Press TV - 127 Palestinians killed since March 30
Brendan McFarlane "Bik" - Monsters, Devils and Strangers
Hello brothers and sisters, this is Back in the USSR,
I’m Siegfried. If you’ll recall, last
week’s show focused on the May 14th massacre in the Gaza Strip, in which 62 unarmed
Palestinian civilians lost their lives to Israeli sniper fire in a case of
cold-blooded murder. That Press TV
report I just played talks about the death of the latest victim of Israeli
repression in Gaza, a young Palestinian medic, who was shot down in cold blood
yesterday. Razan Ashraf Abdul Qadiral-Najjar, 21, was helping treat and evacuate wounded protesters east of Khan
Younis when she was fatally shot in the back on Friday evening. She was about 100 meters away from the
boundary fence with Israel at the moment she was shot and was wearing clothing
clearly identifying her as a medic.
Two weeks ago I couldn’t bring myself to do my show
because talking about this atrocity, this massacre that took place on the 14th
of last month, was so overwhelming.
Instead I went to a spoken word poetry event and performed a poem by Irish
hunger-striker Bobby Sands, a man who was fighting for the liberation of his
own people against colonialism and who stood in full solidarity with the
Palestinian cause and anti-colonial struggles the world over. That poem was “The Rhythm of Time”. A few days ago I received a response to last
week’s show, and to this poem by Bobby Sands in particular, on the CFRU
volunteers Facebook group after I’d posted about the show there. I’m not going to name names, but I think it’s
important to read the response in full:
“I just want to confirm what you are
saying, are you talking about, the hunger strikers who where members of the
provisional irish replican army, AKA the IRA ? Because they where a TERRORIST
GROUP who bombed the hell out of main land Britain. Killing both military and
civilians in indiscriminately. I LIVED in London during those times and it was
no fun. They CHOSE the bullet over the ballot box. I am ABSOLUTELY disgusted
that I have to read this garbage on a public CFRU feed. If you want to cry for
cold blooded murderer's in your own space in your own time. So be it, I don't
want to read and hear propaganda about a proscribed and internationally
acknowledged terrorist group, or there members. From CFRU, before you cry for a
bunch of dead mass killers, spare a thought for there dead, maimed, victims.
There was NO WAR, it was a terrorist operation against The United Kingdom.
There burning in hell for there crimes.”
Note that there were some serious spelling errors in
the message I just read. So there you
have it. The mainstream media has
clearly struck here at CFRU and so has the dominant narrative that has historically sought to criminalize anti-colonial struggle by oppressed people. Because I speak and have spoken
in an uncompromising way in my support for anti-colonial movements, we have
people who say I shouldn’t be here. Apparently I’m just some quirky person whose deplorable opinions should be
isolated behind closed doors and never given a public hearing…even on community
radio. My response to this person was
that he should educate himself on the real history of places like Ireland and
Palestine and understand the impact that colonialism and empire have had there
before he goes around spewing this kind of vitriol and venom.
Yes the IRA used violence in its campaign against
British occupation in Ireland, just as the PLO did in Palestine, just as the
ANC did in South Africa. In each case that
violence was directed against an Apartheid regime armed to the teeth, backed by
sectarian death squads, that was not afraid to gun down innocent civilians in
cold blood just like what happened on May 14th in Gaza. These were national liberation movements
fighting against settler-colonialism and to resist brutal oppression of their
respective peoples at the hands of the colonizer they were willing to fight
back by any means necessary. Listen to this:
Clip: The IRA Speak 1992
Clip: The IRA Speak 1992
Just as the IRA set off bombs in Manchester and
London, the ANC set off bombs in Pretoria and Johannesburg. The latter city was swathed in black smoke
for 24 hours in 1980 when the ANC, Nelson Mandela’s organization, blew up three
oil refineries in an effort to starve the Apartheid state’s military machine of
fuel. Does that make them evil? Does it
make Hamas evil for finally returning fire against Israel this past week with mortar shells after two months of the Israeli Army slaughtering unarmed
Palestinian demonstrators – at least 129 of whom now lie dead without a single
Israeli injury or fatality? The first recorded use of firearms by the
Provisional IRA in the so-called “Troubles” was on the 27th of June,
1970 when the British-backed UVF militia attempted to overrun the Catholic
neighborhood of Short Strand. The IRA
defended the neighborhood and killed five of the attacking militiamen, who
themselves had been murdering and displacing Catholic people from their homes
throughout the 1960s. Self-defense is
not a crime.
But people like my challenger here have a real
tendency to deplore violence only when its done by oppressed people defending
themselves and resisting state violence.
It’s all too easy. The mainstream
media demonizes the hell out of oppressed people for defending themselves and
shapes public opinion to the point where it doesn’t cost a thing to talk trash
about the colonized. Of course the very
same people have zero problem with the cops getting violent with oppressed
people, or the army getting violent, or people who the army and police hire to
do their dirty work for them getting violent, because all that’s “legitimate
force” in their eyes. They believe in
the state. They believe in the
capitalist state and when it commits violence, that’s cool. Or if it isn’t cool it must be a one-time
aberration. If you fight against state
violence, however, you are evil, monstrous, child-murdering scum from
hell. That’s their point of view.
So it comes as no surprise that they don’t care that
the armed struggle in Northern Ireland only began after masses of Irish
Catholic civilians were forced out of their homes and driven out of entire
neighborhoods by state-backed sectarian thugs and turned into refugees in their
own land in the 1960s. They don’t care
that the armed struggle only really started after the British government
cracked down on a peaceful mass movement for civil rights, protesting
peacefully against the Apartheid policies being pursued in Ulster and the
systemic discrimination against Catholics.
The British government responded to these demonstrations by imprisoning
thousands of people without trial, creating a full-on police-state and shooting
14 unarmed protestors dead in the city of Derry on Bloody Sunday 1971. They don’t care about the police raids, the
interrogation centers, the systemic torture of prisoners, the state-backed
sectarian deathsquads who murdered civilians simply for being Catholic, the
enforced segregation of the populace, occupation by the British army, and the
creation of a fully fledged Apartheid system in the north of Ireland – imposed
on the Irish people by the British Crown.
Oh no, they’re not interested in any of that.
Armed self-defense only begins when peaceful movements
are assaulted by the state and civil rights struggles are drowned in blood. It was the same thing in South Africa. Throughout the 1950s the African National
Congress and its allied organizations and trade unions engaged in strikes,
boycotts, massive peaceful protests for black civil rights in an Apartheid
state, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people. The South African government’s response was brutal
repression, leading up to the infamous Sharpeville massacre on March 21 1960
when 83 unarmed black people were shot down in cold blood by the police and
another 365 were injured. It was only
after this and other massacres, the banning of opposition parties and trade
unions and brutal police-state tactics directed against anyone resisting
Apartheid that the ANC began its armed struggle. It was the same thing in the U.S. in the 1960s when the Black Panther
Party really began pushing for armed self-defense only after brutal state
repression against the black community and the assassinations of Martin Luther
King and Malcolm X. And today it’s the
same thing in Palestine, with militant forces in Gaza only opening fire on
Israel after two months of the Israeli army drowning peaceful protests in blood.
I want to quote Michael Parenti, this is something he
said in his book “Blackshirts and Reds”: “Most
social revolutions begin peaceably. Why
would it be otherwise? Who would not prefer to assemble and demonstrate rather
than engage in mortal combat against pitiless forces that enjoy every advantage
in mobility and firepower? Revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, and El Salvador
all began peacefully, with crowds of peasants and workers launching nonviolent
protests only to be met with violent oppression from the authorities. Peaceful protest and reform are exactly what
the people are denied by the ruling oligarchs.
The dissidents who continue to fight back, who try to defend themselves
from the oligarchs’ repressive fury, are then called ‘violent revolutionaries’
and ‘terrorists’.” (Pg 29)
This is an important distinction. Because those “revolutions” that do begin
violently, with armed gangs going around attacking security forces, murdering government
supporters, burning buildings, and using intimidation to recruit people, are
probably not wholly indigenous efforts at political reform, but Western-backed
regime-change efforts. We see this in
the case of Syria, Venezuela, and most recently in Nicaragua, with right-wing
opposition forces rejecting talks, rejecting mediation, rejecting reform efforts,
and really rejecting anything less than the complete overthrow of the governments
of these countries – all of which are currently targeted by the United States. These movements are violent from the start,
they often have support from local elites who want the overthrow of progressive
policies and governments, and most importantly they have the support of the
world’s only superpower – which is a major reason why they don’t feel any
incentive to negotiate or compromise.
Why compromise when you’ve got the US backing you to the hilt? Why be
non-violent when you’ve got the US and the Western media encouraging you and
solely blaming the government for any violence that happens? Why push for
reform when you think you can have it all through a regime change operation spearheaded
by your backers in Washington?
Contrast that with the painful compromises that ANC,
IRA and PLO were willing to make in the 1990s in order to have peace in South
Africa, Northern Ireland and Palestine – painful compromises those societies
are, in many cases, still suffering from right now, especially in Palestine
where the Oslo Accords effectively provided a front for Israeli colonization
and settlement of the West Bank and the end of any realistic hope for a
two-state solution.
So, getting back to the friendly letter from a fellow
CFRU volunteer that I quoted at the beginning of the show, no, Bobby Sands and
his comrades are not “burning in hell” for upholding the self-determination of
their people in the face of a brutally oppressive colonial power. 10 brave men gave their lives on
hunger-strike in 1981: Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O’Hara,
Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee and
Micky Divine. They made the ultimate
sacrifice because they refused to be criminalized by the system that was
oppressing their people – they were not common criminals and terrorists, as the
British government tried to make them out to be, but political prisoners. And I want to play a song about Ray McCreesh,
one of those ten brave men who would not be criminalized.
Chris McGill – My Name Is Ray McCreesh
Christy Moore – 90 Miles
International Law, the UN Charter, clearly state that colonized
peoples have the right to resist. In a
message smuggled out of Robben Island, where he had been held prisoner since
1962, Nelson Mandela declared: “The soil
of our country is destined to be the scene of the fiercest fight and the
sharpest battles to rid our continent of the last vestiges of White minority
rule. The world is on our side. The OAU, the UN and the Anti-Apartheid
movement continue to put pressure on the racist rulers of our country. Every effort to isolate South Africa adds
strength to our struggle. At all levels
of our struggle, within and outside the country, much has been achieved and much
remains to be done. But victory is
certain!” (Quoted in "The Struggle for Africa", Mai Palmberg editor, Zed Books, 1983)
Victory will also be achieved in Palestine, in Ireland, and
everywhere colonialism remains to be defeated, including Canada. With regard to Palestine, just as was the case
in South Africa, a boycott and sanctions movement is growing in strength, it’s
getting harder and harder for celebrities, academics, and others to go to Apartheid
Israel and collaborate with the establishment there without facing international
condemnation. The US is now almost
entirely isolated when it vetoes resolutions at the UN condemning Israeli
crimes. It will be a hard struggle, but I
fully believe that victory is indeed certain.
Palestine will be free. All oppressed
nations will have their liberation.
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