Lasair Dhearg unveiled a mural in recent days dedicated to the continued heroism and bravery of the Palestinian resistance fighters continuing to oppose the genocidal occupation of their lands by western backed Zionists.

The mural was unveiled on the corner of Falcarragh Drive and Suffolk Road in Lenadoon, Belfast. This is an area which itself has long experienced the consequences of imperialist occupation and as such continues to stand in solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world.

The event was chaired by Pádraic MacCoitir, political ex-prisoner and Leas-Cathaoirleach Lasair Dhearg, who introduced the main speaker, activist and member of Lasair Dhearg’s Belfast branch, Amy Rafferty. This was followed by a recitation of a poem written and delivered by Lasair Dhearg Belfast member Aindriú Mac Ruaidhrí.

The full text of Amy’s speech is as follows:

“May of this year marked the 76th anniversary of ‘Al Nakba’ in Palestine. Also known as ‘the catastrophe’, during that period the world bore witness to the mass displacement, genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that occurred in 1948, and which was carried out by Zionist supremacists.

Those Zionists founded a new colonial state which claimed the territory of the Palestinian people. The foundations of that state were laid by Britain and her imperialist allies in furtherance of their own global interests, and at great cost to Palestinian lives.

Every day since Al Nakba however, has been a catastrophe for the people of Palestine, but in recent months, since the zionist devastation of the Gaza strip, such a definition remains wholly inadequate.

As we gather here today, bulldozers are razing Gaza. And that is not a euphemism – the Israeli state, after wreaking destruction on Palestinians from the air, sent in their tanks and columns upon columns of heavily armed troops into what is one of the most heavily populated areas in the world, and with them came the Caterpillar bulldozers. Not content with reducing entire neighbourhoods to rubble from the sky, those bulldozers are busy annihilating what remains and flattening vast areas of what is now being called potential beach-front property for further settlements of Zionist colonisers. So far, well over 40,000 Palestinians have been massacred, and more than 10,000 remain missing. Most of the dead and missing are women and children, and the extreme majority of them are civilians. Any one left alive is now a refugee in their own land.

Let us call this what it is – a genocide. There can be no other definition given to what is happening now in Palestine except ‘a genocide’, the deliberate ethnic cleansing of the native population by a colonial settler state.

All infrastructure in Gaza has collapsed. Universities and schools have been all but destroyed. The health system has completely collapsed. Whole communities and districts have been eradicated, mounds of rubble now sit where homes used to stand. Food and water are deliberately restricted at the border, so as to create, what the UN calls an impending ‘famine’.

All of this has occurred within the last 302 days, since valiant acts of resistance to rid their land of an occupying state took place in October of last year.

It was then that significant numbers of Palestinian Resistance fighters rose up against the Zionist settler colony occupying their lands. The same entity that enforced an Apartheid state against the will of ordinary Palestinians, and which walled in millions of indigenous people into the world’s largest open air prison known as the Gaza strip.

Those acts of resistance, heroic and spectacular as they were, have been widely condemned by politicians and former anti-imperialists in Ireland.

However, Lasair Dhearg wants to use this occasion, and the unveiling of todays mural, to note that such acts of resistance are enshrined in international law. Palestine has a LEGAL and a MORAL right to defend their land against the ongoing occupation of the colonial entity known as ‘Israel’.

The Palestinian people do not need global calls from the liberal tendency demanding a ‘ceasefire’. They need weapons. Weapons that can rid their land and their people of the genocide inflicted upon them by an apartheid state. Weapons that can bring to an end the ILLEGAL occupation of their land.

They do not need a ceasefire, because such calls only serve to extend their suffering into subsequent generations, and the continued ethnic cleansing of their people. They do not need a ceasefire, because a ceasefire fails to conclude the very basis of the conflict. What they need is a global acceptance of the fact that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians. No one else. Not to Britain. Not to the US. And certainly not the Zionist supremacists who seek to rid Palestine of the Palestinians.

The foundation of the conflict in Palestine is the usurpation of their territory by an illegal entity which seeks to eradicate Palestine from the map, and where it once stood, erect their own nation state. That state intends to re-write history, eradicating the Palestinians not just from the land, but from the history books.

The continued existence of the Palestinian people however, gives truth to the lie that the state of Israel has always been there. And the continued resistance of the Palestinian people gives truth to the lie that the colonial apartheid entity known as Israel is the rightful owner of that territory.

For the Palestinians – to resist, is to exist.

And there are those now in Ireland who advocate a two state solution in Palestine. These politicians, many former Republicans, are, by advocating such a position, stating emphatically that the entity known as ‘Israel’ has a right to exist. This partitionist mentality does not represent the rank and file of Irish Republicanism. It is not an anti-imperialist position.

Irish Socialist Republicanism is an anti-partitionist and anti-imperialist ideology, and we use this opportunity now to state that the anti-imperialist position is a simple one:

We support a ONE-STATE SOLUTION – that is, Palestine, free, from the river to the sea, encompassing all the borders of historic Palestine. This necessitates the complete eradication of the Zionist entity. Then, and only then, can the Muslim, Jewish and Christian population of Palestine live in lasting peace, as they did for generations before Al Nakba and the imposition of an apartheid state upon the people. This is not a religious war. Like Ireland, the foundations of the conflict derive from global imperialist ambitions and a supremacist ideology.

We now live in a digital age. Technological advancements have allowed the world to watch, in real time, the horrors visited upon the Palestinians. Within minutes of hospitals and homes being wiped out by American and British bombs dropped by zionist war jets, the images are projected across news channels throughout the globe. Sometimes, we get to watch events as they happen live – death and devastation delivered directly to our TV screens. Governments across the globe have failed the Palestinians.

The digital age however, has also allowed the Palestinians to highlight such horrors, and, alongside that, to highlight the heroic deeds of their people.

We have witnessed one of the most heavily armed and technologically advanced forces in the world, being met head on by a resourceful and resurgent people.

Some of the supposedly best trained shock troops have been wiped out by the tactics and guile of home grown resistance fighters.

Tanks, utilised to destroy whole blocks and neighbourhoods, have been destroyed by sandal-footed, tracksuit-bottomed guerilla fighters, who approach these heavily armed behemoths, and place explosives atop their armour.

It has been said that today, nearly everything is made in China. Except courage. Courage is made in Palestine.

This mural, unveiled by Lasair Dhearg, is dedicated to the heroism and bravery of the courageous resistance fighters in Palestine.

And we use its unveiling to state emphatically, that Palestine has a right to resist.”

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