Anthony McIntyre ☠ In little over an hour's time Drogheda Stands With Palestine will return to West Street at its usual time to express solidarity with the people of Gaza, who even in the midst of an ostensible ceasefire, are still being murdered.
The Israeli fixation with infanticide has seen more children added to the ever growing list of casualties in its war on children.
Last week we gathered fifteen minutes earlier than normal for tactical reasons given that a racist protest was planned at the same time. Despite the noise the friction was minimal, one incident where a racist shoved one of our vigil. People attend our weekly event with children, some so young they are still in prams. Our primary duty of care is to those children which was exercised commendably. There is a time to confront the racists but we do not bring babies along if that is what we intend to do.
Our primary purpose at these events is to ethically but peacefully confront the racism of Israel that is responsible for the genocide that Gazans have been subjected to for the past two years.
The racist gathering last week was a pathetic affair, attended by people with big hats and no cattle. Noisy for sure but the type of sound that reminds us of empty vessels. It merely helps persuade us that if many racists had two heads they would be twice as stupid. Life for the racist means starting at the bottom and working their way down.
In the circumstances that compel us to gather each Saturday, there is rarely ever good news. The build up against genocide continues but at a glacially slow pace. There are no instant solutions, just a long hard slog where each swing of the oar takes us ever so slightly further along our oceanic journey to destination Freedom For Palestine. We are frustrated by the pace of travel but take solace from the direction of travel. In the midst of the darkness one sliver of brightness has broken through. Our colleague Martin Rafferty in Belfast has been acquitted of causing criminal damage at a West Belfast supermarket - his alleged crime, placing stickers on a product BDS had sought banned. Martin called his prosecution a “farcical waste of time and taxpayers’ money”. The Public Prosecution Service in the North seems to waste quite a lot of taxpayers money in its quixotic but malign ventures.
Adrian Carlin, solicitor of the accused activist claimed:
Every attempt was made by the prosecution to secure a conviction in a case that should never have been brought, including special measures, adjournment, and objection to defence evidence . . . It is an injustice that our client had to come to court 11 times this year before his name was cleared. We urge the PPS to now withdraw similar cases which have been brought against other BDS activists.
The Public Prosecution Service is political prosecution service, a view strongly suggested by Martin Rafferty when he linked his arrest to the authoritarian clampdown on protest and dissent heralded by the Starmer government: ''my arrest happened two days after Starmer became prime minister and I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.”
Der Starmer, seemingly as popular as the lecherous predator formerly known as Prince Andrew, not so long back was condemning the musical band Bob Vylan for its chant 'Death, Death to the IDF.'
Yet when the West Midlands police recently announced that they were going to ban the supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv from attending a match in Birmingham, Starmer was furious with their operational decision. Is West Midland police now antiemetic? A year earlier in Amsterdam the same racist Maccabi Tel Aviv fans chanted ”Death to the Arabs” and “There are no more schools in Gaza because we killed all the kids!”.
Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are so disposed towards violence that a match between Maccabi and another team from the Israeli capital was cancelled due to the threat of violence.
Starmer's perspective was summed up concisely by Jonathan Cook:
Starmer wanted punk band Bob Vylan prosecuted for chanting ‘Death to the IDF!’ Four months on, he’s bullying the police to let Israeli football thugs into the UK to chant ‘Death to the Arabs!’
This anti-human rights lawyer and enabler of genocide is stone deaf, deaf to the crimes of the IDF and the genocide loving soccer fans who support them. Will he now seek his critics jailed for accusing him of being deaf deaf to the IDF?
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