Cassandra Voices

Author: Fra Hughes

  • Why is the U.S. Supporting Israel?

    As we witness the barbaric bombing of Gaza by Israel, and as the deaths and horrific injuries of civilian men, women and children rise exponentially, it is necessary to ask: who (apart from the Israeli government) is behind this murderous campaign?

    Over decades the United States has liked to portray itself as an honest broker in an intractable conflict between Muslims and Jews, or Palestinians and Israelis.

    However, with American naval battle groups now in the region to provide ‘air defense or air combat patrol, if necessary,’ according to Aram Nerguizian, from the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington, this claim seems increasingly hollow.

    Nerguizian emphasizes that the current deployment is ‘not intended to be used in an offensive role.’ However, he acknowledges that this could change quickly if Israel finds itself in a ‘total, 360-degree conflict’.

    Moreover, despite more kids being killed in Gaza over the past three weeks than in all armed conflicts in each of the past three years, the Biden administration is proposing to send $14.6 billion dollars of war aid to Israel, while the European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen intitially suspended aid to the besieged Palestinian enclave.

    Meanwhile, in the West Bank illegal Israeli settlers have increased their attacks on isolated defenceless Palestinian villages, murdering one farmer collecting his olive harvest and leaving leaflets on cars and bloodied dolls at schools, warning Palestinians to leave or be killed. We appear to be witnessing a third wave of expulsions, following in the footsteps of 1948 and 1967.

    Indeed, even the New York Times is reporting that attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are surging. At least 115 have been killed, more than 2,000 have been injured and nearly 1,000 others have been forcibly displaced from their homes because of violence and intimidation by Israeli forces and settlers since Hamas’s attacked Israel on October 7, according the United Nations.

    America does not only give Israel political cover in the United Nations, it is also continuing to supply them with weapons of mass destruction. Along with the British and the French, the United States appears to be playing a more active role in this conflict.

    With stalemate in Ukraine, it seems that the U.S.-led NATO alliance is determined not to see an ally lose in Gaza. We can only speculate as to why this is happening, but Joe Biden has repeatedly stated ‘If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to protect our interests in the region’. Israel’s war on Gaza acts as a veiled threat to any nation considering joining a fledgling multi-polar world order.

    Many Israelis want to expel Gazans into the Sinai in Egypt and West Bank residents into Jordan to complete the Zionist dream of conquering all of Palestine and expelling its inhabitants.

    The current Israeli government that includes far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir may not stop at that, as the illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and Lebanese Sheba Farms testifies to the endurance of a Greater Israel project, coveting lands much larger than those currently occupied.

    Palestinians, however, will not go meekly into the night. Many would rather die than allow another Nakba to take place.

    While parents write their children’s names on their bodies so they can be identified in the event of their being slaughtered by American munitions, and as people collect body parts of the dismembered dead around the blast sites, we can only imagine the despair felt by 2.2 million people hopelessly corralled into an area of just 365 square kilometres.

    It seems as if Israel is hoping to occupy Northern Gaza and then expel the refugees into Egypt in a campaign of ethnic cleansing seemingly supported by the U.S., its main NATO allies and the European Commission.

    Of course, it was Britain that created the problem with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 supporting the establishment of a ‘national home for the Jewish people’, along with the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 between Britain and France envisaging the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

    The current turmoil in the Middle East may be traced to the British and French policy of divide and conquer, a tactic subsequently employed by the U.S..

    Perhaps, it is not the words of their enemies but the silence of their friends that Gazans may  remember after the deluge – at least those lucky enough to survive.

  • Anger at Hillary Clinton’s Appointment at Queen’s University in Belfast

    A protest organised by Lasair Dhearg, and involving representatives from People Before Profit and Academics Against Apartheid, gathered on University Road in Belfast on the morning of September 24th, 2021 as Hillary Rodham Clinton posed for journalists and television crews covering her inauguration as the first female Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast.

    Chants of ‘shame on Queen’s’, and ‘Hillary you should be at the Hague’, rang through the air as Clinton walked the short distance from the campus entrance to nearby Whitla Hall for the inauguration.

    Several speakers addressed the assembled protestors calling into question her record as U.S. Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, including support for intervention in Libya that has brought anarchic conditions, illegal drone strikes over western Asia and Africa, and unequivocal support for Israel.

    The promotion of Clinton to a seat of learning must surely be, at the very least, controversial. In a televised interview Clinton once joked about the brutal murder of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, the leader of Libya, saying, “We came, we saw, he died,” before laughing.

    Considering her apparent heartless disregard for human life, why would Queen’s University offer Clinton such a prestigious post as Chancellor?

    In October, 2018, the University invited Mark Regev, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom to speak, which drew a protest of hundreds of students. This was followed by a visit from Hilary Clinton, coinciding with the establishment of the Hillary Rodham Clinton Award in Peace and Reconciliation studies bursary at Queen’s. She also received an honorary doctorate for her ‘exceptional public service in the US and globally, and for her contribution to peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.’ This appears to have been a precursor to her instalment as Chancellor.

    Modern universities are no longer only seats of learning, but are businesses run for profit, with huge salaries for those running the organisations, and significant grants available, especially from technology and pharmaceutical companies.

    In order to benefit from research and development grants and encourage greater ties between American corporations and the University, Queen’s seem to be whitewashing Clinton’s record.

    Hillary Clinton has history in Ireland. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, visited Belfast and is seen as a central figure in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

    She is now milking this for all it’s worth, portraying herself as a mentor, who still has something to offer the youth of Ireland. Yet she has blood on her hands, and an unhealthy disregard for democracy, human rights and the sanctity of life.

    Students across the Western hemisphere are increasingly calling for Justice for Palestine, even as the Israeli lobby works hard to censor and dismiss academics who call Israel an Apartheid state. Indeed, writer Sally Rooney recently declined to have her new novel translated into Hebrew in protest against the conduct of Israel. Queen’s University Belfast now appears to be on the wrong side of history in appointing Hilary Clinton.

    Lasair Dhearg’s Pól Torbóid, who helped organise and also spoke at the event, said,

    Queen’s University’s complicity in the whitewashing of Hillary Clinton and her war crimes further epitomises the university’s role in an international framework of imperialism that sees it not only glorify warmongers like Clinton, but have immense financial investment in military contracts and companies guilty of immense environmental destruction.

    He added:

    As US secretary for war, she authorised over 400 drone strikes across multiple nations, which overwhelmingly killed civilians and even children at a proportion of almost 90%.

    She labelled black men ‘super-predators’ when she helped lobby for the 1994 US Clinton Crime Bill, which was immensely important in creating the mass incarceration levels that exists today in the US to benefit the prison-industrial complex – which is a system of slavery by new means.

    A Zionist, Hillary Clinton has shown herself to be an enemy of Palestinian liberation, siding with the oppressor every time it mattered, like during the 2014 Israeli bombing campaign of Gaza. She increased annual US funding to Israel from 2.5billion, to 3.1 billion US dollars whilst she was US Secretary of State, and she stated that countering the BDS movement globally should be a priority for Israel’s defence.

    Unfortunately all these arguments are falling on deaf ears as Queen’s University appears to have entered into a Faustian pact with corporate America in appointing Hillary Clinton as Chancellor.

    Feature Image: Clinton, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on Operation Neptune Spear in the White House Situation Room on May 1, 2011. Everyone in the room is watching a live feed from drones operating over the Osama bin Laden complex.

    An earlier version of this article appeared in Al Mayadeen.

  • What Next for Aghanistan?

    So where do we go from here? Better still how do we even begin to unravel the pain, sorrow and hardship, Afghans have endured over decades?

    Do we start with the American invasion twenty years ago? Its objective was to end terrorism as part of the ‘War on Terror’ after the September 11 attacks.

    Can we usefully employ a time line of American and NATO interference in the internal affairs of the Afghan people, and a prelude to the invasion of Iraq? Or should we look to events before 2001?

    If we cannot ignore the transgressions of the Taliban while in power, surely we cannot ignore how they came to power in the first place? So let us assess the period prior to the rise of the Taliban.

    Bloodless Coup

    After three Anglo-Afghan Wars between 1839 and 1919, a monarchy continued to rule Afghanistan, until a bloodless coup was led by General and former Prime minister Mohammed Daoud Khan on July 17, 1973.

    Daoud Khan, c. 1974.

    Born into the Royal family, he deposed the King and inaugurated a one-party political system, with himself as supreme leader and President of the Republic of Afghanistan.

    Economic reforms were promised but failed to materialise as events on the ground became unstable. As President, Khan purged the Soviet-aligned Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan. One of its leaders was assassinated and several of its officials arrested.

    Many went into hiding before a military coup on April 28, 1978 deposed Daoud Khan. He and his family were killed and a secular Communist government was established.

    Cold War

    With Afghanistan now led by a secular, pro-Soviet government at the height of a Cold War between U.S. capitalism and Soviet communist ideologies, the stage was set for a proxy war, financed by the United States to destabilise the country and trapping Soviet troops in a Vietnam-type quagmire of military entanglement.

    U.S. President Reagan meeting with Afghan mujahideen at the White House in 1983.

    Historians have claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency set out to recruit, arm, finance and train Islamic fundamentalists. These jihadists were adherents to the Wahabbi strain of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. This radicalised the indigenous population providing the impetus for an armed opposition against the government of Afghanistan. While opposition to the Communist government was already established, it was about to be financed by America, Saudi Arabia, and others. Pakistan was already a haven for the Afghan opposition.

    Under Operation Cyclone the Central Intelligence Agency of America financed and armed the Afghan opposition between 1979 and 1989

    The civil war that erupted was between the secular government of Afghanistan who had invited the Soviet Army into Afghanistan to help store order, and the so-called mujihadeen, led by among others, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and considered by Rober D. Kaplan to be one of the greatest guerrilla leaders of the twentieth century; joined later by Saudi Arabian, Osama Bin Laden, the so-called Arab-Afghanis what went on to form Al-Qaeda (the base).

    Ahmad Shah Massoud

    The protagonists were ready, the stage was set, and the actors employed, armed and financed, before the war began in earnest, culminating in the collapse of Mohammad NajiBullah’s Soviet-aligned regime in April 1992

    The mujahideen trained and financed by the American government had succeeded in destroying the secular government, before a government led by the Taliban (meaning ‘students’ or ‘truth seekers’) eventually seized Kabul in 1996.

    The Taliban emerged in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar around September 1994.

    From that point on human rights were repressed and women especially were forced to conform to a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

    America had won the proxy war. But their surrogate army repressed women and arguably de-evolved human rights by a hundred years. Yet the American administration remained full of self-congratulatory smugness in the wake of victory against a Cold War foe.

    Then began the systemic misrule of Afghanistan by the reactionary forces of Islam, the Taliban, supported by Pakistan.

    Within the mujahideen an internal struggle began between the so-called Northern Alliance forces and the Taliban. This struggle ended with the American-led invasion of 2001.

    Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency ISI played a major role on behalf of America during the mujahideen revolt and harbored its leaders. Many of those who fought with the mujahideen were not Afghans but Islamic extremists, mostly from other Arab countries.

    In the wake of September 11th, amidst claims of Al-Qaeda Islamic militants training in Afghanistan, and the country a hotbed for fundamentalist Islamists, America blamed Bin Laden and others for the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers.

    Although nearly all those accused of perpetrating the atrocity were Saudi Arabian, and the only planes allowed to leave America in the immediate aftermath of the attacks contained Osama bin Laden’s wealthy family, America duly attacked Afghanistan. This occurred despite claims the Taliban had offered to help America hold those responsible to account.

    The Taliban had been part of the mujahideen front which took control of Afghanistan. The Taliban now controlled 90% of the country, while various warlords and drugs gangs involved in the Northern Alliance controlled the countries northeast corner.

    The former puppets of American imperialism the mujahideen, now the Taliban, went from Washington’s brave fighters for freedom to the terrorists who needed to be rooted out and destroyed, when America and its allies bombed parts of Afghanistan back to the stone age.

    A twenty-year invasion and occupation, costing an estimated two trillion dollars alongside countless Allied and Afghan deaths has finally ended. Thus American troops withdrew in a humiliating retreat on August 31st, 2021.

    What next?

    I asked at the beginning of this piece, What next for Afghanistan? Well, I fear more violence destabilisation death, and destruction?=.

    The Taliban now claim they want to pursue national reconciliation with the Northern Alliance, but who would benefit from the disruption of this initiative?

    The new Sino-Soviet cooperation in rebuilding an economic supply line through a revitalised economic Eurasia – the Belt and Road Initiative – may become the real target of American, and European, sanctions.

    There may be no U.S. or NATO boots on the ground any longer but the economic cooperation policies pursued by China and Russia to include vast investment in infrastructure projects throughout Eurasia, including Afghanistan, may yet give rise to a new proxy war aimed at destabilising the Taliban government. In reality it will be yet another war against Russian, and now Chinese economic cooperation in the region. A continuation of the age old Great Game.

    Afghan tribesmen (in British service) in 1841

    The War on Terror is nothing more than a capitalist-imperialist attack on democracy and the freedom of sovereign nations, led by those who claim to cherish democracy and freedom yet continually bomb, invade, sanction, murder, displace and maim millions in the name of humanitarian intervention.

    I fear Afghanistan will not see peace and stability any time soon, and expect the Northern Alliance and even Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan (or ISIS-K) to be used and directed by America to disrupt China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

  • Killing Kelly?

    The strange death of Dr. David Kelly was explored in celluloid at the premiere of Killing Kelly documentary at the Everyman Theatre, Muswell Hill, North London on Saturday, July 17 2021 at 9 pm.

    This is the second in what could well turn out to be a series of documentaries of collaborative works between George Galloway and director Sean Murray from Belfast.

    Murray has earned accolades for his documentaries including Unquiet Graves where he investigated the role of the British government in the murder of one hundred and twenty civilians in counties Armagh and Tyrone in Northern Ireland, between July 1972 and 1978. This involved the infamous Glenanne murder gang, with ties to loyalist paramilitaries, British intelligence, locally recruited soldiers and police.

    The role of British intelligence, its assets, and associated terror gangs has always been a part of the dirty war in Ireland. The counter-revolutionary strategy of successive British governments in Ireland, has had parallels throughout the world. With the mysterious death of David Kelly we appeared to be witnessing this approach in action on the British mainland.

    George Galloway is a former MP, and now a media presenter for a host of radio and television shows, to include the Mother of all Talk Shows on Sputnik Radio International and Kalima Horra on Lebanese Al Mayadeen television.

    The film draws on the book, The Strange Death of David Kelly by Norman Baker. Mr. Baker, Mr. Galloway, and Mr. Murray all made themselves available for questions and answers after the documentary presentation.

    Crowd-funded

    The film was crowd-funded through online donations, and follows the critically acclaimed The Killing$ of Tony Blair released in July 2016 by Mr. Galloway. This sequel, dealing with the same topic, is a timely addition to the history of Britain’s involvement in the illegal invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

    The infamous Weapons of Mass destruction ‘sexed-up’ dossier was used by Blair to inform the British people and the British Parliament, that Iraq had the capability to target the United Kingdom with chemical weapons in just 45 minutes; and as such Iraq and Saddam Hussein could not be allowed to continue to both engineer and deploy these armaments, which were a direct threat to world peace. Blair was beating the drums of war.

    Once the darling of the US, UK, Israel, and NATO, Saddam had gone rogue. Despite sacrificing 800,000 troops in the Iran-Iraq War, a proxy fought on behalf of the West, following the successful Iranian revolution of 1979, by 2003 it was time for Saddam to go.

    Having committed no act of aggression against the West following his humiliating retreat from Kuwait, in the wake of 9/11 a plan was hatched to destroy Iraq.

    It is claimed in the film that Tony Blair and George W Bush conspired to create conditions for war and to prepare a narrative during Blair’s visit to President Bush. But a pretext was required to manufacture consent for military action. Thus, the dossier was used to frighten the UK and US public into accepting another intervention into the oil-rich region

    Daily Walks

    This film documentary is a testament to vigilant investigative journalism, including interviews with some of the major players involved at the time. Although the Kelly family, senior politicians, and military personnel declined to be interviewed, the facts speak for themselves.

    On the day of his death, Kelly headed off on one of his many daily walks, chatting to a neighbour he met on his way. His wife was at home having a nap and he had arranged to meet his daughter later that evening.

    A former head of Britain’s Porton Down chemical weapons research facility, Kelly was also one of UNSCOM’S chief weapons inspectors in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.

    On May 22nd, 2003, Kelly met with Andrew Gilligan a thirty-five-year-old defense and diplomatic correspondent for BBC Radio 4’s “Today”  program. According to Gilligan’s account, he asked how the dossier had been transformed, and Kelly replied with one word: “Campbell”; i.e. the claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction on the United Kingdom, within 45 minutes, was inserted into the dossier on Iraq’s military capability at the insistence of Alaisder Campbell, chief advisor to Tony Blair.

    Alastair Campbell lecturing at the LSE series ‘From Kennedy to Blair,’ 7 July 2003.

    These allegations formed part of an investigation by the Intelligence and Security Foreign Affairs Select committee. After giving evidence on July 15th, Dr. David Kelly was found dead two days later. Kelly may have been the unwitting fall guy for the political spin doctors of Tony Blair. Whatever else he could have exposed was taken with him to the grave.

    Death by Suicide

    The official death certificate records ‘death by suicide’, but certain facts remain elusive.

    When his body was discovered his knife was found lying beside him, with which, it was claimed, he had severed his ulnar artery. A bottle of tablets was found beside the body.

    The following timeline was reported in the Guardian newspaper: at 3 pm Dr. David Kelly received a phone call from the Ministry of Defense. He then left his home at 3.20 pm. Having not returned from his walk, the Kelly family contacted the police at 11.40 pm.

    Within 15 minutes three officers had arrived at the family home. A search operation started immediately, with a helicopter and search teams called in.

    The helicopter with equipment for body-sensory imaging failed to locate the body. But he was found by a volunteer search party the following morning. It seems implausible that body should have lain undetected not far from his home for over nine hours.

    His home was searched not once but twice by police and other investigating officers during that night. They took away many items including according to some reports the very wallpaper from the walls.

    The police were searching his home while he evidently was not there. They made the family leave the home during this period, preventing them from knowing exactly what was going on inside, and what they were taking.

    At the scene where the body was found, there is no evidence of significant blood loss consistent with a fatal wound to an artery. The medication he had ingested found in his stomach was a total of two tablets. The knife beside the body had no fingerprints nor did the bottle of tablets, and Dr Kelly was not wearing gloves

    Unknown Unknowns

    What occurred in the period between Kelly’s disappearance, just two days after giving evidence to a Parliamentary Inquiry, and the discovery of his body may never be known.

    The facts hardly support the official account that he committed suicide, nor even that he died where his body was found.

    The involvement of state operatives in his death cannot be ruled out, but official papers will remain classified for many decades.

    British troops looking at Baghdad, 11 June 1941.

    There are parallels with the suspension of inquests, and prosecutions relating to British state counter-insurgency in Northern Ireland, Iraq, and in Afghanistan – soon to be under a statute of limitations if proposed legislation comes into l\aw.

    The ruthlessness of their approaches around the world from Aden to Kenya and beyond, suggests that elements within the UK government would be prepared to create a pretext for war – such as the Iraq dossier – and possibly collude in the murder of one of its leading scientists. Blair’s government may indeed have given them a license to kill.

    Unusually after Davids’s body was found Tony Blair initiated a public Inquiry under Lord Hutton, which was widely condemned as a whitewash. A full Coroner’s Inquest would probably have elicited more information.

  • Northern Ireland: Poots Booted Out

    The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was founded by the Reverend Dr. Ian Paisley in 1971. Paisley was an enigmatic figure in Northern Irish politics, offering a heady mixture of fundamentalist Christian values, Unionist rhetoric, and a cult of personality, culminating in a power sharing agreement with his greatest foes.

    Paisley was a maverick, non-establishment figure who appealed to biblical scripture and a Unionist siege mentality. His rallying cries – some would say war cries – were: ‘For God and Ulster’ and ‘No Surrender’.

    By ‘No Surrender’, he meant no surrender to ‘Papish’ Catholicism, and no dilution of the British identity which Ulster Protestants so obstinately cherish, and of course no diminution in British sovereignty over Northern Ireland. A more accurate description of this ‘No Surrender’ mantra could perhaps be no compromise.

    This meant no compromise with Irish nationalism, with Irish Republicanism, with the Catholic Church, the Irish Republican Army, the Irish government or anyone holding an Irish identity in Northern Ireland.

    Paisley also represented a branch of the global fundamentalist Christian Protestant Right, and its political voice became the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). He would lead that party for thirty-five years. Never elected, he was nonetheless the supreme leader.

    Ultimately, however, he came in from the cold to lead the Northern Ireland Assembly as First Minister. The man who cried ‘No Surrender to the IRA’, eventually joined a power-sharing executive with Sinn Fein, the political faction associated with the IRA, which became the largest Nationalist party.

    Towards the end of his political career, Paisley was unceremoniously pushed aside, having lost the confidence of the party he had established. His son Ian Paisley junior seemingly still harbours a grievance about what he sees as a betrayal of his father, and his legacy.

    After Paisley senior’s resignation in 2008, the DUP leadership baton was passed on to Peter Robinson, Paisley’s long time protege; then Arlene Foster in 2016, and most recently to Edwin Poots before Jeffrey Donaldson assumed the mantle just three weeks later. Arlene Foster’s demise came about as a direct result of Britain’s exit from the European Union. Brexit had been endorsed by the DUP through its Westminister MPs, but ultimately their interests were ignored.

    Brexit has resulted in the Northern Ireland Protocol, which was agreed between the British Government and the European Union in order to preserve the Good Friday Agreement. The Northern Ireland Protocol creates a custom’s border between Northern Ireland and Britain. Thus, Northern Ireland remains within the European Common Market, creating a de facto border between Britain and Northern Ireland.

    Sections of Unionism, Loyalism, and the DUP view this border as a dilution of their Britishness. A DUP party fed on a diet of No Surrender of their British identity at any price is again circling the wagons. When Foster was seen as incapable of removing the Northern Ireland Protocol she was dismissed as weak and a sell-out.

    Ian Paisley junior is a DUP M.P. in Westminster who continues to represent his father’s old constituency of Antrim North. He seems to have been a driving force behind the coup that ousted Foster as leader.

    In a throwback to the leadership of Paisley senior, in its first democratic leadership election the party elected another Christian fundamentalist in Edwin Poots, by the narrowest of margins.

    Having been anointed by the ‘No Surrender’ brigade of the DUP Edwin Poots was chosen to resist any ‘surrender’ to the British government, and to continue the struggle over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Like King Canute, he stood against an unstoppable tide of forces beyond his control.

    In order for him to nominate a new Joint First Minister to the Northern Ireland Assembly after Foster’s resignation, he needed to have the agreement of Sinn Fein, the other party in government. Sinn Fein price for jointly nominating leaders and preventing the structures of government from collapsing, was the implementation of the Irish Language Act – an Act, which had been previously agreed to by the party, but never implemented.

    Poots, and Loyalists aligned to the party, would have no truck with the advancement of the indigenous language. They want no interaction with anything Irish. A settler-colonial identity refuses to contemplate the advancement of indigenous rights. But Poots also wanted to have his man elected as First Minister.

    In order to find a way of working around to the Irish Language Act Poots and his Assembly team leader came up with a plan to allow the British parliament to legislate for the Act. Thus, Poots and his designate Paul Girvan signed an agreement with Sinn Fein and the British government, handing Westminster the power and a mandate to approve the Irish Language Act, in some form at least.

    Poots and Girvan probably thought this would suffice to appease its base of voters, as the legislation would be the responsibility of the British government, rather than the Northern Executive including the DUP.

    Instead, it created a mass revolt in the party, and those who lost the party leadership election to Poots joined with his erstwhile fundamentalist supporters to force him out. Once again, the No Surrender, No Compromise brigade within the party had triumphed.

    Arlene Foster couldn’t renegotiate the Northern Ireland Protocol, a Loyalist and Unionist red line, and had to go. Seemingly even Poots had also sold out Unionism by permitting an Irish Language Act, which just goes to show how uncompromising the party has become.

    By agreeing to the Irish Languagte Act and nominating Paul Girvan as First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly without his party’s approval Poots had signed his political death sentence.

    In a year that sees the centenary of the establishment of Northern Ireland by Britain – when the island of Ireland was partitioned in 1921 – Unionism appears to be in complete disarray.

    With the DUP fragmenting, we may also be witnessing the enduring wrath of a scorned political legacy. Those who felt the party had betrayed Paisley senior’s message of ‘No Surrender and No Compromise briefly recaptured the party leadership, seemingly only to surrender it again with Donaldson’s election.

    Ian Paisley junior and those around him may be about to destroy the party his father created. Hell hath no greater fury than a political family scorned.

  • Palestine: What happens when the violence ends?

    Self-defence, blood lust, ethnic cleansing, disproportionate response, mowing the lawn, genocide, death from the sky. It’s up to you however you wish to describe the unparalleled violence unleashed on Gaza.

    I describe it as shooting or in this case bombing Palestinians in a barrel. Let’s have a brief resume of what’s happened.

    The district of Sheikh Jarrah is in East Jerusalem, which was the proposed capital of a Palestinian state. The signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993 led to further Israeli expansion into the West Bank. Since then areas like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah have been systematically targeted by the illegal Jewish Settler movement, which uses Israeli courts to award Zionist Jews the homes and land currently occupied by Palestinians.

    If you take nothing else from this article please remember the Occupation is illegal under international law, therefore every decision taken by the Occupation army, the illegal settlers. Yet the Apartheid Israeli judiciary routinely sends Palestinian including young children to prison on extracted false confessions, many made under duress, under physical threat.

    In some cases children are handed false confessions written in Hebrew, which they cannot understand, and are told these are official release forms. The kids sign them thinking they are going home but in reality, these are confessions that will condemn them to jail.

    Add to this ‘Administrative Detention’, Imprisonment without trial, and we have the flawed corrupt Apartheid regimes conveyor belt to jail. All of this is illegal.

    As a result many Human Rights organisations describe Israel as an apartheid state. This is because Zionism, a political ideology is inherently Apartheid.

    Israelis protest against Netanyahu outside his official residence in Jerusalem on 30 July 2020.

    Corruption Charges

    Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now facing corruption charges. A former Israeli Knesset member during a CNN interview accused him of inciting the current round of violence by continuing Israel’s expansionist, illegal land grabs in the Occupied West Bank, and also through the attacks on people at prayer, men, women and children at the Al-Aqsa mosque, towards the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

    Is seems conceivable that the leader of the seventh largest military force on Earth would engineer a state of conflict between Israel and a people without an army, air force or navy, to protect themselves. All they have is local militias, composed of the fathers and sons, mothers and daughters of the local community.

    But if an Israeli Knesset member says exactly that, then it must carry some weight.

    The Dust Settles

    So, where are we now and who won and who lost?

    As the bloodletting ends, as it must, the dead are buried and the dust settles over the destroyed building, like a shroud over Gaza.

    The reality is, everything will be the same and yet everything has changed utterly.

    I have always been sceptical when I heard claims following previous attacks on Gaza that the resistance has won.

    I genuinely thought it was just bravado for the masses. When we see the death toll, the numbers injured and the devastating damage to civilian homes, hospitals and the infrastructure, I have to ask how have they possibly won?

    The loss of life alone is unimaginable in such a small environment. Twenty-five miles by six miles, that is the size of the Ards Peninsula in Northern Ireland, with the equivalent of the entire two million population of Northern Ireland squeezed into it.

    Thus far, the destruction in Gaza is an incredible scale.

    The targeting and killing of whole families is a war crime in itself.

    The systematic destruction of all roads leading to the main hospitals in Gaza, preventing ambulances and victims from accessing acute services is another war crime. The wanton destruction of family homes, farms, places of worship and work are too.

    The Resistance has Won

    The latest Blitzkrieg on Gaza is just another Zionists war on civilians that will never be forgotten. Israel claims its aims were to degrade the military capabilities of Hamas and other resistance groups in Gaza. It cites rockets fired from Gaza as the pretext.

    Under international law, however, with Israel illegally occupying the West Bank and enjoying control air, sea and land borders around Gaza, the Palestinians have a right to resist the Occupation, by any means necessary, including armed resistance.

    Then this David versus Goliath battle is one of the Palestinian David with rocks and rockets legally resisting an illegal Goliath occupation, which uses gunboats, tanks, artillery shells, drones and F16, F35 jets to bomb and murder Gazans at will, and without any recourse to the rules of war.

    The reality is that Israel will only end the bloodshed once it has expended the armaments supplied to it by America France  Britain and the EU.

    Yet Israel has failed again in its stated objective to destroy the ability of the resistance in Gaza to challenge the Occupation. It did not have the courage to commit ground troops as the cost in Israeli soldiers lives was deemed potentially to be too high.

    The resistance groups retain both the ability, and the will, to continue to resist the illegal Occupation and siege by any and all means necessary.

    The attacks on Gaza are a proxy threat to other nations in the region. We will do the same ‘to you’ is the message from Israel. Indeed, Israel routinely bombs Syria in another example of its illegal war crimes, while their military leaders have stated on numerous occasions that they will bomb Gaza back into the stone age.

    I know, it’s hard to believe, but the resistance has won! Gaza may have been levelled: the suffering of the dead, the injured and the dying is unfathomable.

    But while Gaza has been destroyed, the spirit of resistance embodied in the people has survived. This provides the impetus to continue demands for equality, peace, freedom and justice for Palestinians and Palestine survives, not just in Gaza but in East Jerusalem, in Sheikh Jarrah, in the West Bank, in Al-Aqsa and across historic Palestine, which Zionists call Israel.

    Netanyahu has only succeeded in uniting Israelis in their demand for his prosecution for corruption and united Palestinians for the first time in a generation in their defence of Al-Aqsa, East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. A new generation of resistance has been born, united and unified from the river to the sea.

    Did Netanyahu help create the conditions that made this latest attack on Gaza inescapable? Is the shedding of blood in Gaza simply a political gambit aimed at a domestic audience?

    Is it a case of: he or she who kills the most Palestinians getting the most votes?

    Alas, history certainly bears that perspective out to be true.

    Moving Forward

    What Gaza needs is financial support, rebuilding materials, medicine, hope and solidarity in equal measures.

    What it will get is another 50,000 or more refugees, many of whom were previously refugees from the Israeli murder and bombing campaigns of 2014/2009/1967/1948.

    This further degrades Palestinian civil society’s ability to respond to the damage to lives, homes, infrastructure and the economy.

    Egypt is complicit in the siege. It will not help Gaza or Palestine. The humanitarian catastrophe will continue apace

    Israel sells Gaza water, gas, oil and electricity. It makes a profit from all of these utilities. The profits of Occupation.

    And yet the spirit of Resistance has prevailed once again. But the price of resisting the continued illegal Zionist Israel occupation of Palestine is a continued loss of liberty and life for Palestinians.

    The continues loss of life, homes, farms, workplaces, mosques, schools, hospitals, clinics, the loss of innocence in the young, their hopes dashed for the future, and their dreams of a life free from violent occupation, imprisonment, death from the skies. This is a psychological trauma seemingly without end.

    When the bombs stop flying in the east the people stop protesting in the West. Will you stand with Palestine. Or simply melt away like snow on a ditch until the next murderous bombing raids occur?

    Peace needs you now. Palestinians need you now. The future generations being born into captivity need you now.

    What will you do to help end the madness of a rogue Apartheid state and bring peace to the people of the Middle East and West Asia? It is in your hands

    Feature Image: Destroyed house in Gaza City, December 2012.

  • Al-Quds: the Red Line

    Al-Quds (‘the holy sanctuary’), Jerusalem is the red line for the Palestinian people, the wider diaspora and the Arab collective. It is the capital of Palestine and home to the third holiest shrine in Islam, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Muslims believe Muhammad was transported from the Great Mosque in Mecca to Al-Aqsa during the Night Journey. Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad led prayers towards this site for sixteen to seventeen months after his migration to Mecca. So how did we get to this current impasse?

    Jerusalem is in flames. Gaza is being bombed back to the Stone Age. Israeli Zionists and illegal settlers are attacking Palestinian business, homes, and people in the streets, at their residences and places of worship. Palestinians are defending themselves by any means necessary.

    Palestine: To Exist is to Resist

    I won’t give a historical lecture, just some pertinent facts. The First Zionist Congress was held in 1897 in Basel Switzerland. It was decided then that European antisemitism needed to be challenged and that a new state for the Jewish people, free from European antisemitism was to be created. Several places were considered including Madagascar, Uganda and some Latin American countries.

    Finally, it was decided Palestine would become the new Israel. From 1901 onwards the Jewish National Fund began buying land in Palestine. Palestine at that time was part of the Ottoman empire. The land was bought from absentee Turkish landowners, the Palestinians put off the land and Jewish only migrants employed.

    This continued up until World War I. The British formed regiments of Palestinian and Arab troops promising them freedom from Ottoman occupation if they fought for Britain. When the war ended the troops dispersed and Britain and France carved up the Middle East as a prize for both their colonial empires.

    All manifestations of violence today in the Middle East stem from the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and subsequent redrawing of the old Ottoman Empire into a new white European colonial construct. All those who fought for Britain and for the freedom of small nations were abandoned. They were simply cannon fodder to save British lives by using expendable Arab lives.


    History’s Dead Hand on the Middle East
    (Image: Kevin Fox, all rights reserved)

    The Jewish National Fund continued to buy up land and displace the indigenous population. As the 1920s progressed we witnessed clashes between the European colonists and the indigenous population with riots in Jerusalem during this decade.

    With the outbreak of World War II Zionist designs on fully colonising Palestine were set in motion. After 1945 further ethnic clashes occurred. The Zionists were fully armed and trained and the Palestinians had no army, just bands of neighbours and villagers trying to defend their homes and families.

    The Stern Gangs, the Hagana and the Irgun began a campaign to terrorise, murder and displace the indigenous population. They succeeded with the help of Britain and America at the UN and the state of Palestine under the British Mandate was partitioned and the new state of Israel born at the point of terrorist guns. 750,000 Palestinians were forced into exile into the surrounding Arab countries and the systematic erasure of the Palestine footprint in the new state began. Villages were destroyed so their inhabitants could not return. Businesses taken over by Jewish Zionist families, homes sequestered and the land stolen.

    This happened again in 1967 during the Six-Day War with the occupation of the West Bank. This continued Occupation and the siege on Gaza from 2007 are a continuation of the policy of the theft of homes, theft of land, theft of resources and the displacement of the indigenous population.

    From the Wild West to the Middle East, the European white colonial settlement of North America and Canada became the blueprint for the Zionist colonisation of Palestine. We can see the house evictions in Sheikh Jarrah East Jerusalem for what they really are: a continuation of the Zionist-Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It is a microcosm of everyday reality and life under Occupation.

    These house possessions by Zionists are just the latest step in the long path to the total Judification of Palestine. West Jerusalem is already nearly 100% Zionist.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing criminal corruption charges and is hanging on to power as leader of an extremist Zionist political party Likud by the skin of his teeth. During the Holy Muslim Festival of Ramadan up to 100,000 Palestinians gather for prayer and worship daily at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem known in Arabic as Al Quds

    Now if you remember, the Israeli military Occupation is illegal under international law. The Zionist settlements are illegal under international law.

    Every day Palestinians watch their homes land and businesses confiscated by the Israeli occupation. These daily injustices lead to a growing sense of frustration, anger and discontent.

    The Israeli illegal occupation forces then attacked the peaceful worshippers in the compound adjacent to the Al-Aqsa mosque. They attacked people through dispersal squads who use sound bombs, chemical canisters, arrests and assaults to clear any groups who might congregate.

    This means family, friends, neighbours and communities cannot gather in conversation in the community and in peace at the end of the day attending or leaving prayer.

    The scenes witnessed all over the Arab, Persian and Muslim world of peaceful worshippers, many of them women, being attacked inside the mosque at prayer, has led to the resistance groups in Gaza launching primitive rockets at Israel in retaliation.

    Israel’s disproportionate response by launching military sorties from land, sea and air has destroyed buildings and killed scores of men, women and children.

    While Israelis cower in their bomb shelters from the falling debris of Palestinian rockets with a payload similar to an enormous firework, the Gazan’s have no bomb shelters, no air force, no navy and no land army. They have a few rockets, machine guns, mortars and rifles to defend themselves against one the best-equipped armies in the world today.

    While yet another pro-Zionist American President Biden phones Netanyahu to give his support to the ‘Israel must have the right to defend itself ‘mantra, all we will see and hear from Western media propagandists are further Zionist cries of victimhood.

    I visited Gaza on a medical aid convoy in 2010. I walked the streets the Zionists are turning to rubble. They intend to bomb Gaza back to the Stone Age.

    Electricity only runs for a few hours a day. Fresh drinking water is nearly unheard of and bottled water and fuel for generators is sold to Gaza by Israel

    With a total land, sea and air blockade, the Gazan population has an unemployment rate of nearly 70%. They watch on each day as a bombing campaign destroys one building, one house, one business, one apartment block, and one family at a time. The fear the people, and especially the children, must be living under is unimaginable..

    Occupied Territories Bill: Government Defies Dáil Majority Leaving the Jaber Family to their Fate

    What can we do?

    Support the right of Palestinians as enshrined in International Law to free themselves from Occupation by any means necessary.

    Go on a protest.

    Support BDS and boycott Israel goods and companies.

    Demand your government divests from the political and financial support of Israel.

    Once the killings and bombings stop all the people you see protesting will go home and the Palestinians and the Yemenis and the Syrians will be forgotten. Please remember it’s not just Palestine the Zionists want to destroy. They want total hegemonic control over the entire region. That means destroying any country and its peoples that it cannot control. Look at Iraq and Libya, see Syria and Yemen watch them threaten Lebanon and Iran.

    Netanyahu’s Likud government has made Israel a cancer on the body politic of the region. Like cancer, it must respond to treatment or the host and the body die.

    There will soon be one million Zionist Jewish settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They are all illegally there. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying force suhc as Israel from settling its civilian population in occupied territory.

    UN Resolution 194 states that Palestinians exiled from their homes, land and property have the Right of Return.

    Israel has never let the Palestinians return. It continues to usurp their rights and ethnically cleanse the West Bank of its indigenous population through dispersal and dispossession.

    In 1901 European Jews had a dream of a land free from hatred, from discrimination, from racial and religious prejudice. Far from creating this land, they created a state based on hatred, discrimination, and racial and religious prejudice. To many onlookers, Israel and its settlers have recreated that which they set out to escape.

    Featured Image of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Frank Armstrong (2003).