Archive for the ‘Israel’ Category
Why Ukrainians should support Palestinians – Daria Saburova
We thank Dick Nichols for drawing our attention to this article.
Source : Open Democracy https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-israel-palestine-russia-zelenskyi-hamas-gaza-offensive/
Why Ukrainians should support Palestinians
How can we look at images of Gaza and not see Mariupol or Bakhmut?
(c) Mahmoud Khaled/Getty Images. All rights reserved
As Israel’s assault on Palestine continues, apparent similarities with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine grow. Israel’s “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip – cutting off water, electricity and food to more than two million inhabitants – echoes Russia’s intentional destruction of our energy infrastructure last winter. This, among other things, earned Russia the label of a “terrorist state” among Ukrainians.
From the moment an evacuation order for northern Gaza’s 1.1 million inhabitants was announced, Ukrainians must have known it would expose the most vulnerable – the elderly and sick – to certain death. We know that when people have no viable alternatives, they often prefer to stay.
The images of widespread devastation that reach us from Gaza, which suggest the Israeli army’s disregard for international humanitarian law, also resemble those from Mariupol or Bakhmut last year. Israel – like Russia in Ukraine – has been accused of bombing residential areas, evacuation corridors and the only exit point from the city, Rafah.
Of course, Hamas’s brutal attacks on civilians in Israeli kibbutzim also appear similar to Russia’s massacres in Bucha in March 2022. It is only right that these were condemned by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyi and the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. But their messages of support for victims and their families were accompanied by problematic assertions, including Zelenskyi’s truly catastrophic conclusion that Israel has the unconditional right to defend itself.
Read the rest of this entry »Al Jazeera Investigates Israeli Claims that Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital was “the result of a rocket misfire from Palestinian Islamic Jihad”
The vast majority of people, the world over, have concluded that the Israeli Defence Forces are the most likely culprits for the destruction of Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital. All credible evidence drives reasonable people to this conclusion. Al Jazeera has investigated. The story is below. This will continue.
Personally I recall British state claims about Derry’s Bloody Sunday in 1972. The vast majority of people in Ireland disbelieved this propaganda. A few days later a general strike spread across Ireland like wildfire, the British Embassy in Dublin was burned to the ground. Not many hesitated saying “let’s wait for an inquiry funded by the British government when the Westminster Prime Minister will apologize”.
Read the rest of this entry »Bono and The Edge pocket millions from deal with Israeli bank – Electronic Intifada
We thank Roland Rance for drawing our attention to a sordid story
Source : https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/david-cronin/bono-and-edge-pocket-millions-deal-israeli-bank
Bono and The Edge pocket millions from deal with Israeli bank
David Cronin Rights and Accountability 19 October 2023
Bono preaches about peace while doing business with a bank profiting from war crimes. (Via Twitter)
A bank enabling Israel’s war crimes has issued a major loan for the purchase of a Dublin hotel owned by Bono and The Edge from the rock band U2.
The loan – worth more than $45 million – was announced this week at a time when the death toll resulting from Israel’s latest bombardment of Gaza is rising rapidly.
The deal means that U2 – a group that constantly preaches about peace and nonviolence – is now tangled up with a bank profiting from Israel’s violations of international law.
Read the rest of this entry »The Israeli Defence Forces Blew Up that Hospital – October 18 2023
James Doyle writes :
The IDF blew up that hospital. The fact that they’re now lying about is just insulting to everyone’s intelligence. Netanyahu is a war criminal. Of course, he has been for 15 years now, but this is genocidal.
Steve Bell, for 40 years, has drawn brilliant cartoons for the British newspaper, the Guardian, which has banned this image from its site :
The British Guardian has sacked Steve Bell.
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/nationals/guardian-steve-bell-cartoons-sacked-israel/
The Israeli Defence Forces have form on incidents like this :
Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan noted that some observers have questioned Israel’s version of events, with some pointing to Israel’s history of falsely attributing acts carried out by its own forces to armed Palestinian groups.
Read the rest of this entry »Genocide in Gaza, Palestine; Genocide in Ukraine – Good Bad and Ugly Statements from the Left in Ireland
Hypocrisy is shared by many political actors on the left and the right. We witness genocide against the Palestine people and genocide against the Ukrainian people. It is the job of the left to practice critical solidarity in each case. Ukraine’s political leader (Zelenskyy) is not left-wing. Palestine’s political leadership in Gaza is anti-left (Hamas). Resistance has to be enabled. Many on the left have a blind spot on this issue. In the case of Ukraine we must prevent the creation of a Palestine/Gaza in Europe by backing armed resistance against Putin’s genocidal invasion.
We present a meme and a counter-meme.
Spot the Inconsistency No.1 :
Spot the Inconsistency Number 2 :
Holly Cairns TD (Social Democrats Leader, Cork South-West) spoke in the Dáil (the Irish parliament) on this issue on October 12 2023. She got it right.
John Meehan October 13 2023
David Versus Goliath in Palestine : “A primitive, ancient bulldozer can overcome even the most complex and expensive obstacles”
We wish to thank John Goodwillie for drawing this article to our attention.
Article by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. , key columnist of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and one of the strongest antiwar voices in Israel.
“Since 1948, Israel has been punishing Gaza. Yesterday Israel saw images he did not expect in his life, because of his arrogance.
Behind all that has happened, the Israeli arrogance remains unchanged. We thought we were allowed to do anything, that we would never pay a price or be punished for it. Yet we continue on going strong We arrest, kill, mistreat, rob, protect in the massacres committed by our settlers, visit Joseph’s tomb, Othniel’s tomb and Yeshua’s altar, all on Palestinian territory, and of course we visit Temple Mount -more than 5,000 Jews visited the throne. We shoot innocent people, poke their eyes out and crush their faces, deport them, seize their lands, loot them, kidnap them from their beds and carry out genocide. We also continue the unjustified siege of Gaza, and we think everything will be fine.
Read the rest of this entry »Current positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (ESSF) has published a number of statements about the Israeli-Palestine conflict from across the globe. In addition we publish a letter which appeared in the October 11 2023 edition of the Irish Times, and solidarity statements issued by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and the SIPTU Global Solidarity Committee.
Israeli Apartheid Must Be Dismantled
Sir, – Michael Jansen (“Hamas attack on Israel followed years of containment and dire poverty in Gaza”, World, October 9th) rightly notes that the attack on Israel by Hamas was inevitable. Gaza has been under siege and blockade for 16 years, with 60 per cent of its people living in poverty, and tens of thousands suffering from post-traumatic stress after suffering four full-scale Israeli military attacks between 2008 and 2021. When people protested at the Gaza fence in the Great March of Return, they were met by snipers’ bullets.
The response of the Israeli government to the Hamas attack in recent days is shocking. It intends to punish the civilian population of Gaza, in knowing breach by a government of international law.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has ordered a total siege on Gaza. “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, it’s all closed. We are fighting against human animals,” he said. The dehumanisation of Palestinian residents is the prelude to massacre. The bombs have started to fall on Gaza wiping out entire families. The statement by the Israeli ambassador Dana Ehrlich (News, October 9th) that lawyers sit with “very strict rules” observing each target is palpable nonsense.
Read the rest of this entry »Dublin Stand with Palestine – Emergency Protest, Wednesday October 11, 17.30, The Spire, O’Connell Street Dublin 1 – Organized by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign Protest in Dublin :
[Dublin] Stand with Palestine – Emergency Protest (Wed 11 Oct)
Wed, 11 October 2023, 17:30 The Spire, O’Connell Street, Dublin 1
As Apartheid Israel continues pounding the people of Gaza with indiscriminate bombing and gets ready for a full scale invasion, all with the blessing of Western powers, we ask you to join us at an emergency solidarity rally in support of the Palestinian people.
Join us in Dublin on Wednesday 11th October at 5.30pm at The Spire on O’Connell Street.
Read the rest of this entry »Palestine: Hamas Attack
Article Source : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article68150
“Breaking the Silence” is an interesting organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_the_Silence_(organization)
Hamas’s attack and the events unfolding since yesterday are unspeakable. We could talk about their cruel and criminal actions, or focus on how our Jewish-supremacist govt brought us to this point. But as former Israeli soldiers, our job is to talk about what we were sent to do
Israel’s security policy, for decades now, has been to “manage the conflict”. Successive Israeli governments insist on round after round of violence as if any of it will make a difference. They talk about “security”, “deterrence”, “changing the equation”.
All of these are code words for bombing the Gaza Strip to a pulp, always justified as targeting terrorists, yet always with heavy civilian casualties. In between these rounds of violence we make life impossible for Gazans, and then act surprised when it all boils over.
Read the rest of this entry »Palestine, Ukraine, Neutrality and the right to defence
Des Derwin
(This is a repost of a post on the Irish Left With Ukraine Facebook page, 8th October 2023)
There is unlikely to be any supporter of Irish Left With Ukraine who will not also support the latest Palestinian uprising (though I for one by no means approve of attacks on civilians and non-combatants). Today supporters of the Palestinian cause are rightly incensed by the reportage of the Hamas offensive and of the savage Israeli retaliation. At the inconsistency and one-sided nature of that reportage, starting with the RTE radio news bulletins this morning which featured an Israeli spokesperson but no spoken word from Palestine. RTE’s flagship This Week programme had the Israeli Ambassador on. The double standards of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who mixes vociferous support for Ukrainian resistance with a crawling support for Israeli actions, sickens any decent humanitarian. And, yes, those in solidarity with Ukraine, including myself, have opposed Ukrainian President Zelensky’s bizarre obsequious salutes to the Israeli regime too. The Irish Left rightly blasts establishment inconsistency. But seems blissfully unaware of the beam in its own eye.
It really doesn’t feel at all like whataboutery, but more like disgust at dismal double standards to point out the lack of response, the silence, across the Irish organised left to the Russian attacks on civilians of recent days, of the past twenty months, and the contrast with the horror and condemnation being quite correctly displayed over the new Israeli attacks on civilians.
What can be the motivation here but blinkered and politically-guided theatre, without any real feeling for people wherever they are trampled on, without any actual cognition of aggression, invasion, occupation and imperialist colonialism?
What is happening to the Palestinians is monstrous. What is happening to the Ukrainians is monstrous. What does the organised socialist Left and its associated ‘peace’ groups do? It organises a national march on ‘neutrality’ that is really against supporting Ukraine. Just read the text of the leaflet copied here which was distributed at the Cost of Living march yesterday. While issuing statements on the same day offering “full solidarity with the heroic Palestinian people”, while posting on Facebook on the same day ‘End the occupation of Israel’, and then rushing to organise demonstrations for the Palestinians being assailed in exactly the same ways as the Ukrainians (without waiting for the solidarity groups who have campaigned for Palestine all along)!
A post for such a demo actually says, “If Ukraine has the right to defend themselves so do the Palestinians”! While the same people, wearing even the same logos, are actively organising a march for November 4th against the Ukrainians right to defend themselves! Defending the right of Hamas and the Palestinians to defend themselves against Israel while opposing the right of Ukrainians to defend themselves against Russia, and attacking as “a breach of neutrality” even the supply of “flak jackets to the Ukrainian Armed Forces”!
This Left rightly condemns Israel but doesn’t even mention Russia in its leaflet for the neutrality march distributed yesterday.
Yes, I’ll be attending the Palestinian protests. No, I won’t be attending the anti-Ukrainian, succour-for-Putin, march in Dublin on 4th November.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 