60th Anniversary of Deir Yassin Marked
Éirígí members joined the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s (IPSC) mobilisations in Belfast and Dublin on Saturday (12 April) to highlight the 60th anniversary of Al Nakba (The Catastrophe). Palestinians remember the Nakba as the initiation of the misery that has plagued them, at the hands of successive Zionist, Israeli regimes from 1948 to the present.
It marked the brutal beginning of a process of ethnic cleansing, forced population movements, torture and murder and the meticulous deconstruction of the Palestinian nation to facilitate the creation of the nefarious, theocratic state of Israel.
David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister launched Plan Dalet in 1948. It involved the newly arrived European Jewish settlers driving their long established Palestinian neighbours out of most of Palestine, which then became Israel.
Palestine from that date has been watched by the world as the Israeli army and political leadership has torn it asunder with the military and financial assistance of the US and many European nations. Israel, reinforced by its powerful allies, remains beyond reproach and continues to ignore international law and every UN resolution passed against their brutal regime.
750,000 Palestinians were forcibly removed from their lands in the initial stages of Gurion’s callous plan. Today, 6 million Palestinians live as permanent refugees in neighbouring states. Many still hold the keys and deeds to their homes and lands, now occupied by Zionist colonial settlers.
As the leaders of the western world turned a blind eye to this anniversary in continuing complicity with the Israeli regime, activists in Ireland refused to let the world be blinded by the silence of their national leaders. Over 700 people attended the national rally in Dublin, and a mural unveiling in Belfast organised by the IPSC to show their disgust at what continues to be one of the most massive collective human rights abuses in history.
The IPSC chairperson in Belfast, John Mc Cusker, speaking after the mural unveiling said:
“The events today in Dublin and Belfast are the beginning of a calendar of events this year to bring to the fore the historic and contemporary human rights abuses that take place daily in occupied Palestine. We in Ireland have developed a long-standing affinity with the Palestinian struggle given our own history at the hands of the British government and colonial settlers. The attendance today shows the level of support for Palestinian liberation and we hope that over the coming weeks and months people will continue to support equally important initiatives organised by the IPSC.
He concluded:
“IPSC initiatives are not only about supporting people in Palestine standing up to their Israeli oppressors, although that is the obvious and sharp edge of our campaigning.
“It is also about people around the world standing up to a global system that permits such ongoing abuse of democracy which facilitates a US led global plan for the Middle East. In this context, support for the Palestinian people and their cause is paramount in the search for a new and democratic world, in which actions such as those in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Afghanistan become so intolerable as to be rendered impossible.
Éirígí’s Eoin Ó Sé who is also a member of the IPSC in Dublin said,
“Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of one of the most savage affronts to humanity in recent history. What the Palestinian people endure every day is akin to the abuse our people suffered during Penal times. Irish people should be doing whatever they can in their places of work, in their communities and wherever they can make an impact to highlight the ongoing slaughter in the Middle East. We need to focus particularly on the duplicity of our own national politicians who hypocritically refuse to condemn Israeli actions, as many of them are also reliant on the purse of the US government.
“We are standing here in solidarity today with one of the most abused populations ever and demanding the right of six million people to return home. We are asking that people join with us by attending the pickets, demonstrations, lectures and debates as well as engaging in the boycott of Israeli goods. It is only through the actions like these and the building of enough international pressure, that the US and Israeli regimes will ever relinquish the control and oppression of these territories and alleviate the misery of the citizens within.”