Solidarity With Palestine, Dublin October 23 2023 – Sue Pentel Addresses Large Demonstration – “We see genocide unfolding before our eyes”
Is Genocide happening today in Palestine 🇵🇸 and Ukraine 🇺🇦?
Let us consider carefully a robust definition :
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people[a] in whole or in part. In 1948, the United NationsGenocide Conventiondefined genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
The answer is Yes.
The term is carefully used by Sue Pentel, a speaker at an October 23 2023 large Dublin demonstration. The speech is here :
Read the rest of this entry »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 »If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
International Institute for Research and Education
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 »A Palestinian View On Ukraine: Parallels Of Occupation And Solidarity – Versus People Before Profit Double Standards
Several public representatives and supporters of the Irish left-wing party People Before Profit (PBP) attack the Dublin Government’s Double Standards over two major 2023 genocidal wars : Israel’s Genocidal Assault on the Palestinian People and Russia’s Genocidal Invasion of Ukraine.
For example Paul Murphy TD (Dublin South-West) declares on his Facebook page :
“Since Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, the right of an occupied nation to defend itself has been widely recognised.
Now as Israel begins to unleash hell on Gaza and governments prepare to excuse Israeli war crimes, it’s clear that right doesn’t apply to Palestinians. Why not?”
Big problem here : Paul and and others on the left are throwing a dangerous political boomerang : instead of using exactly the same principled framework for supporting Ukraine and Palestine, they operate double standards. When they add denunciation of mass media inconsistency, the government, the European Union, in supporting Ukraine while opposing Palestine, we witness inconsistency in reverse from the left, supporting Palestine while opposing Ukraine.
John Meehan October 10 2023
Aden Shaheen, a Palestinian living in Britain, offers a far better policy.
Article Source : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article68151
In this interview, Adeeb Shaheen shares his perspectives on the ongoing war in Ukraine. As someone who has experienced life under military occupation, he draws parallels between Israel’s actions in Palestine and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, speaking to the suffering of civilians under aggression from a more powerful military force. Interview by Fred Leplat.
Fred Leplat – Adeeb, you describe yourself as a Ukrainian Palestinian and you are now in Britain. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and why you are now in Britain today?
I was born in Palestine and lived there until the Israeli occupation administration expelled my father to Jordan in 1968 for his activities against the occupation. My mother took us, her children, and left for Jordan to join him. I finished school in 1976 and set off for the Soviet Union to study electrical engineering. After finishing my studies, I went back to Jordan, worked there for a couple of years, and then moved to live in Palestine with my wife and son. In Palestine, I took part in the first Intifada and the resistance movement. In 1990, I was arrested by the Israeli occupants and sent to prison for four years. After jail, I resumed my life in Palestine, where the Palestinian Authority began to operate the civilian life of the Palestinians on the occupied Palestinian land. After two years of the second Intifada, I left my home town of Nablus with my family and moved to live in Jordan. It was difficult there as well. In September 2003, I received a job offer from an international trading company to work in its branch in Ukraine. I moved there with my family to Ukraine, to Kharkiv, where I finished my studies when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union. I worked there and had a normal life there until February 24, 2022. Putin’s war against Ukraine forced us to leave for Poland, then for the UK.
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Tomás Ó Flatharta 