Tag: Palestine Armed Resistance

AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT FOR EACH

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

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

As we face the possible escalation of an extended regional war in West Asia it is worthwhile to consider what’s at stake for some of the various ‘players’.

‘Israel’ constantly claims existential threats to its state but Iran has stated the same with regard to attacks upon it by the US and ‘Israel’. The Resistance in Palestine and in Lebanon have also spoken in those terms with regard to themselves.

It might seem that the US is the only major participant in the wars in Western Asia which is not itself threatened existentially. However, in a sense it too is facing a kind of existential threat, the threat to its continuing existence as a superpower.

Dr. Mohamad Hasan Sweidan, one of the panel of regular news updates on YouTube for The Cradle online media regularly states that in reality, all of the principal actors are indeed fighting a threat to their existence, though the weight of threat being of varying degrees for each.

The ‘Israeli’ state

The Zionist state of ‘Israel’ came into being in 1948 as a Zionist-led European settler project to impose itself on the indigenous Palestinian people of all ethnic groups. Supported by the USA, Zionism gathered force since 1945 to the full-blown terror and ethnic cleansing of the 1948 Nakba.1

Despite claims of recovering ancestral lands, the culture of Ashkenazi colonisers and their languages were European, not West Asian, in keeping with their origin. Citizenship was opened to any Jewish person around the world but not to the Arab Palestinians who had been driven out.

The Zionist state is of course completely dependent on western imperialism for its defence and its very he existence. But ‘Israel’ is not content with that alone and in the logic of all settler colonialism, is constantly fighting wars of expansion with its neighbours.2

The location of this settler colony makes it of important political and military value to western imperialism and in particular to the USA superpower. It is a dagger at the throat of West Asian sovereignty, let alone socialism and in the region is totally free of both those dangers internally.

The settler colony is never secure until it has either wiped out the indigenous people or totally broken their resistance and scattered them. Consequently the indigenous people will resist and if they can, logically, aided by their threatened neighbours, will overthrow the occupation.

Therefore the Zionist State is truthfully facing an existential threat.

The Resistance

The Resistance to imperialism and Zionism in West Asia is wide and multi-faceted but for the purpose of this examination we’ll look at sum of the factions inside Palestine, both Islamic and secular factions as one Resistance; and Hizbollah and political allies in Lebanon as another.

Because of its practices, its origins and attitudes to the cultures of West Asia, ‘Israel’ is viewed by Palestinians and most people of the region as an occupier. It has functioned as a proxy of imperialism, particularly the US variety, in the region since it came into being.

Like settler colonies in general, the Zionist state has been expanding its territory since its inception.

It has also waged war on its neighbours for most of its existence: 1948 against Palestinians and Arab states, 1950s-1960s against the Palestinian Resistance; with France and UK against Egypt (Suez) 1956; 1967 against Egypt, Jordan, Syria; 1973 against Egypt and Syria.

And in 1971-1982 in South Lebanon.3 In September 2024 it attacked Lebanon with assassinations and exploding pagers and in December of that year, invaded Syria4 (though it had regularly bombed it previously) and attacked Iran (during peace negotiation) in February 2026.

The Zionist military carried out a great number of major attacks within Palestine including against the West Bank and Gaza in between what the Zionists call ‘mowing the lawn’, i.e. regular assassinations, raids, arrests and imprisonment of hostages.

The attitude of the ‘Israeli’ occupation to the Palestinian resistance is typified in its attitude to Hamas, the political party elected by significant majority across Palestine in 2006: it totally rejects the people’s choice and attempts to eliminate it in Gaza through economic and military means.

In the West Bank the Occupation’s proxy, the Palestine Authority refused to accede to the popular vote and collaborates with the Occupation, even though the even more extreme elements in ‘Israeli’ government and society despise it, regularly denouncing it and calling for its elimination.

The PA represses criticism by Palestinians in the West Bank, jails critics and fighters, sets them up for ‘Israeli’ jailing and has even murdered Resistance fighters.

‘Israel’ and the US are in concert attempting to use elements of the Lebanese Government against Hizbollah and political parties close to or friendly with them, attempting to turn the Lebanese Army to that purpose. Were they to succeed this would result in another Lebanese civil war.

It is a fact that the state of ‘Israel’ has no formal borders, except where its present territory reaches the borders of Egypt and Jordan.5 The ‘Greater Israel’ concept6 and Zionist aspiration exceeds far beyond even those,7 including Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and swathes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Many Israeli political leaders including Ze’ev Jabotinsky,8 Menachem Begin9 and Benjamin Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir10 have openly promoted the ‘Greater Israel’ (sic) concept as an objective and seems to have the support of US foreign policy and the ‘Israeli’ opposition.11

In all ‘peace’ proposals the ‘Israeli’ establishment seeks the ‘disarmament’ of the Lebanese and Palestinian Resistance, while itself remaining the most heavily armed state in the whole of West Asia, the only one with a nuclear weapon and a long history of committing massacres and genocide.

Hizbullah and the Palestine Resistance are therefore indeed facing an existential threat.

Image by D. Breatnach

The USA

The USA is the chief world imperialist power and in order to maintain that position has a number of requirements, among which are that it can direct or at least influence events around most of the world and that its military might is seen as impossible to defend against.

The Warsaw Pact bloc, a former impediment to expansion of US dominance has gone, though the Russian Federation remains. However the rising economic power of China already threatens the world dominance of the US imperialist ruling class.

But it has faced a new threat to its hegemony of West Asia. Although the non-compliant regimes there of Iraq and Syria (and Libya in North Africa) have been overthrown, US influence in Iran12 had been defeated by uprisings and founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.

Despite war against the Republic (1980-’88) by then western-supported Saddam Hussein, the Islamic Republic survived and supplied resistance organisations in Lebanon and in Palestine with weapons.

The US failed to subdue Iran with decades of sanctions or to instigate popular or separatist insurrection against the ruling elite during unprovoked attack in February, having to accept the stability of the Republic and to agree to ceasefire terms, losing much of its mythos of invincibility.

Not only were its military installations in West Asia shown to be vulnerable but they became regular targets in retaliation for US strikes against Iran. Client regimes began to wonder whether they could even afford to have such failed protection US military bases on their soil.

The repercussions of that will extend right around the World.

Iran

The Islamic Republic of Iran came into existence in 1979 in a revolution against the Pahlavi monarchy, its repressive Savak secret police and against Iran’s client status of US imperialism (such that the CIA’s head office for the whole of West Asia was located there).

The revolution found the CIA desperately shredding their spy documents (many of which were later painstakingly stuck back together by the Iranian revolutionaries). The revolutionary leadership and its followers were immediately targeted by imperialism, in particular by the USA.

The imperialists instigated Saddam Hussein (at the time their client) to have Iraq invade Iran in a war which lasted eight years during which 188,015 to 217,489 Iranians were killed (about 70 people per day).13 Hussein used gas attacks14 as well as bullets and explosives.

In addition, US imperialism has imposed sanctions on Iran since 1979, which is to say threatened sanctions on any state prepared to sell to or trade with the Islamic Republic and these have had a heavy negative impact on the population, in particular in the area of health treatment.15

In January 2026 the USA manipulated currency trading and the value of the Iranian rial fell. Protest demonstrations took place which Israeli and US intelligence operatives in places turned into armed attacks on police, government buildings and even some place of religious worship.

The Iranian authorities issued figures of 3,117 killed during the disturbances,16 which included civilians and agents acting under foreign direction, without identifying which was which. A significant number of those killed were State employees, including public security and police.

Sources sympathetic to the West have issued a range of fatal casualty numbers, rising to 36,000. It does not seem possible to separate real figures from propaganda, certainly of Western sources and possibly too of the Iranian State.

However the involvement of agents working for foreign powers to destabilise Iran has been established, not only in results of raids by Iranian State security forces but also in statements by US and ‘Israeli’ authorities17 and in admissions of Starlink-linked devices smuggled into Iran.18

Trump admitted that the US had supplied weapons to Iranian Kurdish pro-independence groups at this time also and complained that the Kurds had failed to use them against the US. Probably Baluchistan separatists were similarly urged to rise but did not do so in any numbers.19

The presence of foreign agents in Iran was also evident not only by intelligence possessed by the aggressors during the following war but also by when drones were launched against targets in Iran from within the country.

‘Israel’ accompanied by the USA,on 28 February, during negotiations, assassinated the religious and political supreme leader, Ali Khamenei and others, along with families and launched air strikes across Iran, including killing 124 schoolgirls with their teachers in a ‘double-tap’ strike.

The USA is too far away for a retaliatory strike but their military assets are distributed around the Gulf and Iran’s response struck those hard, US defences proving inadequate in action. Iran also closed the Strait of Hormuz, cutting the flow of essential gas and oil from the region to the West.

The US was forced to negotiate and to agree to Iranian terms in a Memorandum of Understanding for peace talks, most of which the US has yet to carry out in practice and much of which it has violated. But it is difficult to see what final options it has other than compliance.

The intentions of US imperialism to the Islamic Republic of Iran are irremediably hostile, proven in sanctions, assassinations, war, subversion attempts, rhetoric and threats, wishing the Iranian revolutionary regime overthrown and Iran dismembered, i.e. indeed an existential threat to Iran.

CONCLUSION

The mutual existential threats of antagonists do not usually cancel each other out. Rather, one of the antagonists must fall. Liberal solutions of ‘peace’ between them are illusory and chasing such mirages is not only fruitless but diverts attention from the necessary resolution.

In fact, wars where none of the antagonists feel they can afford to give way are complicated and very hard to resolve.

In the short term, for relative peace in Western Asia, both the US imperialists and the Israeli Zionists need to be severely weakened and those who wish for that relative peace must logically wish success to the struggles of the Islamic Republic of Iran and of the Resistance organisations.

In the medium term, the existence of the state of ‘Israel’ needs to cease and the democratic state of Palestine to come into being with US Imperialism weakened further or overthrown.

The ruling class of the strengthened Iran will need to see how they can manage Iran’s new status and the Resistance organisations how they develop and grow their respective nations as independent and sovereign states.

In the longer term, new threats and new conflicts will emerge throughout the world. As long as capitalism exists, parts of it will grow into monopoly capitalism and that in turn will seek to maximise its profits by venturing abroad in competition and/or in coercion.

End.

Note: If you found this article of interest, why not register with Rebel Breeze for free, so that you will be notified by email of subsequent articles. You can de-register any time you wish.

FOOTNOTES & SOURCES

1During the 1948 Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”), approximately 750,000 to one million Palestinians were displaced from their homes, and an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Palestinians were killed.

More than 80% of the Palestinian population living in the territory that became Israel was forced to leave.At least 530 villages and towns were destroyed or depopulated.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency reports that this initial displacement grew into an ongoing crisis, with nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees registered today. Historians and organizations generally estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 Palestinians were killed. Deaths occurred during combat, in dozens of targeted massacres, and from the general violence of the war.

2https://thecradle.co/articles/israels-permanent-security-doctrine-turns-war-into-the-states-condition

3From 16 to 18 September 1982, the IOF’s proxy, the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon, massacred between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias — in the Sabra neighbourhood of Beirut and in the nearby Shatila refugees camp, with the support of the IOF. 

4As the Syrian regime collapsed in early December 2024.

5https://campaigns.acri.org.il/50yearsen/

6https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Israel

7https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greater_israel.jpg

8An early leading Zionist ideologue and activist.

9Leader of Zionist terrorist group Irgun, founder of political parties Herut and Likud, Prime Minister of ‘Israel’ 1977-1983.

10Respectively in order: Leader of Likud party of current ‘Israel’ government coalition; leader of Religious Zionist Party and current Finance Minister since 2022;  National Security Minister since 2022, leader of Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”), an Israeli far-right, Kahanist and anti-Arab party which won six seats in the 2022 legislative election and is part of the thirty-seventh government of Israel (Wikipedia).

11https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/26/what-is-greater-israel-and-how-popular-is-it-among-israelis

12 Formerly referred to internationally as ‘Persia’ until 1935.

13https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23981159/

14Western media were not interested at the time – Hussein was attacking Iran and was therefore one of ‘the good guys’. Journalists who tried to get western media to cover the wiping out of a Kurdish village Halabja by gas attack in 1982 were getting nowhere. However, many years later, when the Saddam Hussein had switched and started defying the western imperialists, western media suddenly found the story valuable even though years old by then.

15https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_impacts_of_U.S._sanctions_against_Iran

16https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/5/questions-after-irans-government-releases-victim-list-in-protest-killings (Qatar-based Al Jazeera, while hostile to Israeli Zionism, is also hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran. However other online sources I found in a quick search were even worse.)

17https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/14/iran-accuse-foreign-intelligence-behind-protest-movement

18https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgzk91leweo and https://www.aa.com.tr/en/science-technology/us-sent-thousands-of-starlink-terminals-to-iran-after-january-protest-crackdown-report/382849

19https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/trump-claims-he-disagreed-with-arming-kurds-against-iran-ill-remember-that-kurds/

THE TRUMP GAZA PLAN AND IRELAND PACIFICATION

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, British imperialism, Current Affairs Comment, Guerrilla Action, History, Imperialism, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Kurdistan, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, South Africa, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4mins.)

It was great to see the Irish pacification process being referenced with regard to the Trump plan for Gaza1 because that is exactly what the latter is: a plan to pacify the Resistance while ensuring it gets none of what it fought for.2

In other words, exactly like the Irish pacification process.

(Cartoon by D.Breatnach)

Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad grew out of previous Palestinian pacification processes. The Madrid Conference (1991) and the Oslo Agreement (1993) were imperialist/ Zionist attempts to pacify the wide-scale militant Palestinian resistance period of the First Intifada.3

Fatah at that time was the leading group in numbers and influence in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (from which Islamic groups were excluded) but also in Palestinian society in general. But Fatah had agreed to recognise ‘Israel’ and also the two-state solution (sic).

In the Oslo Agreement, furthermore, the question of the return to their homeland of the refugees was left aside. It appears that the Fatah leadership had lost faith in the eventual victory of their people’s struggle and had decided to get what they could by using the struggle to bargain.

The Oslo Agreement: US Imperialism’s President Clinton oversees Yitzak Rabin, Premier of Zionist state of ‘Israel’ shaking hands with Yasser Arafat of Fatah, then leader of the PLO.

What Fatah got was Palestinian Authority control in the first elections (1996), with internal control over/ management of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza, but not of the Palestinians in Jerusalem (captured by ‘Israel’ in 1967): a far cry from a free Palestine.4

In the Algiers conference of 1988 Fatah had won majority agreement to recognise ‘Israel’ and to accept the two-state solution5 (sic), i.e. embodying a Palestinian state on 20% of Palestinian land, under the eyes and guns of their Zionist neighbour).

Fatah’s rule became known for corruption and nepotism, which then had to be protected and defended from the Palestinian masses, leading to authoritarian, repressive and often arbitrary rule. And repression of the Resistance, along with direct collusion with the ‘Israeli’ State.

Continuing ‘Israeli’ repression and settlement expansion in turn led to the Second Intifada; Fatah lost to Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections of 2006 followed by defeat of Fatah’s attempted coup in Gaza in 2007 (but the West Bank remaining under unelected Fatah control).

Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has refused to announce elections since, sitting in unelected control of the PA’s office in the West Bank, collecting the various international grants, presiding over corruption,6 repressing Palestinian resistance of deed or word and colluding with the ‘Israeli’ Occupation.

US Imperialism’s then Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine, soon after the start of the accelerated Zionist genocide in Gaza, December 2023

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE IRISH CONNECTION?

Starting with Palestine and South Africa in 1991, an imperialist pacification process spread to Ireland, Basque Country, Kurdish Turkey, Colombia, India, Philippines, Sri Lanka. With some variations the drive has been the same: to give up revolution and join the system.

One of the features of this process was the apparent need of a recognised leader to sell it to the resistance support base and to front it for the world: Arafat (Palestine), Mandela (S. Africa), Adams/McGuinness (Ireland), Ocalan (Turkish Kurdistan), Otegi (Basque Country).

The Provisional IRA was by far the major organisation in the Irish Republican resistance; it gave up armed struggle in return for vague promises and the release of its prisoners under licence.7 Another organisation complied also even as new ‘dissident’ fighters were being jailed.

Nearly 30 years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Ireland is no nearer the Provisional IRA’s declared aims Irish reunification, independence and sovereignty. The Sinn Féin party helps run the colony8 and is attempting to become part of the neo-colony’s government.

Sinn Féin representatives Tina Black (Mayor of Belfast) and Michelle O’Neill, First Minister of the British colony, laying a wreath at the British War Memorial in Belfast, July 2022 (Cred: Liam McBurney/ PA Wire)

Neither the Spanish, French nor Turkish states were interested in other than crushing the Basque and Kurdish resistance and the corresponding movements disabled themselves without getting anything in exchange other than continued repression.9

The resistance movements in parts of India and Philippines continue to resist but in Sri Lanka was wiped out.10

One feature of the spread was the contagion-like way in which leaders of one infected resistance sought to entice others to follow suit: S. Africa and Palestine to Ireland; S. Africa and Ireland to Basque Country; Ireland to Colombia (where only the FARC but not the ELN accepted it).

In only one iteration of the pacification processes was there a partial achievement of the stated aims of the resistance: South Africa got national enfranchisement but the economy remained under imperialist extractive control and its working people under repression.11

In the course of giving up armed struggle, allegedly just changing the methods, the leaders gave up what they had fought for, the very reason for which they had first come into the struggle. Of course, they could still shout the slogans, just not make them real in any way.

The Irish version (and the Basque one) decommissioned their weapons, which makes it very relevant to the Trump Plan for the Palestinian Resistance, particularly Hamas and PIJ. No resistance movement should even discuss giving up their weapons until the defeat of the enemy.

(Image sourced: Internet)

It will be interesting to see what positions the former parties of Irish and Basque resistance, Sinn Féin and EH Bildu12 and their supporters take on this US/ ‘Israeli’ plan for the Palestinian Resistance.

One of the features of the pacification process was the apparent need of a recognised leader to sell it to the resistance support base and to front it to the world: Arafat (Palestine), Mandela (S. Africa), Adams/McGuinness (Ireland), Ocalan (Turkish Kurdistan), Otegi (Basque Country).

Who will the imperialists find to play this role in Palestine?13

End.

NB: If you found this article of interest, why not register with Rebel Breeze for free, so that you will be notified by email of subsequent articles. You can de-register any time you wish.

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES

Referencing the Irish pacification process in Gaza context: https://apnews.com/article/gaza-northern-ireland-peace-process

The Palestinian Authority: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/11/what-is-the-palestinian-authority-and-how-is-it-viewed-by-palestinians

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/how-palestinian-authority-failed-its-people

1https://apnews.com/article/gaza-northern-ireland-peace-process

2Trump 20-point plan: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles

3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada

4“This mirrors Israel’s post-Oslo approach to the occupied West Bank in pacifying the population through economic incentives, avoiding political concessions, and entrenching structural dependence. This model, often dubbed “economic peace,” has transformed the Palestinian Authority (PA) into a subcontractor of occupation – flush with foreign funds, but powerless to deliver sovereignty.” https://thecradle.co/articles-id/34757

5https://ejil.org/pdfs/1/1/1136.pdf

6Which is why the imperialists and their servants keep alluding to the need for a “reformed Palestinian Authority” e.g. https://israelpolicyforum.org/blueprint-for-reforming-the-palestinian-authority

7Those released under licence could be returned to jail (and a number were) at the decision of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland without trial, hearing or details of why the individual was considered to be ‘a threat to public safety.’

8Its representative, Michelle O’Neill, is currently First Minister of the colony’s government. In the Irish State, the party has 33 TDs (MPs), only two behind the party with next largest representation, Fianna Fáil. They Party has abandoned its opposition to the repressive legislation of the State, welcomed British Royal visits to both parts of Ireland, supports recruitment to the colonial gendarmerie and its leader refused to rule out coalition with the neo-colonial political parties of membership of the British Commonwealth. https://www.thejournal.ie/mar-lou-mcdonald-commonwealth-4561600-Mar2019/

9The Basque leadership abandoned armed struggle unilaterally at the time without gaining even the end of dispersal of their jailed fighters throughout the state. The Turkish Kurdish PKK tried to make progress through political electoral means only under continuing repression. But their Syrian version of armed Kurdish forces got a new lease of life with the vulnerability of the Assad regime in Syria but ended up as a NATO proxy in the latter’s war for regime change. The PKK in Turkey very recently agreed to disarm while their Syrian part remains in difficult relationship with the new (formerly ISIS) regime in Syria and some other ISIS elements under Turkish influence.

10https://www.vice.com/en/article/death-of-a-tiger-0000710-v22n8/

11See The Marikana Massacre of striking miners by the ANC Government’s police.

12Both parties support the Two-State proposal for Palestine.

13Some liberal and social-democratic sections seem to have fixed on Marwan Marghouti in this role, which of course is no reason not to support his release on human rights grounds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6IgjlHaaIs

IS ISRAEL CAPABLE OF KEEPING TO AN AGREEMENT?

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, Palestine, peace processes, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

It’s a legitimate question in view of the Zionist state’s actions preventing aid entry and killing Palestinians every day since it signed a ceasefire agreement — but also from historical,1 cultural and perhaps even psychological standpoints.

Cartoon by D.Breatnach

Since 11 October the Israeli Occupation Force has killed 46 Palestinians Palestinians, including 11-year-old Mohammed Bajhat Al-Hallaql and injured 132 others since the ceasefire took effect. Half of the victims were children, women, and elderly people.2

Among the dead was the Abu Shaban family, completely wiped out, seven children and two women.3

As winter looms, tents and construction materials are blocked. And as sowing time for next year’s crops is here, Israel has blocked agricultural materials, including seeds, fertilizers, and solar panels from entering4 to replace the IOF-destroyed crops and greenhouses.

The IOF has also greatly restricted the number of aid trucks it allows entry, from 700 to 450 daily, which is another kind of ceasefire violation and banned key food items like meat, poultry, and livestock. And allowed just 7% of the agreed quota of 50 gas and oil trucks daily in nine days.

The latest large scale violation, as I was writing this, was its killing of more than 30 Palestinians after one of the IOF’s bulldozers ran over Israeli unexploded ordinance in Rafah, which they decided to frame on the Resistance and use as an excuse for more murder and Rafah gate closure.5

Reports have now emerged of IOF recently burning and otherwise destroying urgently-needed food aid. Which of the ceasefire negotiators or guarantors has called the IOF or the Zionist State’s leadership out over this? None, of course.

And of course too, that’s one important reason why it keeps doing it – because it can. And because none of its allies will call it to account. But perhaps also there is some kind of deep Zionist bias against sticking to agreements made.

Last Autumn, in the midst of its unsuccessful attack on South Lebanon, the IOF asked its allies to seek a ceasefire and truce with Hezbollah. Weakened by exploding pagers6 and assassination of their renowned leader Nasrallah, Hezbollah agreed to the ceasefire.

Cartoon by D.Breatnach

That was on 27 November 2024. Of course, true to form, the IOF violated the ceasefire daily, though Hezbollah kept to the terms. Not dozens or scores of violations, not hundreds … No, the IOF has committed approaching 3,000 separate violations by April this year.7

The brass neck of the Zionists sometimes exceeds belief. In the midst of their daily ceasefire violations, they are now threatening to again prevent food and medical aid entering until the Resistance complies with the ceasefire agreement.

Hamas has not delivered all the prisoner bodies, it says. But Hamas replies that it delivered all those it could access, others lying under tons of rubble, remains of buildings collapsed by IOF bombing, which is what killed the Israeli prisoners of the Resistance (probably along with their guards).

But somehow this is a reason to abandon the ceasefire! Locating the dead prisoners requires rubble-moving machinery and expert forensic help. The IOF long ago bombed all such Palestinian machinery to scrap and are not permitting its entry from any others at the moment either.

Cartoon by D.Breatnach

At the same time, the Zionists rejected two of their own forces’ bodies. One was a non-Israeli who worked for them and another a Palestinian in Israeli uniform, possibly a human shield employed or coerced by the IOF, sent into a tunnel and killed by the Resistance.8

Meanwhile, what of the estimated 2,000 Palestinian bodies held by the Zionists? As a Hamas statement said, their return is a question of human rights and law, not for negotiation. But when the few have been delivered as part of this ceasefire agreement, some have shocked their receivers.

Bodies showing hands tied behind backs and with bullet wounds … or a rope around the neck … signs of blindfolding over eyes, signs of torture … Some with tank-tread marks; all without identification, leaving a grotesque task for the Gaza administration and possible relatives.

Cartoon by D.Breatnach

And still … and still … the Zionists scream about the Resistance not fulfilling the terms of the ceasefire. I would think them to be totally beyond shame, were it not for the lies and excuses for their behaviour that they spew out into the world, which indicates a certain feeling of guilt.

Well, that is the Enemy. Not just of the Palestinians, or the Lebanese, or Syrians, or Yemenis, Iranians, Iraqis … No, they are the enemies of humanity, just as the Nazis were enemies of more than their victims and the countries they attacked.

And this Enemy is ready to resume the genocide at any time.

End.

Note: If you found this article of interest, why not register with Rebel Breeze for free, so that you will be notified by email of subsequent articles. You can de-register any time you wish.

And yet … still (Cartoon by D.Breatnach)

FOOTNOTES

1https://imeu.org/resources/resources/fact-sheet-israels-history-of-breaking-ceasefires/410

2 https://qudsnen.co/hamas-releases-full-report-on-israeli-violations-of-trumps-gaza-ceasefire/

3Ibid

4Ibid

5https://www.palestinechronicle.com/us-government-knew-hamas-was-not-behind-rafah-blast-reports/

6Yet another war-crime by the Zionist State, this time by its intelligence services.

7https://thecradle.co/articles/nearly-200-killed-in-2740-israeli-violations-of-ceasefire-with-lebanon

8https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/4th-body-handed-over-by-hamas-said-to-be-west-bank-palestinian-used-by-idf-in-gaza-as-a-human-shield/ As has been observed by some military commentators, the IOF do not go down into Resistance tunnels they find but blow them up instead. If this man was in a tunnel in IOF uniform the chance are high he was sent down by the IOF under threat (as they have done with others into a hospital or houses they suspect might be booby-trapped) or perhaps just considered ‘expendable’.

SOURCES

Gaza Government report on Israeli violations: https://qudsnen.co/hamas-releases-full-report-on-israeli-violations-of-trumps-gaza-ceasefire/

Israeli ceasefire violations in Lebanon: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/17/iran-condemns-ongoing-israeli-strikes-in-lebanon-as-ceasefire-violation

An Israeli history of ceasefire violations and breaking agreements: https://imeu.org/resources/resources/fact-sheet-israels-history-of-breaking-ceasefires/410

Israeli detention of many hundreds of Palestinian bodies: https://bylinetimes.com/2025/05/28/israel-cemeteries-of-numbers-gaza/

THE GIDEON CHARIOTS ARE HEADING FOR A CRASH

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

Even as European imperialists and imperialist client Arab states try to save the Zionist state with a proposal to disarm the Palestinian Resistance and put the quisling Palestine Authority in charge of Gaza,1 many Israeli Zionists are signalling that it’s too late.

Middle East Spectator reports that six hundred members of the ‘Commanders for Israel’s Security’ (CIS) have written a letter to President Trump urging him to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the war in Gaza due to Israel’s ‘desperate situation’ regarding ‘global legitimacy’.

The MES source is The Jerusalem Post. The ‘Commanders’ consists of former senior officials from the IDF, Mossad, and Shin Bet, which is to say the ‘Israeli’ armed forces, external and internal state intelligence services.

On the popular free-to-air Channel 12 TV, ex-general Noam Tibbon complained that ‘Israel’ was facing international isolation through its starvation of Gaza while its unsuccessful “Gideon Chariots”2 military campaign has resulted in the deaths of 50 of its soldiers.

Cartoon by D.Breatnach

Actually the Zionist army’s deaths are almost certainly under-reported3 as are the 6,145 wounded stated by the IOF, in comparison to the Defense Ministry’s Rehabilitation Division reported 18,500 soldiers and other security forces wounded with varying severity.4

In addition, seven of its soldiers took their own lives during July this year. Seventeen IOF suicides were recorded in 2023 and twenty-one in 2024 with another 17 already this year. Those figures do not include reservists taking their lives in periods after military duty.5

The IOF’s losses in damaged tanks, armoured bulldozers and personnel carriers are also high. Despite this situation, the Zionist State is also carrying out military operations in Syria and Lebanon and its leaders talk about resuming its war with Iran, which had disastrous results for ‘Israel’.

Palestinian Resistance operations of various factions occur every day, while every second day or so ‘Israeli’ media reports “a security incident” in Gaza, their coded description for a Resistance operation resulting in the death of at least one IOF soldier.

In addition to the armed resistance of Palestinians particularly in Gaza putting a strain on the armed Zionist Occupation, it has strained also the relationship between the latter and the Government coalition led by Netanyahu, as discussed on Zionist Army radio and reported by The Cradle.

IOF Army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir is quoted as saying that the Zionist army lacks clear strategic direction from the Government and that it favours a deal with Hamas allowing it to return to Gaza’s periphery as before October 8th and to ‘exhaust’ Gaza.6

As a practical alternative the IOF could occupy the whole of Gaza, which Zamir says can be done in a period of months but the ‘clearing’ of the Resistance above and below ground (in the tunnels) would take years and though he left it unsaid, would drain the IOF to cracking point.

The Resistance is fighting a long war of attrition. While the IOF can and does kill civilians in thousands it cannot operate with impunity on the ground against the Resistance fighters, despite its high technology and drones, both for surveillance and attack, in addition to artillery and air cover.

End.

Cartoon by D.Breatnach

FOOTNOTES

1https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/turkiye-eu-arab-league-16-countries-endorse-new-york-declaration-supporting-2-state-solution/3646558

2IOF Codeword for the military operation since they broke the ceasefire agreement in March this year and restored the genocidal blockade, along with bombing of residential areas and ethnic cleansing of whole districts.

3(390 soldiers reported in January since launch of its ground operation in Gaza, with 61 of those individuals falling in the last months of 2023). https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2025/01/israel-takes-stock-of-military-casualties-over-a-year-of-war.php

4https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/at-least-18-500-israeli-soldiers-injured-since-outbreak-of-gaza-war-media/3643460

5https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-suicides-tied-to-combat-trauma-internal-probes-said-to-reveal/

6What this term entails is not clear but could be a return to the conditions of constant power cuts, restriction on food entry to the minimum and heavy restrictions on entry and departure, along with regular raids in force to capture or kill Palestinians.

SOURCES

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/ex-israeli-general-says-gaza-starvation-campaign-isolated–i

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/at-least-18-500-israeli-soldiers-injured-since-outbreak-of-gaza-war-media/3643460

https://thecradle.co/articles/tensions-between-israeli-army-chief-government-reach-their-peak-report

BBC, Kneecap and the long history of censorship

On By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Censorship & Witch-hunting, Cultural Comment, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Ireland, Irish Republicanism, Israeli Zionism, Mass Media Criticism, Political Analysis, Resistance Art, Rhyming Rapping & Ranting, Song, Song in Struggle, US ImperialismLeave a comment

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh June 2015

(Reformatted entire for publishing in Rebel Breeze from article of same title in his Substack)

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

Kneecap’s music is not really my thing. I am perhaps too old, or maybe my musical tastes are more conservative. But I do love their politics and their stance on Palestine.

I don’t think much of Hezbollah, but I do think waving their flag is not a criminal offence.

The BBC think otherwise as evidenced by their decision to not broadcast Kneecaps’s performance at the Glastonbury festival. The only reason for this was their support for Palestine. There was no other reason.

Though, it didn’t work out well for the BBC as Bob Vylan who was broadcast live got the crowd to chant Death to the IDF!, one of the noblest of chants ever to be heard at Glastonbury.

But there is a long history to the BBC and other British media censoring musicians. The BBC in its statement said:

Whilst the BBC doesn’t ban artists, our plans ensure that our programming meets our editorial guidelines.

We don’t always livestream every act from the main stages and look to make an on-demand version of Kneecap’s performance available on our digital platforms, alongside more than 90 other sets.[1]

In other words, the BBC does ban artists.

The rapper trio under the band name of Kneecap (Image sourced: on line)

It is not like this is the first time they have banned some of them. Following the Bloody Sunday massacre by the British Army in Derry in 1972, Paul McCartney, penned a song titled Give Ireland Back to the Irish.[2] It was the debut single of Wings.

It was instantly banned in Britain by the BBC but managed to get to No. 16 in the British charts nonetheless and got to No. 1 in Ireland.

They banned songs that mentioned sex, even Shirley Bassie’s Burn My Candle[3] and they banned songs that were considered more political such as The Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK,[4] a song that wasn’t really political at all.

Not surprisingly they banned the then relatively unknown Heaven 17’s debut (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,[5] over concerns it might upset the then recently-elected US president Ronald Reagan.

This was a man whose government through the CIA went on to support deaths squads in Latin America and set up cocaine smuggling networks to finance them through his loyal servant Oliver North.[6] Reagan of course is referred to in the song.

Democrats are out of power
Across that great wide ocean
Reagan’s president elect
Fascist god in motion

That wasn’t the last of it either. The BBC went on to ban a song by The Police, Invisible Sun[7] because of a possible slight on the British Army contained in the lyrics and of course the official video to the song.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life
Looking at the barrel of an Armalite
I don’t want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say

I don’t want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the walls of a prison cell
I don’t ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart

The BBC would, during the 1st Gulf War ban a total of 67 songs for the duration of the war, amongst them songs by such establishment figures as Elton John whose song Act of War [8] recorded in 1985 with Millie Jackson was put on the list.

As was Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield,[9] recorded even earlier in 1983. It takes little to upset the BBC it would seem.

The former Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar criticised Keir Starmer’s call for Kneecap to be not allowed play at Glastonbury stating that

It’s not great for politicians to get into deciding which artists should be allowed to perform where or not.

To me, that’s illiberalism. Part of the whole point of art and music and literature is to be inappropriate, is to be challenging, is often to be anti-establishment,” he said.

We’ve had a situation now for quite some time in Ireland and in Europe and Britain, where politicians didn’t get into the space of saying who should be allowed to perform, who shouldn’t, what books you should be allowed to read, and I hope we don’t slip back into doing that under the guise of national security and anti-terrorism when it isn’t really about that.[10]

Varadkar tut tuts the BBC and Starmer. Sounds great, except his party and the Irish state in general does not have a great record in the matter.

The state broadcaster took an insidious approach to censorship with songs rarely being banned outright. Rather they were just not simply played on the radio station. Hint hint, nudge nudge. A very Irish way of doing things.

The Irish group The Wolfe Tones released many songs over the years about the conflict in the north of Ireland and got little to no airtime. Such was the situation that they even recorded a song about it, called Radio Toor I Li Ay (sometimes called They Don’t Play Our Songs on the Radio) [11].

The lyrics are pertinent to Kneecap and Starmer and sum up exactly what the Establishment are about.

You don’t play our songs on radio
You say they’re too political!
Who controls the mind, where’s the mind’s control?
For the music on the airwaves
Follows empty minds, those empty heads
Play songs of sex and drugs instead
Don’t tell them how it really is

Won’t MI5 look after you, control your thoughts
Feed information to your hearts and minds
To save you all from thinkin’, thinkin’, thinkin’, thinkin’

It is a fact that RTE didn’t give them much airtime and still don’t. So much so that in 2024, Derek Warfield the lead singer with the group said it was time to end the ban on them.[12] It still hasn’t happened, nor will it.

In fact, the Irish women’s football team got into trouble for singing one of their songs, Celtic Melody,[13] and were excoriated by British sports journalists, who are not renowned for their knowledge of music, politics, history or much else aside from who ran how fast and where.

Not exactly intellectual heavyweights. Nonetheless these idiots led to the Irish women’s team being eventually fined €20,000 for singing the song.[14]

The Irish singer Christy Moore found himself on the wrong end of state repression in Ireland on many occasions and his songs, like those of The Wolfe Tones were not banned per se, but they never received much airplay.

Except those that were considered to be humorous and non-political, such as Don’t Forget Your Shovel.[15] 

But other songs of his were censored on the radio without the need for an official ban, such as Ninety Miles From Dublin,[16] which was about the IRA and INLA prisoners on the Blanket and Dirty Protests in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh.

Likewise, other songs he recorded about the prisoners and later on about the Hunger Strikers equally received no airplay. There was one brief exception to this.

Patsy O’ Hara (INLA) died on hunger strike on May 21st 1981 after 61 days. His mother Peggy O’Hara was initially adamant that she would not let her son die and that when he lapsed into a coma she would intervene and give the doctors the order to break his strike with an intravenous drip.

However, in her last conversation with her son, he said to her that he was sorry they had not won and asked her to let the fight go on, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. Christy Moore wrote a song about that exchange called The Time Has Come.[17] 

It was well received and got airplay and praise. Then someone informed the ignorant and arrogant mandarins at RTE what the song was about and suddenly it got no more airplay. Listening to the song, it is obvious what it is about.

The gentle clasp that holds my hand
Must loosen and let go
Please help me through the door
Though instinct tells you no

Our vow it is eternal
And will bring you dreadful pain
But if our demands aren’t recognized
Don’t call me back again

Ironically Christy Moore would record another song that got no airplay. It was called Section 31,[18] a reference to the article of the Broadcasting Authority Act (1960) that gave the minister power to ban interviews with members of Sinn Féin and proscribed organisations such as the IRA.

But in effect it led to RTE’s scant reporting of or carrying out of few interviews that were critical of state policy on the conflict. The song explained exactly why some issues are censored.

Who are they to decide what we should hear?
Who are they to decide what we should see?
What do they think we can’t comprehend here?
What do they fear that our reaction might be, might be?

The Kneecap trio with friends at the Sundance Festival in January. (Photo sourced: RTÉ)

It is always about silencing the opposition and preventing a reaction to their repression and in this case genocide.

So back to Kneecap. They stand in a long line of artists who have put their money where their mouths are. They stand side by side with giants from other musical genres such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger who were repressed by the McCarthyite wave in the US in the 1950s.

The BBC for its part continues to be the propaganda arm of the British Empire, or what is left of it, covering up, lying about or justifying murder, massacre, torture and plunder from India to Kenya, Ireland and now Palestine.

Woody Guthrie had the words This Machine Kills Fascists carved into his guitar, a slogan that might earn him a jail sentence nowadays.

It was meant more in the sense that his music was part of the struggle against fascism, carrying political messages to workers, Dustbowl refugees and migrants.

It didn’t literally kill anyone, though in his song Ludlow Massacre,[19] Guthrie celebrated the workers taking up arms to kill the scab thugs that came to shoot them.

Scabs at the behest of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, owned by the infamous Rockefeller family murdered 26 people, mainly the wives and children of the striking miners.

However, the massacre was just one large incident, the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency had harried and harassed the striking miners, murdering them in ones and twos.

The detective agencies celebrated in comics and films were what would later become known in Latin America and elsewhere as death squads. The miners fought back and Guthrie celebrated this in his song. Resistance, including armed resistance was legitimate.

The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corners,
They did not know we had these guns,
And the Red-neck Miners mowed down these troopers,
You should have seen those poor boys run.

The press, at the time, described the striking miners as savages.

Any similarity to the current media onslaught on Palestine is not a coincidence, it shows the class interests of the media moguls and the western states. Working class people, foreign resistance movements will always be savages to the media.

And the use of armed masked thugs by the state is not new either. Before ICE, there were the detective agencies. Most of the dead at Ludlow were migrant workers. The final death toll according to Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the US was sixty six men women and children.

Kneecap have contributed to the fight against fascism and Bob Vylan’s chant Death to the IDF! should be on everyone’s lips. There is no reforming the IDF, just like there was no reforming Hitler’s SS. Only the complete destruction of the IDF will bring any change.

Can their music, like Guthrie’s be said to kill fascists? I don’t know, time will tell, but from the reception they got at Glastonbury it is looking good.[20] What I do know is Keir Starmer and Trump finance fascists.

Starmer like a fascist wants to ban Palestine Action. The BBC covers up for fascists, praises them and censors those who stand up to fascists. I know who is on the right side of history.

End.

NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com

NOTES

[1] The Guardian (28/06/2025) Kneecap’s Glastonbury set Will not be broadcast live, BBC confirms. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jun/28/kneecap-glastonbury-set-will-not-be-broadcast-live-bbc-confirms

[2] See Wings: Wild Life – Give Ireland Back To The Irish

[3] See

[4] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q31WY0Aobro&list=RDq31WY0Aobro&start_radio=1

[5] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV5dbcOmw6I&list=RDlV5dbcOmw6I&start_radio=1

[6] Jacobin (12/11/2021) What We Really Know About the CIA and Crack. Daniel Finn. https://jacobin.com/2021/11/what-we-really-know-about-the-cia-and-crack

[7] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VuDjJ9KIxM&list=RD1VuDjJ9KIxM&start_radio=1

[8] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKbuDkueGek&list=RDvKbuDkueGek&start_radio=1

[9] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGVZOLV9SPo&list=RDIGVZOLV9SPo&start_radio=1

[10] The Journal (27/06/2025) Varadkar on Kneecap row: Terrorism is bombs and guns, not music. https://www.thejournal.ie/varadkar-on-kneecap-row-terrorism-is-bombs-and-guns-not-music-6745000-Jun2025/

[11] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtsxQaXdflU&list=RDjtsxQaXdflU&start_radio=1

[12] Newstalk (11/09/2024) ‘Systemic ban’ on The Wolfe Tones should be lifted – Warfield. Jack Quann. https://www.newstalk.com/news/systemic-ban-on-the-wolfe-tones-should-be-lifted-warfield-1764007

[13] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgWeD7tHhaE

[14] Sky News (08/12/2022) Ireland women footballers fined €20,000 for singing song referencing IRA in World Cup celebration. https://news.sky.com/story/ireland-women-footballers-fined-20-000-for-singing-song-referencing-ira-in-world-cup-celebration-12764012

[15] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV9c0OnekvM&list=RDrV9c0OnekvM&start_radio=

[16] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q98EcxrOr6w&list=RDQ98EcxrOr6w&start_radio=1

[17] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7wJsDx2qg&list=RD6E7wJsDx2qg&start_radio=1

[18] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m19Pc-b7EBc

[19] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDd64suDz1A&list=RDXDd64suDz1A&start_radio=1

[20] See https://www.instagram.com/reel/DLdeW1sI2A-/?igsh=YnJqeDd0bm1obzdi

IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE, THOUSANDS MARCH IN BASQUE CITIES

On By rebelbreezeIn Basque Country, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Euskal Herria, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, ZionismLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Thousands marched recently in two cities of the Basque Country, Bilbo and Iruña/ Pamplona,1 respectively the capitals of the Bizkaia and Nafarroa2 provinces, in solidarity with the Palestinian people and with their Resistance.

And almost immediately posters could be seen calling for the same on the 11th November, but in four Basque cities, including a city in one of the provinces on the French state’s side.3

“Well that’s great but sure we do that here every second week or so,” some might say. But they’d be wrong. The marches organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, while calling for solidarity with the Palestinians and BDS4 of the ‘Israeli’ state and businesses, do not support the Resistance.

The rally stage at the end of the march in Bilbao, on the east bank of the Nervion river. Banner exalting the Resistance in the centre facing the crowd, banner to the left calling for solidarity with the Resistance and another to the right calling for struggle against ‘Israel’. (Photo cred: Resumen Latinamericano)

Nor do the marches organised by the main Palestine solidarity organisations in England or in Scotland. It might be pleaded that in the UK at least, people could be arrested for declaring support for a number of Palestinian resistance organisations that are on the EU “terrorist” list.5

The leadership of the Basque Patriotic Left6 does not support the resistance either, preferring to draw the Palestinians and Basques together as victims under a Gernika-Gaza initiative and even criticising the resistance along with the Zionists in a “both sides” kind of analysis.

But no law exists in these countries forbidding expression of “solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance.” The organisers of those campaign organisations don’t declare for the Resistance because a) they don’t support it or b) wish to remain tolerated by the upholders of the status quo.

View of section of the crowd, giving an idea of its size, the largest Palestine solidarity demonstration in the Basque Country since the present phase of Zionist genocide began on 8th October last year. (Photo cred: Resumen Latinamericano).

IT MATTERS

Well, ok, but does it really matter? Yes, it does and it matters a lot, for the Palestinians, for others struggling against imperialism elsewhere around the world – and for us. Not supporting the Resistance leaves open the question of, for example, the Palestinian Authority.

This Vichy-like organisation headed by a corrupt Quisling sends its security force to intimidate and beat up critics and demonstrators, to arrest them and also Resistance fighters (including invading hospitals to chase down the wounded) and removes defences against IOF invasion.

The PA, despite its widely-acknowledge corruption and the contempt in which it is held by broad Palestinian society, is formally recognised as the ‘representative of the Palestinian people’ by the western imperialists and by many social-democratic parties in Europe.

It is an offence against the Palestinian people and internationalist solidarity to accept the PA as any kind of representation of the heroic Palestinian people – or even to leave the question open. Furthermore, such a stance leaves the door open to all kinds of traitors and confusion.

In our own struggles, we need to be clear who are our enemies and friends. To accept treasonous agencies as representatives of struggling people contaminates our own attitudes in struggle, confuses and undermines our thinking, clouding our vision.

A woman holds high a placard calling to “Free Palestine” and to “Boycott Israel.” (Photo sourced: Internet)

BEING CLEAR AND MAKING IT CLEAR

We need to be clear – and to make it clear – that we support the Palestinian resistance in all its forms: popular, armed, trade unionist, cultural, artistic … and that we abhor collaboration and collusion with the enemy.

We can do that – and it has been done on occasion – by mobilising all who agree on a demo behind a banner celebrating the Palestinian Resistance. But how much better, if like the Basques today in Bilbao and in Iruña/ Pamplona, the whole demonstration marched behind that kind of slogan!

It might be thought that the demonstrations on 5th October would gather less than the safer Gernika-Gaza group of the official leadership of the Left Basque Patriotic movement (Otegi & co.) and other liberals but this was not the case in Bilbo anyway, on the biggest solidarity demonstration since October last year.

Advance posters for the solidarity march. (Photo sourced: Internet)

Two Palestinian Resistance factions, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine sent messages of thanks to the organisers and the demonstrators.

The demonstration and its theme were covered widely in Basque, Spanish, European and Latin American media, usually with photos.

Addressing the rally after the march in Bilbo on 5th October, a speaker listed the many crimes of the Zionist State and was loudly cheered when she said that only the abolition of that state could bring that career of genocidal crimes to an end.

The cheers grew louder still as she called for solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and all others fighting against imperialism and Zionism. And continued as she went on to call for a break with all states and political parties that support the Zionist State.7

The cheers might even have reached EH Bildu’s office and the leadership of the Gernika-Gaza group.

The march on its way to the rally across the river pauses on the way for photos. The long banner calls for “Support for the Palestinian Resistance” but also ” Oppose Israel and its accomplices.”(Photo cred: Boltxe)

End.

FOOTNOTES

1A number of places with Basque toponymics, under Spanish colonialism, were given Spanish names.

2Also known as ‘Navarre’ and ‘Navarra’.

3There are seven provinces in the Basque Country, three on the French side of the Border (Iparralde, ‘the North Country’) and four on the Spanish side (Hegoalde, ‘the South Country’).

4Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

5https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror-groups-or-organisations–2/proscribed-terrorist-groups-or-organisations-accessible-version There is actually no universally agreed definition of ‘terrorism’ neither in objectives nor in actions but if we were to accept “use of violence to achieve a political end” then we’d had to include the chief actors fitting that definition in the world – the western imperialist states, in particular the USA and the UK!

6That was the broad movement of legal and banned organisations of revolutionary Left and independentist outlook, the movement now reformist, much reduced and fragmented under the leadership of Arnaldo Otegi and the EH Bildu party.

7That clearly includes the conservative Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) currently in coalition government in the Basque Autonomous Regional Government.

SOURCES

Orga­ni­za­cio­nes de la resis­ten­cia pales­ti­na envían men­sa­jes de soli­da­ri­dad a mani­fes­ta­ción cele­bra­da en Bil­bao el 5 de octubre
Palestina. Exigen en todo el mundo el cese del genocidio israelí / Miles de manifestantes en numerosos países apoyan la Resistencia al ocupante sionista

FUNERAL OF ZIONISM HELD IN DUBLIN – ITS COFFIN DUMPED IN THE RIVER

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Event Report, Guerrilla Action, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Palestine, Song, Song in Struggle, US Imperialism, ZionismLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

Scores of people participated in a symbolic ‘funeral of Zionism’ on Monday evening (7th October) in Dublin’s city centre. In front of the James Connolly monument1 and near a mock coffin of ‘Zionism’, they listened to a song and short speeches.

This was followed by a march carrying the ‘coffin’ through city centre streets to O’Connell Bridge, where it was dumped in the Liffey river.

The ethnic composition of the mostly young mixed-gender crowd, by appearance and accent, seemed to be a mixture of Irish and Middle Eastern origin.

The chairperson of the event recalled that a year had passed since the heroic action from Gaza of October 7th and the events that followed, all being gathered there at the James Connolly memorial to hold a funeral for Zionism, the ideology of settler colonialism and genocide.

The first contribution was from a man introduced as Seán Óg with a song of his own composition, three verses rendered acapella in fine voice to the air of two well-known Irish patriotic ballads, Men of the West/ Fir an Iarthair and The Boys of Killmichael.2

The audience began to pick up and join in the chorus lines:

So here’s to the boys of Gaza,
Jenin, Nablus and Hebron,
Who fought ‘neath the brave flag of Palestine
and sent the Settlers on.

Section of crowd at event listening to speeches, viewed facing north-eastwards. (Photo: R. Breeze)

Two speakers followed, pointing out the unanimity of imperialism nowadays in supporting Zionism as distinct from the 1950s and the importance of struggles such as that in Palestine to our own in Ireland, of internationalist solidarity and the need for that solidarity to be for the Resistance.

One speaker interspersed his words in English with some phrases in Irish and recalled the protest against the 1897 visit of the British Queen Victoria which saw James Connolly and Constance Markievicz leading a funeral cortège through the streets bearing a coffin for British Imperialism.

Though a ‘funeral’ for British Imperialism might’ve seemed only aspirational in 1897, the speaker said, signs of its decline were there to be seen for the educated, the intelligent and those who wished to see them — and before two decades elapsed it had received a major challenge.

(Photo: R. Breeze)

It survived that challenge of the First World War victorious but weakened and the embers of revolt were burning around its Empire. Before two decades after that funeral march, the torch of freedom had been lit in Dublin,3 the first uprising against world war of that century anywhere in the world.

The speaker went on to recall the subsequent War of Independence in Ireland three years later and remarked that had it not been for some Irish failures in unity and resolution that British Imperialism might have been given its mortal blow then in Ireland.

Subsequently British Imperialism survived by serving as a subject ally to US Imperialism. “Zionism is a rotten tree”, he said, “planted in Palestine by British Imperialism and nurtured by US Imperialism. Even so, Zionism is damaging its very fosterers and we welcome that.”

“Rotten trees don’t fall on their own,” the speaker continued. Trees that are rotten inside may seem healthy on the outside but when a strong storm comes along, they are knocked down. It is then we can easily see the rot inside them that we may not have noticed before.

Storms are now breaking out around the world, he said. We can and need to play our own part in those storms, “to knock down the rotten tree of Zionism and go on to demolish the whole rotten evil forest of imperialism.”

Section of crowd listening to speeches at the event, photo taken facing south-eastwards. (Photo: R. Breeze)

After applause some chants were led, among them: From Ireland to Palestine – Occupation is a crime! Saoirse don-Phalaistín! There is only one solution – Intifada revolution! From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free! Resistance is an obligation – in the face of Occupation!

The attendance then took to the street, carrying the coffin and flying Irish and national flags of Palestine along with those of factions of the Resistance, also Hezbollah’s and Lebanon’s, continuing the chants as they marched up lower Abbey Street,4 then turning left along O’Connell Street.

Along the way, some bystanders cheered and a man leaned out of a delivery van to shout encouragement with clenched fist in the air.

On O’Connell Bridge, after a few words, the ‘coffin’ containing ‘Zionism’ was pushed over the parapet into the river Liffey, to cheers, which then changed to cycling through the accustomed solidarity chants.

The ‘coffin’ is on the Bridge parapet (left of photo) and about to be dumped into the river Liffey. (Photo: R. Breeze)

There were three external interventions.

A known Irish Zionist who regularly tries to harass Palestinian solidarity participants appeared at the outset in attempted intimidation of an activist but was quickly discouraged from doing so. At the Bridge, a person under the influence of alcohol and shouting confusedly was calmed by activists.

Break the Chains of Zionism banner next to James Connolly Monument (Photo: R. Breeze)

A Garda patrol car crew whose political undercover colleagues had clearly overlooked keeping informed drew up at the Bridge bemusedly during the chanting and, after attempting to gain some information as to events, left again – as did the participants soon afterwards.

The event was organised by Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland and Saoirse Don Phalaistín, the former’s Facebook page having been taken down by Meta while the event was being organised but the groups may be followed on Instagram and Twitter.

End.

Footnotes

1The location of this fine monument is in Beresford Place, across from the site of the original Liberty Hall, home of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union which Connolly led after Jim Larkin departed for the USA at the end of the 1913 Dublin Lockout. The site is now occupied a multi-storey building of SIPTU.

2The first is about the last major engagements of the 1798 Republican uprising, when a relatively small French force landed in Co. Mayo and was joined by Irish Republican insurgents; the second celebrates the IRA ambush of a column of the Auxiliary Regiment in West Cork, wiping it out almost to the last British terrorist.

3The 1916 Rising.

4Until they reached O’Connell Street they were following in the footsteps of the GPO Garrison on Easter Monday, 1916 and passed by a number of historical political and artistic locations of 1848 and of the early 20th Century.

EXCLUSION OF ISLAMISTS FROM THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANISATION ENDING

On By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, PalestineLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time article: 5 mins.)

The historic exclusion from the Palestine Liberation Organisation of Islamist resistance organisation is ending. In a conference taking place currently in Beijing, two secular resistance organisations called for the Islamists’ inclusion in the PLO.

That news came earlier in the day from Resistance News Network (on Telegram) and much later, from the same source, the news of an agreement (see Appendix) of all on forming a consensus resistance government – but no mention of opening the PLO to the Islamist groups.

Participants in the Palestine Resistance Unity Conference in Beijing days ago. (Photo sourced: Internet)

The PLO has been internationally recognised as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people but it was dominated by Arafat’s Fatah, which became a corrupt organisation colluding with the Occupation and with US Imperialism.

This morning some of the published contents of the agreement1 leaked to the media, were disputed in statements from Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Ihsan Ataya2 and Hussam Badran of Hamas,3 in particular in reference to UN resolutions which contained a recognition of the state of ‘Israel’.

Reading between the lines one suspects an attempt to bring in false elements of agreement with elements of collusion with the entity and/or undermining and sabotaging any agreement at all. In any such manoeuvres, due to past behaviour first suspicion must fall on the Fatah leadership.4

If no agreement was reached on enlarged PLO membership, then given the statements of the PFLP and the DFLP, one must assume that the Fatah leadership vetoed that decision. In agreeing to a consensus government then one must also suspect the Fatah leadership of playing for time.

The Western Left and the Palestinian Resistance

A decision on opening the PLO has been coming for some time but will not be welcomed by some groups in the West. Islamist resistance organisations hold a number of socio-political ideological positions that are in opposition to the socialist or even secular positions held in Left circles.

Palestinian militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in parade in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on April 29, 2014. (Photo cred: Abed Deb /Pacific Press Credit: PACIFIC PRESS/Alamy Live News)

In those sectors of the Western Left, most support was divided among Fatah, the leading faction in the PLO, or for the Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine, its second organisation in size there, with some supporting the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

With regard to the first, the ability of organisations claiming to be revolutionary or even just democratically socialist to support a leadership founding the Palestine Authority as a Vichy-type government run by the corrupt Quisling Abbas has been astonishing and also revolting.

While the PA and Fatah leadership engage in active collusion, a military section of Fatah has broken away and is part of the active armed resistance to the Occupation,5 though overshadowed in quantity and effect by the operations of the Islamist groups.

Two Islamic Jihad fighters (Photo sourced: Internet)

Need for Unity but Not a Simple Thing to Achieve

There is clearly a need for a unified resistance in terms of military operations but also with regard to political position. How far is the resistance to go? What are to be its objectives beyond defeating the current genocidal campaign? Who will run the territory and how will that be decided?

And of course, what is the national territory to be claimed: historic Palestine? Or the territory as it stood prior to the 1967 War? Into that question comes the other: a unitary secular state of the whole of Palestine, or 20% of the national territory under sight and guns of the larger Occupation state?

According to reports from Resistance News Network two secular organisations, PFLP and DFLP have already laid out their initial positions and both called for the inclusion in the PLO of the Islamist organisations Hamas and ICJ, along with the formation of an interim unity government.

This is a demand made in the past by Hamas and the ICJ also. Should all 14 organisations participating agree, there will remain a long road ahead of them. The Fatah leadership is wedded to Western imperialism and is likely to face rejection in elections, even more than it did in 2006.

Western imperialism and of course the Israeli settler regime don’t want a united Palestinian national resistance.

The fact is that not only are the Islamist organisations doing most of the fighting against the ‘Israeli’ Occupation’s genocidal campaign but there are more of them and they generally acknowledge the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who have also been careful to consult them.

It was the latter two that organised and led the October 7th breakout from the Gaza ‘concentration camp’ into Palestinian territory seized and occupied by the settler regime, though resistance operations immediately afterwards were coordinated by the Joint Operations Room.

Hamas is not only the major leader in terms of military resistance, it is also a political organisation and was the electoral choice of the Palestinian people in the 2006 elections, the result of which was repudiated by the Fatah leadership and by the Western powers.

In addition, while the Palestinian secular Leftists have few external allies, those of the Islamist Palestinian resistance are active and powerful: Hizbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Islamic Resistancein Iraq,6 Ansar Allah in Yemen7 and the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

All of those with the exception of Iran are in constant action against the ‘Israeli’ Occupation and Iran has shown its capacity to flood ‘Israel’s’ air defence systems and, despite Western allies’ air force operations, to strike three military bases of its choice in occupied territory.

Yemen, in addition to its effective interdiction in three seas of shipping allied to the genocidal entity, last week slipped an explosive drone into Tel Aviv without even setting off alarms. The IOF bombed its oil tanks and electricity generator in revenge but this contest is far from over.

Hizbollah developed missiles capable of striking anywhere inside territory occupied by ‘Israel’ and has displayed detailed footage captured by their undetected drone over ‘Israel’s’ claimed territory comprehensively detailing military, industrial and civilian infrastructure.

In the event of the creation of a genuine national independent Palestinian state, it will not be socialist, at least initially — but will it be secular or Islamic in law? In the case of the latter, what will be the fate of the secular resistance sector?

In 2007 Hamas dealt harshly with Fatah forces in Gaza but that was after months of the Fatah administration refusing to relinquish control in line with the 2006 election results and also, no doubt, in recognition of the PA’s collusion with imperialism and the Occupation.

And will Shia and Sunni sections of the Islamist sector find a long-lasting accommodation? Come to that, will the secular organisations agree with one another? Apart from the collusive role of Fatah, in their statement the DFLP supported a two-State solution which the PFLP does not.

Mass demonstration of unity of different Palestinian resistance organisations (Source photo: Internet)

These questions will be answered by events yet to come and of course the right to decide on them belongs to the Palestinians. The Left in Palestine and outside will need to find a way to accommodate themselves to the results and continue to oppose imperialism and Zionism.

The defeat of the genocidal state of ‘Israel’ will be a huge boon to humanity, a significant damage to western imperialism (in that also a huge great boon to the world) and a huge achievement of the heroic resistance, armed and unarmed, of the Palestinian people.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1See Appendix

2Head of Arab and International Relations, statement to Al Mayadeen, summarised in Resistance News Network. Excerpt:

3Head of the National Relations Office in the Hamas movement and a member of its political bureau, in press statement summarised in Resistance News Network. Excerpt: Some points that implicitly and explicitly recognize the naming of UN resolutions that include recognition of “israel” have been amended. The Palestinian political leadership must realize that all negotiations with the occupation forces have failed. The guarantee of implementing the clauses of the “Beijing Declaration” lies in the hands of the Palestinians themselves. The dialogue in Beijing took place in two sessions, and after drafting the statement, there were objections to a number of its contents, and our position was clear. The final reading of the statement was supposed to take place before its approval, but due to the limited time, it was based on what the committee drafted. We passed the statement with our implicit reservations to thwart those who wanted to sabotage this meeting.

4The possibility of collusion in such manoeuvres by the DFLP cannot be excluded, given its position (reiterated in its opening statement to the Beijing Conference, as published by RNN) of claiming Palestinian land on the basis of pre-1967 War only, thereby accepting the State of Israel and its occupation of most of Palestine.

5I have not seen a full list of the represented organisations at the Beijing conference and therefore am unable to say whether they were there. They have been mostly fighting the Occupation in the West Bank and two of their field commanders were martyred yesterday in Tulkarem alongside a commander of Hamas forces by an IOF drone strike during the battle there.

6This coalition recently decided to end its truce in attack on US military bases in Iraq as a result of the long delay by the US in carrying out their agreed departure.

7In effect the government of Yemen, though the Western powers recognise only their proxy, a government in exile.

REFERENCES & SOURCES

Number of postings by Resistance News Network (on Telegram platform) yesterday and today.

https://ecfr.eu/special/mapping_palestinian_politics/plo_parties/

https://ecfr.eu/special/mapping_palestinian_politics/introduction_armed_groups/ (RNN gives a more comprehensive list and more detailed explanation but the link is for Telegram only)

APPENDIX

🚨🇵🇸 “The Beijing Declaration to End Palestinian National Division: To unify national efforts to confront aggression and stop the genocide war.”

The following was agreed upon by 14 Palestinian factions at the end of the reconciliation meeting in Beijing, China (https://t.me/PalestineResist/49595) today, including Hamas, PIJ, PFLP, DFLP, and Fatah:

– The Palestinian factions welcome the opinion (https://t.me/PalestineResist/49245) of the International Court of Justice, which confirmed the illegality of presence, occupation, and settlement.

– Continuing to follow up on the implementation of the agreements to end the division that took place with the help of Egypt, Algeria, China, and Russia.

– Commitment to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Al-Quds in accordance with international resolutions, especially 181 and 2334, and ensuring the right of return.

– We affirm the right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation and end it in accordance with international laws, the UN Charter, and the right of peoples to self-determination.

– To form a temporary national unity government with the consensus of Palestinian factions and by a decision of the president based on the Palestinian Basic Law.

– The formed government exercises its powers and authorities over all Palestinian territories, confirming the unity of the West Bank, Al-Quds, and the Gaza Strip.

– To resist and thwart attempts to displace our people from their homeland, especially from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Al-Quds.

– Working to lift the barbaric siege on our people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and deliver humanitarian and medial aid without restriction or condition.