800 years the Irish have fought a genocidal British occupation .
Eight centuries of ethnic cleansing,land clearances,massacres,starvation,colonisation and a brutal military oppression.
Sucessive generations of Irish men and women ,boys and girls have fought clandestinely and openly to liberate Ireland from foreign imperialist control.
Ireland was Britains first conquest.
The British Empire went on to occupy and at times colonise approximately three quarters of the worlds land mass and citizenry.
Australia,Canada,NewZealand, North America,South Africa, Egypt, India,China to name just a few.
The only difference between the British occupation of Ireland and the Zionist occupation of Palestine is one of time and scale.
Ireland endured a British imposed Famine.
In 1847 the ‘potatoe blight’ destroyed a large percentage of the harvest leading to a shortage of a basic food staple and a subsequent increase in prices.
Ireland having been invaded centuries before was now a land of tenants ruled by absentee land lords.Sections of British aristocracy owned large swaves of Irish land stolen through military occupation.
The Irish were disposessed of their homes and farms and forced to become almost indentured slaves ,tilling the land and raising cattle only for the profits of their labour to be extracted for the largess of a foreign occupier who enacted laws to oppress the indugenous population while protecting the invader.
One law for the occupied a separate law for the occupier.
Two million died or emigrated.This is why there are Irish communitues all over the globe.
54 million North Americans claim to be of Irish descent.
The Irish people wers deliberately starved.
Hunger and famine were used as a weapon of war to end ‘ The Irish Question’ at the heart of British politics.
Those who resisted occupation were murdered imprisoned or deported as Felons to Australia, the Americas and the Carribean.
Massacres,land theft,colonisation,famine,imprisonment,ethnic cleansing.These were the weapons of the oppressor.
This is the fate of all people who live under occupation.
This is Irelands history.A legacy of suffering before partial liberation.
People in Ireland support the people of Palestine.That is a fact.
There is a moral imperative on all people who are suffering or have suffered under foreign occupation or colonisation to support each other.
Ireland gained partial independence in1922 when Britain partially withdrew from 26 of Irelands 32 counties.
This resulted in the Irish civil war were those opppsed to partition were then attacked with British guns and British artillary being operated by their former comrades.
Fratricide, imprisonment torture and summary executions once used as tactics of war by the oppressor were adopted by pro partition Irishmen onto the inheritors of the ideals of a fully independent soverign Irish Republic.
In 1969 a new generation of oppressed Irish people in the British created state of Northern Ireland fought to reunify the country.After 30 years of
Struggle a prece deal was agreed between the protangonist.The Irish Republican Movement The British Government The Irish Government and the counter revolutionary death squads armed and directed by British intelligence alongside their locally recruited merecenary forces.
Through out all those years of armed political resistance the Irish Republican Movement supported their comrades in Palestine.
From the Fayedeen through the PLO to the PA.
Now in N Ireland history has been made by the selection for the first time in the countries history an Irish Republican is now First Minister
A party that I have supported all my life is now in government.
Irish reunification is only now a matter time.
Sadly the Irish Republican Movement in the form of Sinn Fein is no longer a radical Republican party.
It is a shallow shadow of its former glory.
Now a Nationalist constitutional party it has embraced the establishment and the trappings of power and although still endorsed by many it has abandoned its revolutionary roots and embraced neo liberalism.
There is a growing chorus in Ireland demanding that Irish politicians do not observe the traditional St Patricks day celebrations at the White House on March 17 2024.
While Shame Fein party members and elected representatives north and south attend and even organise/ control some of these rallies calling for a ceasefire they have publicly asserted their intention to go to Washington .
While Shame Fein and other corporate endorsed Irish politicians drown there shamrock alongside genocide Joe, while posing for selfies,Palestinians will be drowning in their own blood or suffocating slowly to death under the rubble, as the death toll rises under the bombardment of American imperialist bombs remember the treachery of Sinn Fein.
It is not the bombs of our enemies that hurt us the most but the duplicity of our friends and the treachery of their deeds.
Fra Hughes is a Belfast based Palestine solidarity activist
