From Belfast to Bethlehem: Ireland-Palestine Solidarity

The old web-site of my old CU-Boulder group Students for Justice in N. Ireland is on Geo-Cities and will disappear soon. I link from my blog profile indirectly to that site, and there is one last document from that site that I'd like to still have in cyberspace and available, one way or the other, from this blog.

So below is a short article for the newspaper of the CU-Boulder Coalition for Justice in Palestine. It was written late 2002 or early 2003. SJNI included copies of it on our literature table at events or in the student center.

(When I refer to the republican movement and sort of equate that with Sinn Fein, that's significantly off; usually the RM refers to both political AND military parts; SF supports the Palestinians, and the IRA do too I'm sure but that's not really relevant)

(When I say that the IPSC has a presence in the Nationalist Community of the North, that's largely accurate, but I'm sure some small minority of people in the North who support the Palestinains are not members of the Nationalist community)

(When I refer to the "nationalist/republican struggle" I was being a little lazy and should have seperated them, although I'm not sure how much that matters)

UPDATE 3/15/20 A few months after SJNI endorsed the CJP, they invited us to co-sponsor an event. It was cancelled because the speaker was in criminal trouble for allegedly supporting Islamic Jihad. I wouldn't be surprised if he was innocent of breaking the law, but I imagine he must have been a supporter in other ways of Islamic Jihad. Althoug CJP, about a year earlier, had brought Hanan Ashrawi to speak and I would have been thrilled to recommend to SJNI that we co-sponsor THAT event, if the other event hadn't been cancelled, I would have had to reccomend to SJNI that we decline- continue to endorse the CJP, but not co-sponsor that event.  A) I don't support religiously fundamentalist political movements, and B) SJNI would have been destroyed from the inside and outside if we had co-sponsored that event. But the point is, CJP wanted to raise our profile by listing us a co-sponsor.

Here it is.

From Belfast to Bethlehem: Ireland-Palestine Solidarity

In working-class nationalist (Catholic) areas of Northern Ireland one usually sees Irish flags flying from every lamp-post. However, when I walked down the Falls Rd. of west Belfast last February, I saw at least as many Palestinian flags as Irish ones. At first I was a bit surprised, until I remembered reading a couple weeks earlier that the Palestinian Ambassador to Ireland had visited the area at the invitation of the local chapter of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Group (http://www.supportpalestine.org).

Since the renewed Intifada in Sept. 2000, Irish people have been greatly moved by the Palestinian struggle and have frequently expressed that support in rallies and demonstrations. There are IPSG chapters throughout Ireland, including among the nationalist community in N. Ireland. The republican movement (Sinn Fein) has been especially supportive. When I attended the National Conference of Sinn Fein Youth, one of their main events included a speech by the Palestinian Ambassador. The display of flags I saw in Belfast I saw in pretty much all nationalist areas I visited. In Derry, the Irish flag flying from the "YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY" monument (a major symbol of the nationalist/republican struggle) has been replaced by a Palestinian one.

(Interestingly, in many loyalist/Protestant areas where British flags are common, Israeli flags have been put up. Whether this is in solidarity with another group of colonial-settlers in a similar situation or just a knee-jerk reaction to republicans I'm not sure)

This solidarity is based on many things. A general concern for human rights and an identification with those nations who have, or are continuing to, experienced imperialism. More specifically, Irish republicans see a lot of similarities between their struggle in N. Ireland and that of the Palestinians.

It is in this spirit that Students for Justice in N. Ireland at the University of Colorado at Boulder has formally endorsed the Coalition for Justice in Palestine.