Full Sanctions Now
*Expel the Israeli Ambassador
*Impose trade & arms
embargos
*Close Shannon Airport
to US military
09 November 2024
Last month an enormous demonstration in Dublin, linked to ongoing protests around the world, showed the mass sympathy here for the Palestinian cause. Today’s march will demonstrate that sympathy yet again.
Yet the genocide, carried out by Israel with the support of the US, proceeds apace. A mass siege of northern Gaza involves the outright slaughter of civilians, starvation and destruction of the remaining medical facilities The blitzkrieg has expanded to engulf Lebanon. Iraq, Syria and Yemen are bombed as the background to a failed attempt to provoke large scale war with Iran.
If this escalation isn’t enough, UN troops, including Irish troops, have come under attack and the UN Secretary General is banned from Israel. The final step is the decision to outlaw UNRWA. This UN organisation is actually the main form of civic society in Palestine. The Zionists are closing in for the kill. If there are no hospitals, no education, no shelter and no food then there will be no Palestinians.
One of the most shocking elements of this has been the complicity of governments and international organisations. The Irish government, despite occasional rhetoric, is no exception. Ireland still has full diplomatic and economic relations with Israel. Moreover, it allows the transfer of US military personnel and munitions to Israel via Shannon Airport and through Irish airspace. The Irish government is often accused of doing little or nothing for Palestinians. Yet nothing would actually be an advance on its current stance which is actually doing them harm.
What passes for support for Palestine is no more than tokenism. The latest example of this, which touches directly on the issue of sanctions, is the revival of the Occupied Territories Bill, ahead of the general election. That this is pure posturing by the Coalition parties is evidenced by the fact that it won’t be enacted prior to the dissolution of the Dáil despite other pieces of legislation being rushed through. Moreover, despite the Bill being on the books since 2018 successive governments have refused to adopt it as policy. It has recently been reported that an Irish minister made an off the record call to his Israeli counterpart to assure them that it would be blocked. Even if it was adopted the impact of the bill would be minimal as its provisions only cover a tiny fraction of Israeli exports.
The bigger picture is one of a rapid expansion of trade with Israel over the last three years. Within the framework of the broader EU-Israel trade agreement Israeli exports to Ireland have increased from €182m in 2020 to €3.6bn in 2023. Over the same period Irish exports to Israel have risen from €300m to €1bn. Dual-use exports increased to €70.4m last year, up notably from just €10.4m in 2022. Since October 2023 the Department of Enterprise has issued 14 individual licences for the export of dual-use goods to Israel.
The Israeli market would not be a significant loss to Ireland, accounting for just 0.5% of total export value. However, what is dictating the Irish position is not Israel but the imperialist powers that stand behind it, the US, UK and the EU. The fundamental barrier to Irish action on genocide is the integration of the Irish state into economic and military framework of US led imperialism. The Irish government is fully aligned with the ongoing drive by the US to maintain its dominance. The onslaught on Gaza is a part of this but so too is the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and the stoking of tensions with China over Taiwan.
All of this poses serious questions for an Irish Solidarity Movement which has placed consumer boycotts and the lobbying of the government at the centre of its strategy. The expansion of trade with Israel and the pro-war positions adopted by the government demonstrate that this has failed.
Any effective solidarity action will inevitably involve confrontation with imperialism. We need to take the initiative and impose our own bottom-up sanctions through protest, boycott, blockade and industrial action. In the face of genocide and the growing threat of nuclear war the building of such a movement has never been more urgent.