Trade union solidarity with Gaza
NUJ current formed
By NUJ activist
NUJ members at protest in Dublin.
A New Year’s Eve Palestine solidarity demonstration at halfpenny bridge in Dublin saw the emergence of a new current – a press and media movement based on Irish NUJ members.
The slogan of the current was; “Israel! Stop killing Journalists!”
The Palestinian Journalist’s syndicate had reported that 190 journalists had been killed in a systematic targeting of Palestinian reporters in Gaza.
In a recent episode five reporters were killed in a van outside a hospital as one of them waited for the birth if his son. Media in Britain and Ireland routinely spew Israeli propaganda and opposition to Israel is increasingly criminalised.
It’s easy to explain the need for a solidarity current in media workers. The question is: Why so few and so isolated?
The explanation lies in the unofficial nature of the action. The NUJ leadership were far away. The official banner was not available. The NUJ secretary Seamus Dooley has kept a low profile, all the more striking given his high-profile involvement in support for the Ukrainian regime and NATO intervention against Russia.
The birth of this new media movement shows the potential and the need for trade union organisation in the solidarity movement and the special needs for NUJ involvement given the growing level of propaganda in support of genocide and growing state repression of dissent.
The problem is that Ireland’s trade union leadership is locked in social partnership with the government and that they step back and smother the possibilities of mobilisation.
The response is the response of the new media movement – to organise independently and fight from above and below - to act in the solidarity movement and to pressure the bureaucracy to enable broader movement.