The Age of Empires is Back.

I stand with Ukraine as I always did with Palestine. Putin does not recognise Ukrainians as a separate people with the right to their own independent country. Netanyahu does not recognise Palestinians as a separate people with the right to their own independent country.

We are living in dangerous times.

Trump, Netanyahu and Putin are narcissistic, expansionist and imperialistic leaders wanting to return their states to a mythical past with a supposedly God-given right to consume their smaller neighbours.

We as an Irish people that suffered centuries of occupation and colonisation can empathise with the present day struggles of the Palestinians and Ukrainians. Their struggles are our struggles.

Beir bua!

 

American Universities are becoming once again the conscience of their nation

I am so proud of the students of the prestigious University of Columbia, especially its many Jewish students such as Jared Kannel (see video above), demanding an end to the occupation, colonization and genocide of the Palestinian people made possible by the provision of American-made planes, bombs, tanks, ships and missiles from successive US governments.

Facing arrest and imprisonment, these courageous New York-based students are putting their own careers and futures on the line to stand with the people of Gaza and the West Bank who are being slaughtered daily by a brutal army of occupation assisted by armed racist colonial settlers.

But they have succeeded in lighting a spark of resistance which has inspired university students all across the United States to follow their lead.

When I was student myself, I spent a fantastic summer living on the campus of the University of Columbia and was fully aware of the history of progressive protest on its campus.

Columbia and other American campuses during the 1960s and 1970s were the epicentre and key spark for the anti-Vietnam war movement in the United States. They initially faced huge political and public hostility. But they kept going and helped change public opinion towards a war in South Asia where huge numbers of the indigenous population were been bombed incessantly from the air, land and sea by American military.

American students are once again becoming the conscience of the nation.

Songs & Poems for Peace at Vigil for Palestine, Galway

 

I was glad to have joined great people last night at the Vigil for Palestine on the Salmon Weir pedestrian bridge with the Galway Cathedral serving as an appropriate religious backdrop.

In spite of the heavy rain and strong winds, the poems read and Christmas hymns sung were clearly heard. Their message was peace, freedom and justice for Palestine and its peoples.

At the vigil, the traditional Nativity scene was given a December 2023 Gaza setting with the crib buried under the rubble of a collapsed building as happens daily due to the non-stop barbaric Israeli air and land bombing.

After the vigil the Nativity scene was transferred to the Cathedral where candles can be lit and prayers said for Palestine.

Well done to the Galway Palestine Solidarity Campaign for their great work in keeping the public aware of what is happening in Gaza and West Bank. They deserve our gratitude.

At the vigil it was great to meet up with Cha Taylor and Sean Regan, two good friends from UCG days.

Finally well done to the Christian community of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, for cancelling the Christmas festivities in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

The world this week lost one of the great iconic figures of the anti-apartheid movement. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a leader of the struggle against racist white minority rule in South Africa, and was for decades at the forefront of peaceful mass resistance against the regime. A rebellious priest he steered the Christian churches away from a lukewarm stance on apartheid towards a strong proactive opposition and a recognition that it was evil and immoral to tolerate it. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, he spent his first night of freedom with Desmond at the bishop’s residency in Cape Town. When he died in 2013, it was Tutu that gave the final prayers at his memorial service. Mandela would refer to him as the people’s archbishop and it was Tutu who  came up with the term ‘Rainbow Nation’ to describe the ethnic mix he wished for in a post-apartheid inclusive South Africa. It was to be a country for all its peoples and a recognition that many white South Africans over many years such as Helen Suzman, Archbishop of Durban Denis Hurley (his parents were Irish), Kathleen Murray (her father was Irish) and Joe Slovo were in positions of leadership in the progressive movement for liberty, equality and fraternity. A supporter of sanctions and boycotts, Tutu in the 1980s derided western leaders such as US President Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for their backing of the South African government whilst also condemning the Soviet Union and China for their anti-democratic anti-religious authoritarianism.  Throughout his life he was a strong opponent of Israel, demanding an international boycott of the country, seeing its treatment of Palestinians and the military occupation and colonial settlement of their lands as ‘apartheid’. Desmond also opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq by a US/UK lead coalition, spoke out against political corruption in post-apartheid South Africa, was a strong advocate for gay rights and campaigned for tough action on Climate Change.

From: International Defence & Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1978

 
During my student and post student days I was involved in the global campaign against institutionalised racism in South Africa, setting up a branch of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement (IAAM) in UCG (now NUIG) during 1977, inviting its founder Kader Asmal to address the university’s Students’ Union assembly and being a participant in USI-led activities when student leaders from Galway such as Mike Jennings, Padraic Mannion and Grainne McMorrow were part of the movement during an era when powerful interests in Ireland tacitly viewed apartheid as a ‘necessary bastion’ against ‘godless’ communism. The IRFU arrogantly supported sporting tours from and visits to South Africa, and businesses such as Dunnes Stores sold their farm produce in their supermarkets. I demonstrated outside the Lansdowne Road stadium in the early 1980s during rugby matches alongside activists such as Michael D. Higgins, now President of Ireland; stood on the picket line at the Dunnes Stores branch on Henry Street in the mid 1980s with brave workers such as Mary Manning, sacked because they would not handle South African oranges and vegetables. These pickets were largely ignored by amongst others the wider Irish trade union membership until Bishop Desmond Tutu gave them international recognition by inviting the strikers to visit him in London during 1985 to thank them for their courageous efforts. In the 1980s I proudly wore my ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ tee-shirt dancing to the song of the same name by the Specials at alternative discos. I joined Michael D. and Sabina Higgins with other Galway anti-apartheid activists as well as Labour supporters in the Atlanta Hotel Dominick Street Galway on February 11 1990 as we emotionally watched on a big television screen Nelson Mandela being released from Victor Verster Prison after 28 years imprisonment.

Over recent years during my work visits to South Africa, I often met ANC veterans who talk admiringly of the grassroots support that they had from Ireland during the dark days. Some  would proudly inform me that they, from many different religious faiths, had been given their education by Irish clerics who regaled them with stories of the centuries-long struggle for Irish independence. Many viewed the conflicts in Northern Ireland and their own country as part of the wider global movement against imperialism, based on overcoming political establishments that used racial/class discrimination and police brutality to keep indigenous populations under control. Sinn Féin and the African National Congress (ANC) saw themselves as brothers-in-arms and Gerry Adams was part of the official guard of honour at Mandela’s funeral in 2013. Kader Asmal, Trinity law lecturer and IAAM co-founder who later become a Minister in Mandela’s government, had in the 1970s and 1980s arranged meetings between the IRA and the ANC’s military wing. But Desmond Tutu was always against armed conflict and consistently called for a peaceful settlement to the ‘Troubles’.

 

From: International Defence & Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1978

These ANC veterans would have agreed with Tutu though that the country still has so much to do to live up to the vision that both he and Mandela had of an egalitarian non-sexist non-racist Rainbow Nation, and that inequality, poverty, corruption, crime, femicide, xenophobia and racism were still prevalent.

 

During the apartheid era I, as a young impatient social activist, personally did often feel that Tutu, who was viewed internationally as the publicly acceptable tolerant face of the struggle for freedom, justice and equality in South Africa, was not radical enough and was too willing to cool the righteous anger of the oppressed masses. But in hindsight I admit that I was wrong and have over the years come to greatly admire the charming, smiling, gregarious, friendly, witty socialist churchman who was courageous beyond measure, willing to speak out against human rights abuses by the governments of Israel, USA, China, Soviet Union, UK and Myanmar.

A hero to so many over so many generations Desmond Tutu, throughout his long eventful life, saw himself first and foremost as a Christian priest rather than a politician who tried to live and to follow in the footsteps of his own hero, namely Jesus Christ. May he Rest in Peace/Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.

ISIS - An Ideology of Hate, Death & Destruction

Followers of the Islamic Caliphate (ISIS) were responsible for the massacre of at least 128 men and women enjoying a night socialising with friends and family in Paris. In the same week these religious Nazis massacred people on a popular shopping street in Beirut, at a funeral in Baghdad and at a mosque in Yemen.
In Syria-Iraq, they are attempting to obliterate millennia-old cultures by brutally exterminating ancient peoples such as the Yazidis and  by blowing up Palmyra and Nineveh.
Their ideology is based on a belief that there is no place on Earth or in heaven for atheists, agnostics, secularists, gays, feminists, democrats, socialists, Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Bahais, Hindus, Buddists, pagans, Jews, Alawites, Shiites and other Muslims that don't follow their warped version of Islam.

ISIS is funded and spiritually inspired by a misogynist religious fundamentalist elite in the Arabian peninsula whose wealth is based on oil. From the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, governments in USA, Britain, France, Israel, Pakistan and Turkey have armed jihadis to overthrow secular or secular tolerant regimes in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonial Israel and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia were supported no matter what their crimes. The illegal Iraq war led by Bush and Blair triggered the rise of jihadism in the Levant and Iraq.
If the people of the Middle East of all faiths and no faiths are to live in peace and with justice, the duplicity towards ISIS and other jihadis as well as the Israeli occupation/colonisation of the West Bank has to end.
But what must not happen is a loss of civil liberties in Europe nor an intolerance towards others. ISIS and other jihadis are trying to fan the flames of a religious war and are using terms such as crusades and infidels as part of this campaign of hate. We must not fall into this trap. Tolerance and respect must be the key words and deeds.

Middle East becoming a Human Slaughterhouse.

Assyrian Christians demonstrating in Beirut

 The persecution of Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Israel and Lebanon is wiping out indigenous cultures that have existed for thousands of years. 
Followers of Islamic Caliphate (aka ISIS) are endeavouring to make the Middle East, once the cosmopolitan heart of the world, a mono-religious and monocultural region. They see no reason for the existence of secularism, atheism, socialism, feminism, Alawites, Yazidis, Christians, Jews, Druzes and Shi'ites. Their message is one of misogyny, hate and a glorification of death to the 'unbeliever'. They have introduced stoning to death, beheadings, crucifixion, female slavery and the covering of women in public as normal societal traits.
 

Iraqi Christians in Mosul before the arrival of ISIS

Credit must go to the Kurds for holding back this tsunami of evil. Sadly ISIS is growing in influence and power by the refusal of Turkey over and above pure tokenism to aid the Syrian Kurds in their life or death struggle against the Islamist; by Saudi Arabia's promotion of the puritanical strain of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism; by the United States destruction of Iraq and support for expansionist Israel; by Europe and the West's decade-long adherence to support the enemies of the Assad regime at any price.
But today it is not only in the Middle East that Christians are being attacked. They are now the most persecuted and discriminated against worldwide.
Check out Irish Times article from December 2014
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/christians-most-persecuted-and-discriminated-against-worldwide-1.2046934

Gaza: World's Largest Concentration Camp

Gaza: where 1.82 million people are squeezed and imprisoned in a sliver of land; the descendants of people forced there as a result of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli military from 1948 onwards.

Gaza: the world's largest concentration camp

Gaza: besieged by land, sea and air by Israeli military forces for seven years, over twice as long as the Nazi siege of Leningrad.

Gaza: where today the people that stole their homes and lands can gather together to sit out on deck chairs, enjoy the sunshine, joke with friends and have a nice cold beer or two on a balcony or rooftop whilst looking out towards those poor unfortunate refugees who once lived in their neighbouhood as they are being mercilessly bombed with the latest high tech weaponry.

Gaza: where if I was a Palestinian living there, I would find it hard not to fire rockets at the illegal occupiers and colonists of my grandparents home especially when I see no future for my own children.

Gaza: Today's Warsaw Ghetto.

Video of Syrian rebel leader eating heart of Syrian Solder Shows Evilness of Islamic Fundamentalism

The video of the leader of the Islamic fundamentalist Omar al-Farouq Brigade cutting out and biting the heart of a Syrian soldier shows that the Syria opposition contains a significant evil force that is a threat to peoples and communities all across the Middle East.
See Independent newspaper article here

My fear is that Western intervention will only encourage these elements as shown in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya with 200,000 deaths, ethnic cleansing, millions of refugees, destruction of minorities, loss of female equality, establishment of warlord fiefdoms, Jewish colonisation of the West Bank and  a rise in Islamic fundamentalism that is built on hate. To hear the comrades of Abu Sakkar cheer his actions with "Allahu akbar (God is great) clearly shows the madness of this religious zealots.
See my previous article on the destruction of the 2,000 year old Christian communities in the Middle East.

Joyeux Noel Film - the true message of Christmas portrayed

Click on image above to view the singing by a German soldier of 'Stille Nacht' & 'Adeste Fideles', the latter to the accompaniment of bagpipes played by Scottish soldiers

The French 2005 production 'Joyeux Noel' is one of the most emotionally captivating films that I have ever witnessed. In my humble opinion, it captures the true message of Christmas, namely 'Peace and Goodwill To All Peoples'. 

May I wish you and yours a joyful festive holiday (still a few days left!) and a progressive New Year.

Background to the film:
Along the Western Front on Christmas Eve 1914, soldiers from German, Scottish, English and French regiments organised unofficial ceasefires. Troops ventured into No Man's Land to exchange gifts, play football, sing songs together and bury their dead. 
Ordinary soldiers saw that they were one and the same, no matter what was the colour of the uniform.

Click on image above to hear Scottish soldier pipers playing "I'm Dreaming of Home"

Generals on both sides were incensed and scared that this laying down of arms and friendship across the divide would spread. So they ensured that no such large scale fraternisation ever happened again by ordering artillery barrages during subsequent Christmases. In an insane brutal war, there were already 3.5 million casualties by the end of 1914. Another 32 million would die before the war ended. 

The leaders of the main warring nations dressed up the conflict as a 'War To End Wars', a struggle for peace and liberty when in reality they were only concerned about expanding their empires. Whilst the ‘Allies’ promoted the war as a struggle to free small nations (e.g. Belgium) from German, Austrian and Turkish tyranny, World War One actually resulted in the victorious French and British dividing up the Middle East between them against the wishes of the local populations. 
The horrible legacy of this imperial carve up and the promises made to financiers and oilmen during and soon after WW1 are the conflicts in Iraq, Libya and Palestine that we have today. 

John Lennon and Yoko Ono recognised that throughout the ages, war and conflict were used by those in power to kill, butcher and maim peoples and the planet in order to maintain and expand their control. Their 1971 classic, Happy Christmas, War is Over (below) perfectly encapsulates this message

Peace, Justice and Equality to All Men and Women! 

Click on image above  to hear John, Yoko & Plastic Ono Band sing their 1971 anti-war song 'Happy Christmas, War is Over'

Merry Christmas

A Jesus in Today's Palestine

Could the story of the Nativity happen today in Palestine? 
Unlikely.
For would a poor young unmarried teenage girl in the West Bank, who had just announced that she was pregnant, not become a victim of male ‘honour’?
Even if she did survive, she and her new husband would have found it extremely difficult to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem due to road-blocks and travel restrictions placed on local inhabitants by the occupying Israeli military; the shepherds would have probably lost their grazing lands to compulsory acquisition for the erection of the ‘Security Wall’ and Jewish colonial settlements; and the three wise men from Iraq (Mesopotamia) would have being denied entry visas.

But even if the birth did manage to occur in Bethlehem, Israeli military border controls would have probably barred Mary’s family from crossing into Egypt to escape religious persecution thus sealing their faith.

Yet there is no doubt that an adult Jesus of the New Testament and of a modern Middle East would have ended their lives in a similar terrible fashion. For anyone preaching a message of peace and love, a call for people’s liberation from poverty and oppression, of respect for all races and creeds, of freedom for prisoners, and an end to the oppression of women would have made himself both an enemy of the state and of a religious fundamentalism that preaches intolerance towards non-believers and death to all apostates and blasphemers.

Yes, death would have come either from an American-made laser guided missile or from execution by a Islamic death squad.

Michael D Higgins: Greatest Advocate of International Human Rights in the History of Dáil Éireann

More than any public representative in the history of the Oireachtas, Michael D Higgins has campaigned tirelessly at home and abroad against the oppression of peoples, in defense of human rights and in securing justice for all.

It is notable that whilst generations of Irish parliamentarians unashamedly kept their mouths shut on human rights abuses perpetuated by successive United States governments and their allies, Michael D has had the courage of his convictions to not allow himself to be coerced into silence. He did not distinguish between torture and coercion committed by the USA, China, Soviet Union or any other regime. Whenever the opportunity arose to defend the downtrodden and stand up to the powerful, he did so.

In recognition of this consistent, effective and proud record,  he became the first recipient of the Seán MacBride Peace Prize awarded by the International Peace Bureau in Helsinki in 1992. 

Solidarity with Oppressed Peoples Everywhere

His international causes including highlighting abuses in countries such as Western Sahara, Chile, Iraq, Turkey, East Timor and Somalia, some of which he visited and some of which he was expelled from.

In particular, he has been since the 1970s an outspoken critic of the brutal armed occupation and creeping colonisation being perpetrated by the Israelis in Palestine.

He was an early supporter of the Anti-Apartheid movement as it sought to end the racial oppression of blacks in Southern Africa and introduce democracy.  

On February 11^th 1990, I along with dozens of other peace activists was lucky enough to be with him in a packed Atlanta Hotel on Dominick Street Galway city, as we watched the release of Nelson Mandela from prison unfold live on television. Michael D and the rest of us were part of the international people power movement that finally succeeded in forcing Western governments to end their unswerving support of the racist South African government.

UCG Reunion 2008: Remembering the Anti-Apartheid Campaign

He was never afraid to take on the so-called defenders of the ‘Free World’ as they poured weaponry and military advisors into Chile and Nicaragua in order to overthrow democratically elected governments who were endeavouring to end the economic stranglehold of the nations natural resources held by a tiny elite and multinational corporations.

He visited Nicaragua and El Salvador in the early 1980s as tens of thousands were being slaughtered by US armed paramilitary gangs and authoritarian regimes. His endeavours at the time were praised by Irish Catholic missionaries who had lived in the region and by Bishop Eamon Casey of Galway

In 1984 he was one of only 4 TDs to join the huge public protests against US President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Ireland.  Michael D was with other graduates that included myself outside UCG in Galway when we burned our degrees to coincide with Reagan being awarded a Honorary Doctorate of Law by the university authorities, even though he had just previously broken international law by mining the ports of a sovereign state- Nicaragua.

In the last decade Michael has been the leading parliamentary campaigner against the illegal invasion of Iraq by US coalition forces, against the illegal detention camp at the US military base in Guantanamo Cuba, against the CIA rendition flights including their use of Shannon Airport and against the militarisation of the Salthill Airshow.

Michael D Higgins participating in the Galway Alliance Against War demonstrations held to condemn the presence of military planes at the Salthill Airshow from air forces that participated in the illegal Iraq war

Check out also my blog article Michael D. Higgins: Conscience of the Nation

Obama in Ireland. Truly Inspiring Speech. Pity He Displays Political & Morale Cowardice on the Palestinian Queston

"Is feidir linn!"

A truly Inspiring speech by Barack O'Bama that must have put a smile on the faces and a steely determination into the hearts of every person in the the huge crowds that came to see him in Dublin.

"...Ireland, if anyone ever says otherwise, if anybody ever tells you that your problems are too big, or your challenges are too great, that we can't do something, that we shouldn't even try - think about all that we've done together. Remember that whatever hardships the winter may bring, springtime is always just around the corner. And if they keep on arguing with you, just respond with a simple creed: Is féidir linn. Yes, we can

He reminded us that Ireland's centuries-long fight against occupation, tyranny and for the cause of liberty inspired peoples and nations across the world, none more so than in the USA.

"..When we strove to blot out the stain of slavery and advance the rights of man, we found common cause with your struggles against oppression. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and our great abolitionist, forged an unlikely friendship right here in Dublin with your great liberator, Daniel O'Connell...".

He helped us realise as we face the despondency brought about by economic and political crisis of today's Ireland, that the darkest hour is just before the dawn "..Remember that whatever hardships the winter may bring, springtime is always just around the corner. And if they keep on arguing with you, just respond with a simple creed: Is féidir linn. Yes, we can...." .

Sadly Obama in the last few days has failed to live up to his own words, caving into tyranny as he demonstrated political cowardice and dashed the hopes of millions in the Middle East and elsewhere when he backtracked on his public statement of Thursday last when he said that Israel must withdraw from the West Bank to its 1967 borders to allow for a final peace settlement. On Sunday though he stated the 1967 borders are a starting block for negotiations, that land swaps can occur, that Israel is a Jewish state, that USA will block attempts by the Palestinians to secure recognition at the United Nations for an independent Palestine. Obama, as with other US Presidents over the last five decades, is under the powerful and anti-democratic financial and political influence of the US pro-Israeli Jewish lobby

Dying Embers of Middle Eastern Christianity

At a time when Christians across the world celebrate the birth of their founder, a dangerous cocktail mix of Christian, Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism is leading to the near extinction of native Christianity in its birthplace with a mass exodus of frightened Arab and other indigenous Christians fleeing rabid persecution.

At the beginning of the last century, Christians represented a quarter of the population of the Middle East. Their churches dotted the landscapes of what is now Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. When Islam appeared in the region in the seventh century, Arab Christianity was already six hundred years old. Its worldwide influence was profound. They practised the custom of ‘prostration’ now almost exclusively associated with Muslims, and had always used (and still does) the term ‘Allah’ to refer to ‘God’. Egypt's Coptic Christians gave to the early Irish Celtic church its tradition of monasticism. Assyrian Christian scholars translated many of the Greco-Roman and Persian scientific texts into Arabic, thereby helping in the flowering of Islamic civilisation under the Abbasid Caliphate. From the eight until the eleventh century the Nestorians, with their heartland in modern Iraq and Iran were the most influential of all Christian churches with bishoprics stretching as car as southern Arabia and eastern China.

A religious tolerance more or less held in the Middle East for centuries until it began to be replaced about one hundred years ago by hatred and even genocide. This began in World War One when, according to many leading historians, the Ottoman Turks massacred three million Armenians, Assyrian and Pontiac Greeks in World War One because of their faith and ethnicity.

From 2001, the ‘Born-Again Christian’ George Bush unleashed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that he termed a ‘crusade’ which has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Combined with the pro-Zionist views of influential right-wing American Christians, who believe that all of Palestine must become Jewish in preparation for Christ’s return to Earth for the great final battle of ‘Armageddon’ (aka the ‘Rapture’), the response across the Middle East and environs has been the unleashing of a wave of murderous religious extremism. Too often local Christian communitities became an easy and accessible target. Christians now make up less than 6% of the region's population.

Yet as with Russia and China, US foreign policy is driven by an imperial greed that has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, liberty and justice. Its key global allies are bigoted religious authoritarian regimes such as Israel with its campaign of colonisation of Arab lands by foreign Jewish settlers; Saudi Arabia where Christian worship and that of other religions is banned, where school children are taught to hate ‘infidels’ or non-believers, and where conversion from Islam to any other religion (apostasy) is punishable by death; Iraq where a campaign of ethnic cleansing has led to possibly 500,000 Christians fleeing the country since 2004; and an Egypt where religious discrimination is practiced, where churches are bombed; where reports of the kidnapping, rape and forced marriages of young Christian Coptic women to Muslim men are increasing.

The great Irish writer and Protestant cleric Jonathan Swift was correct in his analysis that “We have enough religion to make us hate each other but not enough to make us love one another”.

So surely there is an obvious case for the expulsion of these and other countries from a United Nations with its ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ that includes Article 18 which states “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”?

Sadly the EU and the Irish government will do little of substance to end religious and other types of persecution in countries where they have vested economic interests.

Finding the Truth in Netanyahu’s Speeches

My article below appeared as a letter in a recent edition of the Galway Advertiser:
One could agree with the sentiments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he says that an air, sea and naval blockade is necessary to “…prevent militants groups from getting weapons… whose only goal (is) to hit civilians and kill as many… women, children, old people…Under international law and under common sense and common decency, (there is a need to) interdict this weaponry and to inspect the ships that might be transporting them.”

Likewise Netanyahu could be correct in his analysis that allowing an aggressive Middle East state to obtain nuclear weapons “…threatens …world peace in a way that very few events could possibly threaten it. (This) nuclear challenge represents a ‘hinge of history’ and ‘Western civilization’ will have failed if (a Middle East state) is allowed to develop nuclear weapons…”

So it is time for the United Nations, supported by the Big Four Powers, to confiscate Israel’s nuclear arsenal and put in place a cordon to finally end the flow of 90 billons of dollars in US military and financial aid that has gone into the country since 1976 which has provided the IDF with the F16s, Apache helicopters and Sparrow/Sidewinder missiles necessary to kill thousands of civilians in its neighbouring states and facilitate the colonial occupation and settlement by racist fundamentalist settlers of Arab lands. Cromwell would gladly approve of a policy that has overtones of “To Hell or To Connacht”. Today the 1.5million civilians in the densely populated over-sized concentration camp known as Gaza can look out from bombed-out tenement buildings across the security walls onto the fertile fields and clean tidy settlements of what was, until only a few decades ago, their family lands.

Netanyahu talks of the ‘Jewish State’. But even in biblical times, the ‘Holy Land’ was never a land of Jews alone who were in fact only one of many indigenous peoples which included Canaanites, Amorites, Philistines and Samaritans. Jerusalem itself was a Jebusite city until conquered by a Jewish army under King David.

The Jewish people in Europe were almost wiped out 70 years ago by a regime that wanted to remove them from lands in Eastern Europe that it laid claim too based on racist myths. The Jews were forced from their homes, that were then given to German colonists (as with many other indigenous peoples in Eastern Europe), and herded into concentration camps where movement of food and other supplies was tightly controlled. Any individual resistance to this blockade led to a brutal armed response onto the entire population.
Ironic then that we see today’s descendants of that Holocaust behave like Nazis of old. They arbitrarily dictate what goes into Gaza and what doesn’t. Allowing canned meat but not canned fruit; allowing mineral water but not fruit juices. Banning computers, school books and cement is reminiscent of Hitler’s ideology of denying education and other basic human rights to ‘inferior’ races.

Europe should follow the example of the activists of the ‘Rachel Corrie’ ship (named after a female American peace activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer when she acted as a human shield protecting a Palestinian home from demolition) to ensure that history does not repeat itself. We owe it to the memories of the victims of the attempted genocides of the Jews, Armenian Christians, Kurds and Muslim Bosnians in the Europe-Middle Eastern region during modern times.

Will the International Community Ever Stand up to the Terrorist Aggressor State known as Israel?

Protests in Galway against armed Israeli attack on naval humanitarian aid convoy.
Location was the Liam Mellows statue at Eyre Square

This week’s armed pirate attack in international waters by the Israeli military on a peaceful flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza, resulting in the deaths of civilian passengers and the hijacking of ships and their occupants, is another demonstration of the terrorism that is a key characteristic of the Israeli state.

In the last few days, Israel has arrogantly dismissed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed by 189 states to make the Middle East a ‘Nuclear Free Zone’; in the last few weeks, it has vowed to continue expanding illegal Jewish colonial settlements on Arab lands; in the last few months it has been shown to have stolen international passports (including Irish) to provide cover for assassins sent to kill an opponent in another country; in the last few years, it has invaded Gaza and Lebanon killing thousands of innocent civilians, deliberately obliterating urban areas, transport/government infrastructure and covering agricultural lands with anti-personnel cluster bombs; in the last three years it has organised an illegal air, sea and land blockade of Gaza that represents the longest siege in modern times; in the last decade it has built a huge fortified wall on Arab lands in order to confine Arabs into nothing more than large concentration camps; in the last few decades it has built up an illegal nuclear weaponry arsenal; consistently defied UN resolutions; introduced racists laws against Arabs; and has invaded, occupied and settled Arab lands with racist Jewish colonial settlers brought in from Europe and beyond, ensuring in the process that any indigenous peoples left are stripped of their personal/national dignity by denying them control of their own roads, food and water supplies.

What more evil does Israel have to do before the western political community has the courage to take on the powerful Zionist financial and political lobby in the USA, Britain and elsewhere, as exposed by that fine elder statesman ex-US President Jimmy Carter, and put an end to the aggression and expansionism of a state that is a central cause of instability in the Middle East and the world?

The Irish government should be praised for unequivocally condemning Israeli piratical action and calling for an end to the illegal siege of Gaza. But surely, Ireland should now go further by expelling the Israeli ambassador and calling for a EU trade boycott of Israel? Likewise it should demand the sacking of the European taxpayer-funded 'Middle East Peace' envoy Tony Blair, who is distrusted in the region from his term as British Prime Minister, who spends so much of his time on the lucrative US lecture circuit or by acting as a high paid consultant to financial institutions/corporations whilst seeming to go AWOL when Israel launches one of its regular terrorist campaigns against unarmed civilians. Sadly he lacks the moral conviction of those brave Jews and Israelis such as the ‘Rabbis For Palestine’ who took part in demonstrations this week in London and elsewhere against the Israeli state murder machine.