Around 100 activists in Dublin, mostly dressed in black to mourn the fate of the Palestinian people (then and now), assembled outside the hotel and chanted at those attending the celebration of ethnic cleansing, dispossession, and continued oppression carried out by the Israeli state.
The voice of Palestinian justice in Ireland is the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, whose celebration of Nakba Day went unnoticed here in the USA. The protest marches in various Irish cities like Dublin and Belfast were actually counter-protests of Israeli Independence Day.
The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) was set up in late 2001 by a group of established Irish human rights and community activists, academics and journalists who were deeply concerned with the current situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (the OPT, as they are designated by the UN). In partnership with Palestinians now living in Ireland, the IPSC was formed to provide a voice for Palestine in Ireland.
Here’s a few more pictures of the Dublin protest. Pro-Palestinian activists had gathered at the Ballsbridge Court Hotel on Wednesday, the 17th of May, to protest the Israeli Embassy-hosted celebrations of the 60th anniversary of foundation of the State of Israel via the ethnic cleansing of over 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.
Here’s the Belfast protest on video (click to see):
IPSC (Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign) demo in Belfast on 17th May 2008 to mark the 60th anniversary of Al Nakba.
‘Al Nakba’, which is Arabic for ‘the catastrophe’, marks the illegal foundation of the State of Israel on May 14th 1948. In order to facilitate this foundation, 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their lands, 531 villages, towns & cities were depopulated and destroyed, and even today some 6 million Palestinian refugees are prevented from returning to their homes, by Zionists, in direct contravention of UN Resolutions.
Everything, absolutely everything, that has happened in Palestine, every disaster, every tragedy, every death, every imprisonment, stems from this lamentable injustice.
It follows then, that every and any hope for Palestine and its people rests upon this injustice being overcome.
Most Americans are oblivious to protests going on around the world over the “human rights crimes” being perpetuated against the Palestinian people by Israel and its number one sponsor, the United States. Even Jimmy Carter’s advocacy for Palestinian human rights had to be vocalized in far off places like Cairo and England. He has no voice in America, a country that only recently overcame Jim Crow segregation laws and inequalities that Black Americans were subjected to historically.
What have we become when we, Americans, suborn civil and human rights violations, even supporting them with military and financial aid?