Ireland and Palestine — a history of solidarity
When news broke through of the massacre of 15 unarmed Palestinians by the Israeli Defence Forces at a Land Day protest on Good Friday of this year; a great sense of empathy was felt in Ireland in particular.
Being the Easter weekend, it was almost symbolic that at the same time Irish Republicans were preparing to commemorate the 1916 Rising; when an armed uprising took place against Imperialist Britain in Dublin city centre.
Indeed, this very Imperialism reared its ugly head the following day when an Easter commemoration was brutally attacked by the colonial RUC in Lurgan, occupied Ireland.
It is this shared experience of Imperialism between both nations which has led to a shared history of solidarity.
Like the occupied north of Ireland, the state of Israel was founded on the basis of a far-right ideology that deemed the lives of the natives to be subhuman; in Ireland, this was Ulster Loyalism, in Palestine, this was Zionism.
Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, the predominantly Catholic Nationalists faced discrimination in housing and employment from the predominantly Protestant Unionist ruling class, descended from Scottish and English settlers in the 17th century. In Israel, the native Arabs faced similar discrimination from European Zionist settlers.
In occupied Ireland this discrimination was one of the main catalysts for the outbreak of violence known as ‘the Troubles’ in 1969, and likewise in occupied Palestine this resulted in the first Intifada in 1987.
This strikingly similar history between both nations has led to long-standing solidarity between both countries; Palestinian flags and murals are a regular sight on the streets of Nationalist areas of occupied Ireland, and in 1981, following the H-Block hunger strikes which led to the death of 10 Republican POWs, Palestinian POWs in the Nafha Zionist jail smuggled out a letter of solidarity read at a rally in Belfast.
Even in a contemporary sense, this solidarity still continues; following the mass-hunger strike of Palestinian POWs in April and May last year, Republican POWs issued a solidarity statement similar to the famous Nafha one, and in January of this year birthday greetings were extended to Palestinian political prisoner Ahed Tamimi at the Bloody Sundays anti-Imperialist event in Dublin.
Indeed, with Brexit posing the possibility of a return to large-scale armed conflict in Ireland, and the Trump administration being perhaps the most pro-Zionist in US history, it would appear that this solidarity will continue for a long time yet.
