We wish to thank Joe Brolly for posting this image on his twitter feed :

Joe Brolly is tirelessly promoting the cause of the Palestinian people.

Readers familiar with political parties based in the six county state in the north of Ireland may be rubbing their eyes in disbelief – is it really possible that the SDLP is taking a stand on this issue, agreeing with most people on the Irish left, and against the Sinn Féin party? The answer is Yes.

The article below puts a remarkable story in context :

Would Mary Lou McDonald dare to please the Sinn Féin faithful by snubbing Joe Biden over Gaza?

The party’s staunch support for Palestine is causing republicans conflict over whether she should meet Israel’s key backer on St Patrick’s Day at the White House

Sam McBride, The Belfast Telegraph

Link :

Would Mary Lou McDonald dare to please the Sinn Féin faithful by snubbing Joe Biden over Gaza?

Sinn Féin is facing an awkward decision that will demonstrate how much it’s prepared to annoy its base in pursuit of greater power. How Mary Lou McDonald handles the next seven weeks will reveal how far she is prepared to bend to win the next election.

As St Patrick’s Day approaches, Sinn Féin is preparing to fly to Washington, DC. The flights and hotels are probably already booked. Those who will be present when McDonald clasps Joe Biden’s hand have probably already been chosen. But not every republican is happy about what’s set to happen because they believe that Biden’s hands are dripping with Palestinian blood.

Sinn Féin regards what’s happening in Gaza as an epoch-defining genocide. It has long ties to the Palestinian people and not so long ago the party was comfortable in the presence of senior Hamas figures. My inbox is brimming with years of Sinn Féin statements about Palestine. No one with any knowledge of republicanism can doubt where Sinn Féin’s sympathies lie.

Nor can any fair-minded person doubt the sincerity of Sinn Féin’s views on this issue. And it’s for that reason its approach now is so revealing. If this is how New Sinn Féin handles an issue about which it cares so passionately, then it’s indicative of how we can expect less emotive issues to be dealt with.

Irish recognition of America’s importance long precedes the Republic. It was in America that the Fenian Brotherhood was founded almost 60 years before the Easter Rising. As Britain’s empire declined and America’s rose, shrewd republicans could see the potential power of such an ally, whose inhabitants’ ancestors had in many cases left Irish shores.

Getting access to the White House in the 1990s was a critical step in Gerry Adams’s path from defending violence to defending the rejection of violence. Respectability in America brought wealth from US donors and credibility at home. Having been hard-won, the party is reluctant to cast that position aside.​

But many Sinn Féin supporters are queasy about what now looms. As Israel pulverises Gaza with little concern for world opinion, it is US president Biden who is sending Benjamin Netanyahu the missiles the latter is raining down on Gazan civilians. This US president’s support for Israel is far more enthusiastic than transactional.

That’s awkward for Sinn Féin because Biden has been a uniquely pro-Irish president whose support during Brexit has been important to ensuring the “Brexit border” ended up in the Irish Sea.

The party boasted of its influence with Irish-Americans over Brexit yet there’s scant evidence of the same ­effort being made to lobby the powerful on behalf of the powerless.

Opinion in Ireland — and particularly on the left — is hardening. Bernadette McAliskey — who as a young MP in 1972 slapped the face of Reginald Maudling, then Conservative Home Secretary, in the House of Commons after he denied the reality of Bloody Sunday — recently asked: “Who in their right mind would go to America and hand the bastard a bunch of fecking shamrocks?”

Writing in rebelnews.ie last week, Somhairle Mag Uidhir described Irish involvement in the festivities with Biden as “the organised Paddy-washing of this warmonger”. Highlighting Sinn Féin’s role as “the elephant in the room”, he asked: “How could anyone who has a single moral fibre remaining in their body grin as they pass shamrocks to genocidalist-in-chief, Joe Biden?”

People Before Profit are particularly vocal in denouncing what it portrays as Sinn Féin’s cravenness to US power.

Even some of those who once lauded Biden are now turning on him ferociously. Joe Brolly, who just months earlier was referring to “the wonderful Joe Biden” and who dined with the US president last year, is now savaging him, describing the idea that Biden has been privately urging Israeli restraint as “b*****ks”.

All of this messes with Sinn Féin’s plan to mop up the left-wing and anti-establishment vote. Already, the rise of migration as a political issue has seen Sinn Féin harden its rhetoric to fend off slippage to more radical figures.

Given public sentiment, McDonald could seek to embarrass Leo Varadkar by doing what no other Irish leader would dare to do. But if she’s serious about being taoiseach, she’ll know that office will involve meeting many people she despises; a precedent now could be a problem later. It would also jolt some of Sinn Féin’s United States backers who don’t share its view of the Middle East.

Thus far, Sinn Féin isn’t even discussing the possibility of snubbing Biden. Last month McDonald said: “I think you need to be very careful about any idea of boycotting, the Irish relationship with the United States is a very long standing one, a very valuable one, on many, many dimensions.”​

Sinn Féin wasn’t always so opposed to boycotts. Just five years ago, in circumstances involving a fraction of the deaths now unfolding in Gaza, the party called for the Irish government to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest because it was staged in Israel. A song contest’s organisers can hardly influence war, but Biden can — yet boycott of him is now unthinkable.

Last week, Michelle O’Neill emphasised there will be no boycott, insisting: “We are going to the US in pursuit of peace.”

The realpolitik is that Sinn Féin’s influence here is scant. Brolly, who is married to a third cousin of Biden and last year described himself as part of the president’s “inner circle”, has spent months publicly pleading for change. He wept on his podcast and told Biden: “You should be ashamed of yourself.” If Biden even noticed, it made no difference.

But politics isn’t just about succeeding; it’s about doing the right thing. For many republicans, the right thing here is to draw maximum attention to Gaza’s plight and create maximum embarrassment for the US.

The party looks determined to go to Washington DC — but the handshake photo is likely to be given more prominence in the literature of Sinn Féin’s rivals than in its own.