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Ireland is failing Palestine

Ireland is failing Palestine

Ireland gets a lot of support and a lot of love from the international and Palestinian communities for our support for a Free Palestine. Unlike most countries, in Ireland the need for a liberated Palestine is a given, the default, and we are deeply pro-liberation and anti-genocide, having endured hundreds of years of occupation ourselves. We have turned out for protests in large numbers, and we have had numerous politicians take active and early stances.

That said, I truly believe that Ireland is failing Palestine.

Our convictions are high, but our actions are absent. We hold the right beliefs, and we are doing absolutely nothing with them.

We hold a privileged position in the world: being part of the "West", being part of the EU, speaking English, having an important relationship with America, being the tech hub of Europe. It is our responsibility–especially as Israel is systematically starving Gaza, and as Trump and Israel are planning to ethnically cleanse Palestine by forcibly moving Palestinians from Gaza–to use that privilege to support our occupied brethren.

Ireland should be all-out in our actions, doing 100% of our capacity to advocate for Palestine and to bring consequences to Israel. I doubt we are currently doing 1/1000th of what we could do.

Throughout Ireland, BDS targets like McDonalds and Dominos are open and profitable, instead of being boycotted to death. Coca Cola is still on the shelves. Tech companies that are active participants in the genocide, such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, receive little pushback. Even Israeli companies such as Wix, or companies which have been active participants in apartheid such as Intel or AirBnb, continue to operate with impunity. In fact, Ireland is the 2nd largest importer of goods from Israel, and the largest if you count per capita.

Government policies

The Irish government has done little to support Palestine, and everything they have done has been dragged out of them.

Ireland could have led the ICJ–that case was put together by international humanitarian rights lawyers who spoke to many countries to potentially lead the case. Ireland was consulted and declined to lead, and even after South Africa took the risk, we declined to join again in January 2024.

Ireland finally recognized Palestine only in May 2024, despite the Dáil and Seanad both passing motions for recognition in 2014. Even in 2024, we needed Spain and Norway to hold our hand.

Not only that, but it turns out that the Irish Central bank is selling Israel Bonds–the financial instrument that directly finances the genocide in Gaza. This shocking revelation was compounded when the government voted down a bill that although imperfect, would have been a very decisive step forward, both in terms of impact and in establishing Ireland's position on Israel's genocide in Gaza.

The government's culpability goes so much further:

Meanwhile, the Occupied Territories Bill–first introduced 7 years ago–finally has the potential to be signed! And although it would be without doubt a win to get that signed, it has been significantly cut down to size, with services excluded, meaning an economic impact of just €685,000. US zionist organization American Jewish Committee claims the Taoiseach is deliberately slow rolling the bill, something that Martin has denied–however, since Fianna Fail's Simon Coveney was previously caught doing that in 2019, it's unclear who to believe here.

It is clear, however, that the Irish government is slow playing its hand. It is doing everything that it can to reduce action, effectively acting as the agent of Israel in Ireland. It uses excuses, such as the potential of running into EU regulations, to slow down what it can do. By keeping the Occupied Territories Bill open and on the agenda but without action, they can prevent discussion of doing more.

I'm appalled and ashamed at the Irish government, and believe Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris to be complicit in Israel's genocide. Their actions are either cynical or pathetic: either they are deliberately doing nothing despite their rhetoric, or they are unable to do anything.

Let's not pretend–we know exactly what Martin and Harris are doing. The blood on their hands is to appease the Americans. This is despite the fact that US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee just admitted that the US was never going to allow a Palestinian State. "There's no room for it," he said, "in our lifetime". You cannot appease the Americans–who you might recall, provided the bombs that killed 60,000 Palestinians–and also support Palestinian liberation; the two are fundamentally at odds.

Governments represent their people. What the government does is what Ireland does. When we look at the history books, we will be ashamed at how little Ireland did, and the cause of doing so little falls firmly in the hands of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail.

However, governments only respond to their people. If the government is not acting, it is because they have been allowed to not act by the people. We know that Irish leaders defer to the Americans, and have for years; it is the people's responsibility to hold them accountable, and the people have not been doing so.

Big tech

That said, Big Tech is really where Irish complicity shines.

Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are providing the computing for the military campaign behind the genocide, which has among other things completely razed Gaza to the ground. Campaigners within Google and Microsoft especially have laid out their complicity, and Israel's mass bombing campaign relied on Microsoft public cloud resources, which I'm reliably assured were hosted on Irish servers. How can it be business as usual for these companies in Ireland?

BDS "priority target" Intel–one of the biggest employers in Israel, with a factory built on an ethnically-cleansed Palestinian village–operates out of Leixlip. It is the reason that Ireland is the 2nd largest importer from Israel. Activists should be chaining closed the doors to the factory, supported by their local politicians. Even the English are doing civil disobedience for Palestine!!

BDS Priority targets HP and Cisco have large operations in Ireland–both of these provide technology that Israel uses to run the West Bank apartheid. AirBnb and Booking.com are both BDS pressure targets for allowing illegal settlements to be rented on their platforms–profiting from stolen Palestinian land. Not only should they be thrown out of the country, their leaders should be arrested for allowing it.

Wix–an Israeli company which has 500 people in Dublin–went so far as to fire an Irish employee from their Dublin office for saying "Saoirse don Phalaistín". Wix leadership later called her an "asshole" and bragged that the entire episode only caused them minor problems for 48 hours. How is it that we haven't run those fuckers out of town?

Patrick Collison of Stripe–himself Irish–which although a US-based company has a significant presence in Ireland, recently posted some Israeli propaganda on his Twitter. Stripe also pulled out of WebSummit as part of an attack on Irish entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave, something that was later discovered to be a coordinated Israeli propaganda attack.

Meta, with an office of 2000 employees in Ireland, is one of the worst aggressors against Palestine, systematically censoring Palestinian content, limiting access to Palestinian news, and even profiting off ads for illegal West Bank settlements. It has even created policies against "anti-zionist" content on its platform, directly shutting down dissent of hateful ideologies.

The list goes on. Each one of these companies is complicit in Israel's genocide, and each one operates just fine in Ireland, without a single consequence.

Shame

Ireland should honestly be ashamed for its complicity. If you're Irish and reading this, it's time to take action. What can you do? A complete, all-out boycott of Israel from both the government, and the people.

Direct action

Firstly, for the people: our goal should be not sending a single Euro to Israel from Ireland, to bankrupt any local branches of companies on the BDS list, to force policy changes in US tech companies in Ireland, and to force Israeli tech companies out of Ireland.

Existing protests in Ireland are common but minimal, simply showing support for Palestine. I advocate instead a maximal protest: a complete and total shutdown targeting BDS targets in Ireland, Israeli and complicit goods and services, and tech's genocide enablers.

This means forming organized protest and boycott groups to:

  • Protest outside every BDS target high street shop and restaurant for every moment that they are open. This includes Texaco, McDonalds, Burger King, Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, and Dominos which have hundreds of locations across Ireland. There should be teams of people outside every single one of those outlets, asking people not to go inside. 3-4 people in a team, round the clock, taking shifts to hand out fliers, teach people about the company's complicity, and redirect them to local and Palestine-friendly shops instead–it's not like we're short of takeaways or petrol stations.
  • Scan the contents of every shop and supermarket with Boycat, and work with the shops' management teams to change their inventories.
  • Practice civil disobedience at the Intel factory in Leixlip, preventing Israeli goods from reaching their factory.
  • Protest outside the offices of Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, HP, and Dell offices. Make it difficult for employees to go to the office, through large protests, non-violent civil disobedience, reaching out to employees who work there, and whatever else you can think of.
  • For smaller tech companies, including Israeli company Wix, repeated propagandists Stripe, and apartheid profiteers AirBnb and Booking.com, these companies should be protested and subject to non-violent civil disobedience until they're forced to shut down operations in Ireland.

Political change

Secondly, people have to pressure politicians to do the absolute most that can be done. Ultimately, the goal should be to denormalize with Israel until the occupation ends completely, and Israel recognizes a completely free Palestine. These are not extreme measures, but a normal moral stance for relations with a country committing genocide, and they are supported by international law.

There isn't a General Election for some time, so plan to harass politicians directly until they are actually doing something. Barricade their constituency offices, protest outside the Dáil, stand outside their homes with bullhorns at 5am. Demand they scale up their sanctions on Israel, to use any and all powers they have available to:

Many of these are trivial for the government to enact, such as recalling our ambassador, expelling the Israeli ambassador, upholding our existing laws to prevent weapons flights over Ireland, or passing today's bill banning the sale of Israel Bonds.

And while the problem here lies fully with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael–they will only act if you force them: tell them you will never vote for them again if they continue to show tacit support for the genocide. If Ireland isn't doing all it can to end the genocide and occupation, we'll never be able to look ourselves in the mirror.

Next steps

Start by immediately calling your TD and Senator's office, and demanding they publicly support and push for getting the Occupied Territories Bill passed this month. Discuss the need for them to go all-out to protect Palestine, and discuss ever step they can take that I've listed above. Tell them you can't vote for them in the future if they don't go all-out.

After that, it's time to get out there: get a handful of friends and either pick a BDS target near you to picket, a shop or supermarket to audit, or if you're feeling feisty, chain yourselves to the doors of a complicit tech company. Put together a flyer discussing why they are complicit, with a list of alternatives. Include a contact email for your group so new volunteers can get in touch. Voila, you're off to the races.

If you're looking to connect to others to do this work, I can help facilitate: fill in this form and I'll connect you to folks looking to do it too (existing groups doing this work, please get in touch).

Saoirse Don Phailistín.

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