both those states have diligently supported the Zionist settler project.

Lithograph image of aftermath of the Wounded Knee massacre of Indigenous people, USA, 29 December 1890 (Image sourced: Internet)

Those Northern American territories were primarily English colonies1 as were Australia and New Zealand, both also practicing genocide and discrimination against their indigenous populations and both those states too have supported the Zionist settler project.

European coloniser collection of New Zealand Indigenous heads 1895 (Photo source: Khamen.ir)

Less unanimous have been the mainly Spanish and Portuguese settler colonies of what is now called “Latin America”, from Brazil to Argentina to Mexico. Their indigenous populations too were ethnically cleansed and subjected to genocide, although to varying degrees of intensity.2

The Caribbean islands have all been settler and imported slave colonies of the states of England, Spain and France3, all now having nominal independence but, with the exception of Cuba,4 remaining within the imperial ambit of the USA (mostly) and France and have responded accordingly.

  • Nature of the zionist state

The Zionist State has demonstrated to us the true outcome of the Israeli zionist ideology, expansionist and prepared to inflict any horror upon the indigenous people in order to achieve its aims, descending to depths of inhumanity unimaginable only if Nazism were forgotten history.

An early mass grave of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in Gaza back in November 2023 as the cemeteries were already full (Photo cred: Mohammed Salem/ Reuters)

Currently the Israelis’ toll of Palestinians is at least 34,049 dead and 76,901 wounded, with an estimated further 8,000 under rubble in Gaza, nearly 2 million displaced (many several times), all medical, educational and social facilities and infrastructure degraded if not totally destroyed.5

And with at least 9,500 prisoners (i.e hostages) reportedly ill-treated, humiliated and even tortured, of which an Israeli-admitted 27 have died during these six months alone and 3,660 are held without trial or release date in “administrative detention”.6

  • Brazen Truth and Lies

We have also learned from the Zionist state its brazen genocidal intentions towards the Palestinians, expressed for internal Israeli consumption, alongside its outlandish lies for the international public about October 7th: beheaded babies, mass rapes, disfigurements, burning alive, etc.

All of those have been debunked and the recorded statistics alone (but also backed by evidence of other agencies) expose the lies that the Israeli army is attacking only7 the Palestinian resistance, that it is not applying collective punishment and using starvation as a weapon.

False Israeli Zionist propaganda about the Palestinian resistance “beheading babies” repeated by US President Joe Biden in press statement, claiming he had seen photos. His aides later ‘clarified’ that he was relying on reports from the Israeli state and had not seen actual photos. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Not bothering to give excuses for its demolition of universities and museums, schools and places of Muslim and Christian worship, ‘Israel’ has claimed the existence of tunnel entrances in them as excuses for the total elimination of Palestine’s main hospitals and degradation of all others.

It has done this despite its lack of evidence of such use of the hospitals, despite denials of hospital staff and organisations and without having to explain how such claims, even if they were true, could justify siege of hospitals, killing patients and staff and their destruction as functioning hospitals.

(Three before-and-after images of Israeli military destruction of Al Shifa Hospital, internally and externally)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5XQ2YQIQwP/
  • Impunity from world legal order

What Israel and the western imperialist states have shown us to date is that Israel has impunity to carry on its genocide. Not only will it not be boycotted, much less blockaded, not to even mention invaded, it will continue to be supplied with weapons, money and political support.

Even after the ICJ judgement in favour of S. Africa that Israel was “plausibly committing genocide” and restrictions imposed on Israel by the court, the genocide continued without pause and without any serious international repercussions by any western state.

Israel has given us a clear demonstration in practice of the hollowness of western institutional democracy and liberalism, not only in its continued support for the genocidal state but in the repression by western states of those who have supported the Palestinians in word or deed.

Demonstrations and pickets have been forbidden8, protesters threatened and arrested9, academics hounded and sacked,10 artists and public speakers cancelled, social media profiles hampered or blocked. In fact, all the kinds of undemocratic actions of which some other states are often accused.

  • Exposure of the world order of legal democratic institutions

The exposure of these institutions was almost complete. The United Nations of 193 states was shown powerless to act without the authorisation of the five Permanent Members11 of the Security Council — which itself was shown nullified by a veto of even one Member.12

United nations

United Nations building with approach flanked by national flags of member states(Photo sourced: Internet)

The International Court of Justice, a sub-institution of the UN itself, with a history of never even trying a western power, though judging Israel plausibly guilty of genocide,13 failed in its judgement on 26th January to order an immediate cease to the state’s attacks on the Gaza population.

The ICJ failed even to take action on Israel’s non-compliance with the interim measures it ordered, viz: “to take all measures to prevent any acts that could be considered genocidal according to the 1948 Genocide Convention”, other than to issue another non-complied order on 28th March.14

The United Nations failed to defend its own aid organisation for the relief of Palestinians (both in Palestine and as refugees in other parts) from unsupported Israeli allegations of the participation of 0.04% of its staff in the Palestinian resistance operation of October 7th 2023.

The UNWRA chiefs responded by failing to stand up to Israeli bullying and by sacking nine of their own workers without any evidence presented against them and without a right to a hearing or appeal. It also for a time failed to denounce Israel for reported torture of the agency’s employees.15

The UN failed to defend the staff of UNWRA from unproven allegations, unfair internal treatment and Israeli intimidation and murder or to maintain the essential funding of UNWRA essential for the Palestinians, or to insist on the regular and protected entry of aid trucks safe from Israeli attack.

The European Union refused to even call for a ceasefire; continued to act as Israel’s biggest export market; some of its members withdrew UNRWA funding and continued to supply the genocidal state with arms, while many states repressed their own citizens acting in solidarity with Palestine.

  • The need for revolutionary resistance

The Zionist state and its imperialist backers and, to be fair to it, our own Irish state too, have demonstrated to us the fragile and temporary nature of western liberalism and democracy on the one hand and the need, by implication, of revolutionary resistance and organisation on the other.

IN CONCLUSION

It remains to us to learn those hard-earned lessons, to internalise them and to apply them externally. We owe that to the Palestinians and to ourselves.

End.

Part of Gaza after Israeli bombardment back July 2014; now of course it is much, much worse. (Image sourced: Internet)

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

https://www.voanews.com/a/7577969.html

https://www.addameer.org/statistics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention)

https://www.unrwa.org

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

1The Dutch also colonised the north-east of what is now the USA and the French particularly Louisiana, in what is now the USA and Quebec in what is now Canada. What is now SW USA was part of the Spanish colonial empire, subsequently part of the Mexican Empire and gained by the USA in two wars with Mexico.

2The disparity in approach of these states is underlined by for example on the one hand El Salvador unreservedly supporting the zionist state and by Nicaragua on the other hand taking Germany to the International Court of Justice in accusation of being complicit in the Israeli genocide by supporting the state with weapons and finance.

3Without overlooking the fact that each of those states (England now as the United Kingdom) contains other dominated nations within it.

4During the existence of the USSR Cuba was often described as being under Soviet colonial influence but remains today the only truly independent (though part-occupied) state in the whole of the Caribbean.

5https://www.voanews.com/a/7577969.html, a pro-Israeli source.

6 At the time of writing Adameer, the Palestinian prisoner and human rights organisation reports 9,500 Palestinian prisoners of which 3,660 are “administrative detainees”, 200 children and 80 women. Seventeen of the prisoners are elected Legislative Council members (similar to MPs or TDs) https://www.addameer.org/statistics. These figures have changed regularly during the 6 months of zionist genocide and the trend is always upward except for a brief period during the truce and exchange of hostages.

7In fact, not even mainly.

8Particularly in Germany and France

9Particularly in Britain

10Particularly in the USA

11UK, France, USA, Russia, China

12Most often and recently in the case of Israel/ Palestine several time by the USA but at times also by the UK and France.

13In a case taken by South Africa lodged at the end of December 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention)

14In response to application of South Africa again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention)

15https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_allegations_against_UNRWA

LESSONS THE PALESTINIANS AND THE ISRAELI ZIONISTS HAVE TAUGHT US

On By rebelbreezeIn Anti-War, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Imperialism, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Mass Media Criticism, Massacres, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, US Imperialism, Zionism2 Comments

Diarmuid Breatnach

The past six months of an almost incredible level of Israeli genocide and Palestinian resistance have taught the world some valuable lessons but particularly perhaps to those of us living among the Western powers.

PART ONE: LESSONS FROM THE PALESTINIANS

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 11 mins.)

  • Resistance – ongoing, preparation, striking, unity

The Palestinians have taught us the strength and value to an occupied and oppressed people of resistance, from generation to generation, maintaining and developing culture and nurturing historical memory while the occupier tried to erase it all and make the endeavour seem hopeless.

Palestinian woman in Gaza defiant, January 8, 2009 (Photo cred: Eric Gaillard/Reuters)

Without a navy, air force, tanks, armoured vehicles or standard artillery (apart from home-made rockets and missiles), they faced what is often called the “strongest military power in the Middle east”. Despite periodic massacres they have regularly risen against the oppressor.

In truth, it was a lesson that at one time we hardly needed in Ireland, learned even earlier than the Palestinians. But we needed reminding of it.

It is also important for the morale and dignity of the resistance that it shows itself capable of striking at the enemy.

We’ve been reminded of the importance of long-term preparation. The Palestinian resistance built kilometres of tunnels underground in which they also set weapon production factories, developing their own weapons and repurposing existing weapons, including unexploded Israeli Army bombs.

In their Al Aqsa Flood attack on October 7th and fighting since, the Palestinians taught us the value of not only of daring and prior preparation but of coordination and unity, as a number of resistance organisations cooperated in struggle, some secular and some Islamic fundamentalist.1

Palestinian resistance fighters from different organisations displaying their unity in struggle in this photo (Photo sourced: Internet)

In meeting the subsequent genocidal rage of the occupier, the Palestinian resistance have taught us that all the technological might and expertise of the enemy was incapable of crushing a prepared, courageous, united and determined resistance.

The Israeli domination of the air from which it rained down genocidal bombing on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or targeted assassinations of the families of resistance fighters, was not sufficient to defend its ground troops from attack and is itself under attack from GTA missiles.2

The occupier was effective only in genocidal actions against the civilian population and civilian infrastructure for which it will forever be reviled in historical memory. It achieved neither of the objectives it declared as it unleashed its war against Gaza: the wiping out of the resistance and release of captives.

  • Imperialism

We been shown – if we were willing to see it – the unity of western imperialism in supporting the ‘right ‘of a European settler group to establish itself on the land of the indigenous, creating an ethnocentric and theocratic state founded with an act of ‘ethnic cleansing’.3

We have been taught the willingness of the western imperialist states to tolerate the proliferation of acts and policies which it claims go against its fundamental liberal values: oppression, apartheid, discrimination and repression, while lauding the ‘European liberal values’ of the occupier state.

  • Betrayal

Another lesson which we should have learned too within the necessity of unity in a broad front is that it needs to be on a principled basis and the dangers in unity without such safeguards, leading to treachery, betrayal and collusion with the occupier.

The secular left-wing Fatah4 organisation may have seemed at one time the ideal one to follow though some would have favoured the further-left People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine.5 But it was Fatah, as leading element in the PLO alliance, that signed up to the Oslo accords.6

In return for limited autonomy in a fraction of Palestinian land and without consideration of the right of return to the expelled Palestinians, the Fatah leadership with Yasser Arafat at its head agreed to this “peace process” while its officials scrambled for the gains of official corruption.

Hence the Palestinian Authority, corrupt, unrepresentative, undemocratic and repressive, working in collusion with the occupying authority. Again, our own history should have taught us that lesson but again, it is good to be reminded.

The Palestinians taught us how to deal with such a poisonous fungal growth with the Second Intifada and their last elections, those of 20067 and the carrying through of the electorate’s wishes in 2007, along with the ongoing resistance since.

  • Western Mass Media and alternatives

In reporting the events in Palestine over the decades but in particular over the last six months, we have learned the heavy anti-Palestinian and pro-Israeli bias of the WMM, that accepted without question the transparent lies of the Israeli regime and even questioned the massacre statistics.

Never once has the unjust claim of the occupiers to their stolen gains been questioned, never once the fundamentally just claim of the indigenous even mentioned. The Palestinian resistance has been reduced to one organisation in reporting, to be held up as a bogeyman monster.

(Image sourced: Internet)

If atrocities from across the Palestinian people were reported in the media, they were framed as of dubious provenance, while the most outlandish and illogical claims of the occupier were reported as reasonable fact.

We have, in fact, been taught not to trust the western mass media when reporting on international events and, by extension, not to trust it on domestic issues either. Conversely we have learned to rely more on alternative Internet media but also on the need to navigate those with some caution.

We have also learned that some of the most prominent alternative sources on the war between NATO/Ukraine and Russia, attacked by liberals and sections of the Left as “Russian-controlled” or “Putinistas” turned out to be the most reliable in reporting the realities of the Israeli genocide.

  • Internationalist solidarity

We have relearned the importance of international solidarity, both as we expressed it ourselves and saw its outpouring across the globe. We have been taught the existence of an alternative world of human solidarity in opposition to one based on expropriation, exploitation and competition.

We saw Hizbolah in Jordan and Syria come to the assistance of the Palestinians and pay the price for doing so, as did Ansar Allah (“Houthis”) in Yemen and as has also Iran — what the Electronic Intifada has called “the Axis of Resistance”.

Chilean football team players May 2021 (Photo sourced: Internet)
London, January 2024 (Photo cred: PA)

And we have learned to use internationalism as a measuring stick also in evaluating institutions, political parties and politicians in our own countries. We have seen the meaning of anti-semitism twisted and employed in repression with a stifling censorship across public life – academic, political and social.

Downing Street (containing home of the UK Prime Minister) 29 December 2023 (Photo sourced: Internet)

Political parties and politicians have revealed either their complicity in and collusion with the criminal Israeli genocide or alternatively their inability to resist and effectively oppose it. That has exposed their lack of fitness to lead us in our domestic struggles too.

Teachers and others in Palestine solidarity demonstration in Dublin, March 2024 symbolically carrying infant school chairs in protest against the Palestinian children murdered by the Israeli armed forces. (Photo: D.Breatnach)

IN CONCLUSION

  • The need for revolutionary resistance

The Palestinian resistance has taught us important lessons, including the need of revolutionary resistance in addition to revolutionary organisation and preparation.

It remains to us to learn those hard-earned lessons, to internalise them and to apply them externally. We owe that to the Palestinians and to ourselves.

End.
(Read also Part B – What the Israeli Zionists have taught us follows.)

FOOTNOTES

1Hamas – Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades; Palestinian Islamic Jihad – Al-Quds Brigades; Popular Resistance Committees Al-Nasser Salah ad-Din Brigades; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades; Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command Jihad Jibril Brigades; Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) – National Resistance Brigades, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades; Palestinian Mujahideen Movement and its Mujahideen Brigades.

https://www.newsweek.com/not-only-hamas-eight-factions-war-israel-gaza-1841292

2Ground To Air missiles.

3The expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians and massacres such as the one in the village of Dir Yassin.

4Fatah wasfounded in 1957 and was the majority party in the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

5The PLO was founded in 1964 and the PFLP in 1967, next in size of organisation in the PLO to Fatah (Islamic organisations were excluded from the PLO; Hamas recently proposed the reconstruction of the PLO open to all resistance organisations).

6The Oslo Accords were the result of a number of conferences, overseen by the USA and was part of the second of the current“peace processes” which include Ireland, the Basque Country and Colombia.

7Hamas won the elections throughout the accepted Palestinian territories but Fatah tried to continue to keep control, being dislodged from Gaza in 2007 by Hamas, which held back from doing the same thing in the West Bank which has remained under the undemocratic, repressive and colluder control of the Palestine Authority.

SOURCES

https://www.addameer.org/statistics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention)

https://www.unrwa.org

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

PALESTINE CHILDREN’S DAY

On By rebelbreezeIn Cartoon, Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, PalestineLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

In Ireland, at this time small children will be in playgroups or nursery schools (if their parents can afford them), or in primary schools fearing or looking forward to assessments and turning in homework. In Palestine there are no longer any playgroups, nurseries or functioning schools.

Post-primary students in Ireland will be preparing for the Junior or Leaving Certificates, a high-stress situation for many. Palestinian children in Gaza don’t have to work about any of that, only about whether, their parents, friends, neighbours will survive the Israeli bombings and sniper attacks.

Or get enough to eat every day and dry warmth protection from the weather. There wouldn’t be much point in sitting the final post-primary exams in Gaza anyway, even if there were somewhere safe to hold them. The Israelis have demolished all their universities.

Even before last year, what would the young do with a degree in besieged enclave of Gaza? Yes, some could get out to other countries in the West or in the Arab world but, if they did, they knew there was never any guarantee of being allowed back.

Over all, there is a horrific statistic to add to all the others of Israel’s genocide in the past six months: the zionist state has killed 13,800 Palestinian children in Gaza and injured over 12,000, which is why some people carry bloodstained white bundles or empty nursery chairs on Palestine solidarity marches.

end.

SOURCES

https://www.cso.ie/en/csolatestnews/pressreleases/2023pressreleases/pressstatementcensusofpopulation2022-summaryresultsdublin

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/one-in-50-of-gaza-s-children-killed-or-injured-in-six-months-of-

TENS OF THOUSANDS IN PALESTINE SOLIDARITY IN DUBLIN MARCH – AND ZIONIST PROVOCATION

On By rebelbreezeIn Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Executions, Gaeilge, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Resistance Art, Trade unionsLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 7 mins.)

Numbers approaching 100 thousand marched in Palestine solidarity in Dublin on Saturday as the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign held its 5th national march since October, attended by people from Donegal to Cork and from the 6-County British colony.

It took place in a week in which the genocidal zionist settler state exercised its “right to defence” by its fourth attack on the Al-Shifa Hospital, massacring over 170 unarmed civilians including women and children and using others as human shields.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)
(Photo: D.Breatnach)

In addition the zionists executed the Chief of the Gaza police and a Deputy (along with the latter’s family), claiming them to be guerrillas but apparently in retaliation for their successful organisation of a recent flour delivery without riots or any civilians murdered by the Occupation Forces.

Meanwhile, the response of the colonial and zionist collaborator, the Palestine Authority, was to continue its repression of Palestinians in parts of the West Bank and to open fire on the funeral of three martyrs1 of the heroic latest battle of Jenin, a scene of many past battles.

The front of the march begins to enter Dublin’s main street, O’Connell Street (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The official figure for Palestinians killed in this latest genocide on screens and before the eyes of the world is now nearing 33,000 dead with well over 74,000 injured and an estimated 8,000 buried under rubble from Israeli bombing in the zionist state’s “right to defence”.

None of the leaders of the Western imperialist states seem to ask themselves whether, if this is truly the necessary cost to Israel’s ‘defence’, does that state deserve to exist at all?

“Nakba never ended” placard seen in this section of the march in O’Connell Street (Photo: D.Breatnach)

MARCH AND ZIONIST PROVOCATION

The march began as has become customary at the Garden of Remembrance2 in the north side of the capital city from where it eventually began to make its way down through the city’s main street, its end taking nearly half an hour to pass through and to cross the river to the south side.

From there, chanting slogans that have since become well-known in solidarity of the Palestinians and their right to self-determination, in outrage at the actions of the zionist state and its imperialist supporters, the marchers made their way to rally outside the Department of Foreign Affairs.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Here many listened to speeches and performances but significant numbers shortly peeled away to make their ways back home or to relax in the city’s cafes and restaurants (after all, what were they going to hear that they had not heard and read before?).

Irish Republican organisations were not noticeably present, even those few that had been visibly present on recent demonstrations; difficult to guess at the reason, even with preparations for 1916 commemorations no doubt being undergone for next weekend and afterwards.

As usual on large demonstrations, the marchers had not experienced the insults and bizarre shouts of “Traitors!”3 by far-Rightists and racists to which smaller solidarity pickets are often subjected but, as part of the march neared Cuffe Street, a man with a large Israeli flag passed them.

From near me shouts of “Zionist! Baby-killers!” arose but he passed. Later he was seen being escorted by a Garda from the rally with his Zionist flag but also a Palestinian flag which people speculated he had taken from a demonstrator.4 Some more Gardaí gathered around the Zionist.

Shortly thereafter, he was permitted/ encouraged to leave the area with at least his flag pole5. Many commented that the outcome would have been very different if it had been a case of a Palestinian supporter provoking a Zionist rally and, indeed, I have witnessed such some years ago.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

When I lived in London I regularly saw Zionists provoking Palestinian supporters and dancing Israeli dances near them. Whenever outraged demonstrators drew near to challenge them, the Palestine supporters were attacked by the London Metropolitan Police.

At a parallel Palestine solidarity march on Saturday in London, a small group of Zionists waved Israeli and Union Jack flags but were soon swamped by Palestinian and Irish – yes Irish! – flags. In London at least there have been Irish flags on every Palestinian solidarity march since October 8th.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

TRADE UNIONS

Banners and flags of Irish-based trade unions were well-represented on the march but with at most a couple of dozen marching behind them. Specific worker groups such as “Health Workers for Palestine” replied to my enquiry that they had organised the group without support from their unions.

Banners of INTO, the largest teaching union in Ireland (primary level in the state and primary and post levels in the colony) precedes some flags of the UNITE union. (Photo: D.Breatnach)
(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Where are the militant actions by the trade union brothers and sisters of murdered Palestinian medical staff including paramedics, journalists (for which job Palestine is the most dangerous place in the world), food distribution workers, poets and writers?

It is well past the time when it was sufficient for Irish trade unions to bring banners and flags on to the street every couple of weeks with a dozen members or so marching behind them. In October they should have been leading their members to the marches in at least their hundreds.

By November last year at least, the trade unions should have been planning actions to take in physical solidarity, moving beyond marches and pickets to sit-downs and other kinds of solidarity action. How do Israeli goods come into Ireland and how are they sold?

(Photo: D.Breatnach)
(Photo: D.Breatnach)

Clearly they are handled and administered by workers and some of those at least6 are unionised. Union-backed boycott actions would put pressure not only on the Israeli economy but also on other companies colluding with them, as with the supermarkets who stock their products.

Pressure on the latter would translate into pressure not only on the Israeli state but on the political management of the economic bases of states and also on the political management of the countries where they are operating, for example in Ireland.

Who knows, the unions might even boost their recruitment with such action, in a country where once most would not dream of crossing a picket line but where now many youth do not even comprehend the nature or purpose of a trade union.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

REPRESSION

Meanwhile, those who ARE taking action in solidarity with Palestine are experiencing repression, not yet to the extent that is occurring in the French and German states, but repression nevertheless. Some marchers on Saturday carried a banner protesting the criminalisation of solidarity.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

In recent months a number of people have experienced dawn house raids by the police, in addition to arrests in the course of demonstrations or pickets. Defence of people victimised for solidarity actions has always been an important part of solidarity movements.

Most of the political parties nor the IPSC will be organising or even calling for such defence and it is up to the ordinary people in the solidarity movement to mobilise to attend and protest the court cases and attend pickets in solidarity with victimised activists.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

In the months ahead, those victimised up to now and quite possibly more still will be attending court on separate dates as their cases are scheduled to be heard. It is also important as a general principle that activists refuse to agree to refrain from solidarity actions as a condition of bail.

A number of Palestine solidarity activists recently had a private meeting with officials of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and the organisation also held a recent day of sessions and workshops on civil rights for protesters.

Campaigning organisation for housing and against evictions (Photo: D.Breatnach)

SHAMEFUL SHAMROCKS

Saturday’s march took place a week after St. Patrick’s Day when to the disgust of many people in Ireland, representatives of the Irish Government and even of a number of Opposition political parties attended in Washington to celebrate the day with President Biden and others.

As a result, no doubt, the presence of the Sinn Féin party on the march was small and muted and the flags of the Social Democrats absent, a party recently prominent in pressure on the Irish Government to join the ICJ case against the Israeli State and even to expel their Ambassador.

One supposes that those who are in a queue to manage the Gombeen state have to show their fitness for doing so by bowing before the leader of western imperialism; whatever their private feelings may be, they need to show that they have the stomach to do what the system requires of its servants.

“No shamrocks for Genocide Joe” placard in this section of the march (Photo: D.Breatnach)

LESS SLOGANS and LESS IRISH?

It seemed to me that there were in general less slogans being chanted on this demonstration and that that their range was less than usual. Possibly this reflects a feeling that the demonstrations are becoming more routine and less capable of stirring emotion.

Possibly too, the sheer daily weight of zionist atrocities is oppressing people and wearing down their capacity for outrage. In either case it would seem that in addition to giant demonstrations, other actions are needed to release the latent emotional energy of the people.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

On this demonstration there was much less Irish language seen in placards, flags or banners than has been the case recently and which had been growing over the months, as I’ve been commenting upon in previous reports. This is regrettable and hopefully will be remedied.

The Irish language NGO Connradh na Gaeilge had a group and banner on the march as has been the case for months, shouting among other slogans “Saoirse don Phalaistín!” A small group also had a banner in Irish declaring that they were Múinteoirí (teachers) ar son na Palestíne.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

ART AGAINST GENOCIDE

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

The lines of baby romper suits or baby-grows made their appearance on the march again as did the bloody butcher image of Prime Minister Netanyahu, with a diabolical Biden on the reverse of the placard. A large ‘puppet’ of Biden with bloody hands was carried riding above the march.

Tail end of Mothers Against Genocide followed by puppet of bloody-hands US President Joe Biden (Photo: D.Breatnach)
LGBT section denounces Israeli state’s attempt to paint itself as liberal through decriminalising the LGBT community (Photo: D.Breatnach)

The A2-size beautiful coloured image of Palestinian resistance solidarity was seen again but however overall the variety and ingenuity of home-made placards seen previously had diminished.

The Mothers Against Genocide group carried their white bundles depicting the slaughter of Palestinian children and sang sentences in Arabic and Irish from Róisín Elsafty and Sharon Shannon’s song “An Phalaistín”, effectively interspersed with slogans.

(Photo: D.Breatnach)

The sight that brought a hush over all witnessing it was the section carrying many yellow infant school chairs, a grim reminder of the huge daily ongoing Zionist genocide inflicted on the Palestinian children in Gaza.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Mohammed Al-Fayed, Ahmed Barakat, Mahmoud Al-Fayeed (Resistance News Network on Telegram, 20/3/’24)

2Originally dedicated to those who fought for Irish freedom since the first Republican uprising in 1798 it has since been recognised as commemorating all those who gave their lives in the nation’s struggle for self-determination (though certainly officialdom would disagree with honouring those who fought that struggle since the founding of the current Irish state in 1921).

3These elements claim it is ‘treason’ for Irish people to support any other struggle than the Irish national one, which they conceive of as attacking immigrants and LBGT people. Their concept of “national struggle” has never included struggling against foreign occupation, supporting Republican prisoners, opposing multinationals’ exploitation of national resources and infrastructure or fighting for universal affordable housing.

4He might also have carried it concealed all along, with the intention of destroying it in front of the marchers; how it came into his possession is unknown to me at this point. He may have departed carrying both flags in his coat etc.

5It did not seem from a distance that the Gardaí had confiscated his Israeli flag but more likely he had been told to remove it from the pole while leaving the area.

6Despite the huge drop in the percentage of unionised workers in Ireland over recent decades.

SOME SOURCES

Latest statistics on zionist genocide: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/-palestinians-killed-by-israel-in-gaza-since-last-oct-7-near-32-000/3169468

PA Security fired on funeral of Jenin martyrs: Resistance News Network on Telegram (20/3/’24)

Al Shifa Hospital massacre: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/20/israeli-military-says-90-people-killed-in-gazas-al-shifa-hospital-raid

https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/international-community-must-act-immediately-stop-israeli-armys-massacre-palestinians-al-shifa-hospital-enar

https://www.breakingnews.ie/israel-hamas/fleeing-palestinians-describe-israeli-raid-on-gaza-strip-hospital-1605671.html