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.
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 »European Left leaders on Ukraine: Not even a hint of solidarity
We thank Dick Nichols, European Editor of the Australian Magazine Green Left Weekly, who drew our attention to an important article on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, written by Murray Smith.
Article Source : https://links.org.au/european-left-leaders-ukraine-not-even-hint-solidarity
About the author : Murray Smith is a member of the leadership of déi Lénk (“The Left”) in Luxembourg and is one of its representatives on the Executive Board of the Party of the European Left. https://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?auteur11
European Left leaders on Ukraine: Not even a hint of solidarity
6 October, 2023
The site of the think tank Transform! published an article, “The Left and the inter-imperial war”, by Michael Brie and Heinz Bierbaum on August 13. The authors are long-standing and widely respected leading figures in Die Linke (The Left, Germany). Heinz Bierbaum was President of the European Left Party from 2019 to 2022 and is now President of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Die Linke is today in a crisis that is widely described as existential. Many comrades are trying to help the party emerge from the fog in which it seems to have lost itself and develop an approach that is class-based and class-oriented. Brie and Bierbaum are two of them. Some time ago they co-wrote an article in Neues Deutschland along those lines. There were only passing references to the war in Ukraine, but they were disquieting. In the light of their present contribution, the disquieting references were clearly premonitory to something much more serious. (A recent contribution by Walter Baer, President of the European Left Party, “Making the difference”, which deals with broader questions, is on the question of Ukraine, close to the position of Brie and Bierbaum, albeit in a more moderate tone).
The authors quote from Ferdinand Lassalle: “All great political action begins with the enunciation of what is. All political small-mindedness consists in concealing and glossing over what is.” One can only agree. So, let us ask ourselves, what is, in Ukraine, today? And the first point to make is that the most important thing that is happening does not get a mention in their document.
We could say that the most important thing is that Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. That is of course true, and it is what started the present war. But actually, the really important thing is that the invasion was met by the massive resistance of the Ukrainian people. Not just the government and the armed forces, but the people. Partisans in the occupied territories, organisations and movements of civil society and grassroots initiatives everywhere, supporting the defence of their country. The Roma community, frequently the object of discrimination in Ukraine as elsewhere, has also mobilised. The forms of resistance can be many, both armed and unarmed. There are two major trade union confederations in Ukraine. They both support the defence of their country. They raise money to help their members who are in the armed forces and to buy military equipment. The political left supports the war, as does a very active women’s network. Even the anarchists have suspended their opposition to all states to join the army and fight.
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.
Making sense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – Paul Le Blanc “I favour the defeat of Vladimir Putin’s invasion and victory for Ukrainian self-determination”
We wish to thank Dick Nichols, European Editor of the Australian Magazine Green Left Weekly, who drew our attention to an important article on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, written by the well-known Marxist scholar and historian Paul Le Blanc.
The author takes the side of Ukraine Against Russia :
- I favour the defeat of Vladimir Putin’s invasion and victory for Ukrainian self-determination.
- I oppose imperialism in all its forms – including Putin’s invasion and NATO.
- I oppose capitalism and favour its replacement with the genuine political and economic democracy of socialism everywhere: the United States, Ukraine, Russia etc.
More about the author here : “Paul Le Blanc (born 1947) is an American historian at La Roche University in Pittsburgh as well as labor and socialist activist who has written or edited more than 30 books on topics such as Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg.[1][2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Blanc_(historian)
Paul Le Blanc launches his new book, in person, on November 7 2023 in Dublin
Making sense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
6 October, 2023
A momentous development has drawn my attention away from the unfolding climate catastrophe on which I have been riveted. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a major factor fragmenting the left-wing forces I hoped would become a major force in the revolutionary struggle for climate justice and human survival. Recently, I have met Russians and Ukrainians — and others from Brazil, Argentina and the United States — who have all made it clear to me that I cannot avoid dealing with this issue.1
In this article, I will attempt to do three things:
- Review what some on the left assert either in favour of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or against the Ukrainian response;
- Review Russian and Ukrainian realities and views on the war; and
- Touch on essential aspects of Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s invasion (including where the weapons come from).
In the footnotes I offer sources that have influenced my analysis and that I believe may be useful for those seeking to make sense of these realities. But I owe it to readers to indicate my own position from the outset. This is my bottom-line:
Read the rest of this entry »
Tomás Ó Flatharta 