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Showing posts with label Drogheda Stands With Palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drogheda Stands With Palestine. Show all posts
Anthony McIntyre ☠  Last weekend in London, British police in a message symptomatic of Burnham draconian intent arrested 325 people at a protest rally outside the US embassy.


The rally had been organised by Defend Our Juries. 

Most of those detained were bearing placards proclaiming I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action. Yet a woman brandishing a placard I support genocide, I oppose Palestine Action was allowed to proceed without police intervention. This prompted a wry observation that “You can’t make this up . . . you can openly cheer for mass murder, but you can’t protest against it.” 

Fortunately, for now, on this turf where Burnham’s writ does not run we can still protest against mass murder and voice our support for Palestine Action without fear of arrest. The elderly Jewish human rights lawyer, 94 year old Margaret Owens was not so lucky. She was one of those arrested.

Echoing the earlier seniment, Rita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, described what is happening under Burnham who remains on course to complete what Keir Starmer began.

The Kafkaesque UK laws adopted under the Starmer (government) to appease Israel are such that you’ll get arrested for terrorism if you hold a sign saying, ‘I support Palestine Action.’ But if you hold a sign saying ‘I support genocide, I oppose Palestine Action,’ then you’ll be fine.” 

Zack Polanski, leader of the UK Green Party served it up on a plate in his scathing criticism of the Burnham policy:

This is truly dystopian . . . Israel killed eight people, including a child, in Gaza this weekend as they continue their genocide . . . After a weekend of arresting pensioners for protesting against this horror, Labour has (put) Israel far above serving our local communities.

Welcome to Burnham’s Britain which is tough on grannies but easy on Genocide.

The protests that took place in London were staged against a background of ongoing genocide in both Gaza and The West Bank. In respect of the latter Israeli policy has been spelt out by the Tel Aviv human rights body B'Tselem in The Elimination Report in which the body drew on 2000 testimonies from Palestinians taken since October 2023 complemented by three decades of monitoring the behaviour of Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. B'Tselem said:

The report looks at the current reality not as a collection of isolated incidents or specific harms, but as part of a comprehensive mechanism of elimination that works to dismantle the conditions for continued Palestinian existence in the West Bank, while deepening Jewish control and supremacy in an irreversible manner. An examination of the current reality in the West Bank reveals that the project of elimination is now being implemented more openly, directly and violently than before, and increasingly relies on cooperation between official state authorities and settler militias operating in the West Bank with state backing and support.

Since the start of 2023 almost 50,000 Palestinians have been forced from their homes or land and 1,333 killed by settlers or soldiers. While the October 7 attack simply cannot be justified by any group purporting to hold to the universal application of human rights, the figures show that more people have been killed in the West Bank since 2023 than died on October 7. 

On top of this a UN Commission of Inquiry reported in the middle of October that Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of persecution against Palestinian children, where in the West Bank “the harm inflicted on children is not incidental or collateral to the broader violence affecting civilian population, but forms part of a pattern of intentional violence.” According to Human Rights Watch:

Their findings recognize an important dimension that has not been given enough attention: children in the West Bank have been deliberately targeted—not just because of their nationality, race or ethnicity but also due to their age—in attacks causing serious bodily and mental harm.

This is entirely consistent with the claim made by Simon Harris shortly after the onset of the Israeli genocide that Israel was waging war on children. 

Margaret Owen and others are being arrested for standing in opposition to what has been clearly identified by a UN Commission of Inquiry and B'Tselem. It is what we stand against week in week out. Like Margaret Owen we stand here weekly, not meekly or weakly. Today we stand also with Margaret Owen and her colleagues who constantly fear arrest. In doing so we stand resolutely against Burnham who despite replacing him continues to stand with Starmer. 
 
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Tough On Grannies 🪶 Easy On Genocide

Anthony McIntyre ☠  Yesterday the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African jurist, Navi Pillay.

The reason for the choice of Pillay came in the words of Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee:

This year's laureate has been instrumental in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide are prosecuted . . . The system of international law is under tremendous pressure and its institutions are under attack . . . towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice.

Little is left to the imagination as to who is the first among equals in this rogues gallery. Ms Pillay pointedly referred to her role heading the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) into Israel's behaviour in Gaza, stating: 'The last thing I did is the delivery of the report on Gaza, naming what's happening there as genocide."

Within hours Donald Trump, furious at not getting a peace prize for waging wars, ordered sanctions against the International Criminal Court. Trump might feel he has a point. In 1973 the prize was awarded to another US war criminal, Henry Kissinger. Horrible Henry was responsible for more war crimes than any other Western leader in the post World War 2 era. Think Vietnam, Cambodia, Cyprus, Argentina, Indonesia, Chile, Laos, Bangladesh, East Timor. He has been at the scene of every crime against humanity, his finger prints on every napalm bomb, torture chamber or assassination. Two members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee resigned in protest at the decision to bestow the peace prize on the US War criminal. Kissinger himself declined to turn up to receive his prize for fear of anti-war protests.

One writer at the time said that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize". And when an international criminal clown sanctions the International Criminal Court as punishment for not awarding him the prize the same type of sentiment is easily echoed.


Consider for a moment who nominated Trump for the prize - the most bellicose state in the Middle East, a country that has bombed as many nations as Kissinger did. Netanyahu nominating Trump for a peace prize has the same moral worth as the paedophile priest Brendan Smyth nominating Jimmy Saville for a child protection award.

While Trump gave off a hissy fit, a deeper reason comes to the fore and which was articulated by US Secretary of State, the Zionist Marco Rubio:

President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans . . .That is ‌why, today, the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court.. . . We ⁠will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.

The Trump regime intends to punish companies that provide services to the ICC.

US sanctions typically bar all US-based companies from any work with a sanctioned organization, forcing banks to shut accounts, ⁠insurers to end ​coverage and software companies to halt cooperation.
 
The Court which has a membership of 125 nation states has described the Trump administration action as an 'assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order' and called on its 125 member states to take action to defend it:

The court cannot stand alone. Its fate now rests also in the hands of the states that created it . . . This is not just about defending a single institution, but about safeguarding the international order grounded upon the rule of law . . . History will judge this moment.

The Nobel Prize Committee has referred to the huge contribution to peace made by the work of the ICC.

An international legal system in which war criminals are held to account and the victims of abuse see justice served is a precondition for a peaceful world.

Contrast this with the bellicose perspective of a genocide enabling state like the US, of which it has been said: "We inhabit a world where The fastest way to get on the president’s sanctions list is to put a war criminal on yours."

As we gather on West Street today as members of Drogheda Stands With Palestine, on the third anniversary of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, we are under no illusion as to what this is about: the unconstrained, unchallenged power to perpetrate crimes against humanity and avoid being held to account. We stand with the 85-year-old South African judge and against the 80-year-old US war criminal. 
 
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International Criminal Clown Sanctions International Criminal Court

Anthony McIntyre ☠ This month marks the third anniversary of Israel's genocide in Gaza. 

Since the nation of child killers invaded Gaza with one aim in mind - making Palestinian life unsustainable - the people of conscience involved with Drogheda Stands With Palestine have assembled each Saturday to protest the genocide and offer solidarity to the Palestinian people. 

The citizens of Drogheda are for the most part welcoming. The rare outbursts of hostility invariably come from those who claim to be Irish nationalists but who are in fact Irish racists. I usually tell them to put their hats on as woodpeckers are about. The colour form might be different from the hate filled bigots who are currently trying to have their march forced down Garvaghy Road. The Irish racists wave green, white and orange, the Portadown hate cabal's colour preference is red, white and blue. Don't be fooled by form or colour. The content is the same. Hate mongers eager to target people they deem children of a lesser god.

Since we gathered here last Saturday, the Irish national soccer team has most unfortunately turned out against Israel. A 3-0 victory over the child killers brings no consolation to those opposed to the game ever having being played. Even less to the besieged and beleaguered of Gaza. When Stop The Game tennis balls were hurled onto the pitch at the Aviva Stadium during Ireland's midweek game against Austria, the thought struck me that there were more balls thrown from the spectators than there are among the ethical eunuchs in the higher echelons of the the Football Association of Ireland. So, it was with a sense of pride that I watched our very own Joanna Byrne, who has stood with us in this very spot, tear strips out of the FAI for its refusal to withdraw from the game during an Oireachtas committee hearing into the handling of the fixtures. She quickly took the smirk from the smarmy face of Paul Cooke, the FAI President.

While it was good to see the Irish players refuse to shake hands with the team representing the genocidal state, and to wear black armbands, it was small consolation, style over substance. At the turning point the entire Irish team, bar one, failed to turn. Gavin Bazuna, alone chose to walk away from the child killers rather than play with them. The Irish squad was given the opportunity to vote on whether to play Israel or abstain. It chose to play and in doing so allowed the Israelis to claim that 'football has won.' Sport didn't win. Sportswashing did.

Also during the week I saw an image of a 94 year old woman, the human rights barrister Margaret Owen, being carried by a large group of British police officers. She was being forcibly removed from the British Labour Party conference because she protested genocide and supported Palestine Action. Like Gavin Bazuna she took a stand of substance, rather than opt for posture protest. Defend Our Juries, which organised the protests, said in a statement:

Inside the Labour party conference today, Ed Miliband will tell campaigners and party members that they were right to build political pressure over Gaza with their protests. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. If he means what he says, why are those taking a principled stand against genocide still being arrested as terrorists?

Like the FAI, the British Labour Party is big hat and no cattle.

The Irish soccer team stands to repeat its obscene abdication tomorrow evening and again take to the field against the child killers. They would do well to ponder the words of Dave Sherlock of the Stop The Game Coalition.

You can't play football with these people – you have government ministers standing up in their parliament and saying there are no innocents in Gaza, kill them all, kill the children because they'll only grow up to be terrorists.

For words such as these Dave Sherlock and Joanna Byrne, like the elderly supporters of Palestine Action, will be seen as the real problem. the message from the FAI: let's pillory the protestors and play the child killers.

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Ethical Eunuchs

Anthony McIntyre ☠ I missed last week's vigil - got caught up in other things. 

While it can't be helped and life has its own way of intruding on our best intentions, missing the vigil that Drogheda stands With Palestine has put in place since the onset of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It makes me feel guilty, as if caught with my hand in the cookie jar: that feeling of  having done something I shouldn't have.

In truth, rather than make me feel guilty it should remind of the honour it is to be part of a body of people for whom genocide is anathema, from which they resile with every fibre of their moral being. Missing the honour of standing here should serve to remind me of just how honourable a stance is taken each Saturday at 12 noon. 

Even when it is dry, warm and the sun bathing our faces with its rays, we can still think of the title of Arthur Koestler's renowned novel, Darkness At Noon. We gather to protest the darkness that has enveloped Gaza in gas chamber like-fumes every single noon for almost three years. We also gather to proclaim that even when governments act like little Mary Sun Shine, there is no amount of rays emanating from their corridors of power that are bright enough to herald the arrival of a new dawn. Western societies need to fumigate not placate the malignancy of the reach of the Israeli lobby. Effective measures alone can dispel the darkness. What sort of commitment to ending a genocide is to be found in banning Palestinian students from this country but allowing IDF war criminals to enter at will and unhindered?

While Steven Pinker in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, makes the point that, if we are prepared to go back far enough in the past, genocide has been a regular feature in human history, for long the rule rather than the exception. Pinker was no in any way justifying genocide but rather trying to demonstrate that society has progressed quite some way to a point where genocide is very much the exception. 

For we who gather here on a weekly basis, no matter how prevalent genocide was in the history of our species, or how rare an event it might today be, it has never been right, has always been wrong, and is as wrong in Gaza as it was in Eastern Europe when the Nazis perpetrated the most heinous crime in human history: the war of extermination against the Soviet people, part of which included the Holocaust against the Jews. 

While evil sounds more like a religious concept than a secular one, there are instances where its use in justified by secularists. The Nazis were indeed evil but they were not uniquely evil. Hutu Power which carried out the 1994 Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis - which the West also denied was happening in real time - was also evil. Israel, like the Hutus and the Nazis, is not uniquely evil. But it is evil nonetheless. 

This may be underscored by the recent activity of Israel's national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. The Guardian columnist and author Owen Jones who has tried to refrain from comparing Israel to Nazi Germany - I am not really sure why - has relented and very pointedly labels Ben-Gvir a Nazi. His reason was simple. Ben-Gvir posted a Computer Generated Image video of emaciated, weeping Palestinian civilians being sent into a Nazi style death camp. Jones commented:

What do you say? Not even any subtlety there . . . Look at it it. Look at it. It could not scream Nazi more loudly. Now look, I have shied away in general from comparisons with Nazis. But what else are you supposed to do when the National Security Minister is literally positing CGI videos of what are mocked up Nazi death camps and senior Israeli leaders are talking like Nazis, unequivocally, whilst committing every single war crime and crime against humanity there is to commit, indeed including genocide?

That is why I try to make this vigil every week. Israel's Nazi like activity occurs every week, every day, every noon. This vigil, no matter how small, helps ensure that a speck of light reaches into the darkness at noon, every noon.

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It Could Not Scream Nazi More Loudly

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Israel has closed its investigation into the IDF murders of seven aid workers in 2024. 


The murdered workers, three British citizens, a dual US-Canadian national, a Polish citizen, an Australian, and a Palestinian, belonged to the World Central Kitchen. The reason for their murder - delivery of food aid to Gazan civilians being starved by Israel.

And to rub salt into the wound the Israeli announcement came on World Humanitarian Day. It was a demonstrable flip of the bird by Israeli to international law in which it demonstrated its contempt for the international legal institutions which on paper at any rate exist for the purpose of holding to account those guilty of Nazi-like atrocities.

The governments of the UK, Australia and Canada issued a joint statement in which they said that the IDF announcement 'that it would not pursue criminal investigations into this strike, without further explanation, is shameful."

The World Central Kitchen which employed the murdered aid workers called the Israeli decision "inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive."

This move comes in tandem with an acknowledgement by the IDF of something that  everybody else has known since 2024. For the past two years the IDF has lied, claiming to have had no forces in the area of the mass murder that saw the deaths of six year old Hind Rajab who:

was found dead inside a car riddled with hundreds of bullets in Gaza City alongside six members of her family, days after she desperately called for help during an hours-long phone call with the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Hind Rajab's remaining family members have expressed no confidence in the Israeli promise to investigate as has the Hind Rajab Foundation in Brussels which rightly pointed out that:

Investigations into violations committed by Israeli forces overwhelmingly end without meaningful examination, prosecution, or punishment . . . In the small number of cases in which soldiers have been convicted of crimes, the punishments imposed have often been exceptionally lenient or administrative in nature.

It is Israel's Nazi-like belief that it is above and beyond international law and that it can murder at will with no fear of accountability that allows Israeli Security Minister Ben Givr, to invoke the Nazi concept of untermesch to advocate that:

targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night . . . Not just those who pose an immediate threat . . . There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn't live. They're not even people.

Yet there are those who would not be upset by that statement but would claim to be deeply offended by, and squeal antisemitism at, others for describing the author of such a heinous statement as a Nazi.

This is what makes the decision to fire International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan an alarming development with Jonathan Cook warning that with his dismissal 'the elimination of the war crimes court is near-complete.'

If Khan is guilty of sexual harassment of a woman named only as Sarah, then there is no appropriate response to his dismissal other than goodbye and good riddance. Yet as Cook points out:

A fact-finding body carried out a lengthy investigation of Sarah’s allegations over more than a year; its thousands of pages of evidence were then evaluated in detail by three senior judges. Though you would not know it from the media coverage, they concluded that there was no evidence to suggest any kind of misconduct by Khan, sexual or otherwise.

He continued that:

an entirely political body called the Assembly of States Parties, comprising diplomatic representatives of the 125 states signed up to the ICC, entirely ignored the legal findings and dismissed Khan. Paradoxically, it was the Assembly of States Parties that appointed the judges who had concluded that there was no evidence of misconduct or breach of duty by Khan. That inconvenient judgment was simply reversed, despite the Assembly members being in no position to weigh the evidence themselves.

Khan was previously told by a British-Israel lawyer with connection to Netanyahu “they will destroy you and they will destroy the court' if the arrest warrants for Israeli leaders were not rescinded. 

The same determination to evade accountability in the ICC was in play when Fatou Bensouda the Ghanian legal figure was ICC prosecutor for nine years. Bensouda reported that she was also the subject of intense pressure from a strategic initiative launched by Mossad. The Mossad aim according to an Israeli official speaking to the Guardian was 'to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her as someone who would cooperate with Israel’s demands.'

We know the truth behind the murder of the aid workers and the Hind Rajab massacre.  It is a truth we assemble at this spot every Saturday as Drogheda Stands With Palestine, to proclaim. The message that rings out from this spot and others each time people of conscience gather in solidarity with the murdered of Gaza and the West Bank is you may have got rid of Khan, but getting rid of the truth - No Khan do. We steadfastly refuse to allow you.

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No Khan Do

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Courtrooms are not the type of places we head off to in search of some relaxation.


I have spent so much time in them that I began to think my name was either 'the accused' or 'the defendant.'. Impersonal, formal and rushed places, business moves at the frenzied pace of a New York moment.

It was a beautiful sunny day when I accompanied Drogheda Stands With Palestine activist Siobhan to Dundalk court. It was the second time in a matter of months that we had made the short train journey to the town. She had been summonsed because she had refused to pay her licence fee. For her it was a matter of conscientious objection towards paying anything to RTE whose coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, she felt, fell far short of what a national television station should be serving to the society that finances it. Her view was simple: how can citizens be well-informed if RTE does not inform them?

The court building felt like a furnace on a sweltering hot Tuesday morning. Not enough seats for the people gathered we stood in the hallway awaiting the court to start while people fanned themselves down with legal papers and summonses, as legal eagles crisscrossed the building seeking out their clients and talking with their opposite numbers. At times a prisoner handcuffed to a guard would walk across the room, the cuffs guaranteeing him attention whether he wanted it or not. I made a point of following the eyes as they followed him. Having been in handcuffs hundreds of times, most of them for court appearances, it felt better to be brought to court by Siobhan who didn't need cuffs to get me there.

Last time up the case was adjourned. The An Post official we met in one of the court building's consultation rooms said at the time he would like to give her more time to pay the licence. Something she had not requested. On this occasion when we entered the room he fully expected Siobhan to have paid, leading to him being able to withdraw the case. She explained she hadn't paid and would not be paying due to the coverage of the Israeli genocide. He informed her that the case would have to proceed and that he could not enter into further conversation with her as it could be prejudicial to the outcome. He was formal but courteous.

I asked Siobhan if she was concerned about getting a record if convicted. No was her brief reply. She was good to go. We bantered about her going to jail as the Termonabbey One. Not that we had any concerns about that. The judge would have to fine her first and when she refused to pay that then the possibility of jail might loom down the line.

Inside the courtroom the judge was moving through cases at lightening speed and giving short shift to those who were not moving as quickly as she felt the imperatives of a busy court schedule required. As we awaited our turn, we watched other cases. In one, a black Garda was giving evidence. I didn't envy him, thinking he must get more abuse than most gardai given the racism that on some occasions has taken to the streets of Dundalk. It brought to mind an incident from Drogheda where a young ban garda of a colour other than white left the force after being threatened and abused by a drunken racist thug. A single black Garda contributes more to the society we live in than a regiment of racist hate vendors.

When Siobhan was called I walked up to stand behind her as she made her case, honoured to be with her as a colleague from Drogheda Stands With Palestine. We had stood together in West Street weekly vigil for almost three years and our court outing was hardly breaking our stride. It was the same journey, standing for the same thing. Most important of all, Siobhan could have restricted her evidence to simply stating that she did not have a TV, and was not in possession of one at the time of the TV licence inspector's visit. That was enough to win her an acquittal. She didn't take the easy way out, but instead made what for her was the foremost point, that she would not be paying RTE anything because of her conscientious objection to its coverage of Gaza. The judge noted it and then moved to strike out the case.

We emerged from the courtroom to a North Louth sun to make our way back on the only good thing ever to come out of Dundalk - the train to Drogheda!!

Siobhan's act of civil disobedience could have cost her. But consequences did not dissuade her from pursuing what she believed to be the proper course of action. Contrast her stand with that of the FAI or the Dublin government and their role in legitimising the rogue state of Israel. Wolfe Tone's people of no property or no power are willing to do the right thing when those who have both property and power use every evasive tactic in the book to dilute, defer, derail doing the right thing, and then deny having done anything wrong.

In the overall scheme of things actions like Siobhan's can appear small particularly when considered against soccer internationals or the Occupied Territories Bill. Yet their significance lies in the message they transmit: that individuals prepared to be disobedient, in a way that their governments and sporting authorities are not, is the grit that sticks in the wheels of the genocidal juggernaut. Siobhan's action was much more than a refusal to pay a TV licence. It was a statement that Irish society should not be complicit at any level in giving Israel a licence to kill. No matter how small it might seem or as torturously slow as progress appears, it is actions such as this which help build the momentum towards a situation once summed up by VI Lenin: There Are Decades Where Nothing Happens and Weeks Where Decades Happen.

Nothing will happen if citizens like ourselves, through actions, big and small, don't make them happen.

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The Courtroom

Anthony McIntyre ☠ The Dublin government, it seems, has finally moved to introduce legislation enacting the Occupied Territories Bill, indicating it will be in place before the parliamentary summer recess, when those who do very little good will take a holiday in which they will continue to do very little good.

Called the Israeli Settlements (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2026, it falls a long way short of what was both hoped for and needed by campaigners. Ellen Coyne in the Irish Times identified the core failing of what the government seeks to enact:

The Bill that Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee finally brought to Cabinet on Tuesday – after an extremely long delay – is one that arguably now carries more emblematic relevance than practical power . . . At the moment, the proposed legislation would only ban the trade of physical goods between Ireland and the illegally occupied Israeli settlements. Most estimations are that this is an almost negligible amount, which would result in a very weak economic sanction of Israel. The trade of services, which is harder to quantify, is believed to be a much higher figure.

No one should feel guilty for believing on the strength of this Bill that Profit Before Palestinians is the government's catchcry. 

In the Dail, stung by the trenchant opposition to the government's all lip no teeth Bill, a petulant Taoiseach accused People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett of virtue signalling when he called for the Bill to be 70% more expansive than what the government currently proposes. What Micheal Martin was actually doing with his labelling of Boyd Barrett was vice signalling. Instead of opting for what is, for sure, an authentic virtuous position the Fianna Fail leader has chosen to adopt one of vice to placate those international forces who show little concern for the Palestinian people. 

Senator Frances Black, who spoke to us only last week in the Barbican Centre, warned us on the night not to expect too much from this government. She did not mislead us. The Bill is effectively a damp squib from a government which, unlike Spain, is more deferential than defiant towards the forces that constitute the Western hegemonic power bloc. The senator said:

Government still haven’t given any coherent, detailed justification for this beyond short soundbites . . . When the Bill finally hits the floor of the Dáil in the coming weeks I will be working with all opposition parties to table amendments to include services . . . That has been my clear position since 2018 and I will do everything in my power to make it happen . . . The ban should be comprehensive and include all trade, both goods and services.

Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Fein leader, accused the government of “taking a wrecking ball” to the Occupied Territories Bill as originally proposed by Senator Black, claiming that it had only acted because it had been dragged into doing so. Endorsement of this position is to be found in a Pat Leahy piece for the Irish Times in which he candidly said that the government had been stalling the Bill.

McDonald went further in her stinging but justified rebuke:

This is your response, your approach after 14 Irish citizens on a humanitarian flotilla to Gaza were kidnapped, detained, and brutalised by Israeli forces.

Having watched the videos and images of Israeli Security minister, Ben Givr - in a manner than even Heinreich Himmler refrained from when inspecting prisoners in Nazi concentration camps - mock and degrade the flotilla detainees illegally captured by Israel, Mary Lou McDonold's barb carries potent resonance.

That the Bill has made any progress at all is down to what the Irish Times has described:

the Irish public have started to treat the Bill as a metric of whether or not the Government is doing enough to either oppose Israel or support the people of Palestine.

This is where it sits: the powerful in this society whether in government or the FAI are comfortable doing as little as they can get away with. Our collective task in Drogheda Stands With Palestine, in conjunction with our colleagues throughout this society, is to hold their feet to the fire and make them as uncomfortable as possible while they replace real politics with gesture politics.  Perform the dance of deceit and vice signal as much as they want, we will be here to remind them and everybody else that vice is never a virtue, no matter how nicely it is dressed up.  Having watched the protest at the midweek Ireland-Qatar game, the phrase that leaps to mind when I observe the government's watery proposal is anyone for tennis? 

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The Soundbite Bill

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Missing these weekly vigils leaves a bad taste in the mouth. 

I was not available for the previous two due to other matters kicking in that needed attending to. If only the Israelis would miss a day of child murder.

While we gather, the Eurovision Song Contest is taking place in Vienna. The organisers have not banned the genocidal state from participation, coming up with all sorts of jabberwocky about an artistic space where unity is promoted and from which an image of a better world might be projected, conveniently choosing to ignore that Israel is using the competition to song wash its genocidal image.

Ireland along with Spain, Iceland, Slovenia, and the Netherlands make up the group of five societies boycotting the event in opposition to Israeli genocide in Gaza. While thirty five countries will be taking part, it is the lowest number of entrants since the 2004 expansion. While Iceland and the Netherlands are reported to be screening the event, Ireland along with Slovenia and Spain are broadcasting alternative shows. In the case of RTE, it has opted to put out old Father Ted episodes. Certainly more than most other national broadcasters are doing but it would have been more pointed and imaginative to have broadcast history shows about the 1938 Nazi march into Austria in pursuit of Hitler's Anschluss project which aimed at creating a Greater Germany. It would have been poignant and a reminder of what horrors can follow from inviting those who perpetrate genocide. Austrians made the German Nazis welcome in 1938 while today the country makes Israeli Nazis welcome. Lesser Germany and Lesser Israel, seem to be concepts alien to the Austrian political and cultural psyche which favours greatness.

RTE's decision is nevertheless to be welcomed but the institution remains a strange beast. Last night it opened its early evening news slot with a report about its top earners where the station juggled with the interchangeability or crossover between presenter and producer. The semantic hairsplitting around producing or presenting might be of interest to the number crunchers in RTE or to the type that like to train spot or plane watch, but it is hardly the most newsworthy item on the public agenda.

RTE's coverage of the genocide in Gaza is considered by many to have has fallen short of the mark. Earlier this week I accompanied our very own Siobhan to Dundalk courthouse where she had been summoned for refusing to pay her licence fee. 


Inside the pre-hearing consultation room she made the case most strongly that she was vehemently opposed to the broadcaster's coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. When people are prepared to stand up and take a hit for their beliefs it serves to remind us of just how many people, to quote the biologist Jerry Coyne, are wedded not to what is true but to what makes them comfortable. 

Which brings me to the Independent Writers Union of which I am a member. RTE, despite its failings, has shown more fortitude, than the Union. It at least is prepared to participate in a cultural boycott of genocidal Israel. The IWU declined to do any such thing a few weeks ago at its AGM, the reasoning being that it is not political. That leaves us as scribblers to look haughtily over the top of our glasses at our fellow writers in Gaza and the rest of the Occupied Territories and proclaim:

most sorry old bean that you are being murdered, your prisoners raped and now facing the noose, your children massacred, your education system destroyed, your intellectuals, writers and surgeons maimed to stem their creativity, your health system obliterated, your land stolen because your tormentors are the chosen people and you are children of a lesser god. But we, the Irish Writers Union, as a body of scribes can't do anything, because protecting our institution from allegations of being political must take precedence over protecting you from genocide.

And when we offer them that as an explanation for our commitment to nothingness, let's not feign surprise when they look at us through disbelieving and disdainful eyes and respond in three terse words: Irish Wafflers Union. 

This week our esteemed colleague. Siobhan, through a single act of civil obedience, did more to challenge the barbarism of Israel than the Irish Writers Union. A playwright, I don't imagine she will sign up for membership of a union too institutionally and non-politically timorous to write the wrong.

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Song Washing

Anthony McIntyre ☠ Nobody here needs to be told that Drogheda Stands With Palestine has gathered at this spot every Saturday since Israel launched its genocide in Gaza. 

Sometimes when we raise our voices there is a sense of whistling while walking past the graveyard. On those occasions our raised voices serve as a counterweight to the drop in morale that tends to set in when every week it is the same story - during the seven days since we last assembled, Israel has murdered more children. Somethings never change and that refrain is a constant here. Child murder seems to work like Viagra for Judeo Nazis like Itimar Ben Gvir, Security Minister of the occupying state and leader of the far right political party, Jewish Power. The very term Jewish Power to those who remember the genocide spawned by Hutu Power in Rwanda three decades ago, causes the most uncomfortable of shudders.

Yet for all of that, skimming over a friend's Fakebook page yesterday, I was heartened to note his take that Israel is growing more isolated in the international community, losing friends as quickly as Donald Trump seems to lose control of his bowels, unsure whether to spew their contents out his backside or mouth. But when it doubt, shit it out either which way, spread the MAGA crowd in slurry and have them express their undying gratitude for the privilege.

My friend wrote on his page:

In September 2025, an opinion poll in Germany, once Israel's most loyal ally, 62% of German voters believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. A vast majority (82%) of Germans reject military support for Israel in its conflict, with only 36% holding a positive view of the country, marking a notable decline in favourability.

If there is such a thing as good news during a genocide this is what makes it. One would imagine that Germany having perpetrated a genocide against the Jews and an even greater one against the Russians - the Holocaust industry tries to flip that so that the Jews, rather than the Slavs, are privileged as the most targeted and violated group during Worlds War 2 - would set its face like stone against any repeat. But no, Germany has found itself in the position of having supported two genocides in the space of a century.

When Israel stood accused of genocide before the International Court of Justice, Germany defended it against the charge, claiming in January 2024 that the allegation was baseless and amounted to a “political instrumentalization” of the 1948 Genocide Convention. As such, back then, the German government undertook to file an intervention on behalf of Israel.

However, as the deadline for submission to the ICJ loomed, Germany pulled back. The reason was not that the German state had second thoughts about what Israel was doing in Gaza but that Nicaragua had taken a case against Germany for assisting Israel through arming its genocide. While The ICJ rejected an application from Nicaragua for emergency action to be taken against Berlin, it did allow the Central American state's case to proceed.

A German Foreign Ministry spokesperson explained that: “We are now ourselves part of a contentious case before the ICJ and have therefore decided not to make use of this option.” 


Germany’s failure to file an intervention on Israel’s behalf means Israel is without the support of one of its more stalwart European supporters. Germany is Israel’s second-largest weapons supplier after the United States and has rarely criticized Israel’s prosecution of the war. It lifted a partial arms embargo on Israel in November.

My friend on Facebook concluded:

The collapse in Israel's reputation, and support for it, is worldwide, and particularly marked in countries seen as guaranteed Israeli supporters. Three quarters of the world's states now recognise the State of Palestine, including Germany and the UK, formerly long-time Israeli allies. Meanwhile, Belgium has become the latest country to call for the suspension, if not the full termination, of the EU-Israel trade deal.
Israel's reputation internationally has never been lower since the state's existence. Support for its existence is rock solid but respect for, and trust in, the state is collapsing, as is military support for it. The actions of indicted war criminal Netanyahu has done catastrophic damage to Israel's reputation.

That is the value of turning up in West Street each week no matter how despondent or despairing it seems. The genocidal juggernaut is finding its tracks increasingly clogged up with the type of grit that turns out here every Saturday.

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True Grit

Anthony McIntyre ☠ For the past fortnight the two most warlike states on the planet, the USA and Israel, have been attacking Iranian society in what looks like a bid to bomb it into the stone age.

Two thousand reported dead and millions displaced from their homes, this is dark ages stuff from two states that have the technology, the capability, the intellect but not the mindset to be global leaders in enlightenment rather than envelop the world in the darkness of a mushroom cloud.

In a most informative article on The Pensive Quill this morning, Cam Ogie draws comparisons between pre-enlightenment rule by the Caesars and that by Trump/Netanyahu. And they have the audacity to claim that Iran and Gaza are led by obscurantists.

Mehdi Hasan cut to the chase with his acerbic observation:

Israel is bombarding, literally bombarding two Middle Eastern capitals. Beirut and Tehran, literally killing hundreds of civilians, and yet the US and UK media continue to portray Iran as the threat to the region Israel has nukes, but Iran is the nuclear threat. We live in Orwellian times.

The fog of the war over Iran might obscure what happens elsewhere in the region, but happen it does. In the West Bank village of Abu Falah on the night of March-7, three Palestinian residents were butchered by Israeli Nazis seeking to intimidate them out of their land so that it could be stolen in pursuit of the expansionist policy of Lebensraum. The IDF stood by and observed as the attacks took place, only entering once the Nazi settlers had departed, their work for the night done. When the Israeli SS came in the wake of the Nazi settlers it was not with ambulances and medical equipment but with jeeps, tear gas and stun grenades.

Mondoweiss, sketching the background to the triple murder, highlighted the spike in Nazi settler violence:

They weren’t the only Palestinians whose lives were taken by Israeli settlers that week. A few days earlier, another Israeli attack killed brothers Muhammad and Fahim Muammar in the village of Qaryut, east of Nablus. Another Palestinian, Ameer Shanaran, was killed by an Israeli settler in Masafer Yatta of the South Hebron Hills on the same day as the Abu Fallah killings.In total, settler pogroms had killed five Palestinians in the West Bank in less than a week, part of a broader escalation in settler violence and Israeli military restrictions on the lives of Palestinians since the start of the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Israeli Nazi settler violence has been unrelenting: 486 attacks in January, 511 attacks in February. It is Kristallnacht every night for the residents of the West Bank. Muhammad Abu Karsh echoed a sentiment often expressed by Jews living under Nazi rule in the 1930s: "There’s a feeling of vulnerability and humiliation that you can be killed in our own town without consequences.”

A Palestinian can also be raped in custody, have it recorded only then to experience the vulnerability and humiliation that comes with finding out the five IDF rapists are not to face prosecution - again no consequences for the perpetrators of sexual violence.

In Gaza, where Israel has killed "more than 72,000 people in its genocidal war . . .  the majority of them women and children, and reduced almost the entire enclave to rubble," the Israeli air force this week murdered four civilians, including two seventeen year old boys. This brings the total of murders committed by Israel in Gaza to seventeen since the start of the onslaught on Iran. So much for a ceasefire.

Yes, there is a an imperialist war on Iran which we very much oppose. But Drogheda Stands With Palestine, each Saturday holds up a candle that refuses to allow the fog of that war to turn Gaza or the West Bank into a cosmological black hole from which no light can escape. We don't have to believe in a god to observe the biblical edict of let there be light. And we who gather here each Saturday remain determined that light from the heart of darkness will reach Drogheda

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Let There Be Light

Anthony McIntyre ☠ More Israeli violence in the Middle East, when yesterday the most Nazi-like regime in the region bombed Iran. 

Its leader, wanted by the international Criminal Court as a suspect in a war crimes investigation, is backed by the military might of another leader who a month or so ago was given to hissy fits because the Nobel Peace Prize had not been bestowed on him in recognition of the wars he has either threatened or been involved in. Yet not enough Americans consider it an imperative to change the president, content instead to change his diaper. 

Israel is considered a vital strategic partner to the US in the Middle East. Former president, Joe Biden has been consistent in his assessment first made in 1986 that “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.”. His reason for opposing the sale of arms to the Saudis four decades ago was because they could not fulfil Whitehouse strategic ambitions to serve as “agents of .U.S interests in the Persian Gulf region.” He brazenly cited the “naked self-interest of the U.S.”

Biden perhaps as a child was denied by his parents the opportunity of watching the movie, Frankenstein. It would have alerted him to the dangers of creating monsters. More likely, he did watch it and found the concept of monster-making a great idea, earning for himself the moniker Genocide Joe as a result.

Either way we are left with the monstrosity that is Israel, a settler-colonial, apartheid, racist regime. From the US perspective, it is considered good realpolitik for genocidal Israel to have a nuclear bomb but not theocratic Iran. 

If the US was a force for good in the world it would have bombed Tel Aviv not Tehran. However, bombing to stop or disrupt genocide is not something the US routinely does. It refused to bomb Rwanda in 1994 to disrupt the Hutu Power genocide of the Tutsis. It bombed Laos and Cambodia in 1970 with genocidal ferocity. In 1945 it bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the same dark spirit, which again is casting a dark shadow across the world as the global community sees the hand of the doomsday clock move towards the midnight hour. 

When we consider the bellicose nature of Israel, the most warlike state on the planet, there is a logic overflowing from the observation made last year by the American columnist Ted Rall:

As a political entity, Israel is a witch. Its conduct is incompatible with 21st-century civilization. To whatever extent it ever had one, Israel no longer has a right to exist.

While averse to any suggestion that the citizens of Israel should be subjected to the type of barbarism that the Palestinians have endured, it must be asserted that no state has an automatic right to remain in existence particularly when it is in perpetual violation of international law and norms. Apart from Justin Barrett, there seems to be a general scarcity of people making the news because of their insistence that the state of Nazi Germany should have been be allowed to continue in existence. 

Given the breadth of support within Israel for genocide and crimes against humanity it seems impossible to envision de-nazifying Israeli society as a workable alternative to the dismantling of the state of Israel. In the interests of world peace, its statehood has to be rendered obsolete.

For now, skip the pretence that the US supports Israel because it is the only democratic regime in the Middle East. It is the only genocidal regime in the Middle East but that is not why the US supports it. It supports it out of its own strategic interests. For people like ourselves in the Drogheda Stands With Palestine group, until this marriage made in hell is dissolved, to cite The Conversation, 'the U.S.-Israel relationship will remain “ironclad” and Palestinians will continue to pay the price."

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Making Monsters

Drogheda Stands With Palestine     will host its weekly vigil tomorrow to demand that the Israeli soccer team be shown the red card.

Date: 21 February 2026

Time: 1200

Venue: West Street 



Show Israel The Red Card

Anthony McIntyre  ☠ Each week we gather here in an act of solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza who for over the past two years have been subjected to a genocidal onslaught.

Given the very focused Israeli strategy of infanticide, which has resulted in a disproportionately high number of children making up the civilian death toll, we have frequently expressed our horror at the wilful extinguishing of young life. No vigil passes where the fate of children in Gaza fails to get mentioned. Children leaving the only world they will ever have known - some too young to be even cognizant of their surroundings - have taken up a large portion of our psychological world.

On the particular Saturday, the second West Street vigil of 2026, I would like to shift our gaze away from destruction, desolation, death. Rather than focus on children that have involuntarily left the world, I would like to draw attention to a child that has just come into the world. The new arrival is the son of our esteemed colleague Stephanie Kirwan and her partner Ryan Brennan.

For Drogheda Stands With Palestine, Stephanie, over the past two years, has been a driving force behind what we do. Inspirational, selfless, she has often delivered motivational speeches at these vigils. Often she would be accompanied by her daughter. On at least one occasion, her partner Ryan - fresh from having scored a wonder free kick the previous evening at Athlone during Drogheda United's magnificent and successful cup run - stood on the periphery of the vigil caring for the child while Stephanie spoke with passion and anger.

As a visitor to the Occupied Territories, Stephanie can speak with first hand knowledge of what conditions are like for those forced to live under the jackboot of Israeli occupation. Outside of these weekly vigils she has immersed herself in campaign work which on occasion has taken the form of fundraisers in McHugh's at which she has communicated to her audience the dire need for more people to become involved in opposing the genocide.

A matter of weeks ago, heavily pregnant, she arrived at my house after which I accompanied her as she went about aid work, on this occasion for a project not associated with Gaza. A truly wonderful human being who, despite now being a mother of two, will continue to reach out to others including the mothers and children in Gaza. For we Drogheda United fans - a few of us here are season ticket holders - Ryan Brennan, as Drogs captain . . . well, he is a great guy too!

Hearty congratulations to both Stephanie and Ryan and a warm welcome to their son, a companion for their daughter to fuss over.
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A New Arrival

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