The rolling out of the red carpet by Sinn Féin to a delegation from the Zionist Likud Party Israel is a symptom of a corrupt political process built on protecting the privileges and power of the few.

Sinn Fein’s so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ credentials were put out in the dustbin the moment they became a firm pillar of the establishment and British rule. Not to mention their role in implementing a brutal austerity agenda that has inflicted devastation and misery in working class communities

Yesterday, members of the Kildare Palestine Solidarity Campaign carried out a boycott Israeli goods action in Tescos in Newbridge. This fairly straightforward action consists of a group entering the store with a trolley or two and filling them up with all the Israeli goods that they can find and then bringing these to the customer service desk and making a formal complaint to management.

Included in the haul were Israeli produced grapefruit, cosmetic products and baby potatoes which Tescos were asked by activists to cease purchasing and stocking due to the ongoing state of illegal occupation and apartheid in Palestine. This action follows on from the previous one in the same store that took place on Thursday 2nd April 2015.

NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION - “It is time for freedom and justice for Palestine"

The IPSC has put out a call to make the 5th protest for Gaza to take place on a Saturday in Dublin a national demonstration. Details are below and we will link to the FB event notice in the comments.



Saturday at 14:00–16:00
The Spire, O'Connell Street, Dublin, Ireland Dublin 1

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The past month has seen protests for Gaza taking place in countless towns and cities around Ireland. Thousands upon thousands of people have come out onto the street to call for an end to ongoing Israeli injustices against the Palestinian people.

We believe it is time for us all to get together, so the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign is calling for a NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION in Dublin on Saturday 9th August, assembling at 2pm at The Spire, O’Connell Street. From there we will be marching to the Israeli Embassy. 

Please bring friends, flags, banners, noise. We would ask that you do not bring party-political flags (Irish, Palestinian or others). 

The text below is translated from the poster at the centre of this image of the destruction of Gaza by the Israeli state. But it refers not to this horror but another in 1943 when the Nazis crushed the Warsaw ghetto, wiping out the poorly armed organised resistance that operated out of a warren of bunkers & sewers hidden beneath the ghetto. This poster was by one of the armed factions that defended the Ghetto, the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB)

All people are brothers;
Yellow, brown, black, and white.
Talk of peoples, colors, races -
Is all a made-up story

The Jerusulem Post carried an opinion piece today with the sub-heading: 

"The only durable solution requires dismantling Gaza, humanitarian relocation of the non-belligerent Arab population, and extension of Israeli sovereignty over the region." 



This echoes the words of Moshr Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Knesset, and a member of the ruling Likud Party, who, only two weeks ago said that "Israel must attack Gaza even more mercilessly, expel the population and resettle the territory with Jewish settlers". 

The expression of these views are not isolated, they represent a significant section of mainstream Zionist thinking and could not be freely aired if they did not. In reality they are the honest expression of the Zionist project to create an ethnically pure state, permanently rid of the native people. 

For the size of its population Ireland has seen very large Gaza solidarity demonstrations. It is also one of the few places in the world outside the USA where there has been public displays of support for the Israeli military assault. Internationally there are many variations of this map where activists present to their population what the expulsion of the Palestinians from much of the land they once occupied would look like in a local context. One of our members prepared this but we soon realised its an impossible image to post without some reflection on our own settler colonialist past.

People in Ireland have been protesting the Israeli assault on Gaza in every city and many towns across the country. Online polls show a majority want the government to take action through expelling the Israeli ambassador. Yet the southern government abstained on a crucial UN vote to set up an investigation into Israeli war crimes. We’d suggest when you include a look at the map above it becomes very clear that this is yet another example of the Irish state putting its alliance with the imperialist countries that have imprisoned the majority of the worlds population in misery ahead of the wishes of the population.

This isn’t new. During the American invasion of Iraq over 100,000 marched through the streets of Dublin demanding an end to our participation yet the government continued to allow US warplanes to refuel at Shannon. When hundreds of people threatened to physically enter Shannon to stop the refuelling ‘our’ same government deployed riot police and even the army against ‘their’ people’. Last month they sent 80 year old Margaretta D’Arcy to jail for a second time for refusing to stop protesting against that same refuelling, a decade on. And a few days ago they even arrested two TD's for daring to try and inspect a clearly visible US military plane that was on the runway for weapons or prisoners.