Anthony McIntyre ☠ I woke up this morning to the news that the US has attacked Venezuela.
This batch of Trump's bombs is now raining down on Caracas rather than making its way to Tel Aviv for use on the civilian population and infrastructure in Gaza.
Trump has also threatened to attack Iran. He menaces that his forces are locked and loaded, ready to be unleashed if the theocratic Iranian regime continues to kill protestors. If the same protestors were on the streets in opposition to genocide in Gaza, Trump would not lift a finger to prevent any of them being shot. His regime and that of Genocide Joe before him provided the Israeli military with deadly hardware knowing that it was to be used in the mass murder of civilians with a particular focus on children, each Trump bomb conveying a message to Gazans about their future - obliteration. Why would he give one flying fornication about the civilian population of Iran?
There is also a message being transmitted to the international community: that international law counts for nothing; a United Nations exists only in name, the very concept reviled by those who do not wish to be united with fellow nation states but to dominate them. There is no sense of a spirit of cooperation aimed at maximising the best outcome possible for humanity. Hearts and minds are not valued. Tooth and claw are all that matters in the barefaced savagery that is unleashed in pursuit of untrammelled power in the areas the dominating nation states regard as their spheres of influence. The US, Russia and Israel can grab whatever they want, fortified by the deeply unethical assertion that might is right.
Against the backdrop of last night's bombs today's bitter chill will not prevent Drogheda Stands With Palestine gathering for the first vigil of 2026. When we first assembled in West Street, few felt we would still be in position for a fourth calendar year. We continue to dissent when it sames easier to despair.
Over forty years ago a line from a poem penned by a South African political prisoner resonated in my mind where it has stayed. I think it was called Handcuffs. The words have hope comrade, despair is for the defeated, motivated me in the worst of times. Yet the world we live in erodes that hope, a world where terror not talking gets to decide who is boss. People having the freedom to talk to each other is much like the United Nations - a formality, a fantasy, a fallacy - when we lack the ability to hear each other because the sound is drowned out by the constant blasts of bombs.
While we often overcome despair through inspiration from Palestinians who battle on in the face of great diversity, there are others too, who are not Palestinian and whose actions help us avoid being dragged down into the quicksand of inert hopelessness. Yael Levkovitz, a math teacher at a Tel Aviv elementary school, has not balked at swimming against the tide and refuses to defer to the logic that it is much easier to be wrong than it is to be ostracised.
Last month she was summoned to a meeting in her school where she faced disciplinary action. Her gross misconduct was that she had made “remarks against the government.”, an action prohibited by Israeli law:
Clause 5.1 in the memo of the director general of the Education Ministry 5769 [2008-2009] 8A, which prohibits levelling “insulting criticism” at the government.
This is the type of law which draws commentary that 'Israel is increasingly resembling a grotesque dictatorship.' It is becoming more like the the Nazi state whose actions served to bring Israel into being.
According to Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières:
The facts are not in dispute. Levkovitz participated in the demonstrations on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv against the war in Gaza and for the return of the hostages, she volunteers to protect Palestinian communities against settler violence and she expresses her political opinions on Facebook. On one occasion, she voiced outrage at the killing of hundreds of Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid. During the summer months this year, when hundreds of Gazan civilians died of starvation because of the Israeli siege of the enclave, she joined demonstrators who held up photos of hungry Gazan children or of others who had been killed in attacks by the Israel Defense Forces.
The stand being taken by Yael Levkovitz is a clear acknowledgement of the dangers lurking in the observation of Alexis de Tocqueville "A man's admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him."
In a world of contempt the fightback must be armed with compassion.
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