Also on Friday, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a Jordanian resolution sponsored by 22 Arab countries calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. 120 countries out of 193 voted for the resolution, as 45 abstained and only 14 voted against, including the United States, Israel, and some tiny Pacific islands that the US bribes to vote with Washington.

The resolution was warmly backed by Ireland’s Micheál Martin, Tánaiste [deputy prime minister], Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defence.

In a speech given on Friday, Mr. Martin said, “Tonight, Ireland supported the UN General Assembly Resolution on the crisis in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. The dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip requires the international community to speak strongly. The resolution emphasises the urgent need for humanitarian assistance which civilians in Gaza so desperately need.”

Gaza requires 500 trucks of aid a day, since it is blockaded by Israel. A little over 50 trucks have been permitted into the Strip since the October 7 Hamas atrocities and war crimes.

On Thursday, Ireland’s Taoseach [Prime Minister], Leo Varadkar attended a European Union summit where he also pressed, along with Spain, for the 27-nation organization to call for a ceasefire. They did not, with Israel hawks Germany and Austria objecting, though the summit communique did speak of the need for humanitarian pauses so aid could get in to Palestinian non-combatants.

Varadkar said he understood where Germany and Austria were coming from, given that the Holocaust took place on their soil. He added, however, that the EU was moderating its position: “If you went back to three weeks ago, it appeared that the European Union was supporting Israel without any equivocation or qualification – that changed a week or so ago to continuing to support Israel’s right to defend itself but emphasising the supremacy of international law, humanitarian law, to yesterday, 27 countries calling for a pause to allow aid to get in and to allow citizens and hostages to get out. So I think you’re seeing an evolving position there.”

Sinn Féin: “Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza must end”

The typical Israeli government tactic of attempting to smear supporters of Palestinian rights as terrorists did not spare the entire country of Ireland. An official in the Israeli embassy in Dublin falsely claimed that Ireland had helped finance the Hamas tunnels under Gaza. According to BreakingNews: “Adi Ophir Maoz, the deputy head of mission for the Israeli Embassy in Ireland, made the claim on X, formerly Twitter.” Ms Maoz wrote: “Ireland wondering who funded those tunnels of terror? A short investigation direction – 1. Find a mirror. 2. Direct it to yourself. 3. Voilà.” The posting was taken down when it became clear that the allegation was false. The Israeli embassy implicitly reprimanded Ms. Maoz, saying that her posting did not reflect Israeli policies.

On Thursday, Tánaiste Micheál Martin warned Israel against violations of international humanitarian law. He said, the “entire population of Gaza can’t be collectively punished.” He added, “Israel’s perspective is that Hamas hides behind the population of Gaza and has its infrastructure, but you can’t bomb entire residential blocks to get at them.” He continued, “I think Israel has a right to go after Hamas and deal with Hamas. The issue is how what methodology do you use, and proportionality.”

Martin insisted, “The population can’t be collateral damage to the degree it is now.” He added, “International humanitarian law exists for a reason.”

“If you keep bombing Gaza, you will generate more martyrs for the future. You will create a more hardline radicalised extreme position. Moderation has not been supported within the Palestinian community to the way it should have been over last number of years – with the result that the Palestinian Authority now is less credible within its own ranks in the West Bank and is under pressure from more radical elements.”

He branded this outcome a “fundamental strategic failure of Israel and others.” He concluded, “When this conflict is over, Europe has to become more influential and effective. We can’t leave it to the US all the time.”

Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – There were elements in Ireland whose anger against Britain overwhelmed any other sentiment. Three hundred years of settler colonialism, dispossession and denigration of language, culture, and religion, left a legacy of deep-seated resentment.  I was born in Donegal, part of the province of Ulster, and often heard my father’s smoldering resentment at the historical traumas still raw in Ulster up to the 1998 Peace Accord when the Easter Friday agreement allowed Indigenous Irish Nationalists to experience the same civil rights as British Loyalists.

I had rebelled at my father’s one-sided view of history, which considered one nation as the source of all evil as it pertained to Ireland. But after reading and reflecting on 17^th century Irish history that involved three invasions from England resulting in a 40% reduction of the native population and then a million Irish starving to death in the Great Hunger of the mid-19th century in a famine that could have been averted if not for the English policy of “laissez-faire”. I then read insightful books by Caroline Elkin on Britain’s colonialism in Kenya and Thomas Dalrymple on Britain in India and gradually came to a better understanding of my father’s perspective.

It was not until the late 19^th century that Prime Minister Gladstone helped to enact legislation to free the indigenous Irish from the onerous and exacting rents that had supported a landlord system which had seen the majority of the wealth of the country siphoned into British and Anglo-Irish hands.

It was during the WWI postwar period that Britain enacted the Balfour Declaration which gave tacit approval to Zionism, thus allowing an influx of Jewish immigrants into Israel. In the Declaration only a couple of phrases were given over to acknowledging that the Indigenous Palestinians needed to be treated fairly. 

By 1930 the Jewish population was one third of the population of Israel but only owned 7% of the land. By 1935 Haifa had a majority Jewish population. In the early 1930s PM Ramsey McDonald admitted that Jewish settlements in Palestine was the purpose of the League of Nations Mandate. 

David Ben-Gurion in 1934 stated: “The Palestinian Arabs will not be sacrificed so that Zionism might be realized. According to our conception of Zionism, we are neither desirous nor capable of building our future in Palestine at the expense of Arabs…”

With the onslaught of WWII and the tragedy of the holocaust, funds from Europe and an annual subsidy of $3 billion worth of weapons from the U.S. Israel population substantially increased. But this was not the case with the Palestinians. Their land continued to contract as dispossession became normalized.  The result was a further marginalization of the Indigenous Palestinians and their desperation as the Jewish leadership, in league with the Israeli settlers in the West Bank, found even more ways to expropriate Palestinian land.

As was the case in Ireland and the Americas in the 17^th and 18^thcenturies, the victims of land expropriation were blamed for resisting or fighting back. In Israel’s case any criticism concerning the dispossession of Palestinian land was seen as anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.  Peace groups, such as Gush Shalom, founded in 1993 by Uri Avnery, have decried the illegal taking of land by settlers in the West Bank. Gush Shalom does not believe in the “so called national consensus” which it considers to be based on misinformation. It wishes “to establish an independent and sovereign State of Palestine”. 

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister suggested in a 1918 book that the “fellahin [indigenous rural villagers] are descended from ancient Jewish and Samaritan farmers”, In more recent years, genetic studies have demonstrated that, at least paternally, “Jewish ethnic divisions” and the Palestinians are related to each other. Genetic studies on Jews have shown that Jews and Palestinians are closer to each other than the Jews are to their host countries. Given this genetic proximity to each other, one would think that fair dealing and genuine rapprochement would be honored and encouraged. 

The Israeli historian, Ihan Pappe, who explored Palestinian issues, wrote in “The Forgotten Palestinians”:  that “the policy towards the Palestinian minority was determined by a security minded group of decision makers and executed by Ben Gurion’s unfailingly ruthless advisors on Arab affairs, who were in favor of expelling as many Palestinians as possible and confining the rest within well-guarded enclaves”.

In the present time we are faced with the brutal attack by the extremist militant group, Hamas, who emerged from Gaza with incredible fury and slaughtered hundreds of Israeli people. These horrific acts have brought upon themselves, and hundreds of thousands of civilians, terrible consequences, as Israeli military forces, supported by American weapons, have caused death and injury to many innocent victims; 40% are estimated to be children. Did Hamas really consider the terrible retribution that would be exacted when they undertook their fool-hardy act? 

The historical causes of conflict in Gaza still have to be faced despite this atrocity. But this disproportionate bombing of civilians in response to Hamas horrific acts, do not take into account the children of Gaza, who have already been traumatized by ten Israeli military assaults between 2006 and 2023. In just one of these assaults in 2008 1,417 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths took place.  

Thousands are now suffering injury and death in Gaza. It was estimated that at least 500 children have died from Israeli air strikes on Gaza. This disproportionate response to Hamas may also have the purpose of compelling Palestinians to leave their ancestral land. Dispossession by whatever means is an ancient tactic, whether taking place in Ireland or in the expropriating of Indigenous land from Native Americans. 

In the 21^st century reconciliation groups have sprung up all over the U.S. and Canada to help redress and atone for the deep traumas caused by dispossession, as well as by the Residential school system. Israel still has time to change its policies and follow the recommendations of Gush Shalom: to “safeguard the security of both Israel and Palestine by mutual agreement and guarantees”

It is Ironic that while Neal is critical of the British Empire colonizing Ireland, he is comfortable supporting Israel’s “Plantation” of squatters on the Palestinian West Bank today. His support for Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people will only contribute to the continuation of the suffering and make the possibility of peace as remote as ever. For example, in 2017, Neal supported a bill which aimed at criminalizing the boycott of Israel.

While the bill is an attack on free speech and freedom of expression in the US, as a Palestinian, I believe that such a bill is a recipe for more bloodshed since it is an attack on a non-violent mean of resistance that seeks to send a message to Israel to stop its brutality against the Palestinian people. Denying the Palestinians and others concerned about human rights violations the right to protest peacefully against the Israeli colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine will only play into the hands of those who advocate violence. It will also encourages Israel to continue its human rights violations including killing defenseless Palestinian civilians, including children which inevitably provoke a strong Palestinian reaction.

This contradiction in Neal’s politics is a reflection of double standards in his own Democratic Party and the American foreign policy in general when it comes to the rights of Palestinians. Only recently, the US State Department removed the Israeli far right racist organization Kahane Chai from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. Kahane Chai was previously known as Kach. It was founded by the American-born late Israeli politician Meir Kahane. He was also the founder of the American violent group the Jewish Defense League (JDL) which was responsible for the assassination of the Palestinian-American Alex Odeh and other violent attacks. Kahane himself was elected to the Israeli Knesset in 1984.

I remember when I was a child growing up in Palestine in the 1980s, Kahana and his Kach thugs used to organize demonstrations calling for the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland. On May 20 1994, American-born physician and member of Kahana Chai opened fire on Palestinians who were praying at the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron killing 29 Palestinians.

This decision to delist Kach was badly timed as well. It came not long after an Amnesty International report called out Israel as an apartheid state and after the Israeli assassination of the Aljazeera Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. It is no wonder why another Palestinian journalist was killed by Israel on Wednesday, June 1^st, her first day of work.

in contrast, despite the full co-operation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with Israel including handing over Palestinians wanted by Israel to the Israeli security services and fulfilling all the obligations required by the agreements it signed with Israel and brokered by the US, the State Department still lists the PLO as a terrorist organization. In the light of delisting Kach as a terror group, the Palestinian Authority (PA) wrote to Biden administration asking it to remove the PLO from the US terror list. In its letter the PA said “We expressed our astonishment and our absolute rejection of the persistence of this unjust classification of a people under occupation at a time when the Kach terrorist organization is removed from those lists.”

If the US was to apply this logic to the conflict in Ukraine, then its intervention will be turned on its head. It will be arming and financing Russia. It will also be preventing any sanctions by the outside world against Russia. The Ukrainian resistance will be labeled as terrorism and blamed for the Russian invasion.

This unethical foreign policy is not only damaging the US reputation but it is also costing innocent lives. There is a need for a balanced foreign policy if the US administration is concerned about the global peace and justice. For people like Richard Neal, visiting places like Gaza would be a good start for him that if his Israeli friends don’t prevent him from entering Gaza like what they did with a recent delegation of parliamentarians from the European Union. .

The Irish government signed up to the recent Glasgow Climate Pact and used the summit to announce a raft of ambitious goals, including the development of 5 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind energy up to 2030. That would more than double the country’s current onshore and offshore wind power capacity.

Compared to some of its more outlandish ambitions, such as having nearly a million electric vehicles on Ireland’s roads by 2030, the offshore wind target actually seems achievable. After all, the Republic of Ireland’s maritime area extends far into the Atlantic Ocean and is roughly ten times the size of its land area. The total offshore wind resource is enough to comfortably power the country’s electricity needs. Given more than 30 projects with a total capacity of around 29 GW are in various stages of planning, then it does indeed seem the 5 GW target can be reached by 2030.

However, the Irish government has a rather bad track record when it comes to delivering on climate plans and Ireland is currently one of the worst performers in the EU. Rewind back to COP21 in Paris, 2015. The then taoiseach (prime minister) Enda Kenny announced that “We have committed, with our EU partners, to a collective target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030”. With the same breath he then claimed it was okay if the national cattle herd would grow.

Six years on from Paris, optimistic projections show Ireland will only achieve a 24% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, even though a new target of 51% has been agreed. On the other hand, the national cattle herd has indeed grown, with agriculture now accounting for one third of the country’s total emissions.

Ireland stands to gain from offshore wind

The Irish offshore wind industry is still in its infancy, with the 24 megawatt Arklow Bank the only operating wind farm in Irish waters. But the country has a lot to gain. A growing offshore wind sector will help it achieve emissions reduction targets, and will also make Ireland less dependent on the import of energy and shield it against spikes in energy prices on the international markets.

Another benefit is that it will bring new jobs to coastal communities, which will help ease the energy transition. For example, as part of a large floating wind farm project off the coast of County Clare the Moneypoint coal power station is to be transformed into a green energy hub and manufacturing site for floating offshore wind turbines.

Gap between policy and action

But dark clouds are hanging over the Moneypoint project in particular, and the Irish offshore wind industry in general. In November 2021 Equinor, a Norwegian oil and gas giant, announced it was quitting its partnership in Irish offshore wind projects with ESB, an Irish electric utility company. One may question the motives of oil and gas companies for investing in offshore wind, but they are certainly capable of delivering badly needed investments. Part of Equinor’s reason was reportedly “dissatisfaction with Ireland’s regulatory and planning regime”.

The Irish government seems undeterred, saying that it was only one company abandoning the offshore wind market while many others are lined up to take Equinor’s place. The government intends to hold renewable energy auctions in 2022 and expects to see construction on offshore wind projects starting in 2025. However, both industry advocates and the government’s climate advisers warned this isn’t fast enough and that new legislation was needed to reform the planning and regulatory framework.

A Maritime Area Planning Bill passed into law in December 2021, which would suggest there is some movement on the legislative front. However, the Irish government admits there is still some work ahead to establish an Office of Marine Development Enforcement, develop necessary regulations, and get different state entities to agree on how to engage with the system.

In contrast, the UK government recently announced the development of an additional 12 GW of offshore wind energy. The Netherlands meanwhile, with a maritime area about 15 times smaller than that of Ireland, has announced the development of an additional offshore wind capacity of 11 GW by 2030, doubling its target, while construction of 2 GW is already ongoing.

Clearly Ireland is lagging behind other countries with offshore wind development. Ultimately, it is likely that many of the planned 30 projects will not be built, even with all the required legislation in place. However, at the current pace of legislation it is uncertain if even the 5 GW target will be achieved by 2030.

The coming year will reveal if the Irish government is indeed serious about offshore wind energy by delivering the necessary legislation, and hopefully avoiding another debacle like the Equinor departure.

Aldert Otter, PhD Researcher, Marine and Renewable Energy Ireland, University College Cork

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Expectedly, the accusations centered on the standard smearing used by Israel and its supporters against anyone who dares criticise Israel and exhibits solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people.

Rooney’s laudable action was not in the least ‘racist’ or ‘anti-Semitic’. On the contrary, it was taken as a show of support for the Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), whose advocacy is situated within anti-colonial and anti-racist political discourses.

Rooney, herself, has made it clear that her decision not to publish with Modan Publishing House, which works closely with the Israeli government, is motivated by ethical values.

“I simply do not feel it would be right for me, under the present circumstances, to accept a new contract with an Israeli company that does not publicly distance itself from apartheid and support the U.N-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people,” she said in a statement on 12 October.

In fact, Rooney’s contention is not with the language itself, as she stated that “the Hebrew-language translation rights to my new novel are still available, and if I can find a way to sell these rights that is compliant with the BDS movement’s institutional boycott guidelines, I will be very pleased and proud to do so.”

READ: Empty gestures or substantive change? On the Nobel Prize in Literature and its discontents

Rooney is not the first intellectual to take an ethical position against any form of cultural normalisation with Israeli institutions, especially those that directly support and benefit from the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. Her position is consistent with similar stances taken by other intellectuals, musicians, artists, authors and scientists. The ever-expanding list includes Roger Waters, Alice Walker and the late Stephen Hawking.

The BDS movement has made it abundantly clear that, in the words of the movement’s co-founder, Omar Barghouti, “the Palestinian boycott targets institutions only, due to their entrenched complicity in planning, justifying, whitewashing or otherwise perpetuating Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian rights.”

Of course, some are still not convinced. Those critics of the BDS movement intentionally conflate between anti-Semitism and a legitimate form of political expression, which aims at weakening and isolating the very economic, political and cultural infrastructures of racism and apartheid. The fact that numerous anti-Zionist Jews are supporters and advocates of the movement is not enough to make them reconsider their fallacious logic.

One of the ‘politest’ denunciations of Rooney, appearing in the Jewish Forward magazine, was penned by Gitit Levy-Paz. The author’s logic is puzzling, to say the least. Levy-Paz accused Rooney that, by refusing to allow her novel to be translated into Hebrew, she has excluded “a group of readers because of their national identity.”

Palestinians in Gaza protest against German Parliament decision on BDS, in Gaza on 23 May 2019 [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]

” data-medium-file=”https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/651A9980.jpg?fit=500%2C333&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/651A9980.jpg?fit=933%2C622&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1″ src=”https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/651A9980.jpg?resize=933.5%2C622&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1″ alt=”Palestinians in Gaza protest against German Parliament decision on BDS, in Gaza on 23 May 2019 [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]” data-recalc-dims=”1″ data-lazy-loaded=”1″ >

Palestinians in Gaza protest against German Parliament decision on BDS, in Gaza on 23 May 2019 [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]

While the Forward writer is guilty of confusing political ethics and nationality, she is not the only one. Israeli Zionists do this as a matter of course, where the Zionist ideology and the Jewish religion – and, in this case, language – are quite often interchangeable. As a result, the definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ has been stretched to include anti-Zionism – though Zionism is a modern ideological construct. Since Israel defines itself as a Jewish and Zionist state, it follows that any form of criticism of Israeli policies are often depicted as if a form of anti-Semitism.

One of the most interesting aspects of this conversation on language is that the Hebrew language has been used by the State of Israel since its establishment in 1948 as the language of oppression. In the minds of Palestinians, anywhere in Palestine, Hebrew is rarely the language used to communicate culture, literature, social coexistence and such. Instead, every military ordinance issued by the Israeli army, including closures and home demolitions, let alone the proceedings of military court hearings, and even the racist anti-Palestinian chants in football stadiums, are communicated in Hebrew. Palestinians are then excused if they do not view the modern Hebrew language as a language of inclusion, or even innocuous, everyday communication.

These realisations are not the outcome of daily experiences only. Successive Israeli governments have passed numerous legislations over the years to elevate Hebrew at the expense of Arabic. For over seven decades, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people has been coupled with the erasure of their culture and their language, from the Hebraicisation of historic Arabic names of towns, villages and streets, to the demolition of ancient Palestinian graveyards, olive groves, mosques and churches, the Israeli ethnocide is a top item on the Israeli political agenda.

The Israeli Nation State Law of 2018, which elevated Hebrew as Israel’s official language and downgraded Arabic to a “special status”, was the culmination of many years of a relentless, centralised Israeli campaign, whose sole purpose is to dominate the Palestinians, not only politically but culturally as well.

All that in mind, the hypocrisy of Israel’s mouthpieces is unmistakable. They welcome, or at least remain silent, when Israel tries to demolish and bury Palestinian culture and language, but cry foul when a respected author or a well-regarded artist tries, though symbolically, to show solidarity with the oppressed and occupied Palestinian people.

The Palestinian boycott movement is conscious of its morally-driven mission, thus can never duplicate the tactics of the Israeli government and official institutions. BDS aims at pressuring Israel by reminding peoples all over the world of their moral responsibility towards the Palestinians.

BDS does not target Israelis as individuals and, under no circumstances, does it target Jewish individuals because they are Jews, or the Hebrew language, as such. Israel, on the other hand, continues to target Palestinians as a people, downgrades their language, dismantles their institutions and systematically destroys their culture. This is rightly referred to as cultural genocide, and it is our moral responsibility to stop it.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

——

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

TRT World: “Irish author Sally Rooney boycotts Israeli publisher in support of BDS”

The motion also condemned Hamas for indiscriminately firing rockets at Israeli civilians.

The United Nations Charter forbids member states from acquiring the territory of their neighbors by military force. Annexation is a serious crime in international law, and such charges became the basis for European Union sanctions on Russia over the annexation of Crimea. Nuremberg also considered the German attempt in the 1930s and 1940s to annex Poland and Czechoslavakia crimes.

The motion was presented by John Brady of the opposition Sinn Fein, the leftist, nationalist party, but was voted for by members of the Dail across the board. When he tabled it on May 25, Brady complained, “Israel has never been held to account for its actions,” according to O’Shea.

An amendment added by the small left-wing “People before Profit” Party calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador was handily defeated.

The main motion on characterizing Israeli actions in the Palestinian West Bank as “annexation” was, in contrast, very popular. Even Simon Coveney, the foreign minister (from the conservative Fine Gael party) said in remarks on Tuesday before the vote, according to the EU Observer, “The scale, pace, and strategic nature of Israel’s actions on settlement expansion and the intent behind it have brought us to a point where we need to be honest about what is actually happening on the ground … It is de facto annexation. This is not something that I, or … this house, says lightly. We are the first EU state to do so.”

The Irish, who labored for centuries under British occupation, are understandably touchy about one country occupying and exploiting the territory of another.

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou MacDonald, potentially a future prime minister of Ireland wrote on social media that the measure “must mark new assertive, consistent confrontation of Israeli crimes against Palestine”. (See her speech in the video below.)

As for Brady, O’Shea quotes him as saying after the vote,

“Tonight, the Irish people have secured a historic victory for the people of Palestine.The decision by the members of the Dáil to vote to accept the Sinn Féin motion on annexation is a sure reflection of the strength of feeling that runs in this country a/t the treatment of the Palestinian people by the apartheid state of Israel.

“Ireland now stands as the first country in Europe to categorically state without equivocation that Israel has carried out the crime of annexation in the occupied Palestinian Territories. The Irish people have pushed the government over the line. The recognition that de facto annexation has taken place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is now the formal position of Ireland.

“The Irish people, through the Dáil, have stated that Israel is guilty of the crime of annexation. The significance of the victory in getting the Irish government to acknowledge that annexation has taken place is enormous.

“It is now incumbent upon the Irish government to accept the imprimatur of the Irish people and take this motion and press for action in the EU, and for action on the UN Security Council on this issue. The Irish government must act to introduce the Occupied Territories Bill. It must recognise the state of Palestine. It must ensure that Israel is held accountable for its action by the international community. Hopefully, other countries can follow Ireland’s lead, and take this motion as a template to use in their own parliaments.”

Brady was a professional carpenter before entering politics fairly recently, who ran for office after his county council tried to evict him for making changes to his council residence without a permit. These are precisely the grounds on which Israel routinely throws Palestinians out of their homes. He sued and won.

Sinn Fein is the most popular party in Ireland, with a 30% approval, and many in the Irish public were extremely upset by Israel’s behavior in April and May, as its security forces sought to repress demonstrations in East Jerusalem and then its Air Force bombed Gaza into rubble. Big demonstrations were held in Dublin and elsewhere.

Even many MPs of the center-right party, the Fianna Fail, were upset at Israeli actions.

It may be that the centrist and conservative members of parliament, in addition, did not want to be outflanked on this issue by Sinn Fein, and so voted for a popular motion that, while condemnatory toward Israel, did not require them to take any particular action or risk a rift with the Biden administration, which is extremely pro-Israel.

Israel rejected the motion. It is not clear why. Israel openly annexed part of the West Bank to create its district of Jerusalem (an act that is illegal in international law). Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has pledged to annex further stretches of the West Bank. So it was the Israelis who introduced the diction of annexation.

——

Bonus Video:

MEMO: “Ireland first EU country to recognise Israel’s de facto annexation of Palestine”

Rallies have been being held all over Ireland for Palestine during the past two weeks, and even on Friday, after the announcement of the cease-fire, some 23 protests were staged throughout the country. The leftist Sinn Fein has introduced a measure in parliament that will be voted on, on Tuesday, calling “on the government to adopt a resolution to take ‘all measures within its powers’ to seek ‘equal rights’ for people in Palestine,” according to the online thejournal.ie.

The 160-seat Irish parliament is dominated by three major parties, each of which won 30-odd seats in the 2020 election– the conservative Fine Gael, the center-right Fianna Fail, and the democratic socialist Sinn Fein. The Greens have 12 seats, and the far left Solidarity has 5.

Sinn Fein spokesman John Brady urged the other parties to support the motion, saying “The Dáil must send out an important message that the ongoing actions of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians is unacceptable to the Irish people.”

Passions in Ireland ran high even a couple of weeks ago as the Israeli bombing began. Deputy prime minister [Tanaiste] Leo Varadkar of the center-right Fine Gael Party had told parliament, as the conflict heated up in mid-May,

“Annexation, expulsion, plantation and the killing of civilians, deliberately or in terms of collateral damage, is not the behaviour of a democratic state in the 21st century and it is simply unacceptable that such a state or any state should behave in this way.”

So reported Daniel McConnell at the Irish Examiner.

The same report quoted member of parliament Mick Barry’s demand that the Israeli ambassador be expelled:

“The Irish State has sent observers to the scenes of the mass evictions in east Jerusalem. Do these actions go far enough? They do not. Is it enough to merely call in the ambassador? The ambassador is the representative of a state that is pursuing a policy of systemic racism. The ambassador should be expelled and I put it to the Tánaiste that this should also be Government policy.”

Barry is a member [Teachta Dála or TD] of the lower house of parliament from the small socialist Solidarity Coalition.

Gino Kenny, the spokesperson for Solidarity, added,

“Israel has reigned terror and murder on the people of Gaza. In eight days, over 200 people have been killed including 60 children, murdered for doing nothing, murdered because they’re Palestinian. The world is watching while the state of Israel conducts collective punishment against the Palestinian people of occupied lands . . . when is the right time to expel the Israeli ambassador to Ireland. If it’s not now Taoiseach [prime minister], when is the time?

This has been going on for generations where the Israeli government with impunity has murdered and caused terror to the Palestinian people. We in Ireland should know we have been occupied, brutalized by another oppressor. So when is the time to expel the Israeli ambassador and show solidarity to the world and Palestinian people.”

Kenny put his finger on the reason for which Israel is in such bad odor in Ireland. For many Irish viewing a conflict abroad, the question is, which side is playing the British Empire (which brutally occupied Ireland for 400 years), and which side is playing the oppressed Irish? Earlier in its history, Israel looked like the underdog, and had fought its own anti-colonial rebellion against Britain in the 1940s, and many Irish warmly supported it. Since 1977, as the Israeli right wing has become more dominant and its treatment of the militarily occupied Palestinians has started looking an awful lot like a long term colonization of the sort the Irish suffered from, Israel increasingly looks like it is playing the British Empire in this drama.

Barry further called for the lower house to again attempt to pass into law the Occupied Territories Bill that would prohibit importation into Ireland of the produce of Israeli squatter-settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank.

The bill was passed by parliament in 2018 under a previous government but was opposed by the ruling party and blocked on the grounds that it was an opposition bill that would cost the treasury money.

The measure is opposed by the prime minister [Taoiseach] Micheál Martin of the conservative, Christian Democrat Fianna Fáil party on the grounds that it would contravene European Union law and prerogatives. Many of his backbenchers, however, are strong critics of Israel.

Not only Solidarity but also the Green Party is pressing for implementation of the Occupied Territories Bill.

Now it appears that the Irish parliament will vote on the question of expelling the Israeli ambassador this week, according to the Jerusalem Post. Many members of parliament in the Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail parties are also strong supporters of Palestinian rights, and will be joined by the Greens and Solidarity.

Despite the stance of many of his party colleagues, Taoiseach Martin is also opposed to expelling the Israeli ambassador, and likely could find ways to block the measure even if it is voted in. But that it has risen as an issue to the point where it is even being voted on tells you how incensed many Irish are about Israel’s actions.

—–

Bonus video:

Dublin Protests In Solidarity With People Of Gaza

The European Union member states sometimes rail against their irrelevance on foreign policy. Despite Europe’s enormous population (pop. 445 million vs. 320 million in the U.S.) and a joint nominal GDP that is second in the world only to the U.S., Europe is not a big player on the world scene and has tended to farm out a lot of foreign policy to the United States or to continue to allow individual states to pursue national goals (as with France in Africa). The recent Irish election may, however, be the beginning of a more pro-active European policy on Palestine.

Ireland has traditionally had good relations with Israel. The Irish, however, have moved to the left and begun to see the Palestinians as a colonized and oppressed people like themselves (Ireland suffered with British colonialism in some form for 800 years).

Even the centrist party, Fianna Fail, has begun supporting a boycott of goods produced by Israeli squatters on the Palestinian West Bank, and it is a measure wholeheartedly supported by the Irish Left.

The major party on the Left, Sinn Fein, put a plank in its electoral platform saying, it will “ban goods from Israel’s illegal colonial settlements in Palestine from entering the Irish market by implementing the Occupied Territories Bill”. Sinn Fein’s paramilitary wing, the Irish Republican Army, back in the days of the Troubles sometimes trained alongside fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organization. With the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the IRA ceased resort to violence.

The centrist Fianna Fail is also committed to the Occupied Territories bill.

It is opposed by the right wing Fine Gael for fear of upsetting relations with Washington.

So what happened on February 8 was that the Left won big. The right wing Fine Gael, once a major player, only got 35 seats in the 160-member parliament.

While the centrist Fianna Fail got the most seats, 38, it was almost tied by Sinn Fein, the leftist party, which got 37.

Small left-leaning parties such as Labour, the Greens, the Social Democrats and others, along with independents, took the rest of the seats.

Leo Varadkar of the right wing Fine Gael has given up on a role in government, saying his party will sit in the opposition benches. He complained that 80 percent of parliament is in the hands of the left parties, and it is now up to Sinn Fein to form a government. I think he was counting the centrists in “the left,” but that is what the world looks like from the Right.

Unfortunately for Ireland, the actual left parties put together do not have the 80 needed for a majority and to form a government. Also unfortunately, the centrist Fianna Fail says it refuses to go into coalition with Sinn Fein.

Under these circumstances, you could have a minority government led by Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein, which could survive as long as Fianna Fail, the centrists, led by Micheál Martin,, vote with it on important issues (which they have been doing in recent years anyway). Or maybe they will have to have another election.

In any case, since the entire left and the centrists, who together have the vast majority of seats, want to pass the Occupied Territories bill, right now it looks as though passage is a good bet.

If that happens, Ireland will be the first European Union country to criminalize the importation of goods made on stolen Palestinian land with stolen Palestinian resources. You could imagine Spain following suit, and, outside the EU, Norway.

This development would be a major setback for the Israeli ministry of strategic affairs, the main goal of which is to prevent boycotts of Israel over its crimes against humanity in the Occupied Palestinian territories. Dublin would certainly come into conflict with Trump over the measure, though who knows if they will have to worry about Trump after November.

There could be worse news for the Israelis, too. Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein have both spoken about recognizing Palestine as a state, giving it full embassy status.

Because of their own role in the Holocaust against six million Jews during WW II, Germany and France, the countries that lead the EU, have been highly reluctant to criticize Israel. It has been Catalonia in Spain and smaller states with resentments about colonialism who have taken the lead here. The Jeremy Corbyn wing of the British Labour Party also took a stance against the brutalization of the Palestinians, but the powerful British Israel lobbies managed to paint this simple human rights advocacy as anti-Semitism, a typical and cynical tactic of right wing Zionism.

Those considerations won’t apply in Ireland, which will therefore be free to take a principled stand in active support of implementing the 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of occupied populations.

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Bonus Video:

Sinn Féin: Sinn Féin’s 37 TDs arrive at Dáil after General Election victory